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We are in dangerous times. The right is suppressing elections, health care, education, urgent climate policies, affirmative action, and human rights.

Sounds like the overwhelming challenges the young organizers of SNCC faced in the 1960s. They went behind the “cotton curtain,” where other civil rights organizations said it was too dangerous to organize. Using popular education and grassroots organizing they and the local leaders they worked with took on the Klan, whose tentacles were everywhere — as well as entrenched politicians, powerful newspapers, law enforcement, and businesses — and they effected lasting change.

We’ll hear from three SNCC veterans about key tenets of their work that we can draw on today. They will also introduce resources to bring that history to the classroom, including the SNCC Legacy Project’s new digital platform.

In the face of Florida’s reactionary new standards, we look at stories in Florida history that would be off limits to students.

DeSantis and Florida education officials know that when students learn from history, they demand and organize for a more just future.

We support the Florida teachers who bravely teach outside the textbook.

W. E. B. Du Bois to Coretta Scott King

The Movement to Ban the Bomb

Did you know that W. E. B. Du Bois, Coretta Scott King, Bayard Rustin, Zora Neale Hurston, Marian Anderson, Langston Hughes, Lorraine Hansberry, and Malcolm X spoke out to oppose nuclear weapons?

Historian Vincent Intondi notes, “African American leaders have long been concerned with broad issues of peace and justice — and have especially opposed nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, this activism is left out of mainstream corporate-produced history textbooks.”

Related lesson: Subversives: Stories from the Red Scare by Ursula Wolfe-Rocca, includes Lorraine Hansberry and W. E. B. Du Bois’s activism against the bomb.

Barefoot Gen

Animated Film

Educators have organized Teaching for Black Lives study groups in dozens of states — including places where teaching the truth about systemic racism has been outlawed. These groups give educators a place to learn, reflect, and struggle for educational justice. 

You, too, can be part of this educational uprising. Gather fellow educators to resist anti-Blackness. Apply today to start a study group, and join the movement to teach for Black lives! Members of each study group receive copies of Teaching for Black Lives, a Rethinking Schools subscription, and access to classes and workshops throughout the year.

With record heatwaves, toxic air due to wildfire smoke, and torrential rains, the mainstream media remain silent about climate change and fossil fuels.

In the face of media silence, educators must fill the gap. See our Teach Climate Justice campaign resources.

Conferences and Classes

For Social Justice Educators

Check out the list of upcoming events hosted by the Zinn Education Project and our colleagues — for example, the classes in our Teach the Black Freedom Struggle online series, the African American Policy Forum CRT Summer School, Rethinking Schools Resisting Debt, Funding Justice summer issue magazine launch, Teaching for Change’s second annual Social Justice Curriculum Fair in D.C., and the Freedom to Teach history conference in Florida.

We need your support to help more students learn people’s history. Most of the Zinn Education Project’s funding comes from individuals like you.

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