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Spurred by that directive, we have just posted Five Ways Textbooks Lie About Reconstruction by Mimi Eisen as an addition to our national report, Erasing the Black Freedom Struggle.

Eisen examined some of the most commonly used U.S. history textbooks and identified five themes. Listed below, Eisen describes these in more detail with textbook examples in the article.



1. Textbooks center Confederate states and ex-Confederates.
2. Textbooks treat white people as subjects and Black people as objects.
3. Textbooks marginalize Black experiences and achievements rather than centering them as the main narrative.
4. Textbooks downplay the pervasiveness of white terror and fraud, distorting the role of the Ku Klux Klan in a much larger network of racial violence.
5. Textbooks ask if Reconstruction was a success or failure, obscuring the white supremacist counterrevolution that cut short its historic gains.

How many of these themes are in your U.S. history textbooks?

On Monday, April 24, Linda Villarosa will be in conversation with Jesse Hagopian to discuss her book, Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation.

Villarosa pays particular attention to environmental racism, challenging programs that attribute illnesses in Black communities to individual patients’ habits while ignoring the refinery next door.

For an introduction to her work, read Pollution Is Killing Black Americans. This Community Fought Back.

This 90-minute event will start at 4 pm PT / 7 pm ET on Monday, April 24.

ASL interpretation provided.

Professional development credit certificate provided upon request.

Teach Truth Day of Action

June 10, 2023

One of the best ways to counter the attacks by the right is to make our voices heard. The media has provided oversized coverage of anti-CRT narratives.

Let’s give them a different story to tell. Sign up for the Teach Truth Day of Action on June 10, 2023. It is easy — pick a site (historic, a library, or any public space), invite people to join you, and speak out. You can read pledges, do a book swap, take photos with a Teach Banned Books frame, etc. Any size of group from 1 to 100+ can make a difference. (Also, check out the Freedom to Learn Day of Action on May 3.)

The Zinn Education Project hosts the Prentiss Charney Fellowship to support a cohort of people’s history educator leaders to study, learn, and organize. Today we celebrate fellow Ayva Thomas in Bothell, Washington.

In the Northshore School District, Ayva developed and facilitates the Student Justice Collective, leads the planning of Northshore’s annual Student Justice Conference, and strives to cultivate youth leadership and amplify youth voice in all of her work with her team.

Ayva also oversees the Racial and Educational Justice Teams at each of Northshore’s school sites and the District’s Racial and Educational Justice Committee.

She has been a key leader in the development and implementation of Northshore’s P–12 Ethnic Studies Framework and high school Ethnic Studies course, joining a committed group of students, families, community members, staff, and administrators.

Her interview with Christopher Emdin, “Designing for Justice in and Beyond the STEM Classroom,” appears in the forthcoming spring issue of Rethinking Schools magazine.

We are lucky to teach, learn, and organize alongside Ayva and all the Prentiss Charney Fellows. Consider a donation to continue and expand the fellowship in honor of lifelong education activists C. J. Prentiss and Michael Charney.

The Zinn Education Project and Beacon Press will send The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, young readers edition to teachers and teacher educators anywhere in the United States.

The Zinn Education Project will send The New Jim Crow and more New Press titles to teachers and teacher educators in Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.

Rethinking Schools will send Teaching for Black Lives to teachers and teacher educators in Florida.

The Zinn Education Project will send five copies or more of How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America for teaching stories about using any of the lessons for the book at the ZEP site.

Teachers are under attack for teaching truthfully about U.S. history. Please donate so that we can continue to offer free people’s history lessons and resources, and defend teachers’ right to use them.

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PO BOX 73038, WASHINGTON, D.C. 20056 

202-588-7205 | zinnedproject.org