Book — Non-fiction. By Bryan Stevenson. 2019. 288 pages.
This young adult adaptation provides readers a glimpse into the lives of the wrongfully imprisoned.
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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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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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Fred Korematsu was arrested on a street corner in San Leandro, California for resisting Executive Order 9066, in which all people of Japanese descent were incarcerated in U.S. concentration camps.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Michael Bronski, adapted for by Richie Chevat. 2019. 336 pages.
A young adult readers edition of the original text explores the history of LGBTQ+ experiences in the U.S. since 1500.
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Inmates at United States Penitentiary (USP) Marion staged a hunger strike on the U.S. bicentennial in protest of inhumane treatment by the prison administration.
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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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Book — Non-fiction. By Andrea Pitzer. 2017. 480 pages.
Starting with 1890s Cuba, this book is a chronological and geopolitical history of concentration camps that is filled with prisoner perspectives.
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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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Little Bobby Hutton (age 17) of the Black Panther Party was shot dead by the Oakland police.
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Joan Little used deadly force to resist sexual assault and was the first to successfully defend herself in court leading to acquittal.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Jerry Mitchell. 2020. 432 pages.
An account of one journalist's search for the long-buried truths that could bring killers to justice for the assassination of Medgar Evers, the firebombing of Vernon Dahmer, the 16th Street Church bombing in Birmingham, and the Mississippi Burning case.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Howard Zinn. 2003. 368 pages.
A selection of passionate, honest, and piercing essays looking at political ideology in the United States.
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Books — Non-fiction. Howard Zinn. 1974.
Howard Zinn's book on the way justice really works in the U.S. and how it can change for the better.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Paul Butler. 2018. 320 pages.
A former federal prosecutor explains how the criminal justice system works against the people and how we can disrupt its abuse.
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Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca.
In this activity, students take on the role of activist-experts to improve upon a Congressional bill for reparations for Black people. They talk back to Congress’ flimsy legislation and design a more robust alternative.
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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.
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Article. By Rachel Boccio. Rethinking Schools, Winter 2018.
A Connecticut educator who taught English to incarcerated young men for 20 years describes what happened when she introduced her students to the Canadian “Leap Manifesto.”
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In 1951, the Commonwealth of Virginia executed seven Black men despite a national campaign in their defense.
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Ellen Harris told the bus driver she would accept a refund and get off the bus, but the driver refused to accept her terms and had her arrested for breaking segregation law.
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In the face of white supremacists’ threats, a Black Detroit judge upheld the law and acted for equal justice for Black churchgoers detained unlawfully after a deadly police shoot-out.
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Two hundred and eighty one Africans aboard The Antelope ship were brought to Savannah by the U.S. Treasury.
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Killed by the police only twelve years later, today Tamir Rice was born.
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The Philadelphia Police Department dropped a C-4 bomb on the home of the MOVE organization, killing eleven people (including five children) and wiping out half a city block.
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Film. By Sam Pollard, Catherine Allan, Douglas Blackmon and Sheila Curran Bernard. 2012. 90 minutes.
Reveals the interlocking forces in the South and the North that enabled “neoslavery” post-Emancipation Proclamation.
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