Jan. 1, 2009: Oscar Grant Killed

Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca.
Students explore three documents produced in the wake of three major episodes of racial violence (1919, 1967, 2014) to understand the long trajectory of police violence in Black communities.

Teaching Guide. Edited by Dyan Watson, Jesse Hagopian, Wayne Au. 2018. Rethinking Schools. 368 pages.
Essays, teaching activities, role plays, poems, and artwork, designed to illuminate the movement for Black students’ lives, the school-to-prison-pipeline, Black history, gentrification, intersectional Black identities, and more.

Henry Dumas, a critically acclaimed author, was fatally shot by the New York Transit police.

Killed by the police only twelve years later, today Tamir Rice was born.

Sean Bell was murdered by New York City police on the day before his wedding.

Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager, was murdered. The death of Martin and acquittal of the man who shot him sparked the national and global Movement for Black Lives.

Michael Brown was fatally shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.

Philando Castile, an African American, was shot to death by a police officer at a traffic stop in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. Castile had worked as a nutritional supervisor at an elementary school.