In the News

A new report has found that U.S. students aren’t adequately taught about the Reconstruction Era, the period from 1865 to 1877 in which white supremacists undermined efforts to reintegrate former Black slaves into the post-Civil War United States. As a result, many students remain ignorant about the period and its connection to the present-day fight for racial justice. The report, released by the Zinn Education Project, found that numerous U.S. school teachers quickly summarize, skip, or minimize lessons from the era over fears that it might upset parents angry over “indoctrination” or “critical race theory.”

Schools need to be a whole lot more honest with America’s students. If we don’t teach students about the past, we aren’t equipping them with the tools to succeed in the future. And any history of America is woefully incomplete without a thoughtful examination of post-Civil War Reconstruction.

Teachers, students and parents across the U.S. joined in a pledge to “teach truth” campaign, opposing new laws in various states restricting school curricula on race. Rallies held June 11-12 were symbolic, marking the two-year anniversary since the spark of racial justice protests and marches across the nation, following the murder of George Floyd, a Black man killed by police in Minneapolis. Protests were held at various historic sites in each of the participating states. In Georgia, such rallies were held in the Decatur Square, where a confederate monument was removed in 2020, and at Stone Mountain Park — often called the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan with perhaps the most prominent Confederate monument in the world. The faces of three Confederate leaders are carved on the mountain

Opponents of “critical race theory” will hear the voices of educators, parents, students, and community organizers who refuse to lie about the true history of the United States. This is the kind of grassroots action that is inspiring hundreds of people in the teach truth movement who are currently making plans to gather at historic sites in their communities from June 11-12 — sites, like the African American Civil War Memorial in Washington, D.C., and Stone Mountain Park in Georgia that reveal something about the struggle against structural racism and oppression, and symbolize the history that teachers would be required to lie about or omit if these bills become law.

Fifty years since the first National Black Political Convention (also known as the Gary Convention) took place in Gary, Indiana, Newark middle and high school students are participating in a commemorative Model Gary Student Convention in Newark. Organizers say the behind-the-scenes work of students to develop position papers on topics including education, health, economics, and politics honor the original convention's goal of convening Black Americans to discuss and advance solutions to promote equity and confront the pressing societal injustices of our times. Participation in the model conventions, organizers hope, will impress upon students that they have the power to advocate for themselves and their communities right now.

Most American students graduate high school without ever learning a complete and unvarnished account of their nation’s history. Systemic racism within the educational system, the historical erasure of Black and Brown narratives, and the manipulation of curriculum standards and textbook content have long undermined even the best efforts to teach the full truth about the history and the persistent legacy of genocide and enslavement in the United States. Recent Conservative efforts to redefine and weaponize the educational approach to history dubbed “critical race theory” has made this job even harder.

Shortly after Alabama’s state board of education passed a resolution last August to ban public schools from teaching or purchasing materials that “impute fault, blame,” or cause students “to feel guilt or anguish” about the legacy of slavery or ongoing racial injustice, members of the Birmingham, Alabama, school board pushed back by passing a resolution of their own.

State Republican Rep. Jim Walsh recently introduced HB 1807 and Republican Rep. Brad Klippert introduced HB 1886 for this legislative session — two bills designed to mandate educators lie to Washington’s students about structural racism and sexism. This copycat legislation is lifted from a growing number of bills around the country that seek to ban an honest account of history in K-12 education, including many of the long struggles against oppression. These bills especially target the teaching of critical race theory (CRT), the 1619 Project, the Zinn Education Project and Black Lives Matter at School.  (PDF)