The constitutional climate case Juliana v. United States was filed by 21 youth against the U.S. government. The defendants said that the government's policies are causing catastrophic climate change and constitute a violation of their constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property.| Zinn Education Project
Book — Non-fiction. By Elizabeth Rusch. 2023. 400 pages. Based on the landmark court case Juliana v. United States, the book reads like a courtroom thriller and is a must-read for young people who want to act against climate change.| Zinn Education Project
It is essential that students know their rights: not just to pass a test, but to protect themselves. We offer FIVE ways to Teach Truth on Constitution Day. The post Five Ways to Participate in Teach Truth on Constitution Day appeared first on Zinn Education Project.| Zinn Education Project
As schools prepare for the federally mandated observance of Constitution Day on September 17, the Zinn Education Project launched its “Teach Truth on Constitution Day” campaign. The post Press Release: Teach Truth Campaign for Constitution Day appeared first on Zinn Education Project.| Zinn Education Project
Stories from educators about Teach Truth on Constitution Day. The post Hundreds of Teachers Sign Up to Teach Truth on Constitution Day appeared first on Zinn Education Project.| Zinn Education Project
Scholar Eve L. Ewing will discuss her book, Original Sins: The (Mis)Education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism, an examination of how the U.S. school system helps maintain racial inequality and social hierarchies. This session is part of the Zinn Education Project’s Teach the Black Freedom Struggle online people’s history series. The post Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism appeared firs...| Zinn Education Project
Free speech activist Mary Beth Tinker on the importance of teaching truthfully about the U.S. Constitution. The post Mary Beth Tinker on Constitution Day appeared first on Zinn Education Project.| Zinn Education Project
Our congratulations to Valencia Abbott of Wentworth, North Carolina for her being selected as the 2025 National History Teacher of the Year by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. The post Valencia Abbott: History Teacher of the Year appeared first on Zinn Education Project.| Zinn Education Project
Share a story about your activities on Constitution Day.| Zinn Education Project
Lessons, books, articles, films, and upcoming events on labor history.| Zinn Education Project
Article. By Howard Zinn. 1976. Essay urging readers to rethink Memorial Day, who we honor, and what resources we prioritize.| Zinn Education Project
Article. By David W. Blight. 2011. The people's history of Memorial Day in Charleston, South Carolina during Reconstruction.| Zinn Education Project
A mixer/mystery activity on Zionism, anti-Zionism, peasant resistance, the Great War, the British Mandate, and more.| Zinn Education Project
The lesson shows how government policies segregated every major city in the United States with dire consequences for African Americans.| Zinn Education Project
A lesson based on colonial law helps students understand the origins of racism in the United States and who benefits.| Zinn Education Project
Through examining FBI documents, students learn the scope of the FBI’s COINTELPRO campaign to spy on, infiltrate, discredit, and disrupt all corners of the Black Freedom Movement.| Zinn Education Project
This lesson shows students how to use the Black Panther Party's 10-Point Program to assess issues in their own communities.| Zinn Education Project
Book offers for educators who share stories about teaching any of the lessons at the Zinn Education Project.| Zinn Education Project
We offer a new timeline of the climate crisis that traces its roots from European colonial expansion and racial capitalism to present-day fossil fuel industry and government projects that exploit and destroy the Earth in the name of maximum profit. It also emphasizes moments and movements of resistance and activism that inform climate justice work today.| Zinn Education Project
This lesson helps students understand the complicated factors involved in who or what is to blame for the effects of the climate crisis.| Zinn Education Project
In this activity, students take on the role of activist-experts to improve upon a Congressional bill for reparations for Black people.| Zinn Education Project
Book — Non-fiction. By Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò. 2025. 286 pages. Táíwò’s take on reparations and distributive justice has wide implications for views of justice, racism, the legacy of colonialism, and climate change policy.| Zinn Education Project
Teaching climate justice has never been more urgent. We offer free downloadable classroom lessons, book and film recommendations, workshops for educators, and a sample school board climate justice resolution.| Zinn Education Project
Thank you to the staff of the Zinn Education Project for trusting and supporting educators and students, and for providing resources to teach truth.| Zinn Education Project
Studying the Constitution is essential — especially now, as constitutional rights are increasingly under attack. We offer activities to teach truthfully about the Constitution on Constitition Day and all year long. The post Teach Truth on Constitution Day appeared first on Zinn Education Project.| Zinn Education Project
Author and educator Clint Smith will discuss the new young readers edition of How the Word Is Passed: Remembering Slavery and How it Shaped America. This session is part of the Zinn Education Project’s Teach the Black Freedom Struggle online people’s history series. The post How the Word Is Passed: Remembering Slavery and How It Shaped America appeared first on Zinn Education Project.| Zinn Education Project
Rosa Parks is one of the most well-known U.S. women of the 20th century and yet much of what has been taught about her is narrow, limited, and at times wrong. This is changing thanks to the release in 2021 of the young adult book, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks and a new film with the same title — both based on the Parks’ biography by Jeanne Theoharis.| Zinn Education Project
Book — Non-fiction. By Jeanne Theoharis. 2013. 320 pages. A revealing window into Rosa Parks’ politics and years of activism.| Zinn Education Project
How the Word Is Passed: Remembering Slavery and How It Shaped America| Zinn Education Project
Online classes for educators on teaching the Black Freedom Struggle. People's historians interviewed by classroom teachers and teacher educators.| Zinn Education Project
Hundreds of educators register for free each month at the Zinn Education Project to access lessons and other resources. Here’s why.| Zinn Education Project
As the climate crisis accelerates, our Teach Climate Justice resources — free lessons, articles, a climate crisis timeline, and more — are becoming more and more valuable in the classroom.| Zinn Education Project
Carter G. Woodson initiated the first celebration of Negro History Week which led to Black History Month.| Zinn Education Project
Clint Smith spoke with educators about his new book, How the Word Is Passed, and related classroom resources.| Zinn Education Project
“Founding” Documents We Don’t Learn About| Zinn Education Project
Interactive activity introduces students to the history and often untold story of the U.S.-Mexico War. Roles available in Spanish.| Zinn Education Project
In this role play, students explore the challenges and perspectives of climate refugees forced from their homes devastated by climate change.| Zinn Education Project
Teaching Guide. By Bill Bigelow. 2006. 160 pages. Rethinking Schools. Lessons for teaching about the history of U.S.–Mexico relations and current border and immigration issues.| Zinn Education Project
While education is central to the fascist agenda, it is not getting adequate attention from progressive forces. You can help shine a light on education by joining the campaign to Teach Truth.| Zinn Education Project
Thanks to generous donors, the Zinn Education Project gave 450 copies of Eve Ewing’s Original Sins to educators around the country.| Zinn Education Project
With the airwaves full of inflammatory rhetoric about immigrants and I.C.E. raids in countless communities, we provide lessons, teaching guides, and other recommended resources for teaching honestly and critically about immigration.| Zinn Education Project
“Lift Every Voice and Sing” was first publicly performed by 500 school children in Jacksonville, Florida. Later, the NAACP adopted the song as the Black National Anthem. The lyrics spoke out against racism and Jim Crow laws.| Zinn Education Project
Teaching Activity. By Jesse Hagopian. 2025. 40 pages. This lesson explores major examples of laws passed to suppress Black education in the wake of major victories for the Black Freedom Struggle, highlighting the historical context and motivations behind these legislative efforts.| Zinn Education Project
Montgomery Bus Boycott| Zinn Education Project
Resources for middle and high school classrooms on the history of policing in the United States.| Zinn Education Project
This mixer activity introduces students to the struggle of residents to access safe water for drinking, cooking, and bathing.| Zinn Education Project
On this Memorial Day weekend, we feature two articles: one about the early origins of the holiday, led by African Americans in Charleston, South Carolina after the Civil War, and the second by Howard Zinn urging us to "destroy the weapons of death that . . . threaten our children and grandchildren."| Zinn Education Project
For the 5th annual Teach Truth Day of Action, Seven Stories Press, Haymarket Books, and One Signal Publishers have donated books that address the censorship of people's history.| Zinn Education Project
Hundreds of educators register for free each month at the Zinn Education Project to access lessons and other resources. Here’s why.| Zinn Education Project
One way to engage the community in defending the right to learn is with a local history walking tour. Along the way, participants learn about history they wish they had learned in school.| Zinn Education Project
On the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, help students think critically about the origins and consequences of the U.S. war in Vietnam.| Zinn Education Project
As state legislatures are passing laws to ban truthful teaching, more and more teachers continue to register at the Zinn Education Project. These numbers reflect a powerful countercurrent — one where teachers, students, and families seek out resources that center justice, people’s history, and critical thinking.| Zinn Education Project
Whether it is Earth Day or any other day of the year, we offer lessons and resources to help students grasp the enormity of the environmental crisis, but also find paths to make a difference, to challenge the profit-first, fossil fuel-forever priorities of the people temporarily running this country.| Zinn Education Project
Historian Jeanne Theoharis returns to discuss her book, King of the North: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Life of Struggle Outside the South. This session is part of the Zinn Education Project’s Teach the Black Freedom Struggle online people’s history series.| Zinn Education Project
Rethinking Schools editor Jesse Hagopian talked to activist scholars Bettina Aptheker and Robert Cohen about their books, the Free Speech Movement (FSM), and current threats to free speech.| Zinn Education Project
Book — Non-fiction. 2025. By Jeanne Theoharis. 400 pages. Illustrates how King’s time in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago — outside Dixie — was at the heart of his campaign for racial justice.| Zinn Education Project
The Zinn Education Project hosts Teaching for Black Lives study groups each year. Applications are open now for the 2024-2025 school year.| Zinn Education Project
Dozens of downloadable teaching activities, books, films, and websites that you can explore by theme.| Zinn Education Project
Book — Non-fiction. By Clint Smith. 2021. 336 pages. An examination of how monuments and landmarks represent — and misrepresent — the central role of slavery in U.S. history and its legacy today.| Zinn Education Project
Historian Jeanne Theoharis discussed her book, King of the North: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Life of Struggle Outside the South. This class was part of the Zinn Education Project’s Teach the Black Freedom Struggle online people’s history series.| Zinn Education Project
Historians Jarvis Givens and Imani Perry discussed the Black Teacher Archive, a digital portal centralizing materials created by professional organizations of African American educators, historically referred to as Colored Teachers Associations (CTAs). This class was part of the Zinn Education Project’s Teach the Black Freedom Struggle online people’s history series.| Zinn Education Project
We invite educators, students, parents, and community members to host a mini-lesson, rally at a historic site, history walking tour, information table, or other event to defend the right to #TeachTruth.| Zinn Education Project
We offer this #TeachTruthSyllabus as a gesture of defiance and education. The Right would be happy to obfuscate reality. We, on the other hand, want to probe beneath the surface — so we can teach the truth about our past and present.| Zinn Education Project
Educators are teaching in perilous times. We face a white supremacist backlash — funded by billionaires — against the 2020 uprising for Black lives, when tens of millions built a multiracial movement against systemic racism.| Zinn Education Project
Students meet targets of government harassment and repression to analyze why disparate individuals might have become government targets.| Zinn Education Project
Students read about sites of memory from Clint Smith's How the Word Is Passed and imagine how to commemorate what occurred there.| Zinn Education Project
Historian Mia Bay discussed her book, Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance, which explores racial restrictions on transportation and resistance to the injustice. This class was part of the Zinn Education Project’s Teach the Black Freedom Struggle online people’s history series.| Zinn Education Project
Remote teaching materials are available for the teaching activities listed below. You can find links to these materials by downloading each lesson and scrolling down to the final sheet. You will be asked to make a copy of the documents, which will allow you to edit your own copies freely and share them with your students. This list will be updated as we convert and share more lesson materials as Google Docs. Please read Ursula Wolfe-Rocca’s guide Teaching ZEP Lessons Remotely: Recommitting ...| Zinn Education Project
Asks students to determine who is responsible for the death of millions of Taínos on the island of Hispaniola in the late 15th century.| Zinn Education Project
Educator Jesse Hagopian discussed his book, Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education. This class was part of the Zinn Education Project’s Teach the Black Freedom Struggle online people’s history series.| Zinn Education Project
In this lesson, students think about what freedpeople needed in order to achieve and sustain real freedom following the Civil War.| Zinn Education Project
Students analyze who is to blame for the illegal mass deportations of Mexican Americans and immigrants during the Great Depression.| Zinn Education Project
In this lesson, students learn about the colonial history of Congo, debate responsibility for crimes against humanity, and investigate the connection, past and present, between the exploitation of natural resources and violence.| Zinn Education Project
Reconstruction, the era immediately following the Civil War and emancipation, is full of stories that help us see the possibility of a future defined by racial equity.| Zinn Education Project
Juneteenth — June 19th, also known as Emancipation Day — is one of the commemorations of people seizing their freedom from slavery in the United States. Yet, if the right wing has its way, it will be illegal to teach students about Juneteenth.| Zinn Education Project
Historian Julius B. Fleming Jr. joined educator Jessica Rucker to discuss his book, Black Patience: Performance, Civil Rights, and the Unfinished Project of Emancipation. This session was part of the Zinn Education Project’s Teach the Black Freedom Struggle online people’s history series.| Zinn Education Project
Award-winning musicologist and music historian Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr. discussed his book Who Hears Here?: On Black Music, Pasts and Present as part of the Zinn Education Project’s Teach the Black Freedom Struggle online people’s history series.| Zinn Education Project
Philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò joined Cierra Kaler-Jones and Jesse Hagopian to discuss his book, Reconsidering Reparations. This session was part of the Zinn Education Project’s Teach the Black Freedom Struggle online people’s history series.| Zinn Education Project
