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Mar 3 • 8 tweets • 5 min read
#tdih 1865 the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands was established in the War Department "to undertake the relief effort and the unprecedented social reconstruction that would bring freedpeople to full citizenship." ⬇️
#TeachOutsideTextbook zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/free…
Freedmen’s Bureau issued food & clothing, operated hospitals, helped locate family members, promoted education, legalized marriages, supervised labor contracts, settled freed people on abandoned or confiscated lands, & more. See records at @USNatArchives: archives.gov/research/afric… black text on white backgro...
Imagine if everyone whose knowledge, skills, & labor had been stolen for generations, for centuries — had been compensated as Richard Brown was promised in doc ⬇️ to “take possession of & occupy forty acres of land, situated in St. Andrews Parish, Island of James.” #reparations Land Order, April 1, 1865 ....
Of the land that was distributed to people freed from slavery, most was returned to the ex-Confederates, despite improvements made to land by the freed people and their moral right to claim it.

The Freedmen’s Bureau was disbanded way too soon, in 1872. #TeachReconstruction
Each Freedmen's Bureau task needed more time following centuries of enslavement. For ex., challenge of finding family members with no records of where they'd been stolen away too, name changes, & more.

Read heartbreaking "last seen" @InfoWantedOrg ads ⬇️
zinnedproject.org/materials/last…
We recommend "Reconstructing Family" episode (and ALL the episodes!) of "Seizing Freedom" podcast by @KidadaEWilliams, with stories of families seeking reunification.

All stories are drawn from archives -- letters, diaries, newspaper ads.

Listen here: seizingfreedom.vpm.org/reconstructing… VPM Seizing Freedom episode...
The Reconstruction era is one of the most important yet least taught periods of U.S. history.

Below are free lessons, recommended books & films, readings, podcasts, a student mapping project, open letter, our national report, & more. #TeachReconstruction teachreconstructionreport.org/resources
Also teach about reparations -- a demand that dates back to before the Civil War ended with field order (15) to confiscate land from Confederates to be divided among newly freed people who had worked land for generations.

Free lesson for grades 7+ below. zinnedproject.org/materials/stud…

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More from @ZinnEdProject

Zinn Ed Project Profile picture
Feb 23
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, and 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 on "Black Reconstruction in America" (1935), just reissued. Video ⬇️of talk about book by Eric Foner, @KeeangaYamahtta, & @HenryLouisGates
zinnedproject.org/materials/blac…
Read 10 tweets
Zinn Ed Project Profile picture
Feb 21
#PresidentsDay: "Nowhere in all this information is there any mention of fact that more than one in four U.S. presidents were involved in human trafficking & slavery." -- by @HowardU Prof. Clarence Lusane, "Black History of the White House" #TeachTruth ⬇️
zinnedproject.org/if-we-knew-our…
“When you sing that this country was founded on freedom, don’t forget the duet of shackles dragging against the ground my entire life.” - - @ClintSmithIII on @pbsnewshour reads a "letter to past presidents." #PresidentsDay
Clint Smith, in video above, is author of "How the Word Is Passed" -- an examination of how monuments & landmarks (incl. for U.S. presidents) represent — and misrepresent — central role of slavery in U.S. history & its legacy today.
Book info, lessons ⬇️
zinnedproject.org/materials/how-…
Read 5 tweets
Zinn Ed Project Profile picture
Feb 12
"I only have 30 min. so I thought I would begin with the Stone Age. Mankind has gone through the age of stone and the age of bronze, & today we live in the age of irony. . . And it goes something like this. We the American people do not want to live in a Communist state." 1/5
"The reason for this is not so much that we object to a planned economy, although many of us do. Not so much that we object to socialized medicine . . . We don’t want to live in a Communist state b/c we don’t want any gov't agency inspecting what we say, what we think.. . " 2/5
".. . the associations we have, the paintings we paint, the writings we write, the books we read, the meetings we go to, the organizations we join. . . And so in order to avoid all this we set up HUAC. And this committee in order to prevent us from experiencing this. . ." 3/5
Read 5 tweets
Zinn Ed Project Profile picture
Feb 11
#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, & Ronald 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 Rosa Parks (wearing hat and glasses) with Freedom Yes, ApartBook cover, No Easy Victories
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 below at @snccdigital.
snccdigital.org/events/sncc-pr…
Read 4 tweets
Zinn Ed Project Profile picture
Feb 9
#tdih 1950 Wisc. Senator Joseph McCarthy delivered a speech in WV; he claimed to hold list of known communists (“enemies from within”) in U.S. State Dep't.

Ask students: What was impact of McCarthyism on labor, civil rights, & anti-colonial movements? zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/mcca…
"The textbook periodization of anti-communist repression, which posits the Red Scare in years following WWI, & the 2nd Red Scare in late 1940s & early 1950s, erases the continuity & pervasiveness of anti-communist politics & policies. . ." -- ⬇️
zinnedproject.org/if-we-knew-our…
"Whenever organizers challenged the status quo — racism, sexism, capitalism, militarism, & colonialism — its defenders screamed 'communism.' [Yet] . . .it has always been about a lot more than Russian spies, a blustering senator from Wisconsin, and a blacklist in Hollywood."
Read 6 tweets
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Feb 9
Ida B. Wells was "countering the propaganda that was justifying a campaign of terrorism . . . political terrorism, not simply what you might think of as mob violence." -- @AdamSerwer in Seizing Freedom interview with @KidadaEWilliams about Black press ⬇️
zinnedproject.org/materials/seiz…
Black press should be in EVERY U.S. history course. Here are resources, starting with student-friendly (well, he was a journalist!) autobiography of Simeon Booker. Dramatic stories of risks he took to cover Black organizing & repression in South in 1950s.
zinnedproject.org/materials/shoc…
Digital collection about Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez, founder of first Black daily newspaper in U.S., the New Orleans Tribune. Launched during Reconstruction. Website by great-great-grandson, an elementary school teacher. zinnedproject.org/materials/roud…
Read 6 tweets

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