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 1/6 zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/wwii…
Allen knew his life was in danger if he stayed in Amite County, Miss. but he had to care for his elderly mother.

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

The night before Allen was to leave, he was killed. #terrorism 2/6
Traditional Civil Rights Movement narratives ignore that fight for civil, voting, and human rights was often met with terrorist violence, as exemplified by story of Louis Allen and countless others. #TeachOutsideTextbook 3/6

See more in @snccdigital ⬇️
snccdigital.org/events/louis-a…
Herbert Lee was murdered in 1961 in broad daylight by a state legislator (coroner’s jury acquitted same day).

Lee had bravely supported Bob Moses on SNCC voter registration in majority-Black, Klan-ridden Amite Cty with only 1 Black registered voter. 4/6
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/herb…
Teach long (and ongoing) history of fight for voting rights.

Below is a 3-lesson unit for grades 7+ (all lessons at ZEP are free) by high school teacher/ZEP team member @LadyOfSardines. Includes testimony by Fannie Lou Hamer. #TeachOutsideTextbook 5/6 zinnedproject.org/materials/teac…
Teach about history (and current role) of FBI and the Black Freedom Movement (& other liberation movements -- Young Lords, American Indian Movement, & more) with free lesson ⬇️.
Students read & analyze primary documents about COINTELPRO. #TeachTruth 6/6 zinnedproject.org/materials/coin…

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More from @ZinnEdProject

Jan 23
#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…
Read 5 tweets
Jan 21
Politicians on the Right keep claiming that the proposed voting rights legislation is an illegitimate "federal takeover" of fed elections. @jbouie refutes those claims in his new column ⬇️, & so has the 15th Amendment since Reconstruction. . . #TeachTruth
nytimes.com/2022/01/21/opi…
See "Reconstruction Defined" in our new national report. Here we note that 15th Amendment federally banned racial discrimination in right to vote, and explicitly gave Congress power to enforce this principle.
Read ⬇️ and check out your state's assessment.
teachreconstructionreport.org/#what%20was%20…
15th Amendment soon yielded criminal penalties for interference with right to vote & federal oversight of congressional elections through Enforcement Acts of 1870 & 1871. Overtly violated ever since, including Jan. 6 attack on Capitol. #TeachVotingRights
zinnedproject.org/if-we-knew-our…
Read 7 tweets
Jan 21
#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…
Read 4 tweets
Jan 20
#tdih 1870, Hiram 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…
Read 5 tweets
Jan 19
#tdih 1966, Georgia State House refused to seat Julian Bond despite his election (with 82% of vote) as a state rep, because of his endorsement of SNCC statement against U.S. in Vietnam. They denied Bond & the voters their rights. #VoterSuppression
Read ⬇️
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/geor…
While fighting for his elected seat, Julian Bond wrote a comic book (graphic novel) about Vietnam War that made connection between struggles of the Vietnamese & of African Americans for self-determination & human rights.
Find link to read in full ⬇️.
zinnedproject.org/materials/viet…
"We maintain that our country’s cry of 'preserve freedom in the world' is a hypocritical mask, behind which it squashes liberation movements which are not bound. . . by the expediencies of US cold war policies." -- SNCC statement on Vietnam war.
Read: zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/samm… Julian Bond standing at mic with hands palm forward, other m
Read 6 tweets
Jan 18
#tdih 1968 When asked at White House luncheon why young people are angry, Eartha Kitt said, b/c "You send best of this country off to be shot & maimed."

In retaliation for her honesty, her career in U.S. was ruined for 10 years & CIA tracked her. See ⬇️
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/eart…
Eartha Kitt describes what happened in an interview with Renee Poussaint for Visionary Project. ⬇️

One of many stories in history of U.S. gov't. (and textbooks') erasure & silencing of critique. (See lesson in 🧵on COINTELPRO & current anti-"crt" laws).
In a 1968 video editorial on WGBH Boston, Howard Zinn nominated Eartha Kitt and Dr. Benjamin Spock for Woman and Man of the Year because they “both refused to play the game” by speaking out against the Vietnam War. #HowardZinn100 #TeachTruth

Watch ⬇️

howardzinn.org/collection/kit…
Read 5 tweets

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