- Zinn Education Project

Daughter of Earth: Reading, Writing, and Social Class

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. 7 pages.
Students read a poignant excerpt from Agnes Smedley's novel, Daughter of Earth, and use it to think and write about how schooling—their own included—teaches lessons about social class.

Teaching Activity by Bill Bigelow

Exploring Women’s Rights: The 1908 Textile Strike in a 1st-grade Class

Teaching Activity. By Dale Weiss. Rethinking Schools. 3 pages.
A teacher's reflections about a curriculum unit on women's rights contextualizes the history of the feminist movement within the broader struggle of people working for greater equality in the United States.

History Textbooks: “Theirs” and “Ours”: A Rebellion or a War of Independence?

Teaching Activity. By John DeRose. Rethinking Schools. 4 pages.
Analysis of textbook passages from different countries, videos and books are used to explore different perspectives about the same event in history, i.e. "Philippine-American War" vs. "War of Philippine Independence."

Labor Matters

Teaching Activity. By Teaching Tolerance.
Introduces students to the role of the labor movement in securing contemporary benefits such as the 40-hour work week, the minimum wage, and workplace safety regulations.

Lewis Hine’s Photographs

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Bob Peterson. Rethinking Schools. 4 pages.
Using photographs to spark creative writing and critical thinking about child labor issues and social justice.

Teaching Activity by Bill Bigelow

One Country! One Language! One Flag!

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. Rethinking Schools. 3 pages.
Discussion questions and teaching ideas for examining the history of the Pledge of Allegiance and the political milieu in which it was written.

Teaching Activity by Bill Bigelow

What the Tour Guide Didn’t Tell Me: Tourism, Colonialism, and Resistance in Hawai’i

Teaching Activity. By Wayne Wah Kwai Au. Rethinking Schools. 5 pages.
Lesson on the history of Hawai'i and the impact of colonization and tourism.

Race and Membership in American History: The Eugenics Movement

Teaching Guide. By Alan Stoskopf. Facing History and Ourselves. 2002.
Resources for teaching about the eugenics movement in the United States.

Before She Was Harriet

Picture book. By Lesa Cline-Ransome and James E. Ransome. 2017. 32 pages.
An illustrated biography of Harriet Tubman written in verse.

Carter Reads the Newspaper

Picture book. By Deborah Hopkinson. Illustrated by Don Tate. 2019. 36 pages.
This picture book chronicles the young life of Dr. Carter G. Woodson, an Appalachian-born Harvard scholar and advocate for African American history. He founded Negro History Week in 1926 (which grew into Black History Month), the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), and the Journal of Negro History.

Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library

Picture book. By Carole Boston Weatherford and Eric Velasquez. 2017. 48 pages.
This picture book is a tribute to Arturo Schomburg, the Afro Puerto Rican historian collector and activist who chronicled the Black history of the Diaspora.

A Boy from Ireland

Book — Fiction. By Marie Raphael. 2007. 217 pages.
Historical fiction about the life of the Irish in New York City at the beginning of the 20th century for ages 12+.

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.

Civil Rights Unionism: Tobacco Workers and the Struggle for Democracy in the Mid-Twentieth-Century South

Book — Non-fiction. By Robert Rodgers Korstad. 2003. 576 pages.
Chronicles the rise and fall of the union that represented thousands of African American tobacco factory workers in Winston-Salem, N.C.

Dark Sky Rising (Book) | Zinn Education Project

Dark Sky Rising: Reconstruction and the Dawn of Jim Crow

Book — Non-fiction. By Henry Louis Gates Jr. with Tonya Bolden. 2019. 240 pages.
Readers trace the rise and fall of racial equity during Reconstruction as increasingly violent white supremacy and new forms of oppression take hold at the turn of the 20th century.

Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age America

Book — Non-fiction. By James Green. 2007. 400 pages.
History of the late 19th century labor movement.

Fannie Never Flinched (Book) | Zinn Education Project: Teaching People's History

Fannie Never Flinched: One Woman’s Courage in the Struggle for American Labor Union Rights

Book — Non-fiction. By Mary Cronk Farrell. 2016. 56 pages.
Biography of labor union activist Fannie Sellins.

A Moment in the Sun

Book — Fiction. By John Sayles. 2011. 955 pages.
Spanning five years and half a dozen countries, Sayles' novel of historical fiction paints a picture of the late 1890s — from the racist coup in Wilmington, North Carolina, to the bloody dawn of U.S. interventionism in Cuba and the Philippines.

A Peoples History of the United States Book | Zinn Education Project

A People’s History of the United States: 1492 – Present

Book — Non-fiction. By Howard Zinn. 2005, with a new introduction by Anthony Arnove in 2015. 784 pages.
Howard Zinn's groundbreaking work on U.S. history. This book details lives and facts rarely included in textbooks—an indispensable teacher and student resource.

Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South

Book — Non-fiction (with CD). Edited by William H. Chafe, Raymond Gavins and Robert Korstad. 2008. 346 pages.
Extensive oral history of African American life under segregation.

Right to Ride: Streetcar Boycotts and African American Citizenship in the Era of Plessy v. Ferguson

Book — Non-fiction. By Blair L. M. Kelley. 2010. 280 pages.
Examines acts of protest and resistance to segregated trains and streetcars during the early Jim Crow era.

Silver People: Voices from the Panama Canal

Book — Fiction. By Margarita Engle. 2016. 272 pages.
Historical fiction in free verse about the building of the Panama Canal.

The Strange Careers of the Jim Crow North: Segregation and Struggle Outside of the South

Book — Non-fiction. Edited by Brian Purnell and Jeanne Theoharis with Komozi Woodard. 2019. 352 pages.
This important work shows how the Jim Crow North maintained inequality in the nation’s most liberal places, and chronicles how activists worked to undo those inequities born of Northern Jim Crow.

They Left Great Marks on Me: African American Testimonies of Racial Violence from Emancipation to World War I

Book — Non-fiction. By Kidada Williams. 2012. 281 pages.
This book documents African Americans' testimonies about racial violence during Jim Crow, and the crusades against that violence that became political training grounds for the Civil Rights Movement.

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. 2014. 400 pages. Vol 2. 2019. 320 pages.
These are two volumes of illustrated histories, adapted for students from a documentary book and film of the same name.