Book - Non-Fiction. By Elizabeth Hinton. 2021. The rebellion and movement for Black lives of 2020 had clear precursors, this book explains, and any attempt to understand that crisis requires a reckoning with the recent past.
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Teaching ideas and discussion questions for How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith.
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Jesse Hagopian led a conversation with Garrett Felber, Safear Ness, and Stevie Wilson about the prison industrial complex, incarceration, and the history of resistance against that system.
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Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca.
Students explore three documents produced in the wake of three major episodes of racial violence (1919, 1967, 2014) to understand the long trajectory of police violence in Black communities.
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Books - Non-fiction. Howard Zinn. 1974.
Howard Zinn's book on the way justice really works in the U.S. and how it can change for the better.
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Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca. In this activity, students take on the role of activist-experts to improve upon a Congressional bill for reparations for Black people. They talk back to Congress’ flimsy legislation and design a more robust alternative.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Paul Butler. 2018. 320 pp. A former federal prosecutor explains how the criminal justice system works against the people and how we can disrupt its abuse.
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Louisville police officers opened fire on the apartment home of 26-year-old Breonna Taylor, shooting and killing her.
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Book - Non-fiction. By Howard Zinn. 2003. 368 pages.
A selection of passionate, honest, and piercing essays looking at political ideology in the United States.
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Book - Non-fiction. By Jerry Mitchell. 2020. 432 pages.
An account of one journalist's search for the long-buried truths that could bring killers to justice for the assassination of Medgar Evers, the firebombing of Vernon Dahmer, the 16th Street Church bombing in Birmingham, and the Mississippi Burning case.
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Book - Non-fiction. By Bryan Stevenson. 288 pages. 2018.
This young adult adaptation provides readers a glimpse into the lives of the wrongfully imprisoned.
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Books - Non-fiction. By Andrea Pitzer. 2017. 480 pp.
Starting with 1890s Cuba, this book is a chronological and geopolitical history of concentration camps that is filled with prisoner perspectives.
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Book - Non-fiction. By Michael Bronski, adapted for by Richie Chevat. 336 pages. 2019.
A young adult readers edition of the original text explores the history of LGBTQ+ experiences in the U.S. since 1500.
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Article. By Rachel Boccio. Rethinking Schools, Winter 2018.
A Connecticut educator who taught English to incarcerated young men for 20 years describes what happened when she introduced her students to the Canadian “Leap Manifesto.”
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Film. By Sam Pollard, Catherine Allan, Douglas Blackmon and Sheila Curran Bernard. 2012. 90 min.
Reveals the interlocking forces in the South and the North that enabled “neoslavery” post-Emancipation Proclamation.
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Book – Non-fiction. By Heather Ann Thompson. 2016.
The hidden history of the infamous 1971 Attica Prison Uprising.
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Philando Castile, an African American, was shot to death by a police officer at a traffic stop. Castile had worked as a nutritional supervisor at an elementary school.
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Book - Non-fiction. By Marc Mauer and Sabrina Jones. 2012.
Based on the popular book Race to Incarcerate, this graphic adaptation is a key resource to introduce a study of U.S. prison system to middle school readers and above.
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Resource list.
Overview with links to articles, books, primers, films, and websites about the Attica Prison Uprising for the classroom.
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Book - Non-fiction. By Michelle Alexander. Introduction by Cornel West. 2010, updated 10th-anniversary edition released in 2020.
A critical analysis of the role the justice system plays in the oppression of African Americans in the United States.
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Book - Non-fiction. By Ellen Miller-Mack, Craig Gilmore, Lois Ahrens, Susan Willmarth, and Kevin Pyle. 2008.
This comic book presents the human stories behind the statistics.
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The New York Police falsely accused four African American teenagers and one Latino teenager who became known as the Central Park Five.
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The Philadelphia Police Department dropped a C-4 bomb on the home of the MOVE organization, killing eleven people (including five children) and wiping out half a city block and .
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Inmates at United States Penitentiary (USP) Marion staged a hunger strike on the U.S. bicentennial in protest of inhumane treatment by the prison administration.
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