Reconstruction was not a “failure” as referenced in many state standards. Students should learn that specific white supremacist individuals, organizations, and systems actively defeated it.

On July 11 and 12, 2022, 30 middle and high school teachers participated in a workshop offered by the National Museum of African American History & Culture (NMAAHC) and the Zinn Education Project on teaching Reconstruction.

Meet the first class of Prentiss Charney Fellows of the Zinn Education Project for the 2022-2023 school year. The fellowship offers support for a cohort of people’s history educator leaders to study, learn, and organize together for one year.

It is urgent that educators of conscience commit ourselves to equipping our students to recognize the breadth of the climate emergency, to probe its social and economic causes, and to come to see themselves as activists for a just society and a stable climate.

Author Michelle Coles donated 52 signed copies of her acclaimed book for young people, Black Was the Ink, in support of our Teach Truth campaign.

Teachers and allies across the country pledged to teach truth on June 11 and 12, 2022. They made their pledges at historic sites to provide examples of the history that teachers would be required to lie about or omit if the GOP anti-history bills become law.

We invite educators, students, parents, and community members to rally across the country and pledge to #TeachTruth on June 11 and 12, 2022.

The Zinn Education Project hosts Teaching for Black Lives study groups each year.

Here are some of the sites that are hosting #TeachTruth Days of Action on June 11 and 12, 2022.

As this country grows more dangerous for women, poor people, immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, workers, and communities of color, so must our resolve and determination to #TeachTruth. Here are some articles and resources we’re turning to for insight and inspiration.

To provide teachers an opportunity to explore how to teach about the rich history of the Reconstruction era, the National Museum of African American History (NMAAHC) and the Zinn Education Project are offering a two-day workshop for 30 middle and high school teachers.

On May 9, the Zinn Education Project hosted author Kidada E. Williams in conversation with Jesse Hagopian about the imaginative, defiant ways that Black people sought and enacted freedom throughout U.S. history. This history is highlighted in her podcast Seizing Freedom, which focuses on and brings to life voices that have been muted time and time again. This session is part of the Zinn Education Project’s Teach the Black Freedom Struggle online people’s history series.

On Monday, April 25, 2022, historian Johanna Fernández spoke about the history of the Young Lords, the Puerto Rican counterpart of the Black Panther Party. This session was part of the Zinn Education Project’s Teach the Black Freedom Struggle online people’s history series.

This year, Earth Day arrives with crisis layered upon crisis. The emergency of climate chaos frames everything.

In New York in the late 1960s, students in the Young Lords and the Black Panther Party were considered such a threat to the establishment that an association of high school principals issued a secret memo about “limits of permissible dissent.”

Pledge to teach climate justice.

Invitation to a panel with high school student organizers from the Mid-Atlantic to the Midwest, from the Northeast to the Deep South to share their struggles and discuss their strategies for resistance.

A statue of Reconstruction era legislator Thaddeus Stevens was dedicated in Gettysburg on Saturday, April 2.

On the two-year anniversary of Zinn Education Project’s Teach the Black Freedom Struggle online classes, we express our appreciation to the educators, scholars, students, organizers, and advocates for teaching people’s history who made the series such a balm in hard times.

When Gov. Reeves proposed a precursor to his anti-history education bill two years ago, we offered people’s history books to Mississippi teachers. Their statements expose Reeves’ lies and also the type of teaching the law is actually designed to suppress.

South Carolina teachers participated in the first state-based workshop on the release of "Erasing the Black Freedom Struggle: How State Standards Fail to Teach the Truth About Reconstruction." It was hosted by the Penn Center, the Zinn Education Project, and the International African American Museum.