Reading Level: High School

High School

Why You Can’t Teach United States History without American Indians

Book — Non-fiction. Edited by Susan Sleeper-Smith, Juliana Barr, Jean M. O’Brien, Nancy Shoemaker, and Scott Manning Stevens. 2015. 352 pages.
Written by leading scholars in the field of Native American history, these essays reflect the newest directions of the field and are organized to follow the chronological arc of the standard U.S. history survey.
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1919 by Eve Ewing book cover

1919

Book — Non-fiction. By Eve L. Ewing. 2019. 96 pages.
Poetic reflections on the Chicago Race Riots of 1919 — part of 'Red Summer' — in a history told through Ewing's speculative and Afrofuturist lenses.
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How Should Rosa Parks’ Legacy Be Memorialized?

This lesson by Cierra Kaler-Jones invites students to consider how Rosa Parks’ legacy is memorialized by critically examining her statue at the U.S. Capitol. Students learn the fuller story of Rosa Parks’ life and use that information to determine how they would memorialize her legacy.
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Labor Matters

Teaching Activity. By Learning for Justice.
Introduces students to the role of the labor movement in securing contemporary benefits such as the 40-hour work week, the minimum wage, and workplace safety regulations.
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What Rights Do We Have?

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 8 pages.
This lesson teaches some of the nuts and bolts of labor unions and then moves beyond to ask students to consider what rights they have at work, and to recognize that “rights” depend in large part on what people have fought for and won.
Teaching Activity by Norm Diamond
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Columbus in America

Film. By Paul Puglisi. 2017. 89 minutes.
Documentary on the symbol of Columbus in the United States and the campaign for Indigenous Peoples' Day.
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How We Remember: The Struggle Over Slavery in Public Spaces

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow, Jesse Hagopian, Cierra Kaler-Jones, Ana Rosado, and Ursula Wolfe-Rocca.
Students read about sites of memory in How the Word Is Passed and imagine how to commemorate what occurred there. They then compare that to how the respective site is currently commemorated and described by docents.
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book cover showing portrait of Carter G. Woodson with colorful background.

The Mis-Education of the Negro

Book — Non-fiction. By Carter G. Woodson, with an introduction by Jarvis Givens. 2023. 224 pages.
Originally released in 1933, The Mis-Education of the Negro continues to resonate today, raising questions about the legacy of slavery and enduring white supremacy.
Teaching Activity by Carter G. Woodson
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