On Veterans Day, we share a collection of stories about African American veterans who fought in various wars abroad and, upon their return to the United States, were murdered in the fight for democracy and human rights at home. We also share resources for teaching about the veterans who speak out against war.
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Film. Directed by Judith Ehrlich. 2020. 95 minutes.
A documentary uses interviews and found footage to tell the inspiring story and impact of the anti-Vietnam War draft resistance movement.
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Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca.
In this mixer lesson, students meet 27 different targets of government harassment and repression to analyze why disparate individuals might have become targets of the same campaign, determining what kind of threat they posed in the view of the U.S. government.
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Sgt. Walker was convicted of mutiny and killed, one of nineteen Union soldiers executed by the Union army for mutiny during the Civil War, fourteen of whom were Black.
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At the height of the anti-Communist Red Scare, Massachusetts second-grade teacher Anne P. Hale Jr. was removed from her position because of her prior membership in the Communist Party.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Jonathan M. Katz. 2022. 432 pages.
This book traces a path from the first wave of U.S. overseas expansionism to the rise of fascism in the 1930s to the crises of democracy in our own time.
Teaching Activity by Jonathan M. Katz
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Book — Non-fiction. By Robert Cohen and Sonia E. Murrow. 2021. 344 pages.
The first work to use archival and classroom evidence to assess the impact that Zinn's classic work has had on historical teaching and learning and on U.S. culture.
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The West Point Cemetery in Norfolk, Virginia was established to provide a burial area for Black soldiers and sailors who fought to preserve the Union.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Frank Abe and Tamiko Nimura; illustrated by Ross Ishikawa. 2021. 160 pages.
This graphic novel tells the story of Japanese American imprisonment during World War II, and the resistance and defiance that existed in these internment camps.
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To facilitate bringing the Seizing Freedom podcast to the classroom, we are sharing teaching ideas for selected episodes, beginning with "A Powerful Black Hand."
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Book — Non-fiction. By Kelly Lytle Hernández. 2022. 384 pages.
Taking readers to the frontlines of the magonista uprising and the counterinsurgency campaign that failed to stop them, Kelly Lytle Hernández puts the magonista revolt at the heart of U.S. history.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Matthew Delmont. 2024. 400 pages.
Accounts from the Black press, Black workers and veterans, and civil rights activists, will help teachers and students tell a fuller, truer, and more historically useful story of World War II.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies. 2022. 198 pages.
An examination of the events leading up to the 2022 conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the different parties involved, and the risks of escalation and opportunities for peace.
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Members of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) were arrested and erroneously charged with inciting violence at the 1972 Republican National Convention in Miami. They were all later acquitted after a lengthy and much publicized trial.
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The First World War killed roughly 20 million people. Fighting transitioned from mainly human- and animal-powered to fossil fuel-powered technologies and accessing and protecting fossil fuel supplies became part of sustaining a powerful military. The Earth and the environment have suffered ever since.
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Article. Timeline by Bill Bigelow. 2023.
A timeline of the overthrow of democracy in Chile — the fall of Salvador Allende and the rise of Augusto Pinochet.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Norman Solomon. 2023. 240 pages.
Too often, our curriculum “makes war invisible.” Too often, the ravages of U.S. militarism go unexamined in our classes. This fact-filled book insists: Teach about this; people’s lives depend on it.
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Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez. Rethinking Schools. 14 pages.
A role play investigating the economic consequences of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
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Film. Written and directed by Justine Shapiro, B. Z. Goldberg, and Carlos Bolado. 2001. 106 minutes.
This documentary explores the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from the eyes and experiences of Israeli and Palestinian children living in the West Bank.
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A lesson to accompany the 2001 documentary Promises, which explores the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from the eyes and experiences of Israeli and Palestinian children living in the West Bank.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Howard Zinn, adapted by Rebecca Stefoff with additions by Ed Morales. Translated by Hugo García Manríquez. 2023. 608 pages.
A Spanish translation of the young adult version of the best-selling A People’s History of the United States.
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St. Louis Cardinals NFL linebacker Dave Meggyesy disobeyed league rules and refused to salute the flag during the pre-game playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” nearly fifty years before San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee to protest police violence.
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A month after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Black soldiers on R&R in the town of Alexandria, Louisiana were attacked by local and military police, with dozens murdered and countless others injured in this brutal instance of Jim Crow violence.
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The Niños Héroes (translated as Boy Heroes or Heroic Cadets) were six military cadets killed in the Battle of Chapultepec, one of the last battles of the U.S. Mexico War.
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Students at Brown University went on strike to demand that the university take a stand against the escalation of the Vietnam War into neighboring Cambodia.
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