Democracy & Citizenship Archives

Maestra (Teacher)

Film. By Catherine Murphy. 2013. 32 minutes.
Documentary about the successful 1961 literacy campaign in Cuba.

Dec. 13, 1903: Civil Rights and Human Rights Activist Ella Baker Born

Born on this day, Ella Baker was a civil rights and human rights activist beginning in the 1930s whose career spanned more than five decades.

Wong Kim Ark | Zinn Education Project: Teaching People's History

March 28, 1898: Wong Kim Ark Wins Citizenship Case

The U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark.

March 14, 1968: King Speaks About the “Other America” in the North

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave the speech titled “The Other America” focusing on economic inequalities and white complicity in the North.

Jan. 17, 1893: Queen Lili`uokalani of Hawai`i is Overthrown

Queen Lili`uokalani of the independent kingdom of Hawai`i was overthrown as she was arrested at gunpoint by U.S. Marines.

Dec. 30, 1971: Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo Jr. Indicted for Releasing the Pentagon Papers

Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony J. “Tony” Russo Jr. were indicted for releasing the Pentagon Papers, detailing the secret history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

Feb. 26, 2012: Trayvon Martin Murdered

Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager, was murdered. The death of Martin and acquittal of the man who shot him sparked the national and global Movement for Black Lives.

April 23, 1968: Columbia Student Occupation

Students for a Democratic Society, Student Afro-American Society and others began a nonviolent occupation of campus buildings at Columbia University.

Nicaragua Literacy Campaign 1980 | Zinn Education Project

Nov. 4, 1984: First Democratic Nicaraguan Elections

Nicaragua held its first democratic elections in more than fifty years in 1984.

Hiram Rhodes Revels (photo) | Zinn Education Project

Jan. 20, 1870: Hiram Rhodes Revels Elected to U.S. Senate During Reconstruction

Hiram Rhodes Revels was the first African American to be elected to serve in the U.S. Senate.

Jan. 25, 1972: Shirley Chisholm Began Historic Campaign for President

Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress, opened her historic campaign for President.

Jan. 21, 2010: Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission Ruling

The Supreme Court determined that the government could not infringe upon the First Amendment rights of corporations to spend unlimited funds on electoral campaigns.

Feb. 11, 1774: Phillis Wheatley Pens Letter on Natural Rights of African Americans

In a letter to a friend, Phillis Wheatley wrote of the idea of natural rights for African Americans, challenging patriot enslavers years before the Declaration of Independence.

June 26, 1776: Philadelphians Warn of “Overgrown Rich Men” in Government

A group of Philadelphians posted a broadside across the city calling for for independence from the British Crown, urging the colony’s militia to instead select delegates of “honesty, common sense, and a plain understanding, when unbiased by sinister motives.”

April 21, 1784: Enslaved Continental Army Veteran Sues for Freedom

Enslaved Continental Army veteran Ned Griffin successfully sued for his freedom in North Carolina.

Nov. 8, 1787: “Centinel” Argues Against New U.S. Constitution

A series of essays appeared in a Philadelphia newspaper from 1787 to 1789, denouncing the new U.S. Constitution, calling the proposed government a “masqued aristocracy” designed to protect the ruling class from the will of the people.

Aug. 19, 1791: Benjamin Banneker Tells Thomas Jefferson to End His “Narrow Prejudices”

A land surveyor, almanac writer, and correspondent of Thomas Jefferson’s, Benjamin Banneker told Thomas Jefferson to end his “narrow prejudices.”

Ten Things You Should Know About Selma Before You See the Film

By Emilye Crosby

On each anniversary year of the Selma-to-Montgomery March and the Voting Rights Act it helped inspire, national media focus on the iconic images of “Bloody Sunday,” the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the interracial marchers, and President Lyndon Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act. This version of history, emphasizing a top-down narrative and isolated events, reinforces the master narrative that civil rights activists describe as “Rosa sat down, Martin stood up, and the white folks came south to save the day.”

Here are 10 points to keep in mind about Selma’s civil rights history.

Bombed out cars by Jo Freeman | Zinn Education Project

‘Is This America?’: Sharecroppers Challenged Mississippi Apartheid, LBJ, and the Nation

By Julian Hipkins III and Deborah Menkart

Fannie Lou Hamer gripped the nation with her televised testimony of being forced from her home and brutally beaten (suffering permanent kidney damage) for attempting to exercise her constitutional right to vote.

“Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings?” she asked the credentials committee at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

James Baldwin Freedom Day Selma 1964 | Zinn Education Project

Aug. 2, 1924: James Baldwin Born

James Baldwin was born in Harlem, New York.

Black Abolitionists

Profiles. Zinn Education Project. 2014. Brief biographies of 25 Black abolitionists.

Nov. 3, 1972: Trail of Broken Treaties Caravan Occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs

Protesters from the Trail of Broken Treaties Caravan occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) offices in Washington, D.C. for six days.

June 27, 1954: Elected Guatemalan Leader Overthrown in CIA-Backed Coup

Democratically elected Guatemalan president Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán was deposed in a CIA-sponsored coup.

May 2, 1963: Children of Birmingham Fill the Jails

In disciplined groups and singing freedom songs, students “ditch” class to march for justice and fill the jails.

Race, Class, and the Constitutional Convention

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. 2025. 36 pages.
This is a unit with three lessons. The first invites students to think critically about key issues that confronted the framers of the Constitution — examining the perspectives not only of the elites attending the actual Constitutional Convention, but also of enslaved African Americans, poor white farmers, and white workers. The other two lessons are: The Constitutional Convention: Who Really Won? — with students exploring whose interests the Constitution advanced — and Federalist Paper #10: Suppressing “Wicked Projects,” a critical reading activity on James Madison's seminal defense of the Constitution.

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