Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #TeachTruth

Most recents (24)

#tdih 1960 SC college students, labeled outside agitators & Communist for protests of segregation, were violently attacked by police & placed in a stockade.

Judge jailed their @NAACP lawyer for “pursuing his case vigorously.” Read ⬇️ via CRMvet website.
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/poli…
"City passes an ordinance to prohibit picketing. . . Almost 400 students are arrested. Soaking wet from the hoses & rain, shivering from 40-degree weather, they are forced into an outdoor stockade that may have been used in the past for enslaved people." -- CRMvet

#TeachTruth
"They cling together for warmth and sing 'God Bless America,' 'The Star-Spangled Banner,' and newly learned freedom songs like 'We Shall Overcome.'"

"Supporters who try to pass them food and blankets are also arrested." -- CRMvet

Empathy, humanity, & solidarity criminalized.
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#tdih 1955 "I could not move, because history had me glued to the seat. . . Sojourner Truth’s hands were pushing me down on one shoulder & Harriet Tubman’s hands were pushing me down on another, & I could not move. — Claudette Colvin, #TeachTruth ⬇️🧵
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/clau…
At 15, Claudette Colvin had been politicized by false arrest & torture of her classmate, poet Jeremiah Reeves . . . she refused to move on bus. "'We’d been studying Constitution [in school during #BHM] I knew I had rights.'” -- Read: rosaparksbiography.org/bio/claudette-… via @JeanneTheoharis photo of young man with glasses and white jacket, head and s
Colvin’s case went to trial in May. The judge strategically dropped two charges (for disturbing peace and breaking the segregation law), found her guilty of assaulting officers. Therefore, appealing her case could not directly challenge the segregation law. -- @JeanneTheoharis
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Born #tdih 1868: William Edward Burghardt (W. E. B.) Du Bois, one of most important scholars of 20th century. Sociologist, historian, Pan-Africanist, author, editor; co-founder of @NAACP, leader of Niagara Movement, & editor of NAACP’s @thecrisismag. 🧵 ⬇️
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/web-…
"One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over. . . The difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is that . . . it paints perfect man & noble nations, but it does not tell the truth." ― W.E.B. DuBois Text: "One is astonished in the study of history at the
"The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery." -- W. E. B. Du Bois in "Black Reconstruction in America" (1935), reissued 2021.

Video ⬇️of talk on book by Eric Foner, @KeeangaYamahtta, & @HenryLouisGates ⬇️
zinnedproject.org/materials/blac…
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#tdih 1900 At Lincoln bday event, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was first publicly performed by 500 school children at Stanton School in Jacksonville, Fla.

School principal James Weldon Johnson wrote the words & his brother Rosamond set them to music. ⬇️🧵
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/lift…
Art on book cover in tweet ⬆️ is by sculptor & printmaker, Elizabeth Catlett.

Don't know her art & story? Read here via @TheRoot
incl. attacks under McCarthyism: theroot.com/happy-95th-bir…

Introduce her life to students with lesson, "Subversives": zinnedproject.org/materials/subv… Black and white photo of Elizabeth Catlett, seated, wearing
Picture book "Sing a Song: How Lift Every Voice and Sing Inspired Generations" by @kelstarly introduces young readers to 120-yr history of song & its role through Great Migration, Jim Crow, Civil Rights Movement, HBCU graduations, @NMAAHC opening, & today. zinnedproject.org/materials/lift…
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#tdih 1990, Nelson Mandela released from prison after 27 years.

The U.S. gov't classified Mandela a terrorist.

While Mandela was in jail, U.S. corporate investment in apartheid South Africa grew, & R. Reagan had policy of “constructive engagement.” 🧵
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/mand…
Hundreds of thousands of people in U.S. & around the world mobilized to oppose apartheid in the 1980s. That successful movement built on decades of links between African liberation movements & activists in the U.S. Rosa Parks in photo ⬇️in D.C. & SNCC in next tweet. #TeachTruth Book cover, No Easy VictoriesRosa Parks (wearing hat and glasses) with Freedom Yes, Apart
In March, 1966, James Forman, John Lewis, Bill Hall, Cleve Sellers, & Willie Ricks occupied 14th floor of South African Consulate to “protest the inhuman and barbaric system of apartheid by the South African government.” Read more via @snccdigital at
snccdigital.org/events/sncc-pr… Demonstrators with signs at Chase-Manhattan Bank, March 19,
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#tdih 1960, four African-American NC A&T students began a sit-in (planned at Bennett College) at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro.

While not first sit-in of modern CRM, it triggered wave of direct action U.S. & founding of SNCC. 🧵#TeachTruth
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/gree…
"The Greensboro sit-ins inspired mass movement across the South. By April 1960, 70 southern cities had sit-ins of their own. Direct-action sit-ins made public what Jim Crow wanted to hide – Black resistance to segregation." via youth-led @snccdigital⬇️
snccdigital.org/events/sit-ins…
Read about earlier sit-ins: 1943 with Pauli Murray & other @HowardU students; 1958 with high school teacher Clara Luper & NAACP Youth Council in Oklahoma; 1958 with students Ron Walters and members of the @NAACP Youth Council in Wichita, Kansas, & more.
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/katz…
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WWII vet Louis Allen was murdered #tdih 1964. Why?

Allen was willing to testify about murder he had witnessed of African American @NAACP member & SNCC supporter Herbert Lee by a white state legislator.

FBI refused protection. #TeachVotingRights🧵
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/wwii…
Allen knew his life was in danger in Amite County, Miss. He stayed because his mother was elderly & needed care.

When his mother died, Allen made plans to move to Milwaukee. (Great Migration continues.)

The night before Allen was to leave, he was murdered. #terrorism
Traditional Civil Rights Movement narratives ignore that fight for civil, voting, & human rights was frequently met with terrorist violence, as exemplified by story of Louis Allen and countless others. #TeachOutsideTextbook

See more in @snccdigital ➡️
snccdigital.org/events/louis-a… Gravestone, outdoors, with ...
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#tdih 1964, Amendment ratified to eradicate poll tax in federal elections. Read ⬇️

Two yrs later, Vernon Dahmer killed for offering to pay poll taxes in Miss. (See 🧵)

#tdih is also birthday of SNCC vet & voting rights organizer Bob Moses (1935 - 2021).
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/24th…
Jan. 1966: Vernon Dahmer said on radio he'd pay Miss. poll tax for anyone who couldn't afford to register to vote.

Next day, Klan firebombed his home, killing Dahmer. His sons, in U.S. military to "defend democracy" overseas, returned home for funeral.
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/vern…
In March 1966, SCOTUS banned poll taxes for state & local elections in 1963 lawsuit initiated by Joseph Jordan Jr., a Norfolk attorney on behalf of Evelyn T. Butts. (Virginia poll tax had been made law in 1902, to reverse Reconstruction era gains.) See ⬇️
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/harp…
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#tdih 1848 "Our nation seems resolved to rush on in her wicked career, though the road be ditched with human blood, and paved with human skulls. Well, be it so." -- Frederick Douglass on U.S. war with Mexico, in North Star editorial
1/4🧵
zinnedproject.org/materials/nort…
"The taste of human blood and the smell of powder seem to have extinguished the senses, seared the conscience, and subverted the reason of the people." -- Frederick Douglass on U.S. war with Mexico 2/4

Editorial read by Benjamin Bratt ⬇️for @vph
vimeo.com/1366819
"Let the press, the pulpit, the church, the people at large, unite at once; & let petitions flood the halls of Congress . . ., asking for the instant recall of our forces from Mexico. This may not save us, but it's our only hope." --Frederick Douglass 3/4
zinnedproject.org/materials/sold…
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#tdih 1870, Hiram R. Revels was elected to serve as senator from Mississippi, becoming first African American to serve in U.S. Senate.

Do you know how many African Americans have served in U.S. Senate to date? #TeachReconstruction
#TeachTruth Read ⬇️
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/hira…
In a white supremacist attempt to prevent Revels from assuming his elected position, his opponents said that despite having lived in U.S. all his life, he could not be seated because Senate required nine years of citizenship. The 14th Amendment had passed only two years earlier.
Attack on Revels, & rights of people of Miss. to representation: part of history of white supremacist voter suppression & attempts to delegitimize elected Black leaders: not seating Julian Bond, Trump's (media fueled) birther campaigns, & more. Lessons ⬇️
zinnedproject.org/materials/teac…
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#tdih 1966: Vernon Dahmer killed when home (family inside) was firebombed by KKK.

Day before he'd offered to pay poll tax for anyone who could not afford to register to vote. #Terrorism (Year AFTER '65 VRA, still poll tax in local Miss. elections.) 🧵
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/vern…
Four of Dahmer's sons served in U.S. military to "defend democracy," only to have their father murdered in fight for right to vote in US. They came home for funeral. Dahmer active in @NAACP & SNCC ally.

📷 in tweet ⬆️ by Chris McNair (Denise McNair's father) via @JMitchellNews.
"For Mr. Dahmer, voting was only way to move from second class to full citizenship. [As a teenager], I was spellbound as [he talked] about a subject that was so verboten that one could be killed for it." -- SNCC veteran Dr. Joyce Ladner

Read more ⬇️
civilrightsteaching.org/voting-rights/…
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Jan. 1 #tdih 🧵

#1 Haitian Independence #tdih 1804 "We owe much to Walker for his appeal; to John Brown. . . but we owe incomparably more to Haiti . . . I regard her as original pioneer emancipator of 19th cent. — Frederick Douglass ⬇️ Art @rlmartstudio
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/hait…
Check out the new book "Fear of a Black Republic: Haiti and the Birth of Black Internationalism in the U.S." by @lesliemalex

"The imperative role Haiti and the Haitian Revolution played in the growth of Black internationalism, sovereignty and freedom."
bookshop.org/a/7256/9780252…
#2 The Emancipation Proclamation took effect #tdih 1863.

Who did it “emancipate”? And who gets credited?

Read “Rethinkin’ Lincoln” by Bill Bigelow of @RethinkSchools⬇️ #TeachTruth #TeachOutsideTextbook
🧵continues
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/eman…
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#tdih 1951, Paul Robeson submitted a petition (edited by William Patterson) to the U.N. titled, “We Charge Genocide: The Crime of Government Against the Negro People,” signed by close to 100 U.S. intellectuals and activists. 🧵
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/we_c…
With the Cold War raging, the U.S. gov't maneuvered to prevent the U.N. Commission on Human Rights from formally debating or even considering the charges brought in the petition.

One of countless examples of white supremacist purpose of "Cold War" & McCarthyism. #TeachTruth
U.S. corporate media gave scant coverage to the petition or the crimes it documented. The few Gov't officials who commented on the petition described it as “Communist propaganda.” Elsewhere in world [& in U.S. Black press] it was well received & extensively covered in the press.
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#tdih 1874 Vicksburg Massacre: Whites attacked Black citizens who had organized to defend Peter Crosby.

Formerly enslaved & a vet of Union army, Crosby had been forced to resign from his elected role as sheriff. #TeachTruth #TeachReconstruction Read ⬇️
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/vick…
In our national report on teaching of Reconstruction, we note that history standards should (but generally do not) include Black agency (i.e., Crosby holding office) and how white supremacist violence & white media overturned multiracial democracy. More ⬇️
teachreconstructionreport.org
Too often U.S. history standards reference "failure" of Reconstruction.

This obscures successful advances made by political & grassroots leadership of African Americans & white allies; that were then undermined by violent white supremacist attacks. Read: teachreconstructionreport.org Graphic with one of 10 points everyone should learn about Re
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#tdih 1865. 13th Amendment ratified, officially ends (with big exception) institution of slavery.

The "ownership" & SALE of people had been CENTRAL to U.S. laws and the economy from colonial era to Civil War, in NORTH & South.

Find lessons & films.⬇️🧵
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/13th…
One of the struggles after 13th Amendment was ratified in 1865 (began before & continues today) was for reparations.

Have students read documents from the Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty, and Pension Association. & work of Callie House. #TeachTruth See⬇️
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/firs…
U.S. history textbooks don't help students understand the demand for reparations. So HS teacher & ZEP team member @ladyofsardines wrote lesson ⬇️for her students. #TeachOutsideTextbook

As with all lessons at ZEP site, it's free, thanks to your donations.
zinnedproject.org/materials/stud…
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#tdih 1955 🧵Montgomery Bus Boycott began.

Powerful organizing story in U.S. history, yet many people associate it with isolated act by Rosa Parks, without context of Parks’ life of activism; decades of public transportation protest; nor role of WPC. ⬇️
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/bus-…
The call to action came from a flier produced by Jo Ann Robinson of Women's Political Council (WPC) and a few associates.

They bravely mimeographed tens of thousands of leaflets to distribute across city. Read more at @NMAAHC nmaahc.si.edu/blog-post/jo-a… & watch "Eyes on the Prize." Typed flier calling for boy...
This wasn't 1st protest against discrimination on public transportation. In 1955, Claudette Colvin & other woman took a stand.

For more than a century, there were hundreds of acts of civil disobedience & other protests. This is not a single story. See ⬇️
civilrightsteaching.org/desegregation/…
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#tdih 1969. Assassination of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark -- shot to death by police in their Chicago apartment. #terrorism
Read more ⬇️ and find lessons (free via ZEP) to teach about the Black Panther Party, COINTELPRO, and police. #TeachTruth 🧵zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/blac…
See “The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther,” an interview with lawyer Jeffery Haas (co-founder of the People’s Law Office) on @democracynow ⬇️
democracynow.org/2009/12/4/the_…
Teach about this history with lesson below by Ursula Wolfe-Rocca, "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."
zinnedproject.org/materials/coin…
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I shouldn’t have to remind people but this is what genocide looks like. This is the U.S. History Republicans are trying to prevent you from knowing. #TeachTruth
Chief Spotted Tail’s band of Minneconjou, Lakota massacred by the U.S. at Wounded Knee Creek, December 29, 1890.
I was never taught any of this in school. I was taught that white men were benevolent pioneers and compassionate, benign explorers. Did you learn any factual, uncensored U.S. History as a kid?
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I am donating to ZEP in honor of all the educators in my family. Especially my great-grandfather London Williams who contributed funding and land for Morris College, a HBCU in Sumter, SC. — Nelva Williamson, Teacher, Houston

Now it's YOUR turn to donate: zinnedproject.org/donate/ Nelva Williamson, wearing glasses and a Juneteenth t-shirt,
Learn about Nelva Williamson's life as a teacher from this wonderful @StoryCorps interview.

Williamson attends all our online classes with people's historians and our curriculum workshops -- 42+ years of teaching and a lifelong learner. #TeachTruth
storycorps.org/stories/after-…
Most of our funding comes from individuals like you.

Please support and defend people’s history teachers.

Donations on this #GivingTuesday will be doubled thanks to Howard Zinn's student & whistleblower lawyer @dcolapinto up to $10,000.⬇️
zinnedproject.org/donate/
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#tdih 1955 Rosa Parks attended mass meeting about Emmett Till, 4 days before her refusal to move on bus.

Parks' (& others') protest was not just in reaction to bus inequities, but also to lynching & criminal "justice" system. ⬇️#TeachOutsideTextbook 🧵
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/rosa…
Read the eye-opening, gripping, beautifully written YA adaptation (with @brandycolbert) of @JeanneTheoharis's bio of Rosa Parks.

Introduces readers to her decades of activism -- long before & after MBB. Also documentary of same name, streams on Peacock.
zinnedproject.org/materials/rebe…
We offer an interactive lesson by @RethinkSchools editor/ZEP co-director Bill Bigelow, based on book by @JeanneTheoharis. Challenges the textbook & mainstream media narratives about Rosa Parks.

For grades 7+, free. ⬇️#TeachTruth
📷by LeRoy Henderson.
zinnedproject.org/materials/rebe…
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#tdih 1919 Bogalusa Labor Massacre. Self-Preservation & Loyalty League (SPLL) and Great Southern Lumber Company gunmen killed white allies of African American labor organizer Sol Dacus.

Their goal: undermine interracial union.

Read more ⬇️ #TeachTruth
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/boga…
As Sol Dacus & Lem Williams organized both Black & white workers, the lumber company made every effort to extinguish their efforts.

Read about Dacus, Williams, & 1919 Bogalusa Labor Massacre in Louisiana in 🧵⬇️ by @LadyOfSardines #TeachOutsideTextbook

There is a long history of white supremacist massacres in U.S. history designed to suppress voting rights, land ownership, economic advancement, education, freedom of the press, religion, LGBTQ+ rights, and/or labor rights.

See ⬇️
zinnedproject.org/collection/mas…
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#tdih 1953: Ind. textbook commissioner (Mrs. White) called to ban Robin Hood references in schools. Like GOP anti-history ed bills today.

Brave @IUBloomington religious student group (incl. in 📷⬇️) challenged #McCarthyism with Green Feather campaign. 🧵
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/call…
"There is a Communist directive in education now to stress the story of Robin Hood. They want to stress it because he robbed the rich & gave it to the poor. That’s Communist line. It’s a smearing of law & order & anything that disrupts law & order is their meat." -- Mrs. White
Five IU students in study group at Baptist church bravely protested. They got poultry feathers, dyed them green, & spread them around campus. Robin Hood is here!

Green Feather movement spread across country. Read about response of FBI and local media ⬇️
zinnedproject.org/materials/the-…
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#tdih Veterans Day. Read about African American veterans who fought overseas and, upon return to U.S., were murdered in fight for democracy & human rights.

Also, resources about vets organizing against war and Lincoln Brigades. ⬇️ 🧵#TeachOutsideTextbook
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/vete…
#VeteransDay WWII vet Maceo Snipes was killed on July 18, 1946 by KKK for bravely casting vote in Georgia Democratic Primary.

He may have survived Klan #terrorism, but Jim Crow hospital denied him treatment. ⬇️#TeachTruth
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/murd…
#VeteransDay In 1955, WWI vet and farmer Lamar Smith was shot dead in cold blood on crowded courthouse lawn in Miss. for urging African Americans to vote.

No one prosecuted. See @NAACP primer and film by @KeithBeauchamp w/ @jelani9⬇️ #TeachVotingRights
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/lama…
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#tdih Nov. 3 🧵starts with uplifting 1874 Reconstruction election of Robert Smalls to Congress (SC) ⬇️

Next: stories of violent 19th cent. voter suppression in Va. & Ala., Native American protest ('72), Greensboro Massacre ('79), Iran/Contra ('86), more.
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/robe…
#tdih 1874, White League attacked Black voters at the polls in Barbour County, Ala.

7 African-Americans were killed & 70 others wounded.

More than 1,000 African-Americans were driven away from polls. Rewrite the marker. #terrorism #TeachReconstruction
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/1874…
#tdih 1883 Danville, Virginia: White supremacists used terrorism to remove the elected, biracial Readjuster Party.

Armed white supremacists killed five people and patrolled streets to prevent most African Americans from voting. #terrorism #TeachTruth
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/danv…
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