Organizing Archives

The Girl from the Tar Paper School: Barbara Rose Johns and the Advent of the Civil Rights Movement

Book — Non-fiction. By Teri Kanefield. 2014. 56 pages.
Illustrated book of a teenager who led a student walk out to protest substandard conditions at a Virginia high school in 1951.

Standing with Standing Rock: A Role Play on the Dakota Access Pipeline

Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca, Bill Bigelow, and Andrew Duden. Article by Ursula Wolfe-Rocca. Rethinking Schools. 15 pages.
A role play helps students recognize the issues at stake in the historic struggle of the Standing Rock Sioux to block construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline.

Teaching Activity by Ursula Wolfe-Rocca

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.

Feb. 19, 1968: Florida Teachers’ Strike

Teachers and administrators from the Florida Education Association (FEA) walked out in what is reported to be the first statewide teachers’ strike.

March 19, 1968: Howard University Protest

Howard University students seized the Administration Building, demanding changes in the discipline policy, the addition of courses in African American history, and more.

July 7, 1903: March of the Mill Children

Mary Harris “Mother” Jones began the “March of the Mill Children.”

Teaching the 1964 New York City School Boycott

Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez. Rethinking Schools.
This lesson and accompanying article teach about the largest civil rights protest of the 1960s was in New York City, when hundreds of thousands of students stayed home to protest school segregation.

Teaching Activity by Adam Sanchez

Teaching A People’s History of the March on Washington

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

The Heroes We Need Today: Teaching About the Radical Ida B. Wells

Teaching Activity. By Matt Reed. Published by Rethinking Schools. 2023.
This mixer activity helps students uncover the radical legacy of Ida B. Wells.

The People v. the Hip-Hop Industry

Teaching Activity. By Jessica A. Rucker. 2021. Rethinking Schools.
A high school teacher and her students question “Who owns and controls hip-hop?” — and put the hip-hop industry on trial.

Mother Jones and Her Army of Mill Children

Picture book. By Jonah Winter, with illustrations by Nancy Carpenter.2020. 40 pages.
The story of Mary “Mother” Jones and the 100 children who marched from Philadelphia to New York in a fiery protest against child labor.

How We Get Free (Updated 2nd Edition)

Book — Non-fiction. Edited by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. 2026. 264 pages.
A collection of essays and interviews with founding members of the Combahee River Collective and contemporary activists who reflect on the organization’s contributions to Black feminism and its impact on today’s struggles.

Media Workshop: Defend the Freedom to Learn

Join us for a Media Workshop on Thursday, May 21, 2026. This is a…

Cane Warriors

Book — Historical fiction. By Alex Wheatle. 2020. 192 pages.
Cane Warriors follows the true story of Tacky's War in Jamaica in 1760.

What Happened to the Civil Rights Movement After 1965? Don’t Ask Your Textbook

By Adam Sanchez

Fifty years ago this week, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee chairperson Stokely Carmichael made the famous call for “Black Power.” Carmichael’s speech came in the midst of the “March Against Fear,” a walk from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi, to encourage African Americans to use their newly won right to vote. But while almost every middle and high school student learns about the Civil Rights Movement, they rarely learn about this march — or the related struggles that continued long after the Voting Rights Act.

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.

How to Make Amends: A Lesson on Reparations

Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca, Alex Stegner, Chris Buehler, Angela DiPasquale, and Tom McKenna.
Students meet dozens of advocates and recipients of reparations from a variety of historical eras to grapple with the possibility of reparations now and in the future.