Kaley Duong, a recent high school graduate, on the Seattle Teach Truth history of 1919 walking tour. By Chloe Collyer.
One way to engage the community in defending the right to learn history is with a local history walking tour. Along the way, participants learn about history they wish they had learned in school. The event hosts can point out that teachers are trying to share this history, but they face censorship from anti-history education laws and Executive Orders.
History walking tours can be led by one speaker, or you can invite students and community members to be responsible for particular stops along the way.
We share examples of Teach Truth history walking tours so that you can pick and choose ideas for your own. These include traditional walking tours, a tour via kayak, and a variation where everyone went to a different site around the county.
Read the descriptions and then sign up to participate in the 2025 Teach Truth Day of Action.
2025 Teach Truth Day of Action
Memphis, Tennessee
See large version of this flyer.
More than 50 people came out in the extreme heat for a Teach Truth Day of Action history walk organized by Memphis teachers to highlight historical sites for events in Memphis history.
The event hosts noted that these were examples of the history that teachers would be forced to lie or omit facts about in order to ensure compliance with Senate Bill 623.
Speakers were prepared to introduce the history of each site, including:
Student Martecus Johnson at the National Civil Rights Museum
Grizzlies Prep head of school Tim Ware at Beale Street, site of the first Freedmen’s Schools in Memphis
Reverend Scott Walters outside of the courthouse, the site of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s home and business in the slave trade
City Commissioner Van Turner at the 1866 Memphis Massacre site
Read the detailed announcement and see photos from the walk below.
The Daily Memphian covered the action in “Teachers at Grizz Prep, surrounded by history, pledge to ‘teach truth’ about race.”
Waterloo, Iowa
Retired educator Denny McCabe organized a teach truth walking tour. They met at a historic building in downtown Waterloo and walked to two more sites.
McCabe recruited volunteers ahead of time to read about the history of the respective sites. Teachers also read and/or signed a pledge to teach truthfully at the sites.
For example, volunteer Anne Johnson read at the Black’s Building,
Willie Mae Wright came to Waterloo in the 1950s. For Wright, racism here was more insidious than the in-your-face racism of her native Mississippi.
“In Mississippi, they (white people) let you know where they were coming from,” she said. “But here, you didn’t know until you approached it. And then you were knocked down with it.”
For example, African Americans could work in the kitchen at the Tea Room in the Black’s Building, but could not eat there.
. . . To teach it otherwise, or to not teach about it all, would not be teaching truth.
Read a description of their action and the full history scripts. The event was covered by two news channels.
Seattle, Washington
There was a walking tour to visit historic sites (see map) in the International District and Pioneer Square to learn about the radical history of Asian-Americans, women, and the 1919 Seattle General Strike. The tour began at the Wing Luke Museum with a talk about the anti-Chinese riots of 1886. Along the way they discussed the attack on abortion rights, socialized housing, Ethnic Studies, and COVID.
The event was hosted by the NAACP Youth Council, Seattle Education Association Center for Racial Equity, Washington State Ethnic Studies Now (WAESN), Kabataan Alliance, and the Schools Seattle Deserves.
A Seattle tour focused on sites relevant to 1919.
Danbury, North Carolina
The Good Stewards of Rockingham County and Outdoor Afro-Greensboro hosted Teach Truth paddling incursions with presentations on Indigenous and Black history along the 6-mile route on the Dan River. They developed a Teach Truth guide for the tour and a program that county teachers can access year-round.
Kansas City, Kansas
The event began in the auditorium of the Kansas City Kansas Main Public Library where participants learned from local Palestinian-American organizers. From there, participants heard about the history and present day efforts to protect the Wyandot burial grounds. Then participants walked to a space outside Sumner High School and heard a speaker from Justice for Wyandotte share the ways that policing in and outside of local schools impacts Black students and students of color. The walk ended at Kinship Cafe, a Black-owned local business, where participants could purchase delicious food and drinks.
Read more.
Event co-host Michael Rebne wrote:
Participants learned from Al-Hadaf how British colonialism, the Nakba, the Naksa, and apartheid under Israel all preceded Oct. 7th attacks and the genocide in Palestine. Participants were taught we have to know history, though not every statistical fact, in order to take action to save lives by standing up to politicians whose ethics have been hollowed out by Stand With Israel propaganda.
Participants learned how the sacred Wyandot burial grounds (“Huron” cemetery includes a racist term) are still being desecrated, though their leaders try mightily to protect it. The Wyandots, after having their land stolen and victims of genocide by the U.S. were the only non-Black community in the area willing to bury deceased African American Civil War soldiers.
Participants learned how Roger Golubski and the KCK police department preyed on Black community members, including children and how teachers’ language can have a profound impact on how potential predators see the kids. How the binary of good kid/bad kid makes them more vulnerable and only uplifts one narrow type of intelligence, and that to experience cops as safe is a very privileged position.
Then participants learned from Connie Brown Collins that there is a clear throughline from Jim Crow-era white supremacy to present day rightwing attacks on 2SLGBTQIA rights, public schools, voting rights, and school funding and that even our democratic governor Governor Laura Kelly is willing to let Republican devised anti-Black legislation through that makes some ways of valuing diversity illegal in Kansas colleges.
Finally participants were able to share refreshments and food together and exchange banned books by authors that write about everything above and more. People schemed for the future and know as teachers, parents, community members of all ages that a better democracy and future is possible. Co-sponsors include Al-Hadaf KC, Brothers Liberating Our Communities, Latinx Education Collaborative, Kinship Cafe, NEA Shawnee Mission Social Justice Committee, NEA-Kansas City, KS, Thula B., Wyandotte High School PTSA, Voting Rights Network of Wyandotte County. Participants were encouraged to bring used books for a “banned books” swap.
Westchester County, New York
Teachers, parents, and community members gathered at about two dozen historic sites throughout Westchester County to pledge to #TeachTruth. The countywide event was organized in response to the growing number of bills that ban teaching honestly about U.S. history.
- Circulated a call for people to select a location and then to sign up on many local progressive Facebook pages
- Spoke at the SURJ Westchester meeting and the Greenburgh Human Rights Advisory Committee meeting
- Emailed or posted on Facebook pages of local organizations that she thought would be in support, such as CURE
- Sent invitations to local superintendents and unions, thanks to help from a colleague
Spiegel noted that her preparation involved a LOT of outreach and the strong participation made it worthwhile.
More
More Teach Truth Day of Action events have included a history walking tour. For example,
The NEA Black Caucus held it’s leadership conference in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. On the Teach Truth Day of Action, more than 90 participants took the tour at the Whitney Plantation.
In Farmington, Michigan, organizers hosted a historic walking tour from Nardin Park to City Hall with speakers along the way uplifting local Black history and advocating for the introduction of the Free Our History: CEO African American History Bill.
In Ann Arbor, Michigan, the Teaching for Black Lives study group organized a historic walking tour of the University of Michigan.
In Lansing, Michigan, participants walked from the site where Earl Little (Malcolm X’s father) was killed to the hospital where he died. They chalked messages along the way and delivered banned children’s books to the hospital
Educators and families marched from the Bainbridge Museum in Washington to the public library, following a panel discussion June 10 on the need to protest book bans and laws that restrict the teaching of racism, white supremacy, and LGBTQIA+ topics in schools
In Atlanta, Georgia, participants learned how residents of Shermantown, the historically Black community adjacent to Stone Mountain, had long protested the Confederate memorial
In Salem, Ohio, young people toured sites related to the town’s abolitionist history.
After making signs and learning about the Black Panther Party history, more than 60 educators marched to its former headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts.
Inspired to host a walking tour?
Sign up to participate in the 2025 Teach Truth Day of Action.
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