Teaching Materials Archive - Zinn Education Project

“Intolerable Conditions”: Teaching About Northern Racism Through Rosa Parks’s Detroit

Teaching Activity. By Say Burgin, Jeanne Theoharis, and Ursula Wolfe-Rocca.
This lesson, which focuses on the Detroit Uprising of 1967, equips students to “talk back” to official accounts of the riot by focusing on its root causes. Additionally, the lesson provides students an opportunity to get a fuller sense of Rosa Parks’s life and politics and to learn about the Black freedom struggle outside of the South.

Harlan County USA

Film. Directed and produced by Barbara Kopple. 1976. 103 minutes.
This documentary tells the story of a Kentucky coal miners' strike and the thirteen-month struggle between a community fighting to survive and a corporation dedicated to the bottom line.

Anne Braden sitting under poster of Ho Chi Minh

Anne Braden Speaks: Selected Writings and Speeches, 1947-1999

Book — Non-fiction. Edited by Ben Wilkins. 2022. 216 pages.
A representative collection of Anne Braden's writings, speeches, and letters, from the relationship between race and capitalism, to the role of the South in U.S. society, to the function of anti-communism.

Our Kind of Historian: The Work and Activism of Lerone Bennett Jr.

Book — Non-fiction. By E. James West. 2022. 328 pages.
This biography examines the life of historian and activist Lerone Bennett Jr. and his influence on African American culture and history.

I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War Against Reconstruction

Book — Non-fiction. By Kidada E. Williams. 2023. 352 pages.
An account of the brutal white supremacist violence and terror that formerly enslaved people were faced with during Reconstruction.

The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks

Film. Directed by Johanna Hamilton and Yoruba Richen. Produced by Soledad O’Brien. 2022. 101 minutes.
This documentary sheds light on Rosa Parks' extensive organizing, radical politics, and lifelong dedication to justice.

The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation

Book — Non-fiction. By Anna Malaika Tubbs. 2021. 288 pages.
This book details the lives of Berdis Baldwin, Alberta King, and Louise Little, the mothers of James Baldwin, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X, respectively.

Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment

Book — Non-fiction. By Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. 2018. 236 pages.
A history of guns and gun laws in the United States, from the original colonization of the country to the present.

The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America

Book — Non-fiction. By Carol Anderson. 2021. 272 pages.
This book illuminates the history and impact of the Second Amendment, how it was designed, and how it has consistently been constructed to keep African Americans powerless and vulnerable.

Still Dreaming / Seguimos soñando

Picture book. Written by Claudia Guadalupe Martínez, illustrated by Magdalena Mora, and translated by Luis Humberto Crosthwaite. 2022. 40 pages.
The story of a boy and his family who leave their beloved home to avoid being separated by the government during the Mexican Repatriation.

On the Books: Jim Crow and Algorithms of Resistance

Digital collection. Collections as data and machine learning project examining Jim Crow and racially-based legislation signed into law in North Carolina between Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement.

Freedmen and Southern Society Project

Digital collection. Documents that help explain how Black people traversed the bloody ground from slavery to freedom between the beginning of the Civil War in 1861 and the beginning of Reconstruction in 1867.

The Freedmen’s Bureau Online

Digital collection. Records of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedman and Abandoned Lands, including new and unpublished records that document the formerly enslaved, freedpersons and their descendants.

Teaching With Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All

Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca. 25 pages.
Students engage in an interactive activity with short excerpts from Martha Jones’ book to learn about the leading role of Black women in the fight for voting rights throughout U.S. history.

Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands

Book — Non-fiction. By Kelly Lytle Hernández. 2022. 384 pages.
Taking readers to the frontlines of the magonista uprising and the counterinsurgency campaign that failed to stop them, Kelly Lytle Hernández puts the magonista revolt at the heart of U.S. history.

Teaching With Seizing Freedom

To facilitate bringing the Seizing Freedom podcast to the classroom, we are sharing teaching ideas for selected episodes, beginning with "A Powerful Black Hand."

La Operación (documentary)

Film. Directed by Ana María García. 1982. 40 minutes.
La Operación is a 1982 documentary that shows the widespread sterilization operation led by the U.S. during the 1950s and 60s in Puerto Rico.

Takeover: How We Occupied a Hospital and Changed Public Health Care

Film. By Emma Francis-Snyder. 2021. 38 minutes.
Takeover tells the story of the Young Lords’ 12-hour occupation of Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx in 1970.

Three Strikes: Miners, Musicians, Salesgirls, and the Fighting Spirit of Labor’s Last Century

Book — Non-fiction. By Howard Zinn, Dana Frank, and Robin D. G. Kelley. 2002. 184 pages.
Three renowned historians present stirring tales of labor and the effectiveness of strikes and organized labor.

Colin in Black and White: The Kaepernick Curriculum

Teaching Guide. Presented by Ra Vision Media & Know Your Rights Camp. 2022. 85 pages.
In conjunction with the Netflix series of the same name, this teaching guide provides students with resources and activities to understand and address systemic and institutional racism.

The Young Lords: A Radical History

Book — Non-fiction. By Johanna Fernández. 2020. 480 pages.
Fernandez demonstrates how the Young Lords redefined the character of protest, the color of politics, and the cadence of popular urban culture in the age of great dreams.

Teaching Activity by Johanna Fernández

Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance

Book — Non-fiction. By Nick Estes. 2019. 320 pages.
In Our History Is the Future, Nick Estes traces traditions of Indigenous resistance that led to the #NoDAPL movement.

Teaching Activity by Nick Estes

Standing with Standing Rock: Voices from the #NoDAPL Movement

Book — Non-fiction. Edited by Nick Estes and Jaskiran Dhillon. 2019. 448 pages.
Through poetry and prose, essays, photography, interviews, and polemical interventions, the contributors, including leaders of the Standing Rock movement, reflect on Indigenous history and politics and on the movement's significance.

Teaching Activity by Nick Estes (editor)

The Young Crusaders: The Untold Story of the Children and Teenagers Who Galvanized the Civil Rights Movement

Book — Non-fiction. By V. P. Franklin. 2021. 328 pages.
This books tells the story of the hundreds of thousands of children and teenagers who engaged in sit-ins, school strikes, boycotts, marches, and demonstrations in which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other national civil rights leaders played little or no part.

Teaching Activity by V. P. Franklin

No Kids in Prison

Website. NoKidsinPrison uses art to model, imagine and advocate for alternatives to youth incarceration by lifting up the voices of youth most impacted by the criminal justice system through art and culture.