Zinn Education Project: Teaching a People’s History offers free resources for teaching outside the textbook. Coordinated by @RethinkSchools & @TeachingChange
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Dec 4, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
#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_…
Sep 29, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
You know of '63 March on Washingon.
Now read about #tdih 1951 protest by Black women in Sojourners for Truth & Justice. Their manifesto “A Call to Negro Women” listed grievances at racial terrorism, S. African apartheid, US militarism, colonialism.⬇️ 🧵 zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/sojo…
"We can not, must not, and will no longer in sight of God or man sit by & watch our lives destroyed by an unreasonable & unreasoning hate that metes out to us every kind of death it is possible for a human being to die." -- Lorraine Hansberry, reading manifesto to crowd
Sep 15, 2023 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
💔#tdih 1963 Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, & Addie Mae Collins – all 14 yrs old, & 11-yr-old Denise McNair were murdered in terrorist bombing.
A 5th child, Sarah Collins Rudolph, was severely injured.
Learn more & find teaching resources on link ⬇️ zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/16th…
Two boys were murdered that same day in Birmingham: 16-yr-old Johnny Robinson & 13-yr-old Virgil Ware. 💔
"Let us also not labor under the illusion that this church bombing was an anomaly. During eight years prior. . ., there had been 21 bombings in Birmingham. " -- Angela Davis
Sep 11, 2023 • 12 tweets • 5 min read
#tdih Sept. 11, we share a 🧵 of tragic anniversaries incl. at Attica Prison, 50th anniv. of U.S. backed coup in Chile, Myrna Mack murder in Guatemala, attacks on WTC & Pentagon, more. And "Whose 'Terrorism'?" lesson.
In their memory, let us teach & work for peace & justice.
#tdih 1851 Horrific Fugitive Slave Act met with resistance by armed African Americans in Christiana, Penn. who successfully defended four Black people from capture, serving as a catalyst for further armed self-defense within abolitionist movement. ⬇️ zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/chri…
Sep 9, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
#tdih Stono Rebellion (1739), Association for the Study of African American Life and History @ASALH founding (1915), Attica Prison Uprising (1971).
Read about each event in 🧵 ⬇️& consider the connection between all three.
Defend right to #TeachTruth #TeachOutsideTextbook
#tdih 1739 in British colony of SC, a man named Jemmy along with 20 more Africans organized a rebellion (one of many) against institution of slavery on banks of Stono River.
"I shall neither fawn nor cringe before any party, nor stoop to beg them for my rights. You may expel us, gentlemen, but I firmly believe that you will some day repent it." -Henry M. Turner #tdih 1868 when Georgia denied elected Black reps their seats 🧵⬇️ zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/henr…
"The Black man cannot protect a country, if the country doesn’t protect him; and if, tomorrow, a war should arise, I would not raise a musket to defend a country where my manhood is denied." -- Henry McNeal Turner
Born #tdih Howard Zinn (1922-2010) was a historian, professor, playwright, activist.
Author of APHUS, he wrote many books incl. "Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal" & "SNCC: The New Abolitionists."
Also trial testimonies on civil disobedience history. zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/howa…
Howard Zinn joined a long and ongoing tradition of people’s historians from before and after the publication of "A People’s History of the United States."
"'Black people have the right to defend themselves' shouldn't be a controversial statement, but in America, a nation inundated with racism, Black people engaging in self-defense are often seen as violent." -- Allison Wiltz
Read ⬇️ & follow @queenie4rmnola allyfromnola.medium.com/why-are-you-so…
Teach the LONG (constant) history of Black self-defense that the right seeks to suppress.
Stories like ones @SNCCLegacy vet Charles Cobb Jr. shares ⬇️ from his book "This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed." (Challenges right's false use of King & Parks.) zinnedproject.org/if-we-knew-our…
Jul 13, 2023 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
#tdih 1863 New York City Draft Riots. White rioters murdered hundreds of African Americans & burned an orphanage.
One of countless massacres in U.S. history, driven by white supremacy.
Read ⬇️& find lesson for grades 7+. #TeachOutsideTextbook zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/draf…
Read a detailed description of 1863 Draft Riots in the excerpt here: from "In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863" by Leslie M. Harris (@ProfLMH) via @UChicagoPress #TeachTruth
https://t.co/62XIg65l4rpress.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/3… bookshop.org/a/7256/9780226…
Mar 15, 2023 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
#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
#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
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.
"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
#tdih 2012 Murder of Trayvon Martin, Sanford, Fla. 🧵 zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/tray…
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…
Feb 23, 2023 • 10 tweets • 8 min read
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
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-…
Feb 12, 2023 • 5 tweets • 4 min read
#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.
#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
Feb 9, 2023 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
#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,
You've heard of Kent State (1970) & maybe Jackson State (1970). Did you know #tdih 1968, 28 students were injured and three killed (one a HS student) — most shot in the back by state police while involved in a peaceful protest in Orangeburg, SC? 🧵Read ⬇️ zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/oran…
The three young men murdered were Henry Smith and Samuel Hammond Jr., both SCSU students, and Delano Middleton, a local student at Wilkinson HS on his way home.
"This crusade is much more important than the anti-lynching movement, because there would be no lynching if it did not start in the schoolroom." — Carter G. Woodson
#tdih 1926, Woodson initiated Negro History Week which led to Black History Month. 🧵⬇️ zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/cart…
Carter Woodson pressed for schools to use Negro History Week to demonstrate what students learned ALL year.
Woodson co-founded the "Association for the Study of African American Life and History" @ASALH which continues with an annual theme.