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Students Play Key Role in Movement to Abolish Columbus Day

After students study the history of Columbus, the first question is invariably, "Why are we celebrating this murderer with a holiday?"

People’s Historians Online: Black Left: 1930s to the Early 1950s

The People’s Historians Online mini-class on Black Left: 1930s to the Early 1950s with Robin D. G. Kelley and Cierra Kaler-Jones on May 22, 2020.

Teaching Climate Justice in a Time of Perpetual Emergency

Students deserve a curriculum that helps them make sense of this moment, and that explores the connections between crises.

Teach Outside the Textbook: Voting Rights and Ethnic Studies

Workshop on the long and ongoing struggle for voting rights and ethnic studies.

Michael Charney: Labor, Education, and Community Activist

Michael Charney's vision, strategy, and generosity have made the Teach Reconstruction campaign possible.

Kelly Lytle Hernández on the 1910 Mexican Revolution

Author Kelly Lytle Hernández spoke about the magonistas, a group of agitators who challenged Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz in the early 20th century. This session is part of the Zinn Education Project’s Teach the Black Freedom Struggle online people’s history series.

Howard Zinn Quotes

For the Howard Zinn Centennial, we are compiling and sharing quotes by Howard Zinn. Join us and share your favorite Zinn quote with #HowardZinn100.

Look for Me in the Whirlwind Book Event

Look for Me in the Whirlwind: Panther 21, author event on Thursday, February 16, 2023.

Newsletters

Newsletter archive for the Zinn Education Project.

Teach the Black Freedom Struggle Online Classes

Online classes for educators on teaching the Black Freedom Struggle. People's historians interviewed by classroom teachers and teacher educators.

Howard Zinn on Prisons and Prisoners

A sampling of Howard Zinn's essays, quotes, trial testimonies, and correspondence related to prisons and prisoners.

Want to Start a Revolution? Black Women Radicals Confront the Red Scare

Historian Dayo Gore shared stories about Black women radicals who were active in revolutionary struggle during the Red Scare. This session was part of the Zinn Education Project’s Teach the Black Freedom Struggle online people’s history series.

“One Long Struggle for Justice”: An Interview with Historian Howard Zinn

In early January of 2010, the Zinn Education Project joined with HarperCollins, publisher of Howard Zinn's classic A People's History of the United States, to sponsor an "Ask Howard" online radio interview, and invited teachers from around the country to participate. Sixty teachers and students submitted written questions to Professor Zinn. The Jan. 19 interview was conducted by Rethinking Schools Curriculum Editor Bill Bigelow. Here are excerpts from that interview, edited for length and clarity. The full audio version can be accessed at Authors on Air.

Five Years After: Long Live Howard Zinn

By Bill Bigelow This week — Jan. 27 — marks five years since the death of the great historian and activist Howard Zinn. No doubt, he would be encouraged by how many educators are engaging students in thinking critically about history and current issues.

Ten Years After Howard Zinn’s Death — Lessons from the People’s Historian

By Bill Bigelow. On the 10th anniversary of his death, we remember Howard Zinn wanted educators to be deeply critical, but never cynical.

What This Cruel War Was Over

As Ta-Nehisi Coates points out in this article, the secession of Southern states was triggered by one thing: the desperate quest to preserve slavery.

Sept. 3, 1991: Fire at Food Processing Plant Kills 25 Workers

Chicken plant workers died when a preventable workplace "accident" trapped them in a burning building.

Oct. 5, 1986: Eugene Hasenfus Captured During Iran-Contra Scandal

The cover-up of the Iran-Contra scandal began to unravel when Eugene Hasenfus was captured by Nicaraguan troops.

Lying to Children About the California Missions and the Indians

As student contests are currently being held for California mission models, we revisit this article…

Occupy the Curriculum

By Bill Bigelow The other day on the Zinn Education Project’s Facebook page, we…

‘Repeat After Me: The United States Is Not an Imperialist Country — Oh, and Don’t Get Emotional About War’

By Bill Bigelow

You may have seen that an administrative law judge in Arizona, Lewis Kowal, just upheld the decree by the State Superintendent of Public Instruction that Tucson’s Mexican American Studies program violates state law. Judge Kowal found that the Tucson program was teaching Latino history and culture “in a biased, political, and emotionally charged manner.” According to CNN, one lesson that the judge objected to taught that the historic treatment of Mexican Americans was “marked by the use of force, fraud and exploitation.”

Try this “history detective” experiment. Ask the next person you encounter to tell you what they know about the U.S. war with Mexico. More than likely, this will be a short conversation, because that war (1846-48) merits barely a footnote in U.S. history textbooks.

Ten Years After: How Not to Teach About the Iraq War

By Bill Bigelow

In 2006, with U.S. troops occupying Iraq, the great historian and humanitarian Howard Zinn expressed his desire for the end of the war: “My hope is that the memory of death and disgrace will be so intense that the people of the United States will be able to listen to a message that the rest of the world, sobered by wars without end, can also understand: that war itself is the enemy of the human race.”

At least in a formal sense, our country’s memories of war are to be found in school history textbooks. Exactly a decade after the U.S. invasion, those texts are indeed sending “messages” to young people about the meaning of the U.S. war in Iraq. But they are not the messages of peace that Howard Zinn proposed. Not even close.

Grenada: ‘A Lovely Little War’

By Bill Bigelow

Anti-bullying curricula are the rage these days. But the official history curriculum teachers are provided often celebrates, or at least excuses, bullying among nations. Well, at least when the United States is the bully.

A good example is the U.S. invasion of Grenada — Operation Urgent Fury, as it was called by the Reagan administration — launched on Oct. 25, 1983. Grenada made an unlikely target of U.S. military might. Its main product was not oil but nutmeg. Its naval fleet consisted of about 10 fishing trawlers. Grenada’s population of 110,000 was smaller than Peoria, Illinois. At the time of the invasion, there was not a single stoplight in the entire country. So what put Grenada in the crosshairs of the Reagan administration?

Lying to Children About the California Missions and the Indians

By Deborah A. Miranda

In California schools, students come up against the “Mission Unit” in 4th grade, reinforcing the same lies those children have been breathing in most of their lives. Part of California’s history curriculum, the unit is entrenched in the educational system and impossible to avoid, a powerfully authoritative indoctrination in Mission Mythology to which 4th graders have little if any resistance.

W. E. B. Du Bois to Coretta Scott King: The Untold History of the Movement to Ban the Bomb

By Vincent Intondi

When the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. announced his strong opposition to the war in Vietnam, the media attacked him for straying outside of his civil rights mandate. In so many words, powerful interests told him: “Mind your own business.” In fact, African American leaders have long been concerned with broad issues of peace and justice — and have especially opposed nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, this activism is left out of mainstream corporate-produced history textbooks.