US Foreign Policy Archives

Passionate Declarations: Essays on War and Justice

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.

Eslanda: The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson

Book — Non-fiction. By Barbara Ransby. 2013. 373 pages.
This biography of cosmopolitan anthropologist Eslanda Cardozo Goode Robeson explores her influence on her husband's early career, their open marriage, and her life as a prolific journalist, a tireless advocate of women's rights, and an outspoken anti-colonial and antiracist activist.

Teaching the “American War” 75 Years After Vietnamese Independence

Here are resources to help students probe the roots of U.S. involvement in Vietnam and the impact of the Vietnam War — which the Vietnamese rightly call “The American War” — and resistance to the war.

June 12, 1956: Paul Robeson Testifies Before HUAC

Paul Robeson testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, where he was questioned about his political speech, associations, and party affiliation.

Ballad of an American: A Graphic Biography of Paul Robeson

Book — Non-fiction. Written and illustrated by Sharon Rudahl. Edited by Paul Buhle and Lawrence Ware. 2020. 142 pages.
The first-ever graphic biography of Paul Robeson charts Robeson’s career as a singer, actor, scholar, athlete, and activist who achieved global fame.

Dec. 6, 1929: Cayes Massacre

One of the worst massacres of civilians during the 19-year American occupation of Haiti took place in Les Cayes.

IDA Treaties Explorer

Digital collection. View digitized historic treaties between Indigenous tribes and the U.S. government alongside key historic works that provide context to the agreements made and the histories of shared lands.

More than McCarthyism: The Attack on Activism Students Don’t Learn About from Their Textbooks

By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca

In legislatures across the country, Republican lawmakers are introducing bills to curtail what educators — in public schools and universities — can say and teach about racism and sexism. This latest moral panic from the Right comes on the heels of recent legislation dangerously curtailing the rights of transgender people — especially young people — and enacting another round of voter suppression. It is paramount that we organize to defeat these threats to the health and safety of LGBTQ people, voting rights, and the freedom of educators to tell the truth. It is also worth reminding ourselves — and our students — of other times in U.S. history when powerful politicians manufactured threats and whipped up fear to neutralize progressive challenges to the status quo — the McCarthy Era being a well-known high-water mark of state repression.

Fireworks over New York | Zinn Education Project

Rethinking the 4th of July

By Bill Bigelow

Apart from the noise pollution, air pollution, and flying debris pollution, there is something profoundly inappropriate about blowing off fireworks at a time when the United States is waging war with real fireworks around the world. To cite just one example, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London found recently that U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan alone have killed more than 200 people, including at least 60 children.

Fighting for Okinawa — My Home, Not a Military Base

By Moé Yonamine

My family moved to the United States from Okinawa when I was 7. But Okinawa is still home — and I’m hurt and angered at how the United States and Japan continue to treat Okinawa as little more than a colonial outpost. As a teacher, I’m even more dismayed at how the conventional school curriculum keeps young people in this country ignorant about the abuse, but also about the resistance, in my home islands.

The Forgotten Fight Against Fascism

By William Loren Katz

Anyone who has gone through school in the United States knows that history textbooks devote a lot of attention to the so-called “Good War”: World War II. A typical textbook, Holt McDougal’s The Americans, includes 61 pages covering the buildup to World War II and the war itself. Today’s texts acknowledge “blemishes” like the internment of Japanese Americans, but the texts either ignore or gloss over the fact that for almost a decade, during the earliest fascist invasions of Asia, Africa, and Europe, the Western democracies encouraged rather than fought Hitler and Mussolini, and sometimes gave them material aid.

Ten Years After: How Not to Teach About the Iraq War

By Bill Bigelow

In 2006, with U.S. troops occupying Iraq, the great historian and humanitarian Howard Zinn expressed his desire for the end of the war: “My hope is that the memory of death and disgrace will be so intense that the people of the United States will be able to listen to a message that the rest of the world, sobered by wars without end, can also understand: that war itself is the enemy of the human race.”

At least in a formal sense, our country’s memories of war are to be found in school history textbooks. Exactly a decade after the U.S. invasion, those texts are indeed sending “messages” to young people about the meaning of the U.S. war in Iraq. But they are not the messages of peace that Howard Zinn proposed. Not even close.

‘Repeat After Me: The United States Is Not an Imperialist Country — Oh, and Don’t Get Emotional About War’

By Bill Bigelow

You may have seen that an administrative law judge in Arizona, Lewis Kowal, just upheld the decree by the State Superintendent of Public Instruction that Tucson’s Mexican American Studies program violates state law. Judge Kowal found that the Tucson program was teaching Latino history and culture “in a biased, political, and emotionally charged manner.” According to CNN, one lesson that the judge objected to taught that the historic treatment of Mexican Americans was “marked by the use of force, fraud and exploitation.”

Try this “history detective” experiment. Ask the next person you encounter to tell you what they know about the U.S. war with Mexico. More than likely, this will be a short conversation, because that war (1846-48) merits barely a footnote in U.S. history textbooks.

Aug. 7, 1964: Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was passed without a single dissent in the House of Representatives, and only two no votes in the Senate, leading to increased U.S. aggression in Vietnam.

Sept. 11, 1973: U.S.-Backed Coup in Chile

Chile’s democratically elected president, Salvador Allende was killed in a U.S.-backed coup.

Oct. 2, 1937: Parsley Massacre

Under the orders of U.S.-backed Dominican dictator President Rafael Trujillo, the execution of more than 20,000 Haitians began in what is now known as the Parsley Massacre at Massacre River.

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?”

Nov. 12, 1991: Indonesian Massacre of East Timorese

Using arms from the United States, Indonesian troops fired on a peaceful procession in East Timor, killing more than 270 people.

San Francisco moratorium march | Zinn Education Project

Nov. 15, 1969: Second Anti-War Moratorium

The second anti-war Moratorium occurred with over 500,000 marching in Washington, D.C. and demonstrations throughout the country and the world.

Nov. 18, 1909: U.S. War Ships Sent to Nicaragua

President William Howard Taft ordered U.S. warships to Nicaragua to defend U.S. corporate profits.

Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America’s Empire

Book — Non-fiction. By Jonathan M. Katz. 2022. 432 pages.
This book traces a path from the first wave of U.S. overseas expansionism to the rise of fascism in the 1930s to the crises of democracy in our own time.

Teaching Activity by Jonathan M. Katz

Revolutionary Women of Texas and Mexico, illustrated book cover

Revolutionary Women of Texas and Mexico: Portraits of Soldaderas, Saints, and Subversives

Book — Non-fiction. Edited by Sosa, Clark, and Speed. 2020. 352 pages.
This anthology examines female role models and subversives who stood up for their visions and ideals in Mexico and Texas.

Teaching Activity by Edited by Kathy Sosa, Ellen Riojas Clark, and Jennifer Speed

Arise!: Global Radicalism in the Era of the Mexican Revolution

Book — Non-fiction. By Christina Heatherton. 2022. 336 pages.
This book tells the international history of radical movements and their convergences during the Mexican Revolution, reconstructing how this era's organizers found new ways to fight global capitalism.

Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War

Book — Non-fiction. By Howard W. French. 2021. 521 pages.
This sweeping history reveals a long-concealed history of trivialization and, more often, elision in depictions of African history throughout the last five hundred years.

book cover showing sketch of woman's face with a sketch of a butterfly overlapping her.

In the Time of the Butterflies

Book — Fiction. By Julia Alvarez. 2010. 352 pages.
The story of Las Mariposas — “The Butterflies” — is about four sisters and their tragic deaths under Trujillo’s dictatorship in the Dominican Republic.

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