Remembering Red Summer:
The 100th Anniversary of the Elaine Massacre
100 years ago today, on Sept. 30, 1919, Black farmers met in Elaine, Arkansas, to fight for better pay and higher cotton prices.

A white mob shot at them and the farmers returned fire in self-defense. News of the confrontation spread and a massacre ensued, leaving more than 100 (estimates range up to 800) African Americans dead, 67 indicted for inciting violence, and 12 Black sharecroppers (the Elaine 12) sentenced to death.

The Elaine Massacre occurred at the end of the Red Summer of 1919  ----  a series of brutal attacks on African Americans in more than three dozen cities including Chicago, Washington, D.C., Omaha, and Knoxville.

Read the article below to learn how textbooks downplay both the racism and Black resistance of Red Summer, while distorting facts in a dangerous "both sides" framing. We also offer related lessons on redlining and reparations.
Remembering Red Summer:
Which Textbooks Seem Eager to Forget
Teen Vogue featured a Zinn Education Project article by Ursula Wolfe-Rocca, on Red Summer.

Confronting a national epidemic of white mob violence, 1919 was a time when African Americans defended themselves, fought back, and demanded full citizenship in thousands of acts of courage and daring, small and large, individual and collective. (See our If We Knew Our History series for a longer version of this article.)

Newsela: We are excited to announce that Newsela adapted "Remembering Red Summer" for reading levels corresponding with grades 3, 5, 7, and 9.
Related Lessons
How Red Lines Built White Wealth:
A Lesson on Housing Segregation in the 20th Century 
By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca


 
How Red Lines Built White Wealth introduces students to the 20th-century housing policies that bankrolled white capital accumulation while halting Black social mobility --- and contributed to the absurd injustice of the modern wealth gap.

In the lesson, students encounter stories about the Home Owners' Loan Corporation, the Federal Housing Administration, the Veterans Administration, redlining, zoning, racially restrictive deeds and covenants, and move-in violence.

The mixer lesson by Ursula Wolfe-Rocca is based on Richard Rothstein's The Color of Law, which shows in exacting detail how government policies segregated every major city in the United States with dire consequences for African Americans.
How to Make Amends: A Lesson on Reparations
By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca, Alex Stegner, Chris Buehler,
Angela DiPasquale, and Tom McKenna




In this mixer role play, students learn about more than a dozen examples of reparations  ----  ranging from cash payments to land settlements to state apologies ---- from a variety of historical moments and places.

This lesson helps students think and talk about the subject of reparations generally, to prepare them to study the modern debate over reparations for African Americans specifically. A lesson on HB 40 and reparations for African Americans is being piloted and is coming soon.
News
American Educator  Special Feature
Read the full introduction by Adam Sanchez to Teaching a People's History of Abolition and the Civil War (Rethinking Schools) in the  fall edition of the  American Federation of Teachers'  American Educator.  

"By debunking the false history of lone great men and restoring the role of diverse coalitions of ordinary people working together to make extraordinary change, these lessons provide a factual basis for hope and inspiration amid oppressive circumstances." --- Chenjerai Kumanyika, co-host of Uncivil
Share Your Story  ----  Get a Free Book!

Receive the new Howard Zinn book, Truth Has a Power of Its Own, when you submit a story about using any of the lessons at the Zinn Education Project website. 

You are also invited to participate in our Reconstruction Campaign book giveaway and our Teach Climate Justice Campaign book giveaway.
The Zinn Education Project lessons are made possible by support from individuals like you. Please donate today so that more teachers receive free lessons, books, and workshops to support social justice teaching in their classrooms. Donate now!
 
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