Teaching Materials Archive

Young Voices for the Planet: “Words Have Power”

Film. By Lynne Cherry and Young Voices for the Planet. 2019. 6 minutes.
This short documentary features the activism of Jaysa Mellers, a young adolescent girl who rallied her community to challenge local air polluters.

Carter Reads the Newspaper

Picture book. By Deborah Hopkinson. Illustrated by Don Tate. 2019. 36 pages.
This picture book chronicles the young life of Dr. Carter G. Woodson, an Appalachian-born Harvard scholar and advocate for African American history. He founded Negro History Week in 1926 (which grew into Black History Month), the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), and the Journal of Negro History.

Ghost Fishing Poetry Anthology (book cover) | Zinn Education Project

Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology

Poetry. Edited by Melissa Tuckey. 2018. 460 pages.
A collection of poetry about colonial dispossession, the environmental crime of war, food and culture, resource extraction, resistance, and the Global South.

A Message from the Future with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Film. Narrated by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and illustrated by Molly Crabapple. The Intercept. 2019. 7 minutes.
The film flips the script on our future by illustrating one where we survive climate change and thrive because we took action today.

Segregated by Design

Film. Directed by Mark Lopez. Written by Mark Lopez and Richard Rothstein. 2019. 18 minutes.
An animated documentary of how the federal, state and local governments unconstitutionally segregated every major metropolitan area in the U.S. through law and policy.

You got to move (cover art) | Zinn Education Project

You Got to Move: Stories of Change in the South

Film. Directed by Lucy Massie Phenix and Veronica Selver. 1985. 86 minutes.
Documentary about people who learned to organize, and received peer support, at the Highlander Center.

Poems from a Marshallese Daughter (Book Cover) | Zinn Education Project

Iep Jāltok: Poems from a Marshallese Daughter

Poetry. By Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner. 2017. 90 pages.
Poetry reveals the traumas of colonialism, racism, forced migration, the legacy of American nuclear testing, and the impending threats of climate change.

Thomas Jefferson Advertisement Runaway Slave | Zinn Education Project

Freedom on the Move: Rediscovering the Stories of Self-Liberating People

Digital collection. Crowdsourcing project that provides access to information, through thousands of print advertisements, about freedom-seekers and their would-be enslavers in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Midnight Teacher 9781620141632 | Zinn Education Project

Midnight Teacher: Lilly Ann Granderson and Her Secret School

Picture book. By Janet Halfmann. Illustrated by London Ladd. 2018. 40 pages.
Tells the story of Lilly Ann Granderson, an enslaved woman who taught hundreds of people in Kentucky and Mississippi to read.

Pies from Nowhere (Book Cover) | Zinn Education Project

Pies from Nowhere: How Georgia Gilmore Sustained the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Picture book. By Dee Romito. Illustrated by Laura Freeman. 2018. 40 pages.
The story of Georgia Gilmore and the Club from Nowhere, a grassroots project to provide food and funds for the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Memphis Martin and the Mountaintop 9781629797182 (Book Cover) | Zinn Education Project

Memphis, Martin, and the Mountaintop: The Sanitation Strike of 1968

Picture book. By Alice Faye Duncan. Illustrated by R. Gregory Christie. 2018. 40 pages.
A historical fiction picture book that presents the story of nine-year-old Lorraine Jackson, who in 1968 witnessed the Memphis sanitation strike.

Someday is Now (Book) | Zinn Education Project

Someday Is Now: Clara Luper and the 1958 Oklahoma City Sit-Ins

Picture book. By Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich. Illustrated by Jade Johnson. 2018. 32 pages.
The true story of a teacher who led her students to take direct non-violent action to protest segregation.

Ellen’s Broom

Picture book. By Kelly Starling Lyons. 2012. 32 pages.
Story about a young girl during Reconstruction whose parents are finally able to have a legal marriage while honoring a family wedding tradition.

Before She Was Harriet

Picture book. By Lesa Cline-Ransome and James E. Ransome. 2017. 32 pages.
An illustrated biography of Harriet Tubman written in verse.

The Killing Floor

Film. Directed by Bill Duke. 1985. Digitally restored in 2020. 118 minutes.
Set during World War I, two African-American men deal with racism in the workplace and the labor union.

In Their Own Voice: Activists Tell the History of the Civil Rights Movement

Digital collection. The Library of Congress has launched an online collection of oral history interviews with Civil Rights Movement veterans.

The Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated the United States

Article. By Richard Rothstein. 2017. If We Knew Our History series.

Harriet Hanson Robinson: “Characteristics of the Early Factory Girls.”

Film clip. Voices of a People's History.
Harriet Hanson Robinson's "Characteristics of the Early Factory Girls" (1898) read by Lili Taylor.

Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library

Picture book. By Carole Boston Weatherford and Eric Velasquez. 2017. 48 pages.
This picture book is a tribute to Arturo Schomburg, the Afro Puerto Rican historian collector and activist who chronicled the Black history of the Diaspora.

Charles Sumner

Profile. Charles Sumner, Civil War and Reconstruction era politician in the United States.

Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery

Digital collection. This website publishes thousands of “Information Wanted” advertisements taken out by people freed from slavery who are searching for family members who had been sold apart.

Banished

Film. Center for Investigative Reporting and Two Tone Productions. 2007. 84 minutes.
Filmmaker Marco Williams examined four examples of primarily white communities violently rising up to force their African-American neighbors to flee town.

Crossing Bok Chitto: A Choctaw Tale of Friendship and Freedom

Picture book. By Tim Tingle. 2008. 40 pages.
A picture book that highlights rarely discussed intersections between Native Americans in the South and African Americans in bondage.

Now Can We Talk? 40 Years Later

Film. By Lee Anne Bell and Markie Hancock. 2013. 45 minutes.
This DVD and discussion guide offer a powerful way to engage students, teachers, and community groups in honest dialogue about the ongoing problems of racism and what we can do to address them.

A Beautiful Ghetto

Book - Non-fiction. By Devin Allen. 2017. A Beautiful Ghetto documents Black life in Baltimore before and after the police murder of Freddie Gray and the uprising it produced through short essays, poetry, and stunning photographs.