#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
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
Rosa Parks invited Claudette Colvin to serve as @NAACP Youth Council secretary.
Colvin bravely signed on as key plaintiff in "Browder v. Gayle."
Claudette Colvin & Rosa Parks joined a LONG line of people who challenged segregation and other abuse on public transportation throughout U.S. history. See this list of dozens of stories from 1841 to 1992. And there are many more. #TeachOutsideTextbook civilrightsteaching.org/desegregation/…
Protests of injustice on public transport includes many streetcar boycotts.
Exposes same language used by right today who defended segregated streetcars to "protect whites from discomfort." ⬇️ podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wal…
Read "Traveling Black" by @mia__bay From stagecoaches & trains to buses, cars, and planes, this book explores racial restrictions on transportation & examples of resistance (court cases, boycotts, & more) to injustice on almost every one of its 400 pages! zinnedproject.org/materials/trav…
"Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice" by Phillip Hoose is based on extensive interviews with Claudette Colvin and others.
Creative effort to expose & resist #RedScare attempt by Indiana Textbook Commission to ban Robin Hood from all school books for "promoting communism because he stole from the rich to give to the poor." 🧵 ⬇️ zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/gree…
In face of Red Scare today, we can learn from five brave IU students.
They dyed chicken feathers green (not easy) & spread them around IU campus to protest censorship & McCarthyism.
Bernard Bray, who teaches at @TalladegaColleg, said he was inspired to take action based on Baptist Fellowship youth group discussions of burning social issues; influences of seminarian who was jailed for refusal to participate in WWII; & religious convictions of his parents.
"Until the killing of Black men, Black mothers' sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a white mother's son, we who believe in freedom cannot rest . . ." -- Ella Baker
Trayvon Martin was murdered in Sanford on land that had been home of Mayaca people, later the Seminoles.
Town incorporated during Reconstruction. Named for Henry Sanford who secured US recognition of King Leopold II’s colonial claim to the Congo. ⬇️ zinnedproject.org/news/peoples-h…
#tdih 1965 Jimmie Lee Jackson, civil rights activist & Baptist church deacon, was shot by state troopers in Marion, Ala. during peaceful voting rights march.
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
"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.
First U.S. statewide teachers strike. (Later banned in Fla.)
Focus on salary, school budget, & overall failure of Florida legislators to fund public ed. Read ⬇️🧵 zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/flor…
Corporate media lambasted teachers.
STUDENTS offered most support for strike with WALKOUTS for better schools. Strike was continuation of CRM activism & strengthened by '66 integration of Fla. teachers unions.
#tdih 1942, Huey Newton was born in Monroe, LA. His family (sharecroppers) fled to Oakland as part of Great Migration after his father was almost lynched. (h/t @Isabelwilkerson) Newton co-founded Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in 1966. Read more ⬇️ zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/huey…
"Thank you for posting the picture of Huey Newton and the children. I am the girl in the picture. I was 11-years-old and volunteering as a typist for the Black Panther Party . . . Today I work on computers, so I am still typing!" -- Annissa Nadirah Karim zinnedproject.org/news/memories-…
#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.
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…