Slavery and Resistance Archives

Reconstructing Race: A Teacher Introduces His Students to the Slippery Concept of Race

Teaching Activity. By Nathanial W. Smith. Rethinking Schools. 6 pages.
A teacher describes a series of lessons he teaches to help his students understand race as a social construct.

When Black Lives Mattered: Why Teach Reconstruction

By Adam Sanchez

Every day seems to bring new horrors as the U.S. president’s racist rhetoric and policies have provided an increasingly encouraging environment for attacks on Black people and other communities of color. The acquittal of yet another police officer accused of murdering a Black man in St. Louis, the raging battle across the country over whether symbols of slavery should be removed from public spaces, and the formation of a “Commission on Election Integrity” to further suppress voting by people of color are just a few of the recent reminders that racism is as American as apple pie. In moments like these, it’s worth remembering a time in U.S. history when Black lives mattered.

White House Black History | Zinn Education Project

Missing from Presidents’ Day: The People They Enslaved

By Clarence Lusane

Schools across the country are adorned with posters of the U.S. presidents and the years they served in office. U.S. history textbooks describe the accomplishments and challenges of the major presidential administrations — George Washington had the Revolutionary War, Abraham Lincoln the Civil War, Teddy Roosevelt the Spanish-American War, and so on. Children’s books put students on a first-name basis with the presidents, engaging readers with stories of their dogs in the Rose Garden or childhood escapades. Washington, D.C.’s Smithsonian Institution welcomes visitors to an exhibit of the first ladies’ gowns and White House furnishings.

Nowhere in all this information is there any mention of the fact that more than one in four U.S. presidents were involved in human trafficking and slavery.

Abolition/Earth Day | Zinn Education Project

An Earth Day Message: Take Heart from the Abolition Movement

By Bill Bigelow

Imagine for a moment that it is 1858 and you are an abolitionist. Talk about discouragement: The previous year, in its Dred Scott decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that no Black person — whether enslaved or free — was entitled to become a U.S. citizen. A few years before, Congress had passed the Fugitive Slave Act, which vastly expanded the U.S. government’s authority to seize and return to slavery individuals who had fled to freedom — or even those Blacks born free in the North. Many Northern Blacks crossed into Canada rather than live in constant fear.

And abolitionists were waging not just a moral struggle against the enslavement of human beings. Slavery was the largest industry in the United States, worth more than all the factories, banks, and railroads combined. In effect, the abolition movement aimed to expropriate without compensation the wealth of the most powerful social class in the country.

American History Lessons

The original idea for the Zinn Education Project’s “If We Knew Our History” column grew out of our reading “American History Lessons,” by Melissa Harris-Perry in The Nation magazine. Harris-Perry’s article, reproduced here, is a meditation about the role of Black History Month.

She argues that we suffer from a “national deficit of historical knowledge” and that this deficit has contemporary political consequences. If we knew our history, she suggests, people would be less likely to follow the bigots who patch together historical symbols and soundbites to justify their right wing nostrums. And if we knew our history, we’d be more likely to appreciate and defend the accomplishments of social movements.

Collage of anti-slavery efforts | Zinn Education Project: Teaching People's History

Rethinkin’ Lincoln on the 150th Birthday of the Emancipation Proclamation

By Bill Bigelow

Here’s a history quiz to use with people you run into today: Ask them who ended slavery.

I taught high school U.S. history for almost 30 years, and as we began our study, students knew the obvious answer: Abraham Lincoln. But by the time our study ended, several weeks later, their “Who ended slavery?” essays were more diverse, more complex — and more accurate. In coming months and years, teachers’ jobs will be made harder by Steven Spielberg’s film Lincoln, in which Daniel Day-Lewis gives a brilliant performance as, well, Lincoln-the-abolitionist. The only problem is that Lincoln was not an abolitionist.

It’s Constitution Day! Time to Teach Obedience or History?

By Bill Bigelow

Pearson-Prentice Hall’s high school textbook, United States History, opens its chapter on the Constitution with this Daniel Webster quote: “We may be tossed upon an ocean where we can see no land — not, perhaps, the sun and stars. But there is a chart and a compass for us to study, to consult, and to obey. The chart is the Constitution.” United States History tells students approvingly that Ronald Reagan and others have recited this Webster quote at celebrations of the Constitution.

This is the kind of on-bended-knee Constitution worship that has long been a staple of our country’s social studies curricula.

Sure, these days, most U.S. history textbooks acknowledge that the Constitution was not without controversy. Holt McDougal’s The Americans offers a perfunctory couple of pages on the debate between elite groups of Federalists and Anti-Federalists. But corporate textbooks present the Constitution as a wise inevitability, awaiting only the Bill of Rights as the icing on a delicious cake of compromise.

What the Koch Brothers Want Students to Learn About Slavery

By Adam Sanchez

Given that the billionaire Charles Koch has poured millions of dollars into eliminating the minimum wage and paid sick leave for workers, and that in 2015 he had the gall to compare his ultra-conservative mission to the anti-slavery movement, he’s probably the last person you’d want educating young people about slavery. Yet the history-teaching wing of the Koch brothers empire is seeking to promote an alternate narrative to slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction.

July 21, 1656: Elizabeth Key Wins Her Freedom

In early Colonial Virginia, Elizabeth Key became the first woman of African descent in the North American colonies to sue for her freedom and win.

Poster for an event in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1849, to commemorate the end of slavery in the British West Indies.

Aug. 1, 1834: Britain Passes Slavery Abolition Act

August First Day became a symbol of hope for enslaved people and abolitionists in the United States when Britain passed the Slavery Abolition Act in 1834, abolishing slavery throughout its colonies around the world.

How the Word Is Passed: Discussion Questions, Writing Prompts, and Teaching Ideas

Teaching ideas and discussion questions for How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith.

How We Remember: The Struggle Over Slavery in Public Spaces

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow, Jesse Hagopian, Cierra Kaler-Jones, Ana Rosado, and Ursula Wolfe-Rocca.
Students read about sites of memory in How the Word Is Passed and imagine how to commemorate what occurred there. They then compare that to how the respective site is currently commemorated and described by docents.

Lives in Our Lineage: A Lesson on Oral Histories

Teaching Activity. By Cierra Kaler-Jones.
In this lesson, students use key excerpts from How the Word Is Passed by Clint Smith as inspiration for a project where they tell their and their loved ones’ stories.

Rethinking the U.S. Constitutional Convention: A Role Play

Teaching Activity. By Bob Peterson. Rethinking Schools. 14 pages.
A role play on the Constitutional Convention which brings to life the social forces active during and immediately following the American Revolution with focus on two key topics: suffrage and slavery. An elementary school adaptation of the Constitution Role Play by Bill Bigelow. Roles available in Spanish.

Teaching Activity by Bob Peterson

Presidents and Slaves: Helping Students Find the Truth (Teaching Activity) | Zinn Education Project: Teaching People's History

Presidents and the Enslaved: Helping Students Find the Truth

Teaching Activity. By Bob Peterson. Rethinking Schools. 7 pages.
How a 5th grade teacher and his students conducted research to answer the question: “Which presidents owned people?” Available in Spanish.

Constitution Role Play: Whose “More Perfect Union”? and The Constitutional Convention: Who Really Won?

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. 24 pages.
The U.S. Constitution endorsed slavery and favored the interests of the owning classes. What kind of Constitution would have resulted from founders who were representative of the entire country? That is the question addressed in this role play activity.

Teaching Activity by Bill Bigelow