Laws & Citizen Rights Archives

July 15, 1964: Ozell Sutton Denied Service at Arkansas Capitol Cafeteria

WWII veteran Ozell Sutton was denied service at the Arkansas Capitol cafeteria after visiting the building to collect voter registration materials.

July 16, 1944: Irene Morgan Refuses to Change Seats on Bus

Irene Morgan refused to change her seat on a segregated bus in Virginia.

July 19, 1958: Dockum Drug Store Sit-In

Ron Walters, Carol Parks-Haun, and other leaders in the NAACP Youth Council organized a sit-in in Greensboro, North Carolina.

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.

Why We Should Learn About the FBI’s War on the Civil Rights Movement (If We Knew Our History) | Zinn Education Project: Teaching People's History

Why We Should Teach About the FBI’s War on the Civil Rights Movement

By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca

On March 8, 1971 — while Muhammad Ali was fighting Joe Frazier at Madison Square Garden, and as millions sat glued to their TVs watching the bout unfold — a group of peace activists broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, and stole every document they could find.

Delivered to the press, these documents revealed an FBI conspiracy — known as COINTELPRO — to disrupt and destroy a wide range of protest groups, including the Black freedom movement. The break-in, and the government treachery it revealed, is a chapter of our not-so-distant past that all high school students — and all the rest of us — should learn, yet one that history textbooks continue to ignore.

It’s Constitution Day! Time to Teach Obedience or History?

By Bill Bigelow

Pearson-Prentice Hall’s high school textbook, United States History, opens its chapter on the Constitution with this Daniel Webster quote: “We may be tossed upon an ocean where we can see no land — not, perhaps, the sun and stars. But there is a chart and a compass for us to study, to consult, and to obey. The chart is the Constitution.” United States History tells students approvingly that Ronald Reagan and others have recited this Webster quote at celebrations of the Constitution.

This is the kind of on-bended-knee Constitution worship that has long been a staple of our country’s social studies curricula.

Sure, these days, most U.S. history textbooks acknowledge that the Constitution was not without controversy. Holt McDougal’s The Americans offers a perfunctory couple of pages on the debate between elite groups of Federalists and Anti-Federalists. But corporate textbooks present the Constitution as a wise inevitability, awaiting only the Bill of Rights as the icing on a delicious cake of compromise.

Howard Zinn at 90 — Lessons from the People’s Historian

By Bill Bigelow

This week — August 24 — would have been the 90th birthday of the great historian and activist Howard Zinn, who died in 2010. Zinn did not merely record history, he made it: as a professor at Spelman College in the 1950s and early 1960s, where he was ultimately fired for his outspoken support of students in the Civil Rights Movement, and specifically the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); as a critic of the U.S. war in Vietnam, and author of the first book calling for an immediate U.S. withdrawal; and as author of arguably the most influential U.S. history textbook in print, A People’s History of the United States. “That book will knock you on your ass,” as Matt Damon’s character says in the film Good Will Hunting.

July 22, 1966: Lawful Demonstrators Threatened by Klan and Police in Grenada, Mississippi

U.S. District Judge issued an injunction ordering police in Grenada, Mississippi to stop interfering with lawful protest. This ruling followed weeks of arrests and beating of demonstrators who had been attempting to desegregate businesses in the town.

Poster for an event in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1849, to commemorate the end of slavery in the British West Indies.

Aug. 1, 1834: Britain Passes Slavery Abolition Act

August First Day became a symbol of hope for enslaved people and abolitionists in the United States when Britain passed the Slavery Abolition Act in 1834, abolishing slavery throughout its colonies around the world.

Aug. 6, 1964: Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party Convention

The MFDP held a State Convention with 2,500 people in Jackson, Mississippi.

Until Justice Be Done: America’s First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction

Book — Non-fiction. By Kate Masur. 2021.
The movement for equal rights in the decades before the Civil War.

Aug. 18, 1977: Steve Biko Arrested

Anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko was arrested at a police roadblock in South Africa.

Clara Luper (photo) | Zinn Education Project

Aug. 19, 1958: Katz Drugstore Sit-Ins

Clara Luper and the NAACP Youth Council began sit-ins to desegregate lunch counters.

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. 2019. 320 pages.
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.

Oberlin Rescuers | Zinn Education Project

Sept. 13, 1858: Oberlin Wellington Rescue

Eighteen-year-old John Price was arrested by a federal marshal in Oberlin, Ohio under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

Sept. 14, 1941: Rally Against Police Brutality

Following years of organizing against police brutality, four marches from different points in the city of Washington, D.C. converged at 10th and U Streets NW.

Sept. 25, 1961: Murder of Herbert Lee

Herbert Lee, a farmer who helped voting rights activists, was murdered by a Mississippi state legislator in broad daylight.

Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America (Book)

Book — Non-fiction. By Juan Gonzalez. 2022. 560 pages.
An updated and thorough account of the role the United States in the mass migration of Latinos to the U.S.

Jerry Rescue Monument in Syracuse, New York.

Oct. 1, 1851: The Jerry Rescue

Abolitionists freed a man captured under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 in Syracuse, New York.

Pledging Allegiance: The Politics of Patriotism in America’s Schools

Book — Non-fiction. Edited by Joel Westheimer. Foreword by Howard Zinn. 2007. 219 pages.
Educators address the politics of patriotism in schools.

Oct. 24, 1871: Los Angeles Chinatown Massacre

A lynch mob of 500 Anglo and Latino Los Angelinos rioted and murdered at least 17 Chinese residents after a white civilian died in a shootout.

Rethinking the U.S. Constitutional Convention: A Role Play

Teaching Activity. By Bob Peterson. Rethinking Schools. 14 pages.
A role play on the Constitutional Convention which brings to life the social forces active during and immediately following the American Revolution with focus on two key topics: suffrage and slavery. An elementary school adaptation of the Constitution Role Play by Bill Bigelow. Roles available in Spanish.

Teaching Activity by Bob Peterson

Constitution Role Play: Whose “More Perfect Union”? and The Constitutional Convention: Who Really Won?

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. 24 pages.
The U.S. Constitution endorsed slavery and favored the interests of the owning classes. What kind of Constitution would have resulted from founders who were representative of the entire country? That is the question addressed in this role play activity.

Teaching Activity by Bill Bigelow

Nov. 1, 1890: Mississippi Constitution

Mississippi adopted a state constitution with poll tax and literacy tests to roll back the gains of the Reconstruction era.

Feb. 11, 1963: Howard Zinn Debates Fulton Lewis III About HUAC

Howard Zinn debated Fulton Lewis III, a journalist and member of the House Un-American Activities Committee, on the question of “Shall the House Committee on Un-American Activities Be Abolished?”

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