This month marks the 51st anniversary of the Voting Rights Act being signed into law. In this article, “The Voting Rights Act: Ten Things You Should Know,” Emilye Crosby and Judy Richardson, write: "Together with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act ended most legal forms of white supremacy. Although this was important, it did not end all forms of racial discrimination, many of which were—and are—embedded in the structures of our society."
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The far-right Breitbart News Service, founded in 2007, has frequently targeted the Zinn Education Project.
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One of our most read “This Day in History” posts is about the July 29, 1910, Slocum Massacre—the racially charged murders by whites on the Black population of Slocum, Texas, and the subsequent cover-up of a community’s violent history.
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By Bill Bigelow
Last month in Washington, D.C. the National Education Association, voted at its national convention to support the Portland resolution and to encourage state and local affiliates to create and promote climate literacy resolutions in their own communities, using the Portland resolution as a model.
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On June 30, 1966, dozens of people assembled in the basement auditorium of the Community Church for a big announcement. All of them gathered to hear the words of three soldiers, Privates David Samas and Dennis Mora, and Private First Class James A. Johnson. The G.I.’s convened the press conference to perform a bold act: they intended to refuse their orders to go fight.
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It is time to stop celebrating the crimes of Columbus and stand in solidarity with the Indigenous people who demand an end to Columbus Day.
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Rush Limbaugh targeted the Zinn Education Project on his radio show last week. Why? Because our article, "A People's History of Muslims in the United States: What School Textbooks and the Media Miss," explores Muslim history in the United States since colonial times.
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Here are a few of the many stories of why teachers value the Zinn Education Project resources and the impact with students.
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The climate justice resolution passed on May 17, 2016, by Portland, Oregon’s school board was the country’s first such comprehensive resolution. Portland’s Educating for Climate Justice, the organization that initiated this effort, offers some thoughts on what contributed to this successful effort as well as some of the things that they'd do differently were they starting over.
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This month, we reached the milestone of 60,000 teachers teaching outside the textbook. Each year, the Zinn Education Project grows by an average of 10,000 teachers.
Why are so many teachers signing up to use people’s history lessons from the Zinn Education Project? Here’s just a few of the many reasons we’ve heard.
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By Bill Bigelow
In what may be a first in the nation, this week the Portland, Oregon school board passed a sweeping “climate justice” resolution that commits the school district to “abandon the use of any adopted text material that is found to express doubt about the severity of the climate crisis or its roots in human activity.”
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Donation from Robert Forrant in honor of Bread and Roses strikers.
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"The Color Line" lesson by Rethinking Schools editor Bill Bigelow is featured in a Washington Post article today called "How American oligarchs created the concept of race to divide and conquer the poor" by Courtland Milloy Jr.
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From Brussels to Lahore, from Syria to the Trump campaign, the world can seem an increasingly chaotic and scary place. More than ever, teachers need people’s history resources to help students ask deep and critical questions—and to surface the grassroots activism for justice that is always there, but too often buried in the official curriculum.
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The latest book from Rethinking Schools is Rethinking Sexism, Gender, and Sexuality that addresses questions including: How do you respond when a child asks, “Can a girl turn into a boy?” What if your daughter brings home school books with sexist, racist stories? What does “queering the curriculum” look like? What’s wrong with “anti-bullying” policies? What are alternatives?
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We are pleased to announce the five winners of a class set of A People’s History of the United States. These teachers were among hundreds who entered our contest last fall, with many inspiring stories about how they use the lessons from the Zinn Education Project website to teach outside the textbook. Here are two examples
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Did you see the Democratic debate last night? Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger became a point of contention. We can take this opportunity to introduce students to Kissinger. It was Kissinger who famously called anti-Vietnam War activist and whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg "the most dangerous man in America."
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By Will Kaufman
In December 1950, Woody Guthrie signed his name to the lease of a new apartment in Brooklyn. Even now, over half a century later, that uninspiring document prompts a double-take.
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By Deborah Menkart
A firestorm erupted when Scholastic released a children's book early this month, A Birthday Cake for George Washington, by Ramin Ganeshram and illustrated by Vanessa Brantley-Newton, featuring smiling slaves baking a cake for George Washington.
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After attending a presentation on the history of housing segregation and race, parent Wendy Jacobson…
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I donate to the Zinn Education Project so that my daughter will not have to wait until she is an adult, as I did, to learn people's history. —Katherine Gray
Katherine Gray is one of dozens of people who have donated to the Zinn Education Project during our year-end campaign so that we can provide free people's history lessons to teachers across the country in 2016.
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The Zinn Education Project registered 11,000 new teachers in 2015. We now have more than 55,500 teachers who have signed up to download our free "teaching outside the textbook" materials. In addition, we also:
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Dear Zinn Education Project friend,
As you may know, we launched our People's History Organizer Campaign last month, and the response has been encouraging. Please join the campaign to raise the final third—$40,000—of our goal.
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This past weekend was one of the largest climate mobilizations in history. Throughout the world more than 785,000 participated in demonstrations.
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