- Page 5 of 8 - Zinn Education Project

Battle of Algiers

Film. Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo. 1966. 123 minutes.
This film documents the armed insurgency against the French colonial powers in Algiers, showing the brutality and desperation of war.

How History Got the Rosa Parks Story Wrong

Article. By Jeanne Theoharis. The Washington Post. 2015.
The radical life history of Rosa Parks, before and after the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

April 7, 1954: Norfolk’s African American Baseball Fans Win Desegregation Victories

A successful boycott of the Norfolk Tars by Black sports fans leads the team to desegregate both the players and stadium seating.

Journey for Justice: The Life of Larry Itliong

Picture book. By Dawn Bohulano Mabalon and Gayle Romasanta. Illustrated by Andre Sibayan. 2018.
The first nonfiction illustrated Filipino-American history book for children tells the story of labor activist Larry Itliong, who organized farmworkers on the West Coast in the mid-20th century.

Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision

Book — Non-fiction. By Barbara Ransby. 2005. 495 pages.
This biography chronicles Baker's long and rich political career as an organizer, an intellectual, and a teacher, from her early experiences in depression-era Harlem to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Eslanda: The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson

Book — Non-fiction. By Barbara Ransby. 2013. 373 pages.
This biography of cosmopolitan anthropologist Eslanda Cardozo Goode Robeson explores her influence on her husband's early career, their open marriage, and her life as a prolific journalist, a tireless advocate of women's rights, and an outspoken anti-colonial and antiracist activist.

May 26, 1956: Tallahassee Bus Boycott Sparked by Students’ Protest

Wilhelmina Jakes and Carrie Patterson sparked a city-wide boycott in Tallahassee, Florida when they were arrested for refusing to move from the whites-only seats of a segregated bus.

Edna Griffin served in the Women’s Army Corps at Fort Des Moines during WWII.

July 7, 1948: Katz Drug Store Denies Service to Edna Griffin

When WWII veteran Edna Griffin was denied service at a Des Moines drug store, she took the company to court and the lawsuit became a test case.

Teaching the “American War” 75 Years After Vietnamese Independence

Here are resources to help students probe the roots of U.S. involvement in Vietnam and the impact of the Vietnam War — which the Vietnamese rightly call “The American War” — and resistance to the war.

Citizenship Schools: They Say I’m Your Teacher

Film. Directed by Lucy Massie Phenix and Catherine Murphy. 2019. 9 minutes.
Documentary about Citizenship Schools.

June 12, 1956: Paul Robeson Testifies Before HUAC

Paul Robeson testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, where he was questioned about his political speech, associations, and party affiliation.

Ballad of an American: A Graphic Biography of Paul Robeson

Book — Non-fiction. Written and illustrated by Sharon Rudahl. Edited by Paul Buhle and Lawrence Ware. 2020. 142 pages.
The first-ever graphic biography of Paul Robeson charts Robeson’s career as a singer, actor, scholar, athlete, and activist who achieved global fame.

Separate No More: The Long Road to Brown v. Board of Education

Book — Non-fiction. By Lawrence Goldstone. 2021.
A portrait of the road to the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case.

Feb. 2 and 5, 1951: Virginia Executes the Martinsville Seven

In 1951, the Commonwealth of Virginia executed seven Black men despite a national campaign in their defense.

March 15, 1960: Police Attack SC Students in Peaceful Protest

South Carolina college students in a peaceful protest against segregation are attacked by police with firehoses and placed in a stockade. Their NAACP lawyer is sent to jail by the judge for “pursuing his case vigorously.”

March 30, 1952: Charlotta Bass Accepts U.S. VP Nomination

California newspaper owner and anti-Klan activist Charlotta Spears Bass became the first African American nominated to be a U.S. political party's vice-presidential candidate.

Why We Should Learn About the FBI’s War on the Civil Rights Movement (If We Knew Our History) | Zinn Education Project: Teaching People's History

Why We Should Teach About the FBI’s War on the Civil Rights Movement

By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca

On March 8, 1971 — while Muhammad Ali was fighting Joe Frazier at Madison Square Garden, and as millions sat glued to their TVs watching the bout unfold — a group of peace activists broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, and stole every document they could find.

Delivered to the press, these documents revealed an FBI conspiracy — known as COINTELPRO — to disrupt and destroy a wide range of protest groups, including the Black freedom movement. The break-in, and the government treachery it revealed, is a chapter of our not-so-distant past that all high school students — and all the rest of us — should learn, yet one that history textbooks continue to ignore.

July 26, 1950: No Gun Ri Massacre

During the No Gun Ri Massacre, the U.S. Army ordered that all Korean civilians traveling and moving around the country must be stopped.

The Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated the United States

By Richard Rothstein

Racial segregation characterizes every metropolitan area in the United States and bears responsibility for our most serious social and economic problems — it corrupts our criminal justice system, exacerbates economic inequality, and produces large academic gaps between white and African American schoolchildren. We’ve taken no serious steps to desegregate neighborhoods, however, because we are hobbled by a national myth that residential segregation is de facto — the result of private discrimination or personal choices that do not violate constitutional rights.

Disguising Imperialism: How Textbooks Get the Cold War Wrong and Dupe Students

By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca

The perpetual interventionism and global hegemony exercised by the U.S. government today urgently need to be questioned and dismantled. Such a monumental task requires a citizenry armed with clear-eyed understandings of its past. That cannot be accomplished when the Cold War is sanitized and downsized, confined to one chapter of a textbook . . .