Federal funds were quickly restored to Chicago public schools after they were withheld for continued segregation in schools, effectively curtailing enforcement of the Civil Rights Act in Chicago.
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Seventeen year old Black teenager Jerome Huey was brutally murdered by four white teenagers in Cicero, Illinois, sparking public protests and demands for justice.
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Andre Adams, a baby two days shy of his first birthday, was chewed to death by a rat in Chicago.
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“An Act to Prevent the Importation of Certain Persons into Certain States” was passed into law in 1803.
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Between 30-60 striking Black Louisiana sugarcane workers were massacred.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Howard Zinn. 2005, with a new introduction by Anthony Arnove in 2015. 784 pages.
Howard Zinn's groundbreaking work on U.S. history. This book details lives and facts rarely included in textbooks—an indispensable teacher and student resource.
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Film. Produced by Henry Hampton. Blackside. 1987. 360 minutes.
Comprehensive documentary history of the Civil Rights Movement.
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In the face of attempts by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to ban AP African American studies, social justice books, and critical race theory in K–12 schools (and DEI in public colleges), we take a look at stories in Florida history that would be off limits to students.
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Film. Directed by Hazel Gurland-Pooler. 2023. 85 minutes.
Tells the story of how Las Vegas activist Ruby Duncan's grassroots movement of moms fought for guaranteed income.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. 9 pages.
Students are invited to solve a mystery, using historical clues, about the real story of the Draft Riots.
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The Ku Klux Klan bombed the home of labor and voting rights activists Harry T. Moore and Harriette Moore — killing them both. Harriette Moore taught elementary school, secretly teaching her students Black history in the face of bans by the state superintendent.
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White people attacked and killed many Black citizens who had organized for a Black sheriff to remain in office during the Vicksburg Massacre.
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Joseph H. Rainey, from South Carolina, was the first African American to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives.
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The first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, known as the United States Bill of Rights, were ratified.
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Teaching Activity. By Mimi Eisen and Ursula Wolfe-Rocca. 47 pages.
A follow-up lesson to “Reconstructing the South,” using primary source documents to reveal key outcomes of the Reconstruction era.
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White settlers massacred all inhabitants of Conestoga Indian Town, leading to escalating tensions across the state of Pennsylvania.
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A Black labor organizer’s imprisoned for having “communist literature” was freed following a U.S. Supreme Court decision.
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Union dockworkers in San Francisco refused to unload South African products in a coordinated 11-day strike against apartheid.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Amy Nathan with Sarah Keys Evans, and illustrated by Jermaine Powell. 2025. 72 pages.
Chapter book about how Sarah Keys Evans was arrested at a North Carolina bus station in 1952 for not moving to the back of a bus. She went on to challenge the arrest in court.
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Teaching Activity. By Mark Sweeting. Rethinking Schools. 4 pages.
How one teacher engaged his students in a critical examination of the language used in textbooks to describe the Japanese American incarceration.
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A group of African Americans presented a petition for freedom to the Massachusetts Council and the House of Representatives.
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Belinda Sutton petitioned the Massachusetts legislature for a pension as reparations for the wealth she produced and was stolen from her while she was enslaved.
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Resources about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., beyond the traditional narrative.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Gary Tyler with Ellen Bravo. 2025. 288 pages.
In the tradition of books by Albert Woodfox and Angela Davis, this memoir of a wrongful conviction and time spent on death row in Angola prison shows how incarcerated people care for each other and fight for justice.
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White members of the Northern Student Movement broke off to form a new group that was soon called People Against Racism, which organized white people by creating suburban freedom schools, developing school curriculum, raising the alarm on “law and order” politics, and through other means.
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