People’s History Articles for Elementary and Middle School

We offer this #TeachTruthSyllabus as a gesture of defiance and education. The Right would be happy to keep the conversation at the level of obfuscation, divorced from reality and history. We, on the other hand, want to talk about the truth — the truth about our past and present, the truth about our classrooms and curricula.

Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez and Jesse Hagopian. Rethinking Schools. 33 pages.
A mixer lesson introduces students to the pivotal history of the Black Panthers.

The racist riots of 1919 happened 100 years ago this summer. Confronting a national epidemic of white mob violence, 1919 was a time when Black people defended themselves, fought back, and demanded full citizenship in thousands of acts of courage and daring, small and large, individual and collective.

This erasure of huge swaths of humanity is a fundamental feature of the school curriculum, but also of the broader mainstream political discourse. We usually think about the curriculum as what is taught in school. But as important — perhaps more important — is what is not taught, which includes the lives rendered invisible.

From the urban rebellions to the salute at the Olympics, commemorations of 1968 — a pivotal year of Black Power — are popular every year. Yet there is another anniversary of Black Power that merits our attention — 1868 during Reconstruction.

On Monday, The Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy spoke with students and teachers in D.C. who are studying Native American history with lessons from the Zinn Education Project.

Political activist Yuri Kochiyama was born in San Pedro, California.