An explosion at the Banner Mine in Alabama killed 128 men, almost all of them African American prisoners of the state who were forced to work in the mine under the convict leasing system.
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Paul Robeson was one of the most important figures of the 20th century. He was a “renaissance man” — an acclaimed athlete, actor, singer, cultural scholar, author, lawyer, and internationally-renowned political activist.
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Film. Directed by Mark Lopez. Written by Mark Lopez and Richard Rothstein. 2019. 18 minutes.
An animated documentary of how the federal, state and local governments unconstitutionally segregated every major metropolitan area in the U.S. through law and policy.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Clint Smith. 2016. 84 pages.
A teacher and scholar celebrates Black humanity, and guides readers toward self-reflection through his coming-of-age poems that are political, historical, and deeply personal.
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The U.S. Civil War ended when the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia surrendered to U.S. General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in south-central Virginia.
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The 1968 Fair Housing Act was signed into law after years of struggle and grassroots organizing.
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Confederate troops massacred over 500 surrendering Union soldiers, majority African American, at the Civil War Battle of Fort Pillow.
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Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez.
Through a mixer activity, students encounter how enslaved people resisted the brutal exploitation of slavery. The lesson culminates in a collective class poem highlighting the defiance of the enslaved.
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The federal government compensated the “owners” of enslaved people for their “loss of property.” The people whose labor and families were stolen for generations were not compensated nor given any assistance for the transition to freedom.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Cameron McWhirter. 2012. 368 pages.
A chronicle of white supremacist violence in major U.S. cities across the nation after World War I.
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The New York Police Department falsely accused four African American teenagers and one Latino teenager who became known as the “Central Park Five.”
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Harriet Tubman helped rescue Charles Nalle, a fugitive from slavery in Virginia, in Troy, New York.
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Robert Sengstacke Abbott founded the highly influential newspaper, the Chicago Defender, with the tagline “American Race Prejudice Must Be Destroyed.”
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Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca. Rethinking Schools.
The mixer role play is based on Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law, which shows in exacting detail how government policies segregated every major city in the United States with dire consequences for African Americans.
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Henry Dumas, a critically acclaimed author, was fatally shot by the New York Transit police.
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African Americans tested their right to vote and when denied, cast their own “freedom ballots,” on election day in Norfolk, Virginia.
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President Roosevelt signed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (USA), known as the GI Bill, to provide financial aid to veterans returning from WW II. White supremacy prevented equal access to those benefits.
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While politicians debated the implications of taking down the Confederate flag after the white supremacist murder of nine African Americans at Emmanuel AME Church, Bree Newsome scaled the South Carolina state flag pole and took the flag down.
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Picture book. By Deborah Hopkinson. Illustrated by Don Tate. 2019. 36 pages.
This picture book chronicles the young life of Dr. Carter G. Woodson, an Appalachian-born Harvard scholar and advocate for African American history. He founded Negro History Week in 1926 (which grew into Black History Month), the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), and the Journal of Negro History.
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Africans on the Cuban schooner Amistad rose up against their captors, seizing control of the ship, which had been transporting them to chattel slavery.
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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.
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Thousands of white people rioted after a young Black couple moved into an apartment in Cicero, Illinois, west of Chicago. They firebombed the building, overturned police cars, and threw stones at firefighters who tried to put out the fire.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Ibram X. Kendi. 2016. 608 pages.
This book chronicles the origins and growth of anti-Black racist ideas, and their power, over the course of U.S. history.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Jacqueline Houtman, Walter Naegle, and Michael G. Long. 2019. 168 pages.
A biography of antiwar and civil rights activist Bayard Rustin.
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Film. Produced and directed by David Shulman. Narrated by Danny Glover. 2015. 82 minutes.
Documentary about the pivotal role played by Black landowning families during the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi who controlled over a million acres in the 1960s.
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