1945 Archives - Zinn Education Project

“The Carceral State” Online Class

Garrett Felber and abolitionist organizer Stevie Wilson talk about the growth of the carceral state and resistance movements.

This Promise of Change: One Girl’s Story in the Fight for School Equality

Book — Non-fiction. By Jo Ann Allen Boyce and Debbie Levy. Told from the perspective of Jo Ann Allen, this book tells the story of twelve Black students who integrated Clinton High School in Tennessee in 1956.

Separate No More: The Long Road to Brown v. Board of Education

Book - Non-fiction. By Lawrence Goldstone. 2021. A portrait of the road to the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case.

Ballad of an American: A Graphic Biography of Paul Robeson

Book - Non-fiction. Written and illustrated by Sharon Rudahl. Edited by Paul Buhle and Lawrence Ware. 2020. 142 pages. The first-ever graphic biography of Paul Robeson charts Robeson’s career as a singer, actor, scholar, athlete, and activist who achieved global fame.

The Southern Mystique

Book - Non-fiction. By Howard Zinn. 1964. In one of his earliest published works, Howard Zinn writes about his experiences teaching and organizing with the Civil Rights Movement in the South.

They Say I’m Your Teacher

Film. Directed by Lucy Massie Phenix and Catherine Murphy. 2019. 9 minutes. Documentary about Citizenship Schools.

Teaching the “American War” 75 Years After Vietnamese Independence

Here are resources to help students probe the roots of U.S. involvement in Vietnam and the impact of the Vietnam War — which the Vietnamese rightly call “The American War” — and resistance to the war.

The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks: Young Readers Edition

Book — Non-fiction. By Jeanne Theoharis and Brandy Colbert. 2021. This biography of Rosa Parks accessibly examines her six decades of activism, challenging young readers’ perceptions of her as an accidental actor in the Civil Rights Movement.

Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision

Book — Non-fiction. By Barbara Ransby. 2005. 495 pages. This biography chronicles Baker's long and rich political career as an organizer, an intellectual, and a teacher, from her early experiences in depression-era Harlem to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Eslanda: The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson

Book — Non-fiction. By Barbara Ransby. 2013. 373 pages. This biography of cosmopolitan anthropologist Eslanda Cardozo Goode Robeson explores her influence on her husband's early career, their open marriage, and her life as a prolific journalist, a tireless advocate of women's rights, and an outspoken anti-colonial and antiracist activist.

Journey for Justice: The Life of Larry Itliong

Picture book. By Dawn Bohulano Mabalon and Gayle Romasanta. Illustrated by Andre Sibayan. 2018. The first nonfiction illustrated Filipino-American history book for children tells the story of labor activist Larry Itliong, who organized farmworkers on the West Coast in the mid-20th century.

The Rebellious Lives of Mrs. Rosa Parks

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. In this mixer lesson, students learn about Rosa Parks' many decades of activism by taking on roles from various times in her life. In this way, students learn about her radicalism before, during, and long after the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

How History Got the Rosa Parks Story Wrong

Article. By Jeanne Theoharis. The Washington Post. 2015. The radical life history of Rosa Parks, before and after the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Battle of Algiers

Film. Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo. 1966. 123 minutes. This film documents the armed insurgency against the French colonial powers in Algiers, showing the brutality and desperation of war.

Disguising Imperialism: How Textbooks Get the Cold War Wrong and Dupe Students

By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca

The perpetual interventionism and global hegemony exercised by the U.S. government today urgently need to be questioned and dismantled. Such a monumental task requires a citizenry armed with clear-eyed understandings of its past. That cannot be accomplished when the Cold War is sanitized and downsized, confined to one chapter of a textbook...

Troublemaker for Justice: The Story of Bayard Rustin, the Man Behind the March on Washington

Book — Non-fiction. By Jacqueline Houtman, Walter Naegle, and Michael G. Long. 168 pages. 2019. A biography of antiwar and civil rights activist Bayard Rustin.

The Untold History of the United States: Young Readers Editions, Vols 1 (1898-1945) & 2 (1945-1962)

Book - Non-fiction. By Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick. Adapted by Susan Campbell Bartoletti and Eric S. Singer. Vol 1. 400 pages. 2014. Vol 2. 320 pages. 2019. These are two volumes of illustrated histories, adapted for students from a documentary book and film of the same name.

Pies from Nowhere (Book Cover) | Zinn Education Project

Pies from Nowhere: How Georgia Gilmore Sustained the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Picture book. By Dee Romito. Illustrated by Laura Freeman. 40 pp. 2018. The story of Georgia Gilmore and the Club from Nowhere, a grassroots project to provide food and funds for the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Memphis Martin and the Mountaintop 9781629797182 (Book Cover) | Zinn Education Project

Memphis, Martin, and the Mountaintop: The Sanitation Strike of 1968

Picture book. By Alice Faye Duncan. Illustrated by R. Gregory Christie. 2018. 40 pages. A historical fiction picture book that presents the story of nine-year-old Lorraine Jackson, who in 1968 witnessed the Memphis sanitation strike.

Jan. 23, 1957: Klan Forces Man to Jump from Bridge

Mr. Willie Edwards Jr., a 24-year-old African American man, was murdered by members of the Alabama KKK.

A More Beautiful and Terrible History (Book) | Zinn Education Project

A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History

Book – Non-fiction. By Jeanne Theoharis. 2018. 282 pages. A non-academic, popular historiography that challenges educators to revamp curriculum to include a fuller, more critical history of the Civil Rights era.

Aug. 28, 1955: Murder of Emmett Till

Teenager Emmett Till was lynched.

June 9, 1952: Fred Ross Pitched Political Activism to Cesar Chavez

Fred Ross knocked on the door of Cesar Chavez.

The Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated the United States

By Richard Rothstein

Racial segregation characterizes every metropolitan area in the United States and bears responsibility for our most serious social and economic problems — it corrupts our criminal justice system, exacerbates economic inequality, and produces large academic gaps between white and African American schoolchildren. We’ve taken no serious steps to desegregate neighborhoods, however, because we are hobbled by a national myth that residential segregation is de facto — the result of private discrimination or personal choices that do not violate constitutional rights.

Banished

Film. Center for Investigative Reporting and Two Tone Productions. 2007. 84 minutes. Filmmaker Marco Williams examined four examples of primarily white communities violently rising up to force their African-American neighbors to flee town.