Book — Non-fiction. By . 2024. 256 pages.
This young adult history offers a researched account with first-hand testimonies of how people in bondage were themselves a driving force behind their own emancipation.
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Teaching Guide. Edited by Bill Bigelow, Jesse Hagopian, Suzanna Kassouf, Adam Sanchez, and Samia Shoman. 2025.
Provides educators with powerful tools to uncover the history and current context of Palestine-Israel in the classroom.
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Teaching Activity. By Cierra Kaler-Jones.
In this lesson, students use key excerpts from How the Word Is Passed by Clint Smith as inspiration for a project where they tell their and their loved ones’ stories.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Clint Smith. 2021. 336 pages.
An examination of how monuments and landmarks represent — and misrepresent — the central role of slavery in U.S. history and its legacy today.
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Book — Historical fiction. By Louise Erdrich. 1999. 244 pages.
Historical fiction set in the mid-19th century in the Lake Superior area. Part of a series of chapter books.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Howard Zinn, adapted by Rebecca Stefoff with additions by Ed Morales. 2022. 544 pages.
A young adult version of the best-selling A People’s History of the United States, ideal for 6th through 9th grade students.
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Picture book. By Don Brown. 2004. 32 pages.
The story of the 1899 strike by the children who sold newspapers on the street for grades K-4.
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Article. By James W. Loewen. July 2015 in the Washington Post.
A critique of textbook and mainstream media coverage of the Civil War.
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Film. By Sam Pollard, Catherine Allan, Douglas Blackmon and Sheila Curran Bernard. 2012. 90 minutes.
Reveals the interlocking forces in the South and the North that enabled “neoslavery” post-Emancipation Proclamation.
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A white mob seized three African American business men in Memphis, Tennessee and lynched them without trial.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow, Jesse Hagopian, Cierra Kaler-Jones, Ana Rosado, and Ursula Wolfe-Rocca.
Students read about sites of memory in How the Word Is Passed and imagine how to commemorate what occurred there. They then compare that to how the respective site is currently commemorated and described by docents.
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Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Black educator, baseball player, and civil rights activist Octavius V. Catto was murdered by a white supremacist on election day.
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The populist Las Gorras Blancas published a human rights declaration.
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The St. Bernard Parish massacre of African Americans was carried out by white men to terrorize the recently emancipated voters in Louisiana.
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Reconstruction era protest of racist discrimination on streetcars in Louisville, Kentucky.
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Teaching Activity. By Bob Peterson. Rethinking Schools. 7 pages.
How a 5th grade teacher and his students conducted research to answer the question: “Which presidents owned people?” Available in Spanish.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. 10 pages.
What led up to the Trail of Tears? In this lesson, students learn about the decision to remove the Cherokee and Seminole people from their lands.
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Teaching Guide. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 1988. 184 pages.
Role plays and writing activities project high school students into real-life situations to explore the history and contemporary reality of employment (and unemployment) in the U.S.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. 9 pages.
Students are invited to solve a mystery, using historical clues, about the real story of the Draft Riots.
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Teaching Activity. By Gayle Olson-Raymer. 18 pages.
Questions and teaching ideas for Chapter 7 of Voices of a People's History of the United States on the American policy of "Manifest Destiny" and Native American resistance to their own displacement.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. 17 pages.
A role play allows students to examine issues of race and class when exploring both the accomplishments and limitations of the Seneca Falls Convention.
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Teaching Activity. Lesson by Bill Bigelow and student reading by Howard Zinn. Rethinking Schools. 21 pages.
Interactive activity introduces students to the history and often untold story of the U.S.-Mexico War. Roles available in Spanish.
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Teaching Activity. By Gayle Olson-Raymer. 15 pages.
Questions and teaching ideas for Chapter 12 of Voices of a People's History of the United States on internal dissent over American expansionist policies.
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Book — Fiction. By Martin Duberman. 2005. 330 pages.
Historical novel for high school and adults on the Haymarket struggle.
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