Elias Thomson, an African American who lived in Spartanburg, South Carolina, bravely shared testimony detailing violence inflicted against him because he voted for the Republican ticket in the local election.
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Juneteenth — June 19th, also known as Emancipation Day — is one of the commemorations of people seizing their freedom from slavery in the United States. Yet, if the right wing has its way, it will be illegal to teach students about Juneteenth.
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The first general convention of African American Ohioans met in Columbus and pledged to continue raising their voices in order to repeal the Black Codes.
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Film. Directed by Johanna Hamilton and Yoruba Richen. Produced by Soledad O’Brien. 2022. 101 minutes.
This documentary sheds light on Rosa Parks' extensive organizing, radical politics, and lifelong dedication to justice.
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The Virginia Interscholastic Association (VIA) was established to provide African American high school students in Virginia with athletic, artistic, academic, and leadership opportunities unavailable to them in segregated schools.
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In this speech, Frederick Douglass denounced the Civil Rights Cases of 1883, in which the Supreme Court held that the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments did not empower Congress to outlaw racial discrimination by private individuals.
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Edward Alexander Bouchet graduated from Yale University as the sixth person to receive a Ph.D. in physics in the United States.
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Julius Taylor founded and ran Broad Ax, a Utah-based Black newspaper which challenged commonly accepted beliefs about politics and religion at the end of the twentieth century.
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The Real Estate and Homestead Association helped organize travel and settlement for African Americans, “Exodusters,” who fled the South because of racial violence and “bulldozing” by white supremacist groups.
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Six Black Kansans and a white developer created the Nicodemus Town Company. With the goal of establishing an all-Black settlement on the Great Plains, W. H. Smith and W. R. Hill advertised the town as a haven for Black migrants.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Kidada E. Williams. 2023. 352 pages.
An account of the brutal white supremacist violence and terror that formerly enslaved people were faced with during Reconstruction.
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Book — Non-fiction. By E. James West. 2022. 328 pages.
This biography examines the life of historian and activist Lerone Bennett Jr. and his influence on African American culture and history.
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More than 1,000 delegates representing 286 organizations and institutions from 126 cities in 26 states, Bermuda, and Nigeria gathered at the National Conference on Black Power in Newark, New Jersey.
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The first African Liberation Day drew some 60,000 demonstrators in cities across the United States and Canada, including one on the National Mall in Washington D. C.
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Princeville, North Carolina originated as a resettlement community for freed people and became the oldest incorporated city chartered by African Americans in the United States.
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Learn directly from people's historians by listening to these audio recordings of Teach the Black Freedom Struggle online classes.
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Book — Fiction. By Lesa Cline-Ransome. 2021. 256 pages.
The final novel in the award-winning Finding Langston trilogy, this novel examines mid-twentieth century America through the eyes of Clem, a young boy whose family is torn apart after his father's untimely death.
Teaching Activity by Lesa Cline-Ransome
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Book - Non-fiction. 224 pages. 2021.
Through chapters that chart cycles of dispossession, land seizure, and settlement in Indian Territory, Alaina E. Roberts connects debates about Black freedom and Native American citizenship to westward expansion onto Native land.
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Teaching Activity. By Jessica Lovaas and Adam Sanchez. Rethinking Schools. 2021. Updated in 2023.
A lesson with case studies from Los Angeles; Birmingham, Alabama; Brooklyn; Detroit; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Albany, Georgia; and Cambridge, Maryland — to introduce students to the diverse struggles across the United States that were represented at the March on Washington.
Teaching Activity by Adam Sanchez
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Book — Non-fiction. By Mariame Kaba and Andrea Ritchie. 2022. 400 pages.
No More Police calls on us to turn away from systems that perpetrate violence in the name of ending it toward a world where violence is the exception, and safe, well-resourced and thriving communities are the rule.
Teaching Activity by Mariame Kaba and Andrea Ritchie
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The Slave Revolt of 1842 — when dozens of enslaved Black people in Webbers Falls, Oklahoma fought back and briefly escaped from their Cherokee overseers — was the largest rebellion of enslaved people in Indian Territory history.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Linda Villarosa. 2023. 288 pages.
This book details racial health disparities in the United States.
Teaching Activity by Linda Villarosa
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Book — Non-fiction. By Thulani Davis. 2022. 464 pages.
The author traces how people newly freed from bondage created political organizations and connections that mobilized communities across the South during Reconstruction, building on a long tradition of organizing against all odds.
Teaching Activity by Thulani Davis
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Most state standards and textbooks frame Reconstruction as a Southern story, but grassroots struggles for justice met resistance in the North and to the west. That is why one of the recommendations in our report, Erasing the Black Freedom Struggle is to “Emphasize the significance of Reconstruction throughout the United States.”
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This lesson by Cierra Kaler-Jones invites students to consider how Rosa Parks’ legacy is memorialized by critically examining her statue at the U.S. Capitol. Students learn the fuller story of Rosa Parks’ life and use that information to determine how they would memorialize her legacy.
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