Aug. 9, 2014: Michael Brown Killed by Police

Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca. Rethinking Schools.
The mixer role play is based on Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law, which shows in exacting detail how government policies segregated every major city in the United States with dire consequences for African Americans.

Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca.
Students explore three documents produced in the wake of three major episodes of racial violence (1919, 1967, 2014) to understand the long trajectory of police violence in Black communities.

Teaching Guide. Edited by Dyan Watson, Jesse Hagopian, Wayne Au. 2018. Rethinking Schools. 368 pages.
Essays, teaching activities, role plays, poems, and artwork, designed to illuminate the movement for Black students’ lives, the school-to-prison-pipeline, Black history, gentrification, intersectional Black identities, and more.

Book — Non-fiction. By Paul Butler. 2018. 320 pages.
A former federal prosecutor explains how the criminal justice system works against the people and how we can disrupt its abuse.

Resources for middle and high school classrooms on the history of policing in the United States.

In light of the grand jury decision, we share this collection of teaching ideas and resources, originally published by Teaching for Change in August of 2014.

By Julian Hipkins III
As the new school year begins, first and foremost on our minds and in our hearts will be the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Teachers may be faced with students’ anger, frustration, sadness, confusion, and questions. Some students will wonder how this could happen in the United States. For others, unfortunately, police brutality and intimidation are all too familiar.

Following years of organizing against police brutality, four marches from different points in the city of Washington, D.C. converged at 10th and U Streets NW.

Henry Dumas, a critically acclaimed author, was fatally shot by the New York Transit police.

Killed by the police only twelve years later, today Tamir Rice was born.

Oscar Grant was fatally shot by BART Police in Oakland.

Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager, was murdered. The death of Martin and acquittal of the man who shot him sparked the national and global Movement for Black Lives.

Jonathan Ferrell was killed by police in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Philando Castile, an African American, was shot to death by a police officer at a traffic stop in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. Castile had worked as a nutritional supervisor at an elementary school.

Louisville police officers opened fire in the home of 26-year-old Breonna Taylor, shooting and killing her.