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By March 13, the last day of in-person classes in Washington, D.C., I had moved all desks in my classroom six feet apart and encouraged students to remain calm, use hand sanitizer, have empathy for other teachers and students, but to take precautions.

It was clear to my students, who live in every region of the city and are overwhelmingly students of color, other teachers, and the entire staff at Hardy Middle School that the coronavirus, coupled with a lack of response or preparation, would change our lives for the unforeseeable future. . .

I originally planned to complete a culminating group discussion on the Indian Removal Act, using the Cherokee/Seminole Removal Role Play at the Zinn Education Project. But I also knew my students were being inundated with more articles, graphs, and research on the pandemic. Xenophobia was also on the rise as people across the country used racist language to describe the coronavirus. I wanted to do whatever my students wanted to do.

So I asked them.

I had students take a survey during the first week of April on whether we should talk in more detail about the Indian Removal Act or hold a tribunal on the coronavirus. Fifty-four out of the 60 students in class that day said let's have a tribunal on who's to blame for the crisis in the United States.

I chose to write a tribunal, rather than a mixer lesson or research-based activity, as the students had already mentioned that the tribunal on Columbus found in the Rethinking Schools book Rethinking Columbus was one of their favorite lessons of the school year. In addition, by March, I knew that my students' generation was being blamed for something they were not responsible for - their own death and oppression. So I wanted to write a lesson to help them formulate their own language to fight back.

Students commented that information about the coronavirus was everywhere, and they felt overwhelmed. But were they overwhelmed with the same information? Was the information accurate? Was the information racist? I wanted to consider the fact that my students come from 13 different elementary schools and live in every ward in the District of Columbia. I could not just tell the story with different news items. I wanted to create a lesson to empower them to tell their story to me and to others. What did they know? What had they read? And how was it affecting their understanding of this crisis? What was wrong in society and how should we change it?

And that was the most important part of this lesson: students writing a 10-point program - inspired by the Black Panthers' 10-point program, adopted in 1966 - on how to prevent crises like this in the future.

I asked students how it compared to other trial lessons (Columbus, Reconstruction, etc). This one does require more media literacy and research than the others, but in the words of one student: "It was easier because I have been thinking about who is to blame for months."

- Tracey Barrett (@traceyebarrett) March 25, 2021

TEACHERS: We'd love your feedback after using this lesson. Submit your reflections, student comments, modifications, questions, and more. In appreciation for your story, we will send you a free copy of the Rethinking Schools book, Teaching for Black Lives.

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Who's to Blame? A People's Tribunal on the Coronavirus Pandemic - Zinn Education Project

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Teaching Activity. By Caneisha Mills. This people's tribunal begins with the premise that a heinous crime is being committed as tens of millions of people's lives are in danger due to COVID-19. But who was responsible for this crime? Students weigh the evidence.

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No Option Except Escape: A Role Play on the Struggles of Climate Refugees - Zinn Education Project

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Teaching Activity. By WorldOregon's Young Leaders in Action. In this role-play, students explore the challenges and perspectives of people - climate refugees - who have "no option except escape" from homes devastated by climate change.

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Reconstructing the South: What Really Happened

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A follow-up lesson to “Reconstructing the South,” using primary source documents to reveal key outcomes of the Reconstruction era.

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I used " Reconstructing the South " as a two-day lesson, following our study of slavery, the 1850s, and the Civil War.

I was tremendously impressed by the quality of thought the students gave to the assignment and the discussions they had. (As an aside, I also really liked the concept of letting them determine what shape to give the discussion. I was really impressed that they ran a completely self-sustaining discussion for 45 minutes in every period, while I just typed notes madly.)

In addition to showing some significant empathy for the plight of the freedmen, students also brought up a wide range of issues that, to them, fit into the topic: The need for a minimum wage, possible impacts on child laborers, the politics behind women's suffrage, second amendment rights, whether soldiers should remain on duty or be able to return to families, and much, much more. This really provided a terrific basis for the Reconstruction discussions that will follow.

Here are some of my favorite responses:

Chloe (on who could own land): "Freed slaves should get three-fifths of the available land in the South because, for one, that's ironic and also because there are more slaves than plantation owners."

Brianna (on a promise to grow cotton on the land): 'I would not be willing to have to grow cotton on my land because it's like we're being controlled by our "equals.'"

Arielle (on that promise): "At first I kind of agreed they should stay on the plantations. Now I'm second-guessing myself. It seems like slavery without slavery. The former slaves should be able to grow what they want and not be tied down by other people's ideas."

Momin (on punishing confederate leaders): [We should punish them] "because they were the ones who seceded and started the war. Lincoln said that if we have to shed the same blood that slave masters caused in slaves, then so be it. I don't think we have done that yet."

Dax (on voting rights): "Everyone should be able to vote because the reason for voting is to determine what the people in the United States want, and those decisions will affect everyone in the United States."

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﻿Reconstructing the South: A Role Play - Zinn Education Project

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I used " Reconstructing the South " as a two-day lesson, following our study of slavery, the 1850s, and the Civil War. I was tremendously impressed by the quality of thought the students gave to the assignment and the discussions they had.

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My 1st- and 2nd-grade students wrote a play about Portland, Oregon. It wasn't about bridges or roses, although both are associated with our city. It was a play about segregation and how people stand up to fight for justice. It began with two things: a question and a belief that little kids can do big work.

One afternoon, as my then 6-year-old son and I headed home from school, he sat in the backseat looking out the window.

"Mom, can I ask you a question?"

"Sure."

"Why is this part of Portland the only place I see lots of Black people?"

Over the rest of that evening and into the next week, I kept coming back to his question. At that point, my class was at the tail end of a months-long study of the Civil Rights Movement. We had read dozens of picture books, watched several videos, and generated lots of wall charts and posters. But all of our research had been about the South in the 1950s and '60s. I began to fear that, mixed with the intended messages of this unit, was an unintended message: The fight for racial justice happened long ago and far away, and now it is over. Did my students think racism died when the last "whites only" sign came down? I wondered if talking about the history of the neighborhood was a way I could bring civil rights home for my students.

Roles included with this lesson are:

African American Homeowner

White Homeowner

White Real Estate Agent

White Banker

White Mayor

African American Renter

This lesson was published in the Fall 2012 issue of Rethinking Schools magazine. For more lessons and articles like this one, visit www.rethinkingschools.org.

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"Why Is This the Only Place in Portland I See Black People?": Teaching Young Children About Redlining - Zinn Education Project

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My 1st- and 2nd-grade students wrote a play about Portland, Oregon. It wasn't about bridges or roses, although both are associated with our city. It was a play about segregation and how people stand up to fight for justice. It began with two things: a question and a belief that little kids can do big work.

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Most historians, and many textbooks, divide the New Deal into two phases: the first New Deal, the flurry of legislation during Franklin D. Roosevelt's first 100 days, and the second New Deal, the more sweeping and long-lasting legislation passed in 1935. They describe this as an era when the government experimented with new and different programs aimed at the same goal: economic recovery. In Roosevelt's words: "It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something."

Unfortunately, mainstream histories ignore the social forces pressing for more radical New Deal legislation and fail to explain how the dynamics of power shifted in response to a growing struggle from below.

To help students grapple with the legislation of the early New Deal, I developed the Economic Recovery Conference Role Play. The goal of this role play is to help students understand who among the public supported this early legislation and why.

After exploring the causes of the Great Depression (see What Caused the Great Depression?), my 10th-grade U.S. History class at Madison High School in Portland, Oregon, read about the emergence throughout the country of Unemployed Councils. We also read about the Bonus Army's 1932 occupation of Washington, D.C.

Together, these stories make a compelling case that the decisive blow ending the Hoover presidency was not Roosevelt's charismatic speeches on the campaign trail, but the militant actions of ordinary people whose lives were devastated by the crisis. Like capitalists today, the business community supported government spending when it helped increase their business' profits, but not as a policy to curb unemployment. I wanted students to imagine the early New Deal within the context of other economic solutions on offer at the time.

This article was first published in Rethinking Schools magazine Volume 30, No. 2 in Winter 2015/2016. Rethinking Schools offers a series of books providing practical examples of how to integrate social justice education into social studies, history, language arts, and mathematics. They are used widely by new as well as veteran teachers and in teacher education programs. Visit www.rethinkingschools.org to learn more and subscribe.

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Who Made the New Deal? The Economic Recovery Conference Role Play - Zinn Education Project

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Most historians, and many textbooks, divide the New Deal into two phases: the first New Deal, the flurry of legislation during Franklin D. Roosevelt's first 100 days, and the second New Deal, the more sweeping and long-lasting legislation passed in 1935.

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For all its weaknesses and divisions, the abolition movement was perhaps the most significant social movement in U.S. history: an anti-racist movement, a labor movement, a feminist movement, a free speech movement, an antiwar movement.

The secession of Southern states in response to Abraham Lincoln's election, which triggered the Civil War, is inexplicable without the fear - and sometimes paranoia - the abolition movement kindled in the Southern imagination.

And yet our textbooks cover this essential social movement in a few cursory pages, at best. In curricula and mainstream media, social progress is assigned to Great Men. Young people fail to learn the lesson they need so desperately in order to recognize their own potential power today: Throughout history, social movements have made the world a better place - more democratic, more equal, more just.

The purpose of the abolitionist mixer is to familiarize students with the stories of famous and lesser-known abolitionists and introduce them to a number of the individuals and themes they encounter both in the role play "'If There Is No Struggle...': Teaching a People's History of the Abolition Movement" and the reading "A People's History of the Abolition Movement."

Materials Needed

Copies of "Abolitionist Mixer: Questions" (Handout 4-A) for every student.

"Mixer Roles" (Handout 4-B), cut up. One for every student in the class.*

Blank nametags. Enough for every student in the class.

Copies of "A People's History of the Abolition Movement" (Handout 4-C) for every student.

The lesson PDF includes Handout 4-A, Handout 4-5, and Handout 4-C. Download it for free to access this full lesson.

This lesson was originally published by Rethinking Schools in Teaching a People's History of Abolition and the Civil War.

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Who Fought To End Slavery? Meet the Abolitionists - Zinn Education Project

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For all its weaknesses and divisions, the abolition movement was perhaps the most significant social movement in U.S. history: an anti-racist movement, a labor movement, a feminist movement, a free speech movement, an antiwar movement.

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Teaching Activities (Free)

Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez and Nqobile Mthethwa. 25 pages.
A mixer role play that explores the connections between different social movements during Reconstruction.

Time Periods: 19th Century, Civil War Era: 1850 - 1864, Reconstruction Period: 1865 - 1876

Themes: African American, Reconstruction, Democracy & Citizenship, Laws & Citizen Rights, Organizing, Racism & Racial Identity, Slavery and Resistance

I recently used the lesson plan When the Impossible Suddenly Became Possible: A Reconstruction Mixer in my 9th grade Honors U.S. History class. I had previously used the 'If There Is No Struggle...': Teaching a People's History of the Abolition Movement lesson, where I had students take on the role of members of the American Anti-Slavery Society to debate abolitionism in the mid-1800s. My students had enjoyed that activity, and when I found the "Reconstruction Mixer," I was excited to try it.

For context, this lesson came after a few days of discussion and reading about the Reconstruction Era. Students had built some background knowledge about Reconstruction, the major goals/problems, and the backlash to increased civil rights and freedoms of African Americans. We had looked at examples of Thomas Nast's political cartoons for perspectives on Reconstruction in the North, and students had done a gallery walk of "Black Codes" passed in Mississippi right after the Civil War.

I felt that this lesson would open their eyes to the myriad possibilities that existed for change during Reconstruction and get beyond the typical, textbook narrative that it had failed due to political compromise, or worse, because of poor governance by "carpetbaggers" and African Americans in the South. I taught the lesson in one day, and I found I needed to do minimal setup for students to take on the role of a historical figure. My students loved the chance to get into "character" and think about what their historical figure had stood for. Once the mixer got started, students naturally took on the roles and partnered up to share their stories and gather information to answer the questions included in the plan. We haven't studied the Women's Suffrage Movement or the Labor Movement so it was a great chance for students to start to get background on those issues in a very organic, unscripted way.

I had students reflect on 3 questions after the mixer: (1) Whose story did you find most interesting? Why? (2) What did you learn about the Reconstruction period from this activity? (3) How did you feel about this activity? Some student responses:

"The Reconstruction period was the best time to fight for equal rights and establish new laws!"

"I found Henry Highland Garnet's story to be the most interesting because he continued fighting for other people's freedom."

"I learned black people got to have some freedom in the Reconstruction period."

"I learned that everyone had different reasons to fight for equal rights, women's rights, or black men's rights, and sometimes these people didn't all agree."

"It was cool! I wish we had more time!"

"Many different people were taking a chance to change America."

The role-plays, simulations, and general outside-the-box teaching activities offered by Zinn Education, including "When the Impossible Suddenly Became Possible," give me an opportunity to teach history in a way I wished my high school teachers had embraced. The creators of these lessons clearly understand that students often learn best from EACH OTHER rather than through direct instruction, rote memorization, or textbook reading. With minimal background and setup needed, this lesson was a powerful edition to my unit on Reconstruction.

High School Social Studies Teacher, Baltimore, Maryland

My experience learning about the Reconstruction Era in school (which I'm sure was like most people's) centered around the Reconstruction Amendments and the actions of the President and Congress.

As a teacher, I wanted to go beyond the amendments to introduce my students to the individuals who were involved in the abolition movement and the fight for equality and justice. The Reconstruction Mixer lesson did just that. Students took on roles of people involved not just in the abolitionist movement but also in the women's rights and union workers' movement. It's a good day when students know the names and stories of people who fought for justice in their community and their nation.

The diversity of the people included in the activity led to some interesting conversations. In our post-mixer discussion, students spoke up about the tensions between different movements, especially the abolitionist and women's rights movements. My class delved into a deeper conversation about what to do when you don't get what you are fighting for - do you support the other movements or do you stand firm and focus on only what you want? This is a discussion we would not have had if we had just looked at the Reconstruction Amendments and the actions of the people at the top! I will definitely be doing this lesson again in my class.

Middle Social Studies Teacher, Massachusetts

Role plays are such an excellent way of engaging students in learning. When the Impossible Became Possible: A Reconstruction Mixer allows students to interact with both the content and one another to further their learning. I chose to do the lesson at the end of our unit on Reconstruction. Students had a good basis of understanding, but only from the newly freedmen and women's perspective. This activity revealed to the students, as well as myself, the new possibilities that many Americans recognized after emancipation.

During our debriefing discussion, some students were struck by the narrow thinking behind many activists who placed, as one student mentioned, "priorities of justice," believing that the nation could only have justice for one group at a time. Another student even mentioned how easy it was for many of the people involved in social activism to lose site of the bigger picture of "justice for all," refuse the collaboration and solidarity of others and allow racism and sexism to derail their own movements. One group of students connected past learning to debunk this myth by mentioning how the Women's Liberation Movement, Chicano Movement, American Indian Movement and African-American Civil Rights Movements all co-existed and moved towards social justice during the same decades of the 20th century.

I was impressed with the connections that this activity allowed for my students to make. It was a perfect lesson to include in our study of Reconstruction.

High School Social Studies Teacher, Woodburn, Oregon

I used When the Impossible Suddenly Became Possible last year and LOVED it. The stories the students learned in the mixer brought to life how extraordinary this time was and not just something to brush past on our way to our unit on the Second Industrial Revolution. It segued us into that unit as well as into the Great Migration. This curriculum led to excellent "push/pull" conversations, too.

The most powerful story for me was that of Benjamin Montgomery who actually bought Jefferson Davis', the President of the Confederacy, plantation! What a man! What a story!

For the mixer, I had my students create name badges and they put their interview sheets on a clip board. We sat outside at tables and when one interview was over they raised their hands and moved to a new table to hear a new story. I participated as well and loved interacting with my students.

When we finished, we went inside and each table group discussed what they learned. Then we had a class discussion about what surprised us, what inspired us, and what upset us. Back in their table groups (of 3 or 4) they connected what they learned from the activity to other themes in history and/or today. A second class discussion led to topics The Trail of Tears, immigration, the Holocaust, Japanese internment, and police brutality. They even added in Supreme Court decisions and first amendment rights!

This activity came in the last month of the school year for my eighth grade class and WOW. I was so impressed by the higher-order-thinking it facilitated and inspired by how aware these kids are to what is right with America, and what is still so very wrong.

Middle School Social Studies Teacher, Santa Rosa, California

The classroom textbook does not really highlight the successes of Reconstruction and focuses on the backlash to this progress. Reconstructing the South: A Role Play successfully revealed to my students the problems that needed to be addressed during Reconstruction. In particular, students were interested in the questions about what should happen to the land and if there should be any consequences for Confederate leaders.

The second Reconstruction lesson, the Reconstruction Mixer, was also very successful. It showed students the social organizing that happened during Reconstruction. The question of addressing Black rights and women's rights got students thinking about the challenges of organizing, and how difficult it is to make radical changes when people do not agree on issues. I like the diversity of the people included in the role, and that there were several people I had not heard of before. Students enjoyed the mixer format. We also did the Election of 1860 Role Play and this mixer was a nice change of routine.

I decided to spend more time on Reconstruction than during the Civil War because of these great lessons available. I think it's important to show the post-war progress after learning about the cruel economic system of enslavement. I would use it again in a class, for sure.

High School Social Studies, Peterborough, New Hampshire

Teach Reconstruction Campaign

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When the Impossible Suddenly Became Possible: A Reconstruction Mixer

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"The ability of newly freed people to imagine their former owners serving them, or to walk off a plantation en masse in a society that had heavily policed Black movement, reveals the possibilities of a period where something that had only a few years prior seemed unthinkable was now a fact of life."

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On Monday April 1, 1967 "George Dowell and several neighbors from North Richmond, California . . . heard 10 gunshots. Sometime after 5:00 a.m., George came upon his older brother Denzil Dowell lying in the street, shot in the back and head. Police from the county sheriff's department were there, but no ambulance had been called. . . . [The] sheriff's office reported that deputy sheriffs Mel Brunkhorst and Kenneth Gibson had arrived at the scene at 4:50 a.m. on a tip from an unidentified caller about a burglary in progress. They claimed that when they arrived,Denzil Dowell and another man ran from the back of a liquor store and refused to stop when ordered to halt. Brunkhorst fired one blast from a shotgun, striking Dowell and killing him. . . . "For the Dowells, the official explanation did not add up, and community members helped the family investigate. . . . There was no sign of entry, forced or otherwise, at Bill's Liquors, the store that Dowell had allegedly been robbing. Further, the police had reported that Dowell had not only run but also jumped two fences to get away before being shot down. But Dowell had a bad hip, a limp, and the family claimed that he could not run, let alone jump fences. . . . A doctor who worked on the case told the family that judging from the way the bullets had entered Dowell's body, Dowell had been shot with his hands raised. . . . Mrs. Dowell publicly announced, 'I believe the police murdered my son.' . . . A white jury took little time deciding that the killing of unarmed Dowell was 'justifiable homicide' because the police officers on the scene had suspected that he was in the act of committing a felony. Outraged, the Black community demanded justice."
-Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin Jr., Black Against Empire:
The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party

Helping North Richmond's Black community demand justice for the killing of Denzil Dowell was one of the first major organizing campaigns of the Black Panther Party. The first issue of The Black Panther newspaper, which at its height around 1970 had a circulation of 140,000 copies per week, asked "Why Was Denzil Dowell Killed?" Anyone reading the story of Dowell today can't help but draw parallels to the unarmed Black men and women regularly murdered by police. The disparity between the police's story and the Dowell family's, the police harassment Dowell endured before his murder, the jury letting Dowell's killer off without punishment, even the reports that Dowell had his hands raised while he was gunned down, eerily echo the police killings today that have led to the explosion of the movement for Black lives.

Yet when we learn about the early years of the Panthers, the organizing they did in Richmond - conducting their own investigation into Dowell's death, confronting police who harassed Dowell's family, helping mothers in the community organize against abuse at the local school, organizing armed street rallies in which hundreds filled out applications to join the party - is almost always absent.

The history of the Black Panther Party (BPP) holds vital lessons for today's movement to confront racism and police violence - yet textbooks either misrepresent or minimize the significance of the Panthers. Armed with a revolutionary socialist ideology, they fought in Black communities across the nation for giving the poor access to decent housing, healthcare, education, and much more. And as the Panthers grew, so did the issues they organized around.

Black Panthers and Community Health

Jesse Hagopian and Adam Sanchez are interviewed in With Free Medical Clinics and Patient Advocacy, the Black Panthers Created a Legacy in Community Health That Still Exists Amid COVID-19 and the short video below via Time magazine.

This lesson was originally published in the Rethinking Schools publication Teaching for Black Lives.

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What We Don't Learn About the Black Panther Party - but Should

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On Monday April 1, 1967 "George Dowell and several neighbors from North Richmond, California . . . heard 10 gunshots. Sometime after 5:00 a.m., George came upon his older brother Denzil Dowell lying in the street, shot in the back and head. Police from the county sheriff's department were there, but no ambulance had been called.

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In her memoir, Warriors Don't Cry, Melba Pattillo Beals walks students into the events of Central High School and makes them feel the sting of physical and emotional abuse the Little Rock Nine suffered as they lived the history of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Beals' book tells the story of young people who became accidental heroes when their lives intersected a movement for justice in education, and they made the choice to join the movement instead of taking an easier path.

This teaching activity encourages teachers to begin with a role play to increase students' knowledge of the historical context of segregation and the struggle for civil rights. Following the role play, students write a "Writing for Justice" narrative about an incident from their lives. They then engage in a literary mixer as they meet key players in the book.

While students read the book, they keep a dialogue journal where they keep track of their insights and questions. They also identify targets and perpetrators of injustice as well as allies and bystanders. During the unit, students write an essay, poetry, and interior monologues. They draw literary postcards, engage in improvisations, and create character silhouettes to collect evidence for their essay. Linda Christensen also interlaces footage from Eyes on the Prize and Standing on My Sisters' Shoulders for students to see and hear events described in the memoir. The films and other texts from the time period help students understand that the story of the Little Rock Nine was part of a larger movement to reshape U.S. society.

This lesson was published by Rethinking Schools in Teaching for Joy and Justice: Re-imagining the Language Arts Classroom. For more lessons like "Warriors Don't Cry: Connecting History, Literature, and Our Lives," order Teaching for Joy and Justice with two dozen lessons and articles for language arts and social studies classrooms by Linda Christensen.

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Warriors Don't Cry: Connecting History, Literature, and Our Lives - Zinn Education Project

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In her memoir, Warriors Don't Cry , Melba Pattillo Beals walks students into the events of Central High School and makes them feel the sting of physical and emotional abuse the Little Rock Nine suffered as they lived the history of the Brown v. Board of Education decision.

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Today's border with Mexico is the product of invasion and war. Grasping some of the motives for that war and some of its immediate effects begins to provide students the kind of historical context that is crucial for thinking intelligently about the line that separates the United States and Mexico. It also gives students insights into the justifications for and costs of war today.

This activity introduces students to a number of the individuals and themes they will encounter in the chapter from Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, "We Take Nothing by Conquest, Thank God." The individual roles include:

Cochise, Chiricahua Apache leader

Colonel Ethan Allen Hitchcock, commander of the 3rd Infantry Regiment

Congressman Abraham Lincoln, Whig Party, Illinois

Doña Francesca Vallejo

Francisco Márquez, Mexican Cadet

Frederick Douglass

General Mariano Vallejo

General Stephen Kearny

Henry David Thoreau

Jefferson Davis, plantation owner, Mississippi

María Josefa Martínez, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Padre Antonio José Martínez

President James K. Polk

Reverend Theodore Parker

Sgt. John Riley San Patricio Battalion, Formerly U.S. Army

William Lloyd Garrison , Founder, American Anti-Slavery Society

Wotoki, Miwok Indian, California.

The lesson includes a reading from Zinn's chapter, "We Take Nothing by Conquest, Thank God." Here is an excerpt.

Frederick Douglass wrote in his Rochester newspaper the North Star, January 21, 1848, of "the present disgraceful, cruel, and iniquitous war with our sister republic. Mexico seems a doomed victim to Anglo Saxon cupidity and love of dominion." Douglass was scornful of the unwillingness of opponents of the war to take real action (even the abolitionists kept paying their taxes):

No politician of any considerable distinction or eminence seems willing to hazard his popularity with his party . . . by an open and unqualified disapprobation of the war. None seem willing to take their stand for peace at all risks; and all seem willing that the war should be carried on, in some form or other.

Where was popular opinion? It is hard to say. After the first rush, enlistments began to dwindle. Historians of the Mexican war have talked easily about "the people" and "public opinion." Their evidence, however, is not from "the people" but from the newspapers, claiming to be the voice of the people. The New York Herald wrote in August 1845: "The multitude cry aloud for war." The New York Morning News said "young and ardent spirits that throng the cities . . . want but a direction to their restless energies, and their attention is already fixed on Mexico."

It is impossible to know the extent of popular support of the war. But there is evidence that many organized workingmen opposed the war. There were demonstrations of Irish workers in New York, Boston, and Lowell against the annexation of Texas. In May, when the war against Mexico began, New York workingmen called a meeting to oppose the war, and many Irish workers came. The meeting called the war a plot by slave owners and asked for the withdrawal of American troops from disputed territory. That year, a convention of the New England Workingmen's Association condemned the war and announced they would "not take up arms to sustain the Southern slaveholder in robbing one-fifth of our countrymen of their labor.

This lesson was published by Rethinking Schools in The Line Between Us: Teaching About the Border and Mexican Immigration. For more teaching activities like "U.S. Mexico War: "We Take Nothing by Conquest, Thank God," order The Line Between Us with role plays, stories, poetry, improvisations, simulations and video edited by Bill Bigelow.

See Table of Contents.

Classroom Stories

As educators across the country are faced with the daunting challenge of moving their instruction online in the midst of the global pandemic, many teachers are brainstorming innovative ways to implement interactive lessons with students. Bethany Hobbs is one of those educators.

Read more to find out how Hobbs taught this lesson online during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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U.S. Mexico War: "We Take Nothing by Conquest, Thank God" - Zinn Education Project

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Teaching Activity. Lesson by Bill Bigelow and student reading by Howard Zinn. Rethinking Schools. 21 pages. Interactive activity introduces students to the history and often untold story of the U.S.-Mexico War. Roles available in Spanish.

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I was 9 years old and living in Los Angeles when the Northridge earthquake hit Southern California in 1994. I still remember my mother waking me in the middle of the night and rushing me under the table as books and trinkets fell from our bookshelves. Despite the lasting memory and a few shattered handicrafts, our family was not much affected. Throughout California the earthquake left only minor infrastructural damage and killed 72 people, a relatively low number for such a strong quake.

So when I first heard that the earthquake of similar magnitude that hit Haiti on Jan. 12, 2010, destroyed entire Haitian cities and killed more than a quarter million people, I was shocked. For me, it was apparent that this was more than a natural disaster.

The role played by the U.S. government raises critical questions for students and teachers. How does Haiti's history explain why it experienced such devastation as a result of the earthquake? Who or what was responsible? And why was Haiti unable to quickly rebuild and recover?

Roles included with this lesson are:

"Papa Doc" and "Baby Doc" Duvalier

The French Government

Haitians

Capitalism: System of Profit

U.S. Government

This lesson was originally published in the Summer 2011 issue of Rethinking Schools magazine. Find many more lessons and articles at www.rethinkingschools.org.

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Tè Tremblé: An Unnatural Disaster: A Trial Role Play Probes the Roots of Devastation in Haiti - Zinn Education Project

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I was 9 years old and living in Los Angeles when the Northridge earthquake hit Southern California in 1994. I still remember my mother waking me in the middle of the night and rushing me under the table as books and trinkets fell from our bookshelves.

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What we don't teach in school can be more important than what we do teach. When we fail to engage students in thinking critically about their own schooling, the hidden message is: Don't analyze the institutions that shape your lives; don't ask who benefits, who suffers, and how it got to be this way; just shut up and do as you're told.

To explore some of the historical roots of the modern high school, I wrote a role play that I hoped would allow students to question aspects of schooling they often take for granted, such as tracking ("ability grouping"), standardized testing, guidance counseling, student government, the flag salute, bells, required courses with patriotic themes, and extracurricular activities like athletics and the school newspaper. These now commonplace components of high school life were introduced in the early years of the 20th century, a time of growing union militancy and radicalism, and large-scale immigration from southern and eastern Europe, accompanied by vastly increased high school enrollment.

Underlying the new reforms was a consensus among leading educators that social class stratification was here to stay, and that high schools should abandon a single academic curriculum for all students.

This lesson was originally published by Rethinking Schools in Rethinking Our Classrooms: Teaching For Equity and Justice (Volume 1).

Background Materials

Paul Davis Chapman, Schools as Sorters, New York University Press, 1988 (especially Chapter 5, "The Use of Intelligence Tests in Schools: California Case Studies").

David Tyack, The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education, Harvard University Press, 1974.

Joel Spring, The American School, 1642-1985, Longman, 1986 (especially Chapter 7, "Education and Human Capital").

Robert S. Lynd and Helen M. Lynd, Middletown, Harcourt, Brace, 1929 (especially part II: "Training the Young").

Jeannie Oakes, Keeping Track: How Schools Structure Inequality, Yale University Press, 2005 (Chapter 2, "Unlocking the Tradition").

Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, Basic Books, 1976, (Chapters 5 and 6, "The Origins of Mass Public Education" and "Corporate Capital and Progressive Education").

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Testing, Tracking, and Toeing the Line: A Role Play on the Origins of the Modern High School - Zinn Education Project

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What we don't teach in school can be more important than what we do teach. When we fail to engage students in thinking critically about their own schooling, the hidden message is: Don't analyze the institutions that shape your lives; don't ask who benefits, who suffers, and how it got to be this way; just shut up and do as you're told.

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"That's the problem with Black Lives Matter! We need a strong leader like Martin Luther King!" Tyriq shouted as I wrote King's name on the board.

I started my unit on the Civil Rights Movement by asking my high school students to list every person or organization they knew was involved. They replied with several familiar names: Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Emmett Till. Occasionally a student knew an organization: the NAACP or the Black Panther Party.

"Has anyone ever heard of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee?" I asked while writing the acronym on the board.

"S-N-C-C?" students sounded out as my black Expo marker moved across the whiteboard.

"Have you ever heard of the sit-ins?" I prodded.

"Yeah, weren't they in Alabama?" Matt answered.

"No, Mississippi! Four students sat down at a lunch counter, right?" Kadiatou proudly declared.

This is usually the extent of my students' prior knowledge of SNCC, one of the organizations most responsible for pushing the Civil Rights Movement forward. Without the history of SNCC at their disposal, students think of the Civil Rights Movement as one that was dominated by charismatic leaders and not one that involved thousands of young people like themselves. Learning the history of how young students risked their lives to build a multigenerational movement against racism and for political and economic power allows students to draw new conclusions about the lessons of the Civil Rights Movement and how to apply them to today. Continue reading.

Classroom Story

High School U.S. History Teacher, Gulfport, Mississippi

This lesson was originally published in the Winter 2017 issue of Rethinking Schools magazine and is included in the Rethinking Schools publication Teaching for Black Lives.

Adam Sanchez ( asanchez@zinnedproject.org) teaches at Harvest Collegiate High School in New York City. He is an editor of Rethinking Schools magazine and a Zinn Education Project teacher leader with a focus on the Teach Reconstruction campaign.

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Teaching SNCC: The Organization at the Heart of the Civil Rights Revolution - Zinn Education Project

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"That's the problem with Black Lives Matter! We need a strong leader like Martin Luther King!" Tyriq shouted as I wrote King's name on the board. I started my unit on the Civil Rights Movement by asking my high school students to list every person or organization they knew was involved.

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The more I read and learned about the Standing Rock resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline, the more obvious it became that this story must make its way into my curriculum. Here was a fascinating and important story-a story that literally cannot be told without recognizing Native peoples as full participants in their own, and U.S., history.

I put out a call to other teachers, educators, and activists who might be interested in collaborating on some curriculum. I wanted to roll out the lessons in the days before or after Thanksgiving. This timing, I believed, would be a powerful symbolic rejection of the lies about Indian people promulgated in our national Thanksgiving myths, in favor of a real story, about real Indians, leading a powerful movement in the 21st century. Joined in the work by my fellow Lake Oswego High School teacher, Andrew Duden, and Rethinking Schools curriculum editor Bill Bigelow, we quickly agreed that the story lent itself well to a role play and got to work.

Before launching the role play, we wanted to give students a visceral and visual sense of the resistance under way along the Missouri River. We thought immediately of Amy Goodman's wonderful coverage on Democracy Now!, and specifically, of the horrifying footage of the use of dogs against protestors/Water Protectors by a private security firm ( Democracy Now!, 2016). We also used " The Standing Rock Protests by the Numbers," a short documentary posted at the Los Angeles Times (Etehad and Tchekmedyian, 2016). We asked students to jot down questions that emerged as they watched. Afterward, students shared out their questions and it didn't take long for them to recognize and frame many of the fundamental issues at stake. Gavin asked, "Are the protestors more angry about the possibility of oil spills or that they're building on burial grounds?" Kisa asked, "What guarantee does the pipeline company have against the breaking or leaking of the pipe?" Tatum wrote, "Is this pipeline really needed? What is it for? Can they move it somewhere else?" Vivian asked, "Who owns the land the pipeline is being built through?" Finally, Callie wondered, "Does the government care about what could happen to the water of these tribes?" These questions not only built toward the role play to come, but also generated possible research questions for the entire unit.

The Role Play

We liked the idea of a role play for a couple reasons. Our first and most important goal was to create a context for students to confront the complex social reality of the Dakota Access Pipeline and the resistance movement to which it has given rise. That social reality includes the history and contemporary status of Indigenous rights, the power of the fossil fuel industry, the support for pipeline infrastructure from segments of organized labor, and the extent to which our government is protecting-or failing to protect-the land, water, and air. The role play asks students to explore these complicated dynamics as active participants. Reading about historical figures is like standing on the sidewalk looking at a house: You can recognize its basic shape, color, and perhaps how many levels it has. Actually assuming the identity of these historical figures allows you to step through the front door and explore what's inside: How many rooms does it have? What's the function of each? How are they connected? Which is the most spacious and light? Which the darkest and most cramped? Is it well-built or flimsy? We hoped this role play would enable students to navigate the #noDAPL movement from inside the house, rather than as a bystander peering in from outside. Another of our considerations was that at the moment we were writing, there was little mainstream media attention directed toward Standing Rock, so in some way, the role play was aspirational-a way of insisting that this is a Big Deal, even if that is not reflected in the media. Our aim was for students to know what was happening, but also, perhaps what was not happening, and to begin to wonder about why.

The setting of the role play is a meeting, called by the president, to hear input on whether the Dakota Access Pipeline should be completed. Students, representing five different groups, must convince him that the project should be abandoned or allowed to proceed. Two of the groups are in direct conflict:

Members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, protesting the pipeline and encamped along the Missouri River in North Dakota

Energy Transfer Partners, the oil company building the pipeline

The other three groups we selected provide additional context on the question of whether the pipeline should be built:

Iowa farmers who have brought lawsuits and protested another section of the same pipeline

Our Children's Trust, youth activists suing the federal government over its insufficient responses to and action on climate change

North America's Building Trades Unions, which represent the workers who consider themselves direct beneficiaries from the pipeline's construction

After sorting students into five table groups, we distributed the role sheets, which outline each group's beliefs and interests. We asked students to read and underline important information in their roles. Next we had students answer three questions:

1. Do you support the building of the Dakota Access Pipeline? Why or why not?

2. What are the three most compelling arguments or pieces of information that you want the president to consider when making his decision to proceed with or halt the construction of the pipeline?

3. How do you think the president should respond to the Standing Rock Sioux protesters (and other protesters) currently blocking the way of the pipeline's construction?

Classroom Story

Curriculum specialist and teacher trainer in Native education, District of Columbia

Video Clip:
FULL Exclusive Report: Dakota Access Pipeline Co. Attacks Native Americans with Dogs & Pepper Spray | Democracy Now!
Related Video
"Stand With Standing Rock" by David Rovics

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Standing with Standing Rock: A Role Play on the Dakota Access Pipeline - Zinn Education Project

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Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca, Bill Bigelow, and Andrew Duden. Article by Ursula Wolfe-Rocca. 15 pages. Rethinking Schools. A role play helps students recognize the issues at stake in the historic struggle of the Standing Rock Sioux to block construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline.

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The Southern Tenant Farmers' Union (STFU) was a federation of tenant farmers formed in Arkansas in 1934 with the aim of reforming the crop-sharing system of sharecropping and tenant farming. The STFU was integrated, women played a critical role in its organization and administration, and fundamentalist church rituals and regional folkways were basic to the union's operation. [Continue reading the history of the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union at the Encyclopedia of Arkansas.]

This teaching activity on the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union examines efforts by African American and white workers to overcome deep divisions and suspicions of racial antagonism. Students are faced with a "What would you do?" assignment that helps them grasp many of the difficulties in achieving some degree of racial unity. At the same time, they realize the importance of confronting and overcoming racist attitudes. The interview with C.P. Ellis by Studs Terkel is a remarkable example of one individual's awakening to these issues.

Setting for the Student Activity

It is the middle of the Great Depression and farmers, especially those who rent land or are "sharecroppers"-people who use others' land in exchange for part of their crop-are hard hit. For one thing, cotton prices have gone steadily down. The response of the federal government has made matters worse. In 1933 the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) was passed. The AAA was intended to boost cotton prices by paying farmers to take land out of production. According to the law, no tenant farmers or sharecroppers were supposed to be evicted from their farms. But that's not how it has worked. Between 1933 and 1934, an estimated 900,000 people-African American and white-have been thrown off the land by plantation owners taking advantage of the AAA.

Goals and Objectives

1. Students will explore the difficulties of farm labor organizing in the 1930s.

2. Students will understand how racism divides potential allies.

3. Students will reflect on ways to overcome racism while trying to change oppressive conditions.

" Southern Tenant Farmers' Union: Black and White Unite?" is one of the 16 lessons in The Power In Our Hands.

Find related lessons and other resources below.

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Southern Tenant Farmers' Union: Black and White Unite? - Zinn Education Project

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The Southern Tenant Farmers' Union (STFU) was a federation of tenant farmers formed in Arkansas in 1934 with the aim of reforming the crop-sharing system of sharecropping and tenant farming. The STFU was integrated, women played a critical role in its organization and administration, and fundamentalist church rituals and regional folkways were basic to the union's operation.

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In this lesson, students grapple with one of the difficult and unresolved issues that confronts workers: plant closures. Students take on the role of union members and consider a range of options for how to deal with this threat. Should they work for plant closure legislation? Should they attempt to take over the plant and run it themselves? Should they appeal for government relief for the company that owns the plant? Should they try to persuade or force the company to stay?

Students will understand some of the personal and community consequences of closing facilities that provide employment; enhance their ability to think about public policy, and evaluate appropriate means and ends; and they will consider some of the limits to any choice that unions and workers in a particular facility may make in response to a closure.

The Power In Our Hands-Available for Download

This is one of the 16 lessons available from The Power In Our Hands. Other lessons available for individual download are:

Opening

Unit I: Basic Understandings

Unit II: Changes in the Workplace/"Scientific Management"

Unit III: Defeats, Victories, Challenges

Unit IV: Our Own Recent Past

Unit V: Continuing Struggle

Order the book online from Rethinking Schools.

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Shutdown!-Confronting Plant Closures - Zinn Education Project

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In this lesson, students grapple with one of the difficult and unresolved issues that confronts workers: plant closures. Students take on the role of union members and consider a range of options for how to deal with this threat. Should they work for plant closure legislation?

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This lesson explores one of the most important events in the fight for true democracy in U.S. history, when a coalition of grassroots activists challenged the Mississippi political system, the federal government and the national Democratic Party that excluded citizens on the basis of race.

Working within the political "rules," the activists formed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP or FDP) in 1964 and mounted a legitimate challenge to the existing system of race-based exclusion. In the process, they garnered a national audience and sparked moral and ethical debates.

As historian John Dittmer explains in Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi:

The Freedom Democratic Party (FDP) was one of the most important and distinctive institutions to emerge from the civil rights movement. It challenged white supremacy in the most repressive state in the South, combining grassroots activism with a radical social agenda. FDP had its origins in the fall of 1963, when the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) conducted a "Freedom Vote" to dramatize the exclusion of African Americans from the political process in Mississippi.

More than 80,000 blacks voted black NAACP state president Aaron Henry for governor and white Tougaloo College chaplain Ed King for lieutenant governor in this mock election. The election's success led to the creation of an independent, black-led, state Democratic Party that would challenge the legitimacy of the state's white supremacist delegation at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in the summer of 1964.

The events surrounding the MFDP's efforts to be seated at the Democratic National Convention of 1964 in Atlantic City provide a strong example of the unprecedented and sophisticated organizing techniques used to challenge the state sponsored terrorism that blocked voting rights based on race.

In this lesson, students step into the shoes of key people at the Democratic National Convention in a dramatic role play based on the real challenges and decisions facing the MFDP delegates.

It is our hope that after this introduction to the MFDP, students will want to learn more about the people and the strategies used to fight for voting rights in the United States.

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Sharecroppers Challenge U.S. Apartheid: The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party - Zinn Education Project

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This lesson explores one of the most important events in the fight for true democracy in U.S. history, when a coalition of grassroots activists challenged the Mississippi political system, the federal government and the national Democratic Party that excluded citizens on the basis of race.

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Teaching Activities (Free)

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow.
A role play allows students to examine issues of race and class when exploring both the accomplishments and limitations of the Seneca Falls Convention.

Time Periods: 19th Century, Early 19th Century: 1800 - 1849

Themes: Civil Rights Movements, Democracy & Citizenship, Laws & Citizen Rights, Organizing, Women's History

The first organized gathering of women to demand their rights as women took place during two days in July 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York. The manifesto produced by the women in Seneca Falls offered a blueprint for feminist organizing for decades to come. The most "radical" demand - at least the only demand not passed unanimously by the assembly - was for universal suffrage. Not all attendees were women. In fact, it was the most prominent African American abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, who seconded Elizabeth Cady Stanton's motion for female suffrage. However, the large majority of those present were women, and many, perhaps most, were veterans of the abolition movement. Some of those in attendance were working-class, but most came from privileged backgrounds. Their Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions proclaimed that "the history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her." But, as the feminist scholar Gerda Lerner points out, the authors of this denunciation "did not speak for the truly exploited and abused working woman. As a matter of fact, they were largely ignorant of her condition and, with the notable exception of Susan B. Anthony, indifferent to her fate." Nor did the document address the plight of women who were not white.

The role play included here is designed to simultaneously honor the accomplishment and explore the limitations of the women of Seneca Falls. The activity includes roles for the upper-class and middle-class white women who organized the convention, but also for women who were not in attendance: poor, working-class white mill workers; enslaved African American women; Cherokee women 10 years after the Trail of Tears; and Mexican women in territory newly conquered by the United States in its war with Mexico. This is not the entire rainbow coalition that would have been in attendance at an assembly fully representative of this country's women in 1848. But it's representative enough to give students a chance to imagine the additional demands that might have been raised that summer had it not been so limited in race and class.

Classroom Stories

I always use the Zinn Education Project's Seneca Falls, 1848: Women Organize for Equality lesson, and no other activity does so well to teach students to question "unmarked" categories assumed to be normative. In this instance, the lesson teaches students to see that the "women's" movement was really about white, privileged women. They then understand, too, how "men" means just white men in the United States.

The role play activity captures their attention, keeps them engaged, and cultivates a deeply critical perspective not only on Seneca Falls but also on the workings of race, class, and gender.

High Social Studies Teacher, Los Angeles, California

For the past several years, I've had the joy of teaching AP U.S. History at my school. It's important to me that my students get a full, accurate picture of the people's history of the United States, so I regularly use Zinn Education Project materials in my classes.

I've used the Seneca Falls, 1848 lesson several times. Last year, I took the time to locate multiple primary source documents from a diverse group of women to help students. These documents helped students build their primary source document analysis skills, and learn from multiple perspectives and experiences of women who lived during this time. As a class, we used the materials and role descriptions from the activity. Students also used additional primary source documents to add to their knowledge prior to the mock convention.

This lesson about women's history provides my class with the historical context, as well as their personal connections to this history, to gain a full understanding of the complexity of the suffrage movement. Thank you, Zinn Education Project!

High Social Studies Teacher, Denver, Colorado

I recently used the Seneca Falls Convention lesson and was pleased by how engaging it was for my students. We started by reading the chapter on women's history from A Young People's History of the United States. This helped set up the history behind the Seneca Falls Convention.

My class was properly outraged just by the reading and then I passed out the laws affecting women in 1848 provided in the lesson. We went through each of these and that provided a lot of opportunities for discussion. Next, the students broke up into the different groups of women and read about what struggles they were facing. During this small group work, I listened in on my students' conversations and was struck by their intellectual engagement with the materials.

The next step, of having these different groups of women with diverse concerns try to come to a consensus, provided my students with a wide perspective on the vastness of the struggle. In the end, we were able to create a great list of demands by using Robert's Rules of Order, which my students really enjoyed. They were surprised by what demands they had that the women did and didn't share.

After the first run, I know it's a great lesson and I plan to use it annually. Thank you so much to the Zinn Education Project for making it available!

High School Social Studies Teacher, Ellsworth, Maine

Related Resource

19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Women's Right to Vote (1920) at OurDocuments.gov.

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Seneca Falls, 1848: Women Organize for Equality - Zinn Education Project

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Teaching Activities (Free) Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. A role play allows students to examine issues of race and class when exploring both the accomplishments and limitations of the Seneca Falls Convention.

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The United Nations has declared this the Decade of Peace. The troubling irony is that teaching for peace must begin with a study of war. Unless we look carefully at the dynamics of war and come to grips with the root causes of global conflicts, we have no way to convincingly propose solutions-no way to imagine peace.

Sadly, when it comes to probing the root causes of the Vietnam War, not a single major U.S. history text glances back beyond the 1950s. Why was the U.S. involved in Vietnam?

As James Loewen points out in Lies My Teacher Told Me, his critique of 12 best-selling high school history texts, "Most textbooks simply dodge the issue. Here is a representative analysis, from American Adventures: Later in the 1950s, war broke out in South Vietnam. This time the United States gave aid to the South Vietnamese government.' War broke out' - what could be simpler!"

When teachers pattern our curricula after these kinds of nonexplanatory explanations, we mystify the origins not just of the war in Vietnam, but of everything we teach. Students need to learn to distinguish explanations from descriptions, like "war broke out," or "chaos erupted."

Thinking about social events as having concrete causes, constantly asking "Why?" and "In whose interests?" need to become critical habits of the mind for us and for our students. It's only through developing the tools of deep questioning that students can attempt to make sense of today's global conflicts. However, especially when teaching complicated events like the war in Vietnam, bypassing explanation in favor of description can be seductive. After all, there's so much stuff about the war in Vietnam: so many films; so many novels, short stories, and poetry; so many veterans who can come in and speak to the class. These are all vital resources, but unless built on a foundation of causes for the war, using these can be more voyeuristic than educational.

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Rethinking the Teaching of the Vietnam War - Zinn Education Project

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The United Nations has declared this the Decade of Peace. The troubling irony is that teaching for peace must begin with a study of war. Unless we look carefully at the dynamics of war and come to grips with the root causes of global conflicts, we have no way to convincingly propose solutions-no way to imagine peace.

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Teaching Activities (Free)

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow with contributions from members of the Taíno Community. Rethinking Schools. 13 pages.
A trial role play asks students to determine who is responsible for the death of millions of Taínos on the island of Hispaniola in the late 15th century.

Themes: Imperialism, Native American

By Bill Bigelow with contributions from members of the Taíno Community
This role play begins from the premise that a genocide was committed in the years after 1492, on the islands inhabited by the Taíno. Many Indigenous scholars estimate somewhere around 5 million Taíno inhabited the Greater Antilles pre contact.

Who - and/or what - was responsible for this genocide? This is the question students confront in this activity.

The intent of the lesson is to prompt students to examine the roots of colonial violence. When I first taught a version of this trial role play, it came at the conclusion of a longer unit about the meaning of the European arrival in the western hemisphere, one which included reading Taíno scholar José Barreiro's "The Taíno: 'Men of the Good,'" in Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years , which explicitly critiques the notion of the Taíno as "primitive." As Barreiro writes, "The Taíno strove to feed all the people, and maintained a spirituality that respected most of their main animal and food sources, as well as the natural forces like climate, season, and weather. The Taíno lived respectfully in a bountiful place so their nature was bountiful." Barreiro notes that "There was little or no quarreling observed among the Taíno by the Spaniards."

Students and I also read excerpts from Columbus's journal when he encountered the Taíno Nation, the Lukayan on the island of Guanahaní (probably San Salvador/Watlings Island), included in Rethinking Columbus , which hints at the violence to come: "They do not bear arms or know them, for I showed them swords and they took them by the blade and cut themselves through ignorance" - a quote that students find chilling. On the third day of Columbus's first encounter with the Taíno, October 14, 1492, Columbus bragged that "with 50 men they would be all kept in subjugation and forced to do whatever may be wished . . ."

The more students learn about the Taíno, Spain, Columbus's voyages, and details of Columbus's strategies to steal wealth and land from the people of the Caribbean - and Taíno resistance - the more effective this trial activity will be. But a caveat: The trial is not an introductory activity. A critical look at colonialism begins with the people being encountered prior to colonization, not with the state of siege that they experienced.

This lesson was originally written in 1991. Many things changed over my 30-year teaching career, but one thing stayed sadly consistent: Year after year, my high school U.S. history students had never heard of the Taíno people. Early in my classes, I asked students if they could name the person some people say "discovered America." There was never any shortage of students calling out "Columbus!" Then I asked, "OK. Who did he supposedly 'discover'? Who was here first?" Sometimes a few students would say, "Indians." But I'd say, "No. I mean what was the specific name of the people he found?" In all my years of teaching, I never had a single student say: "The Taíno" - much less be able to name any individual Taíno. I told my students their name, and that there were possibly millions on the islands of the Caribbean. "What does it say," I asked, "that we all know the name of the fellow from Europe, a white man, but none of us can name who the original peoples of the Caribbean are?"

" The Taíno vs. Columbus, et al. " was - and is - part of a broader effort to bring Taíno peoples into the curriculum. Although this lesson is not designed to introduce students to Taíno culture, the enormity of what happened to the Taíno is at the heart of the lesson. Columbus's actions against the Taíno meet the United Nations' definition of genocide ("acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group") - as well as internationally recognized crimes against humanity, war crimes, and environmental crimes. But there has been an almost complete curricular erasure of the Taíno peoples. Thus, it is up to us as educators to address these gaps, and consult and collaborate with those harmed to address misleading colonial narratives in our classes.

The updated version of this activity centers the Taíno people as the people harmed and includes indictments for four colonial offenders: Columbus, Columbus's Men, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, and the System of Empire.

A pedagogical note: Recently, there has been much discussion - and controversy - about role plays. It's a term that embraces strategies the Zinn Education Project supports, and others we oppose. Some school activities - "role plays" - demand that students "recreate traumatic experiences," in the words of Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Ohio State University professor. No Zinn Education Project activity engages in this kind of teaching. In this and other ZEP role plays, we do not ask students to perform. Although Columbus enslaved Taíno people, and ordered his men to spread "terror," as documented by the Spanish priest Bartolomé de las Casas, students do not act any of this out in this role play. Instead, the role play asks students to attempt to represent different individuals' and social groups' points of view, to wrestle with who or what was responsible for the crimes against the Taínos. The "drama" in this activity is sparked by the intellectual and ethical questions students discuss, not by reenacting historical events. [Read How to - and How Not to - Teach Role Plays.]
Download the lesson to read in full. Read suggestions for adapting to upper elementary classroom
Taínos

The trial role play is excerpted from Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years, which includes more context for the events dealt with in the lesson, including "The Taínos: 'Men of the Good,'" by José Barriero; a critical reading activity of Columbus's diary on his first contact with Indigenous people; a timeline of Spain, Columbus, and Taínos with teaching ideas; and an adaptation from the writings of Bartolomé de las Casas on the first Spanish priest to denounce the Spanish brutality in Hispaniola.

We also recommend Indigenous Cuba: Hidden in Plain Sight by José Barreiro in the National Museum of the American Indian and Whose History Matters? Students Can Name Columbus, But Most Have Never Heard of the Taíno People by Bill Bigelow in the Zinn Education Project "If We Knew Our History" series.

Authors

Bill Bigelow is curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools magazine and co-director of the Zinn Education Project. Read more.

Members of the Taíno Community. This version of the lesson was revised in collaboration with Tanya Rodriguez (National Institute for Racial Equity) and the Grandmothers Council Bohio Atabei - Verona Iriarte and Naniki Reyes Ocasio. Additional feedback was provided by the United Confederation of Taíno People.

Scenes from the Classroom

Students engaged in the People vs. Columbus trial. (Teacher: Julian Hipkins, 11th grade at CCPCS in Washington, D.C. Photographer: Rick Reinhard, 2012)

Stories from the Classroom

"Guilty or Innocent? Hardy Middle School Students Put Columbus on Trial"
By Cierra Kaler-Jones
If you had to put Christopher Columbus on trial for murder, would he be considered guilty? Students in Caneisha Mills' 8th-grade U.S. History class at Hardy Middle School in Washington, D.C. grappled with this question when they were assigned the task of deciding who would be considered guilty for the deaths of millions of Taínos on the island of Hispaniola in the 1490s . . .

Continue reading this play-by-play account of The People vs. Columbus, et al. at DC Area Educators for Social Justice.

The People vs. Columbus trial has been my most successful and popular lesson in the two years I taught it. Not only do students get to learn the extent of the atrocities committed by Spanish colonizers, but they get to engage in higher order thinking (one of my grad school buzzwords I think about a lot!) on the factors that cause historical atrocities to occur.

I LOVE how "the system of empire" is one of the options for students to blame or defend. This has generated some of the most challenging discussions I've seen in my class so far, as students say, "The king and queen would not have sent Columbus if they hadn't been acting within the system!" and retort, "But the system is made up of individuals, and each have their own choices!" This thinking about structure vs. agency is a level of thinking in social studies that was not made explicit to me until college, and I am thrilled that this assignment has given my students an opportunity to delve into core disciplinary questions.

They get excited about it, too ― I've had students leap up in the trial, hollering their positions to each other in attempts to convince a jury of their peers. At the end of the trial this year, as the jury came back with the verdict, one of my students reflected, "I think that Columbus is like Trump, and the Tainos are like the Mexican people..." This prompted a discussion about how colonial-type oppression works in our current society, leading one student to observe, "You know, I think WE live within a system." I asked them if they thought that they had any agency within the system, and they had a really thoughtful conversation about it.

Your resources truly fill a well left dry - not by forgetfulness, but by the same racist systems that perpetuate the injustices my students face on a daily basis in schools.

Social Studies Teacher, Baltimore, Maryland

The Zinn Education Project made untold history come to life for students working on the People vs. Columbus tribunal. Students were immersed in building background knowledge by reading the indictments, working together, and using teacher-created graphic organizers to build a defense and a strong prosecution.

The lesson captivated the attention of my students in the online environment, fostered collaboration and highlighted rigorous writing, reading, and speaking & listening standards as we work our way through a delicate piece of history that not many know and everyone should appreciate.

Students remarked at the end of the first day in trial how fun and engaging the work was and how much they were learning by working together, interacting with the teacher and rereading the indictments to write argument pieces to present to class. Seeing the students produce quality work aligned to standards and related to our curriculum content is a magical feeling for a teacher and I for one am humbled it happened in my classroom.

I am grateful I had robust materials to use, a guide for instruction, and the opportunity to create. I am eager to continue to use more Zinn Education Project resources with my students in the future.

Middle School Language Arts/English Teacher, Baltimore, Maryland

This school year has been riddled with uncertainty and confusion. For my students, it has also been distant. Socially distant, limited engagement, cameras off, muted, seldom chat. The People vs Columbus, et al. lesson stands out as an outlier for participation. Even over Zoom, students became active participants, engaged, and passionate about their opinions. While working in groups there was very real collaboration that led to detailed and nuanced arguments. The activity pushed students into discomfort about facing the actual history of trying and horrendous acts.

The trial really allowed students to dig into the nature of responsibility and actions. It showed students the difference between individual actions and the responsibility attributed to the systemic nature of power and privilege. The structure of the trial, one splitting the class into different perspectives, allows students to push beyond their own assumptions and point of view, to see the issues of the past, and apply them to a contemporary dilemma.

Middle School Social Studies Teacher, Oak Park, Illinois

In U.S. history with my 11th-grade students, we began the year by corroborating Columbus's story and used texts from A Young People's History, traditional textbooks, videos, and other primary sources. They were shocked and surprised at his actions but also surprised that they hadn't learned this information before.

A perfect culmination to this set of lessons was The People vs. Columbus, et al. The students used their various resources to craft an argument and counter-arguments, and we had a debate about who was responsible for the genocide. They passionately took on their roles and characters, using textual evidence and thinking critically. It has been one of their favorite lessons since the school started and I know they want to participate in more debates!

This lesson perfectly combined speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills, all so that students could have a better understanding of the past.

High School Social Studies Teacher, Lemoore, California

The science teacher told me that students were arguing during lunch about The People vs. Columbus et al. trial and who was to blame. This was the first time all school year he has heard students really talking about what they were learning outside of class time. To hear ninth graders thinking critically about how much of a person's action reflects individual choice vs. what society compels them to do and then applying that to major events in world history is amazing. Thank you, Zinn Education Project.

High School History Teacher, Washington, District of Columbia

I have used the lesson on colonization and the genocide of the Taínos for many years with my 7th graders. I give them primary and secondary sources to read first so that they can analyze perspective and bias. Then I put them in roles as defense lawyers for each of the teams, witnesses, court reporters, a jury, and a judge. The lawyers read the indictments from the Zinn Education Project and use the sources to help them come up with arguments to defend their sides. The jury summarizes the indictments to be read during the trial. The lawyers come up with opening and closing statements and witness questions. The witnesses prepare responses to the questions they will be asked, the judge prepares a script to be read during the trial.

The mock trial format of the lesson helps students to think critically about the history of the genocide and to craft arguments using evidence to enhance their position. Students become really passionate about the trial and many express their desire to be a lawyer at the end of it. Ultimately, students are divided about who they think is to blame for the genocide, which sets up a really nice conversation with students that there is no "right or wrong" and that many people, as well as the system of the empire, are to blame.

This has fostered really high-level discussions in my class and has allowed students to use their voice effectively while developing persuasive arguments. I love how organized the Zinn Education Project is and how they foster engagement in students. It is something I will continue to use for years.

Middle School Social Studies Teacher, Fredonia, Wisconsin

The People vs. Columbus trial was a perfect start of the year assignment for my 8th graders, and they were absolutely excited to put Columbus on trial and develop questions and statements to roleplay the characters that they were assigned. I will definitely be using this lesson again in the future.

Additionally, it was a great way to get the other teachers on campus involved in my classroom since the students asked and got other teachers and administrators to come in and help judge the trial with me. They were excited to show other staff members the work they were doing to counteract the systems of oppression that were set up at the start of colonization. As Brown and Black students, they were excited to really look into the history of oppression that exists in our nation and argue about what or who made the underlying factors in developing the systems of oppression in the United States. The trial also helped develop conversations about why the systems still exist.

Middle School Social Studies Teacher, Glendale, California

When I first came across this website, one of the first activities I read was People vs. Columbus, et al. and I immediately began preparations to use it in my world history classes. After providing background information from A People's History and various primary sources, we set the trial up.

My students' reactions after the trial concludes can easily be described as unsettled. Never before had they heard of the crimes committed against the indigenous peoples of the "new world." Never before did they realize the impact Europeans had on the indigenous peoples of the western hemisphere.

I have a writing assignment attached to this activity. In two paragraphs, I ask that they tell me who they think is to blame for the crimes. I also ask if they think we should still celebrate Columbus Day.

Afterward, we take a look at our textbook. We look at the one paragraph devoted to Columbus in which it describes his ability to persuade Queen Isabella in 1492. That's it. That's all it says. Thanks to the Zinn Education Project, my students have a better understanding of the impact left by him and other Europeans. Now, they know more than just the year he sailed and the color of the ocean.

High Social Studies Teacher, Reidsville, Georgia

I always begin my U.S. history course with the People vs. Columbus, et al Trial. It is amazing how engaged students become to not only learn the truth but also be able to defend themselves using the evidence provided. Students love creativity and this case allows students to come to their own conclusions.

High School Social Studies Teacher, Hayward, California

I used the The People vs. Columbus, et al. lesson plan when I was a student teacher during the school year of 2020-2021. The lesson was very engaging and it encourages students to think about the causes and effects of European arrival to America.

Students were able to generate their authentic ideas regarding the slaughter of the Taíno Community. The lesson allows students to think about history from different perspectives and the activity encourages students to develop critical thinking skills. Since students have to participate in a trial, they were also able to develop public speaking skills.

Middle School Social Studies Teacher, New York, New York

More Classroom Stories

As a teacher, the Zinn Education Project website is invaluable because it provides activities that directly relate to A People's History. Last week we did The People vs. Columbus, et al. which places all the parties involved in the arrival of Columbus on trial for the murder of the Tainos. The activity was so interactive that teachers from other classrooms had to ask us to quiet down. Students were able to better understand the motives and consequences behind the arrival.

Even though A People's History can be a bit difficult for some students, the activities on the Zinn Education Project website makes the content accessible regardless of their reading level.

HIgh School Administrator, Washington, District of Columbia

Every year when I discuss the European Age of Exploration with my students, I spend time using the materials included in Bill Bigelow's excellent The People vs. Columbus, et al. lesson. However, instead of making it a trial that students participate in directly, I have it set up as a murder mystery: who is responsible for the deaths of all of these people? Though the format that I use is different than what Mr. Bigelow recommends, students still find the lesson engaging - the idea that they not only get to be critical of historical decision-makers, but also get to have agency over which one is the worst gets them involved with the topic.

Within this murder mystery, students act as a detective, gathering evidence from Mr. Bigelow's summaries and from other sources I have gathered. In the end, they need to write up a police report and prepare information to present to a grand jury. Students share their findings and then they debate who they believe is most guilty of the deaths of the Taíno people.

Middle School Social Studies Teacher, Silver Spring, Maryland

My students were completely engaged in The People vs. Columbus trial we held about the massacre of the Taíno people. They loved it! They were so outraged that Columbus Day is a federal holiday that I suggested we send letters to the editors of local newspapers and our city council. They were so excited. Most of the students chose to send letters. When a student's letter was published the next day advocating for our city to celebrate Indigenous People's Day, the students who had not yet sent letters immediately began to write their own.

It was a powerful lesson in civics, especially since my students are disenfranchised and feel like they don't have power to effect change politically.

High School Social Studies Teacher, Eugene, Oregon

When I do the Christopher Columbus lesson, the students are blown away. They are usually so surprised at the truth behind Columbus. They also love the role-playing. This year, when I was doing the lesson, my assistant principal walked in just as one of the students who usually sits quietly during social studies was standing up and asking a fiery round of questions to the defendants on the stand. I was so impressed with it. The lesson also gets students who I usually don't get a lot of participation out of to debate with the students who I do. I love it!

Middle Social Studies Teacher, Chicago, Illinois

The People vs. Columbus trial was so effective. I taught it in a Native American Studies course and the students spent a lot of time exploring primary source documents from Columbus and Las Casas.

It was powerful to watch them transform into excellent and passionate litigators, but basing their arguments upon historical evidence. Also, the power of role plays to induce empathy and compassion for various points of view was evident.

My students are all Native American and they are all too familiar with the concepts of genocide and exploitation. However, many of them did not know about the Taíno and were curious to learn more. At the conclusion we watched the film Even the Rain to enhance their understanding of the texts, and also to learn more about the Cochabamba water war to piece together an interdisciplinary unit about water that they were engaged in.

High School Social Studies Teacher, Santa Fe, New Mexico

The Christopher Columbus trial is a phenomenal lesson to use with students. First, it forces them to think about the construct of our globalized world in a new and critical manner. Americans are bred upon the unchallenged idea of superiority and equality, and it is troubling for them to have to see that the true pillars of trade, colonization, exploration, and expansion are instead rooted in forced inferiority and exploitation. This lesson further challenges students to give up the stereotypes and nostalgia surrounding Native Americans (in this case on Hispaniola) and see them as people who had functioning societies and belief systems. The most powerful aspect of the lesson, however, is the way it forces students to research, utilize primary resources, think in a debate-like manner, and justify their positions with evidence.

One of my students returned to visit me last month to inform me that because of partaking in this lesson last year, he joined an online group advocating the end of Columbus Day. I was impressed to have a 10th grade student not only take a firm stand on something, but actually take action to incite change. Another of my students said that this "was the best lesson I ever learned because it helped me believe that there is 'real' history I can learn from."

High School Language Arts/English Teacher, Hollywood, Florida

The People vs. Columbus lesson was transformative in my classroom. Students were initially motivated by the competitive aspect of the lesson in trying to "win" during the trial. During the preparation of this lesson, students were able to really practice historical contextualization by looking through various points of view.

Additionally, I supplemented this lesson with primary sources from Voices of a People's History. Working with the primary sources provoked deep discussion about why certain points of view are omitted or de-emphasized in American History. We compared Las Casas to Columbus and discussed the development of racism and ethnocentrism.

On the day of the trial, students were completely engaged in the process of argumentation, viewing history (in many cases for the first time) as more than just fact, but a series of arguments presented through various frameworks. By the end of the trial, it was clear that blame was very difficult to lay on just one group. It encouraged them to think more critically about a complex web of contingencies that all led to the genocide of the Taínos. They were engaged through the entire unit, practiced presentation skills, research, historical argumentation, and more.

High Social Studies Teacher, Durham, North Carolina

I teach U.S. history to juniors. Our first unit is on the first peoples of North America. Our second unit begins exploring the impact European colonization had the the indigenous people of the Americas. At the end of this second unit, we use The People vs. Columbus, et al in order to critically examine the forces that created and maintained imperialism. I supplement by focusing more time on the Taínos, their rebellions, and their leaders.

Besides being incredibly informative and an excellent way to teach claim and evidence, this Zinn Education Project lesson is also really fun for students. Every year, my students say it is one of their favorite things from the school year, especially for those who enjoy getting into character and "embellishing." For example, I had lawyers attempt to bribe jury members or the judge, dramatic reenactment of specific conversations or crimes, and more. At the same time, students understand and respect the gravity of the history lesson and the genocide of the Taínos.

-Priscilla Lizasuain-Vazquez

High Social Studies Teacher, Chicago, Illinois

I am the secondary guide (middle school teacher) in Davis, West Virginia, at the Mountain Laurel Learning Cooperative, a Montessori learning center for students age 3-14. I developed this middle school program last year, so this is our inaugural year and a big success so far. Our curriculum is centered around social justice, environmental stewardship, and mindfulness.

I rely heavily on the Zinn Education Project for the social justice component of our program. One of the best experiences I had with my students this year was on Columbus Day when we followed the mock trail lesson, People vs. Columbus, et al. The students really got into this activity. The upper elementary students (grades 4-6) joined us to be the jurors and audience. Fervent speeches were made and thoughtful and powerful discussion ensued. My students noted this activity as one of their highlights this fall. Thank you so much for the resource.

Middle School Social Studies Teacher, Davis, West Virginia

The People vs. Columbus, et al. was a unique way to bring the often hidden story of the Taíno peoples to my class. Many students had never been exposed to the unjustified treatment of the Taíno. The activity immersed students in the past and allowed them to hear a new perspective of the "founding" of the Americas. Thank you Zinn Education Project.

Middle Social Studies Teacher, St. Louis, Missouri

Every year I use the Columbus trial lesson from the Zinn Education Project. It's by far my most popular activity all year. It's amazing to see all the critical thinking that's set on fire. It prompts so many arguments, discussions, and discoveries in their outside research. When seniors who've had my class come in and see the desks rearranged for the trial, they always exclaim, "Oh, they're doing the Columbus trial? I remember that! I miss that!" It helps them see the power of greed and how that mindset has affected subsequent historical events. Thank you so much for helping promote so much important learning in my classroom.

High Social Studies Teacher, Portland, Oregon

Our students were incredibly engaged in the reading and learning and had meaningful group discussions that focused on choices made by Columbus and other explorers and their impact on the world.

Overall, having access to the Zinn reading and activities has encouraged my students to be excited about reading and history, show self-motivated engagement, and look at both the positives and negatives in history without the rose-colored tint that other resources often provide for students.

Middle School Humanities Teacher, Los Angeles, California

Maryland does not celebrate Columbus Day, so students are in school. To show the impact of Columbus's voyage on Indigenous people, this exercise provided an eye-opener for students as well as instructors. It was done with four GED classes that were at various learning levels. Students were randomly selected from each class to participate in the trial and one class served as observers and writers of the exercise. Students were able to show clear critical thinking skills that we rarely use with our other learning materials. The students and instructors truly enjoyed the exercise and it was reported in our newsletter.

Teacher Educator, Maryland

I have used the Columbus trial lesson from the Zinn Education Project website, and it went fantastically well. I teach high school Spanish, and this lesson completely changed their outlook on: (1) Who Columbus actually was; and (2) What we as Americans value as a society. I saw their critical thinking skills broaden before my eyes, and the lesson was so easy to maneuver for me!

Plus, the Spanish version of "Los cargos" made it that much easier to differentiate the lessons. Now that they understand the beginning of Europeans in the New World, we'll continue through the study of Latin American history throughout the next two years. I felt it important that they understand where much of the ill will started in this history, and between Columbus and Pizarro, I now believe that they have a good grasp of that. Thanks for your help in making this AWESOME unit!

High School Language Teacher, Florahome, Florida

In a blog post about this lesson in action, Adrian Hoppel at the Talking Stick Learning Center describes how his students found all parties except the Taíno guilty - and apologized to the Taíno for being charged and being brought to a trial for their own genocide.

Each of the defendant groups did an amazing job defending themselves, pulling all of the obvious rationalizations you'd expect, but also surprising me with some very creative defenses. For example, when attempting to defend The System of Empire, the defendant stated that "while my system, unfortunately, allows for abuse and atrocities, it does not require them; you still have to choose, on your own, to commit them." I thought that was surprisingly astute.

By working hard to defend each of these groups, the hope was that each group would be examined for its complicity in this crime, and I feel this was most definitely accomplished.

Beyond the Classroom

Student Film Critiques Textbook Accounts and Hero Worshipping

D.C. high school teacher Julian Hipkins III used The People vs. Columbus, et al. lesson with his 11th grade U.S. history class at Capital City Public Charter School and introduced them to Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. Four of his students (Jared, Ana Marie, Jonah, and Mayra) were inspired to make a film called Columbus-The Real Story. Using feature film clips and interviews with school staff, the film critiques and analyzes textbook accounts of Columbus. Columbus-The Real Story was selected as a D.C. citywide entry for the 2011 National History Day competition.

Columbus - The Hidden History from Nonchalant Filmmakers on Vimeo.

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The People vs. Columbus, et al. - Zinn Education Project

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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow with contributions from members of the Taíno Community. Rethinking Schools. 13 pages. A trial role play asks students to determine who is responsible for the death of millions of Taínos on the island of Hispaniola in the late 15th century.

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My unit on the largely unknown history of the internment of Japanese Latin Americans began 12 years ago. I was on a bus from Portland, Ore., to Tule Lake, Calif., site of one of the largest Japanese American incarceration camps during World War II. "I am from Japan," the elder sitting next to me said in Japanese. "But I am originally from Peru." For me, it was an honorable coincidence to find myself next to this elder.

An elder sitting in front of us turned around and said in English, "He looks very familiar." As I translated their conversation, it came out that they were both young boys interned at Tule Lake. "I know him!" said the Japanese American elder. "He was my friend!" Grabbing the Peruvian man's hand and shaking it firmly, he explained that they played baseball together often but that one day his friend just disappeared. His friend had only spoken Spanish, so he could never ask him what he was doing in the camp. He had wondered all of these years what had happened to him. The Peruvian Japanese elder's face beamed with joy as the two continued to shake hands, not letting go. "I am so glad you are safe," he said. They had reunited after more than 50 years.

This lesson was published in the Fall 2010 issue of Rethinking Schools magazine, "Fighting For Our Schools." For more articles and lessons like "The Other Internment: Teaching the Hidden Story of Japanese Latin Americans During WWII," order Rethinking Schools magazine " Fighting For Our Schools." See Table of Contents.

See Related Resources on Asian American history.

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The Other Internment: Teaching the Hidden Story of Japanese Latin Americans During WWII - Zinn Education Project

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My unit on the largely unknown history of the internment of Japanese Latin Americans began 12 years ago. I was on a bus from Portland, Ore., to Tule Lake, Calif., site of one of the largest Japanese American incarceration camps during World War II.

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The Puyallup Fair, 35 miles south of Seattle ranks as one of the 10 largest fairs in the world. When I was growing up, every September my mom, dad, brother, sister, and I drove the 20 minutes from our house to the fairgrounds to spend the day. We kids looked forward to cotton candy and bumper car rides. Mom and Dad held our hands as we ooh-ed and ah-ed over 200-pound pumpkins. There were magic shows, animals to pet, cows to milk, and the World Famous Earthquake Burger.

Up until several years ago, local school districts released children early on the second or third Wednesday of the school year with free tickets to attend the Puyallup Fair. Even today districts distribute free admission tickets to schoolchildren. For people who grow up in this area, the fair is a tradition.

I'm sure I was not more than 2 years old the first time I attended the fair. Still, it was another 10 years before I learned some of the fairgrounds' history. In middle school, I was close friends with a girl whose father was Japanese American. In 1988, she told me that her grandmother would receive several thousand dollars from the government as part of an apology for incarcerating her and her family at the Puyallup fairgrounds during World War II.

The individual roles include:

Joe Hanada, an 11 years old and live in Auburn, Washington in the early 1940s whose parents are Japanese

Grandmother Hanada, a Japanese-born Issei, who has no love for the government-neither the Japanese nor the U.S. government

Michi Hanada, the mother of Joe, 11, and Mike, 16, who was born in Japan but came to the United States 20 years ago with her husband

Mike Hanada, a No-No Boy, for refusing to fight on behalf of the United States or forswear allegiance to Japan

Mae, a friend of Joe Hanada's in Auburn, Washington

Tomio Hanada, a very active man in the Japanese American community in Auburn, Washington during the early 1940s

Ray O'Brien, an Irish American and who's best friend is Joe Hanada, a Japanese American boy in his class

Mr. Spooner, owns a farm near Auburn, Washington, and is friendly with the Hanada family

Mr. O'Brien, an immigrant to the United States from Ireland who knows the Hanada family

Mr. Langley, who lives on the same street with the Hanada family and believes the Japanese are disloyal

Mrs. O'Brien, the mother of Ray O'Brien, Joe Hanada's best friend

Harold Langley, who goes to school with Joe Hanada and Ray O'Brien

Sergeant Sandy, a guard at the Tule Lake Relocation Camp in Northern California

Mrs. Lynden, a sixth grade teacher in Auburn, Washington, who is concerned about the safety of her students

FBI agent, who job is to find suspected traitors and remove them from their homes before they can contact their superiors in Japan

David Omatsu, an American-born a No-No Boy, for refusing to fight on behalf of the United States or forswear allegiance to Japan

Mr. Moffitt, a teacher at the Tule Lake Relocation Camp in Northern California

Mrs. Terada, an elderly Japanese American woman who was taken to the Tule Lake Relocation Camp

Phillip Yatsuda, an 11-year-old Japanese American boy who has been taken to the Tule Lake Relocation Camp

Mr. Yatsuda, a hardworking Japanese American who was taken to the Tule Lake Relocation Camp

This lesson was published by Rethinking Schools in a special edition of Rethinking Schools magazine, honoring Howard Zinn's legacy after his death that year ( Spring 2010; Vol. 24, #3). For more articles and lessons like "Learning About the Unfairgrounds: A 4th-Grade Teacher Introduces Her Students to Executive Order 9066," order Rethinking Schools magazine. See Table of Contents.

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Learning About the Unfairgrounds: A 4th-Grade Teacher Introduces Her Students to Executive Order 9066 - Zinn Education Project

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The Puyallup Fair, 35 miles south of Seattle ranks as one of the 10 largest fairs in the world. When I was growing up, every September my mom, dad, brother, sister, and I drove the 20 minutes from our house to the fairgrounds to spend the day.

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This activity embodies a couple of key insights of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. One is that history is not inevitable. People's choices matter. Through role play, students in this lesson explore some of the actual dilemmas faced by strikers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912. Here, the teaching methodology is designed to match the history itself, as students portray Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.) organizers deciding how - and for what - to conduct a massive strike. The other is that social class matters. Too often, traditional textbooks and curricula neglect the way social class has shaped our country's history and how people's understanding of class has influenced their actions.

Social class is at the heart of this lesson, as it is at the heart of so much of Howard Zinn's work. This activity - co-authored with Norm Diamond and included originally in the book The Power in Our Hands: A Curriculum on the History of Work and Workers in the United States - highlights how unions can have different goals and structures than the ones that predominate today.

In "Lawrence, 1912," students contrast the American Federation of Labor and the Industrial Workers of the World. Students act as, and empathize with, union organizers. The role play illustrates, well, the power in our hands - one of the first major victories for U.S. labor, and an inspirational instance of worker solidarity. This lesson broadens students' sense of what workers can and do fight for beyond wages and benefits.

This is one of the 16 lessons available from The Power In Our Hands.

Classroom Stories

This week's @ZinnEdProject activity is about the 1912 🍞 and 🌹 Strike. One of my students imagined himself as a recent Polish immigrant and wrote his internal monologue in Polish!! @SAC_PR students are the best 🤓 pic.twitter.com/HuRvDM6fLJ

- Amelia E Serafine (@AmeliaESerafine) February 14, 2019

High School Social Studies Teacher, New York

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Lawrence, 1912: The Singing Strike - Zinn Education Project

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This activity embodies a couple of key insights of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States . One is that history is not inevitable. People's choices matter. Through role play, students in this lesson explore some of the actual dilemmas faced by strikers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912.

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"Who here would have been against slavery if you suddenly found yourself living in those times?"

I've asked a version of this question to many U.S. history classes over the years.

Every student raises a hand.

"So what exactly would you have done to end slavery?"

Puzzled looks are generally the response to this question. What should we do, what can we do, when we are confronted by the enormity of an injustice like slavery? It's not an easy question for my students, and it wasn't an easy question for the people who opposed slavery in those times. The answers were struggled over in the abolition movement, one of the most significant social movements in U.S. history, but underappreciated in today's history curriculum.

. . . .

I created a role play in which every student in class portrayed a member of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS). As the AASS, the class would encounter some of the difficult strategic choices that confronted the actual organization throughout its history. I'd be present as teacher to observe and take notes, but I would play no role in their deliberations.

...I distribute a handout with five strategic dilemmas that faced the AASS at different points from its founding in 1833 until 1858:

* Should the AASS support "colonization" schemes to send people freed from slavery to Africa?
* Should the AASS spend time and money opposing racial discrimination in the North as well as attempting to end slavery in the South?
* Should the AASS support efforts to gain greater equality for women?
* Should the AASS support armed attempts to resist enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act?
* Should the AASS support John Brown either with guns or money?

These were actual historical dilemmas, although I took some liberty in suggesting that they were each debated in an assembly of AASS members.

This lesson was originally published in the Summer 2010 edition of Rethinking Schools magazine and is one of 10 lessons in the 2019 Rethinking Schools publication Teaching a People's History of Abolition and the Civil War, edited by Adam Sanchez.

"A valuable blueprint for teaching the history of abolitionism and the end of slavery. . . . Coming at a moment of activism by modern descendants of the struggle for freedom, the book could not be more timely." - Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor Emeritus of History, Columbia University and author of The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery

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'If There Is No Struggle...': Teaching a People's History of the Abolition Movement | Zinn Education Project

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"Who here would have been against slavery if you suddenly found yourself living in those times?" I've asked a version of this question to many U.S. history classes over the years. Every student raises a hand. "So what exactly would you have done to end slavery?"

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Somewhere back in school I learned about the 19th-century Irish Potato Famine: More than a million people starved to death when blight hit Ireland's main crop, the potato. The famine meant tremendous human suffering and triggered a mass migration, largely to the United States. All this is true. But it is also incomplete and misses key facts that link past and present global hunger.

Beginning in 1845, blight did begin to hit Ireland's potato crop, which was the staple food of the Irish poor. But all other crops were unaffected. And during the worst famine years, British-ruled Ireland continued to export vast amounts of food.... In approaching the potato famine in my global studies class, I wanted students to see that hunger is less a natural phenomenon than it is a political and economic phenomenon.

In 19th-century Ireland, food was a commodity, distributed largely to those who had the means to pay for it. Like today, the capitalist market ruled, and commerce trumped need. According to the Institute for Food and Development Policy/Food First, "Enough food is available to provide at least 4.3 pounds of food per person a day worldwide: two and a half pounds of grain, beans, and nuts, about a pound of fruits and vegetables, and nearly another pound of meat, milk, and eggs." And yet, according to the organization Bread for the World, 852 million people in the world are hungry, and every day 16,000 children die of hunger-related causes. The main issue was and continues to be: Who controls the land and for what purposes?

This lesson was published by Rethinking Schools in the " Feeding the Children " (Summer 2006) issue.

For more lessons like "Hunger on Trial: An Activity on the Irish Potato Famine and Its Meaning for Today," order the Rethinking Schools book, A People's Curriculum for the Earth.

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Hunger on Trial: An Activity on the Irish Potato Famine and Its Meaning for Today - Zinn Education Project

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Somewhere back in school I learned about the 19th-century Irish Potato Famine: More than a million people starved to death when blight hit Ireland's main crop, the potato. The famine meant tremendous human suffering and triggered a mass migration, largely to the United States. All this is true.

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As high school teachers of history and government, we teach about reparations at multiple points across the curriculum. Students learn about the reparations imposed upon Germany by the Treaty of Versailles following World War I; students learn about the failure of the U.S. government to enact reparations - 40 acres and a mule - for newly emancipated people during Reconstruction; students learn about the 1988 Civil Liberties Act through which Congress paid 82,000 Japanese American survivors of the U.S. government's wartime incarceration program $20,000 each, totaling more than $1.6 billion. But when we have asked our students to grapple with the possibility of the United States paying reparations today - for slavery and its 20th- and 21st-century legacies of white supremacist violence, disenfranchisement, and exploitation - we find students struggle to unleash their critical imaginations.

Some students hold fast to the "slavery is long gone" line of thinking. Some students are frozen by the magnitude of the harm: How could any amount of money ever properly address the wickedness of slavery and racism? Other students worry about the practical questions: Who would be eligible to receive payment? What form would payment take? How long would a reparations program last and how much would it cost? These responses are understandable and important; yet, we noticed that students had trouble navigating through their initial positions to engage with a broader scope of possibilities. Students got stuck thinking of reparations only as a onetime compensatory payment intended to right the wrongs of history.

We developed this lesson to help students find a way into thinking and talking more imaginatively about reparations in general before we ask them to examine the modern debate over African American reparations specifically. (We have been piloting an African American reparations role play that will be completed and posted later this year.) We want students to consider how a legacy of injustice as deeply rooted and multidimensional as anti-Black racism in the United States requires a multifaceted strategy, not a single action.

In this mixer role play, students learn about more than a dozen different examples of reparations - ranging from cash payments to land settlements to state apologies - from a variety of historical moments and places. Students meet those who advocated for reparations, those who received them, and those who did not. They walk away from the activity with a greater understanding of the horizon of possible reparative policies and enough examples to begin to analyze and articulate their own beliefs about the appropriate context, goal, and form of reparations.
Materials Needed

Mixer roles, cut up, one for every student in the class.

Blank nametags, enough for every student in the class.

Copies of Reparations Mixer Questions for every student.

Time Required

1-2 90-minute block class periods.

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How to Make Amends: A Lesson on Reparations - Zinn Education Project

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As high school teachers of history and government, we teach about reparations at multiple points across the curriculum. Students learn about the reparations imposed upon Germany by the Treaty of Versailles following World War I; students learn about the failure of the U.S.

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An 11th-grade student leaned back in his chair at Lincoln High School in Portland, Oregon, and said, "Absurd. That is the only way to describe those numbers. They are absurd." He and his classmates had just read statistics about the racial wealth gap in their Political Economy class: White households are worth at least 10 times as much as Black households; only 15 percent of whites have zero or negative wealth while a third of Blacks do; Black families making $100,000 typically live in the kinds of neighborhoods inhabited by white families making $30,000. These numbers are absurd, and they are not accidental.

This lesson, " How Red Lines Built White Wealth: A Lesson on Housing Segregation in the 20th Century," 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.

The mixer role play is based on Richard Rothstein's The Color of Law (Liveright, 2017), which shows in exacting detail how government policies segregated every major city in the United States with dire consequences for African Americans. Students encounter stories about the Home Owners' Loan Corporation, the Federal Housing Administration, the Veterans Administration, redlining, blockbusting, zoning, racially restrictive deeds and covenants, and move-in violence. Students also meet many people who fought bravely against this dizzying array of racist policies.

This could be an introductory lesson in a unit on housing segregation, gentrification, the racial wealth gap, and/or reparations in a U.S. history, economics, or government course.

For more context and background on this lesson, read the online article, The Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated the United States by Richard Rothstein.

From the author of The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein:

I recommend this important Zinn Education Project lesson, "How Red Lines Built White Wealth: A Lesson on Housing Segregation in the 20th Century," for use by middle school to college instructors.

Based on The Color of Law, it teaches about residential segregation in a fashion that is both accurate and creative. With it, teachers can correct the misinformation in textbooks that typically promote a myth that we came to be segregated by private actions alone. If younger generations finally learn the truth with a lesson like this, they'll be in a better position to redress the unconstitutional segregation and inequality that was created by our government.

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How Red Lines Built White Wealth: A Lesson on Housing Segregation in the 20th Century - Zinn Education Project

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Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca. Rethinking Schools. The mixer role play 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.

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Students are often skeptical about the possibility of people genuinely working together when at least their short-term interests appear in conflict. The Homestead Strike is a historical test case that may challenge their skepticism. In this widely used role play, students become participants in one of the most famous strikes in U.S. history, the 1892 strike in Homestead, Pennsylvania.

In the Homestead Strike role play, students begin to explore some of the themes that are important in understanding the relationship between workers, owners, and government, after the 19th century: different types of unions; the role of government intervention; new capital formations that stimulated industry-wide organization among workers.

Classroom Stories

Battle of Homestead today- students' favorite parts seem to be when the tugboat Little Bill pulls the Pinkertons up the river and of course Berkman's hapless assassination attempt. Such a great activity from @ZinnEdProject pic.twitter.com/QEevNyR8ud

- Amelia E Serafine (@AmeliaESerafine) January 31, 2019

The Homestead Strike is one of the 16 labor history lessons available for free download from The Power In Our Hands.

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The Homestead Strike - Zinn Education Project

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Students are often skeptical about the possibility of people genuinely working together when at least their short-term interests appear in conflict. The Homestead Strike is a historical test case that may challenge their skepticism. In this widely used role play, students become participants in one of the most famous strikes in U.S.

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When I asked my 9th-grade modern world history classes to write a list of what they knew about the war in Iraq, Liza's response was typical: "I'm ashamed to say this, but I literally know very little to nothing."

Since U.S. troops were pulled out in 2011, news coverage of Iraq has all but disappeared from the mainstream media and, consequently, from the minds of most high school students, including the ones I teach at Madison High School in northeast Portland, Oregon.

Of course, like every war, there is a battle over what version of that history is passed on. Modern World History presents the Iraq invasion as reasonable and inevitable, repeats the Bush administration's lies about weapons of mass destruction and 9/11, and ignores the antiwar movement and all Iraqi voices. The section's only "critical writing" activity asks students to write a victory speech for then-President George W. Bush.

One essential flaw in Holt McDougal's description of the Iraq war - and a familiar theme in the portrayal of any war - is that it is depicted as a purely military affair. When we teach about wars, even from a critical standpoint, too often we focus only on the military aspects. But whether it's Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq, there is always an economic dimension.

Inspired by Naomi Klein's groundbreaking article, " Baghdad Year Zero," I wrote a role play that examines the economic dimensions of the Iraq war.

Roles included with this lesson are:

Iraqi Trade Unionists

Iraqi Farmers

Iraqi Businessmen

U.S. Corporate Executives

U.S. Government

This lesson was published in the Winter 2013/2014 issue of Rethinking Schools magazine. For other lessons and articles, visit www.rethinkingschools.org and see the resources listed below.

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Greed as a Weapon: Teaching the Other Iraq War - Zinn Education Project

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When I asked my 9th-grade modern world history classes to write a list of what they knew about the war in Iraq, Liza's response was typical: "I'm ashamed to say this, but I literally know very little to nothing." Since U.S.

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La Vía Campesina is arguably the largest social movement in the world. As of 2019, it comprised 182 local and national organizations in 81 countries, and represented about 200 million farmers. And yet, try finding a mention of La Vía Campesina in mainstream textbooks.

One of the reasons textbooks fail to include discussions of La Vía Campesina-and other social movements, for that matter-is because the publishers presume that change comes from the top. Textbooks teach students to look to Great Individuals, governments, corporations, multilateral organizations, the United Nations. According to the official stories offered in textbooks, power flows downhill, from the commanding heights. Another source of La Vía Campesina's invisibility is textbooks' core narrative-that humanity is in the midst of a pageant of progress, powered by science, technology, and capitalism. Peasants, by contrast, represent backwardness, pockets of ancient history waiting around in the countryside for the beneficent arrival of the modern world.

This role play on La Vía Campesina challenges both these notions. Not only does La Vía Campesina's work call into question a future of corporate-dominated globalized markets and homogenized bigness, it has dramatically changed the global conversation about agriculture, food, and hunger as well. This role play allows for these vital conversations to occur in our classrooms. When they represent members of La Vía Campesina, students grapple with core issues that many in the industrialized West choose to ignore, or have never thought to question.

We designed this role play to teach some of the facts of La Vía Campesina, but in a way that invites students to "become" La Vía Campesina activists throughout the world, discovering differences, common circumstances, and shared objectives-and defining together what they mean by "food sovereignty," the animating principle of the organization. Through role play, students take on personas representing six of the many constituent organizations that make up La Vía Campesina:

the Basque peasants union (EHNE)

Brazil's Landless Workers Movement (MST)

Haiti's Group of 4 and the Dessalines Brigade

the National Peasants Union of Mozambique

the Korean Women's Peasant Association; and

the Tamil Nadu Women's Collective of southern India.

Members of each group learn about one another in a mixer activity and meet some of the actual La Vía Campesina activists by viewing a film produced by the organization. They encounter an entirely different strategy to feed the world, one articulated by the world's wealthiest G7 countries. And finally, students propose and organize for alternatives to the G7 agricultural vision.

This lesson was originally published by Rethinking Schools in A People's Curriculum for the Earth.

Classroom Story

I chose to do Food, Farming, and Justice: A Role Play on La Vía Campesina with seniors in International Issues, where they completed the role play for their midterm exam. Our course uses the critical lenses of racism, imperialism, capitalism, and the climate crisis to investigate human rights issues. So, this role play has been a perfect supplement to our work. The materials are so well-designed, thoughtful, challenging, yet accessible, that all of my students have been 100% engaged.

Students were so engrossed in the mixer at the beginning of the lesson that they responded with cries of "No! You can't make us stop!" when I told them class was ending and we could continue our work during the next class.

Thank you Zinn Education Project. Your materials help me to be a better teacher and they help my students have more meaningful and memorable experiences in the classroom.

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Food, Farming, and Justice: A Role Play on La Vía Campesina - Zinn Education Project

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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow, Chris Buehler, Julie Treick O'Neill, and Tim Swinehart. Rethinking Schools. This role play invites students to take on identities of La Vía Campesina activists around the world, to compare/contrast circumstances in order to discover the common goal of "food sovereignty."

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Most of my students share a cartoon-like version of the causes of the Civil War: slavery was horrible; President Abraham Lincoln was a great man who hated slavery; so, to free the slaves, he fought a war against the South; the North won and the slaves were freed. This common but wildly inaccurate history reinforces at least two unfortunate myths: the United States fights wars only for high moral purposes; and African Americans owe their freedom to the efforts of a great white man. The activities in this lesson offer students a more complex and truthful historical picture, and, thus, help to puncture these myths.

Four political parties competed for the presidency in 1860. The outcome resulted in a social earthquake that permanently transformed the United States of America. The role play asks students to confront the actual issues addressed by the different parties in 1860. It gives students the tools to analyze some of the main causes of the Civil War, and helps them expel the simplistic notions of the war's aims that they may, perhaps unconsciously, carry around.

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The Election of 1860 Role Play " Zinn Education Project

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Most of my students share a cartoon-like version of the causes of the Civil War: slavery was horrible; President Abraham Lincoln was a great man who hated slavery; so, to free the slaves, he fought a war against the South; the North won and the slaves were freed.

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Teaching Activities (Free)

Teaching Activity. By Julie Treick O'Neill and Tim Swinehart. 16 pages. Rethinking Schools.
A role play on the Indigenous Peoples' Global Summit on Climate Change asks students to develop a list of demands to present to the rest of the world at a climate change meeting.

Time Periods: 21st Century, 2001 - Present

Themes: Climate Justice, Environment, Native American, Pacific Islander, Science, World History/Global Studies

What does it mean to take Axam's question seriously? For many of us in the wealthy and so-called "developed" countries of the world, it means learning about the very real and life-threatening ways that climate change is affecting some of the world's poorest populations.

We used materials from the Zinn Education Project, Rethinking Schools, and Teaching for Change with our 7th grade to create an interdisciplinary, experiential project that explored Indigenous Perspectives on Climate Change. It was the perfect way to tie together our humanities unit on Indigenous Perspectives on American History with the STEM unit on deep time and extinction-level events.

Our students prepared for the 'Don't Take Our Voices Away' indigenous people's climate summit simulation as a final learning demonstration. Taking on the perspectives of various indigenous groups was something our students took seriously as they researched both the cultures and climate challenges faced by the groups. Then, at the summit, they did presentations that explained the priorities and needs of those groups before launching into negotiations about how to best communicate those perspectives with the rest of the world.

Leading up to the summit, we took a climate justice gallery walk using photos shared on the ZEP website, researched indigenous climate activists, and also did the Meet Today's Climate Justice Activists mixer. Those activities were the perfect scaffold to the summit. Overall, I saw my students develop deep understanding and empathy through the interactive and experiential materials provided by the Zinn Education Project.

I am grateful to have participated in a workshop where I learned how to use them. Now that I am at a school where our model centers experiential project based learning, these materials have become an invaluable resource.

Middle School Humanities and Math Teacher, Washington, District of Columbia

I'm a Participation in Government teacher at Metropolitan Expeditionary Learning School, a public 6-12 school in Queens, New York. We have some latitude to design our own curriculum at my school, and given our motto as a "school for a sustainable city," with a focus on designing learning experiences around environmental and social justice, we work to thread the climate crisis into many of our case studies across the disciplines.

This year, we wanted to kick off the semester in Government class by thinking about ways in which people traditionally, and non-traditionally, "participate in government." We also wanted to explore on-going fights where communities rise up against the confluence of big business, fossil fuel companies, lobbyists, and dark money to fight to protect the Earth. The Zinn Education Project's Teach Climate Justice resources were a boon to spark our curricular thinking.

Using the Don't Take Our Voices Away role play as inspiration, we decided to teach and learn deeply about the Dakota Access Pipeline Fight as a way to better understand indigenous peoples' perspectives on climate, and also to analyze the heroic methods and strategies used by #noDAPL protesters to make their voices heard. Teaching the role play over a few days to build background knowledge, we wanted students to be able to empathize with the stakeholders in this fight in order to better understand the stakes, and the resources, both natural and financial, at play in this particular issue. Without much other context, we jumped right into the role play. Once all of the DAPL stakeholders were named and their arguments analyzed, we were then able to dig into the context behind each of these positions.

In order for students to understand the ways in which people power with limited resources (as the Standing Rock Sioux exemplified) can strategize and make their voices heard, students needed to investigate the levers of power. So, we introduced our students to an old chestnut of community-based organizing strategy: power mapping.

Using the Midwest Academy framework and the resources from Zinn to provide primary and secondary source support, students power-mapped (and backwards power-mapped) the DAPL fight. They thought about specific targets - or stakeholders they wanted to move - as they designed short-, medium-, and long-term goals to achieve their organizational aims and to move stakeholders.

These frameworks allowed students to explore the roots of grassroots organizing. With with the examples provided by the Standing Rock Sioux and the curricular supports provided by the Zinn Education Project, the power mapping exercise was not just theoretical for my students, but was a case of real stakes and the struggle for climate justice.

High School Social Studies Teacher, New York

There are few lessons that I enjoy teaching more than ' Don't Take Our Voices Away': A Role Play on the Indigenous Peoples' Global Summit on Climate Change in my science classroom. In part, because it gives tangible details and a human face to the issue, not just a story of polar bears or talk about temperature. This is missing in a lot of the science curriculum we are provided. Likewise, the voice of indigenous people in the world is something quite absent in our westernized science curriculum, which is maybe not surprising because these voices are also being left out of world decisions. Those points are what drew me to teaching the lesson. I keep teaching it because of how my students respond. They enjoy the structure of the activity, that they have some agency and control in what happens, as they get to take on the roles and make proposals.

Middle Science Teacher, Durham, North Carolina

Additional Resources

Paradise Lost. PBS NOW traveled to the nation of Kiribati to see up close how climate change affects residents' daily lives and how they are dealing with the reality that both their land and culture could disappear from the Earth. NOW also traveled to New Zealand to visit an I-Kiribati community that has already left its home, and to the Pacific Island Forum in Niue to see how the rest of the region is coping with the immediate crisis of climate change. [Producer's description.] This film can be viewed for free online. It was used in the classroom and is recommended by the teachers who wrote "'Don't Take Our Voices Away': A Role Play on the Indigenous Peoples' Global Summit on Climate Change."

The Island President tells the story of President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives. After leading a 20-year pro-democracy movement, surviving repeated imprisonments and torture, Nasheed becomes president at 41, only to encounter the crisis of climate change. Considered the lowest lying country in the world, a rise of a mere three meters in sea level would inundate the 1,200 islands of the Maldives, rendering the country practically unlivable. [Producer's description.]

Democracy Now! interview withMohamed Axam Maumoon, the 15-year-old environmental ambassador from the Maldives, challenging Western viewers by asking, "Would you commit murder?"

Democracy Now! clip featuring youth activistKari Fulton speaking at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico: "We want people to know that whether you live in the forest, whether you live in the hood, you will be impacted by false solutions."

Coup in Maldives: Adviser to Ousted Pres. Mohamed Nasheed Speaks Out from Hiding as Arrest Sought. Democracy Now! broadcast, 2/9/2012.

Lessons, books, films, and websites for teaching about climate change in K-12 classrooms.

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'Don't Take Our Voices Away': A Role Play on the Indigenous Peoples' Global Summit on Climate Change - Zinn Education Project

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Teaching Activity. By Julie Treick O'Neill and Tim Swinehart. 16 pages. Rethinking Schools. A role play on the Indigenous Peoples' Global Summit on Climate Change asks students to develop a list of demands to present to the rest of the world at a climate change meeting.

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Which country is the No. 1 supplier of oil to the United States? Saudi Arabia? No. Iraq? No. Russia? No.

My geography students were surprised to learn it's my country-Canada. Most of that oil comes from the tar sands located in northern Alberta, in an area roughly the size of Florida. The Alberta tar sands are home to the world's second largest deposit of oil, after Saudi Arabia. They are also the source of great controversy, seen by some as "Canada's greatest treasure" and others as "Canada's greatest shame."

As a Canadian teaching at an international school in New York City, I had long been planning to teach about the tar sands. Although many people are aware of the devastating effects of BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico or Shell's human rights abuses in Nigeria, few know about the enormous environmental and social injustice caused by oil extraction just to the north. The perfect opportunity to teach about this issue arose this past fall when the media focused attention on the proposed TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline. If approved, this pipeline would have brought as much as 700,000 barrels a day of crude oil from Alberta's tar sands to refineries in Texas.

Who would benefit most from the pipeline? Who would suffer? What would be the pipeline's long-term effects on the environment, economy, and on local communities? Should we support or resist increasing the capacity of the tar sands? These were the questions that I wanted my geography students (most of whom come from relatively privileged backgrounds) to consider.

To confront these questions, I wrote a role play where students take on the characters of six key stakeholders invited to an imaginary public hearing, chaired by then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (played by myself), to discuss whether or not the State Department and the president should approve the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Key stakeholder roles included with this lesson are:

The Tar Sands and the Keystone XL Pipeline

TransCanada

American Petroleum Institute

The Republican Party

Environmental Activists

Indigenous Environmental Network

Bold Nebraska

This teaching activity was originally published by Rethinking Schools and is included in their book A People's Curriculum for the Earth.

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Dirty Oil and Shovel-Ready Jobs: A Role Play on Tar Sands and the Keystone XL Pipeline - Zinn Education Project

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Which country is the No. 1 supplier of oil to the United States? Saudi Arabia? No. Iraq? No. Russia? No. My geography students were surprised to learn it's my country-Canada. Most of that oil comes from the tar sands located in northern Alberta, in an area roughly the size of Florida.

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The Trump administration's war on immigrants has been nothing short of horrifying in its scope. As acting director of ICE, Thomas Homan explained in 2017, "The president made it clear in his executive orders: There's no population off the table. If you're in this country illegally, we're looking for you and we're going to look to apprehend you." The massive reach of this effort, the uncertainty and terror it elicits, and the opacity of the controlling laws, recall an earlier time in U.S. history when the due process and human rights of racialized "foreigners" were abused with impunity.

From the late 1920s to the late 1930s, men, women, and children, immigrant and U.S.- born, citizen and noncitizen, longtime residents and temporary workers all became the targets of a massive campaign of forced relocation, based solely on their perceived status as "Mexican." They were rounded up in parks, at work sites, and in hospitals, betrayed by local relief agencies who reported anyone with a "Mexican sounding" name to what was then called the sounding" name to what was then called the Immigration Service, tricked and terrorized into "voluntary" deportation by municipal and state officials, and forcibly deported in trains and buses, to a country some hadn't lived in for decades and others never at all.

Historian Mae M. Ngai argues that this 1930s campaign of mass deportations had little to do with law; it was a program of "racial expulsion," rooted in racism. But unlike other racist and nativist efforts of the era, these deportations were not symbolized or driven by any signature piece of legislation like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 or the Immigration Act of 1924. Rather, they were orchestrated using a patchwork of federal and local authority, existing but seldom used deportation rules, and simple mob action against a vulnerable population. It is precisely this messiness that is fruitful to surface with students. If no single law or leader ordered these deportations, then why and how did they happen and who or what is responsible for the damage they wrought? These are the questions raised in the Deportations on Trial lesson (modeled after Bill Bigelow's Rethinking Schools lesson " The People vs. Columbus ").

This lesson was originally published in the 2018-2019 Winter issue of Rethinking Schools.

has taught high school social studies since 2000. She is on the editorial board of Ursula Wolfe-Rocca Rethinking Schools and is the Zinn Education Project Organizer/Curriculum Writer.

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Deportations on Trial: Mexican Americans During the Great Depression - Zinn Education Project

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The Trump administration's war on immigrants has been nothing short of horrifying in its scope. As acting director of ICE, Thomas Homan explained in 2017, "The president made it clear in his executive orders: There's no population off the table. If you're in this country illegally, we're looking for you and we're going to look to apprehend you."

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Teaching Activities (Free)

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. 24 pages.
The U.S. Constitution endorsed slavery and favored the interests of the owning classes. What kind of Constitution would have resulted from founders who were representative of the entire country? That is the question addressed in this role play activity.

Time Periods: 18th Century, Revolution & Constitution: 1765 - 1799

Themes: Voting Rights, African American, Democracy & Citizenship, Laws & Citizen Rights, Racism & Racial Identity, Slavery and Resistance, Social Class

Most U.S. history and government textbooks present the Constitution as a kind of secular Ten Commandments: James Madison brought the document from the mountain and it was Good. The books may point out that not everyone agreed on the best plan for government, but through debate and compromise "Right" triumphed.

What makes this treatment of the Constitution so pernicious is its effect on students. Removed from a social context, cast as an inevitability, the document is elevated to an almost holy status, above analysis and critique. This Constitution-as-religious-icon scenario doesn't allow much wiggle room for student reflection. Instead, the teacher's task is to enlist students in memorizing Constitutional wisdom: What's meant by "checks and balances"? What's a writ of habeas corpus? I'm sure I wasn't the only student forced to learn by heart and repeat on command: "We the people, in order to form a more perfect union . . ." This is indoctrination, not education.

The Constitution Role Play asks students to think critically about a number of issues that confronted the original framers of the Constitution. But the role play adds a twist: instead of including only the bankers, lawyers, merchants, and plantation owners who attended the actual Constitutional Convention, the activity also invites poor farmers, workers, and enslaved African Americans. This more representative assembly gives students a chance to see the partisan nature of the actual document produced in 1787.

In the second lesson (The Constitutional Convention: Who Really Won?), with the Constitution Role Play as background, students are primed to wade into the actual document and analyze parts of it in a social context.

NOTE: This lesson is currently being updated. Complete this short form to be notified when it is available again.

Read teacher stories below about using these lessons on the Constitutional Convention.

Classroom Stories

As an 8th grade teacher making the Constitution relevant and exciting can be a challenge. I have used Bill Bigelow's Constitution role play as a way to make history come alive! It allows my students to debate issues regarding race, gender, and class and see how decisions made by those in power can have long lasting consequences.

Middle School Social Studies Teacher, Cupertino, California

I first came across the Zinn Education Project online in 2015. At the time I was searching for lesson materials and ideas to more fully integrate social justice into my state-mandated curriculum.

The first lesson I implemented in my classroom was Bill Bigelow's Constitutional Convention Role Play. It was an instant success! In addition to giving students simulated practice negotiating and working as political actors, they engaged in critically thinking (and re-thinking) about the way the U.S. Constitution was created. Both my students and I were hooked!

The lesson was so successful, that students began consistently asking me when our next "simulation" would be. I have since used other lessons designed by Bill Bigelow, and frequently browse lesson materials at Zinn Ed and adapt them for my classes.

I am very appreciative of the resources available here for educators like myself, and the ways they have transformed my teaching and students' learning.

Middle Social Studies Teacher, Salt Lake City, Utah

The Constitutional Convention lesson had a huge impact on my students.

Many of my students are not white - Black and Latino, especially. Many of them did not have an understanding of just how biased the Constitution was. With the knowledge that we have gained from this lesson, students were able to then look at other situations that are currently surrounding us in the United States - such as the controversy surrounding Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, and the Black Lives Matter movement - with a more critical eye, understanding the kind of bias and uneven laws that founded this country and our government.

They were then better able to understand the anger and frustration that surrounds many Black communities in regard to both historical and current events.

They can now use the backdrop of the Constitution to better understand their own country, the frustration of others and what they have to do to move this country and the plight of a social justice worker forward. Most importantly, they were able to finally connect just how much history influences current events and our countries sentiments and culture.

Middle School Language Arts Teacher, Patterson, California

The Constitutional Convention lesson was the most successful role play I've done yet with my 8th graders. The students really embraced their roles. Even those students with difficult roles (the plantation owners and bankers) did not shy away from their arguments and play beliefs.

The discussions got pretty heated at different points, but not so much so that we couldn't reel things back in. There is much scientific evidence to support the idea that emotion is essential to learning, and this role play is a good case in point.

Students were talking about the convention outside the classroom, letting students in later periods know what was about to go down, so there was a lot of excitement in the 8th grade hallway and during PE throughout the week. Students were saying those magical words "this is fun" during the convention as well (and that is great praise from middle school students).

I love the Zinn Education Project role plays because they give every student an opportunity to participate in some way. Even the students who are normally shy about speaking in front of classmates are at least engaged in the dialogue and writing notes furiously.

Middle School Teacher, Oakland, California

I did the Constitutional Convention role play lesson with my 11th grade U.S. history students, and they were extremely engaged. The class worked in small groups, each representing different people who were present at the actual convention, as well as groups that were left out of the decision-making process.

The students debated the founding ideas of liberty and justice when evaluating how certain people or groups would have contributed to the meeting and discussing the possibilities of how the country would have been different if they had been included. It allowed students to be collaborative, develop critical thinking skills, and to think of history in a more relevant way.

The Constitution is often a challenging document to read for the students - since its language use is different to the way they speak today and it seems distant from their interests - but this activity allowed them to see this part of history in a relevant and impactful way.

High School Social Studies Teacher, New York, New York

One of my favorite activities from the Zinn Education Project is the Constitution Role Play: Whose "More Perfect Union"? and The Constitutional Convention: Who Really Won? The simulation allows for students to not only use their critical thinking skills, but to challenge the traditional mythology and romanticism of American values and democracy. This lesson pairs well both in U.S. History and American Government classes, and it can be modified easily for all levels of students.

This is a fantastic activity to use at the beginning of the year, to set the stage in your classroom for political discourse and courageous conversations.

The results of our role play about "Who Really Won?" speaks volumes to the themes of any U.S. History course - it's hard work to face hard history. But recognizing those individuals who came together collectively to bring positive change and realize many American values for those not at the table during the convention, inspires students to embrace their own voice, courage, and responsibilities as a citizen in today's complicated political arena.

High School Social Studies Teacher, Elmhurst, Illinois

What I really appreciated about the Constitutional Convention role play materials is how thorough and clear they were. The role cards are excellent and give students enough background to play their roles effectively.

I found that students were much more interested in examining the real Constitution after they had designed their own as a class. Pointing out similarities and differences between the class version and the real version made the information much more "sticky" for them.

Any time teachers have the chance to bring a historical topic "to life" like that is fantastic. I really appreciate the work that went into creating these materials.

High School Social Studies Teacher, Ontario, Outside of US, Canada

The Zinn Education Project has delivered time and time again the most impactful experiences for my students. They will not remember the PowerPoint info on the Articles of Confederation, but they will remember when they wrote the Constitution from the perspective of an enslaved African American or a member of the Iroquois nation using the Constitutional Convention role play.

They understand the problems embedded into the way our country was founded AND the remarkable opportunities we have to reshape the conversation in our nation.

Middle School History Teacher, Ann Arbor, Michigan

More Classroom Stories

I use the Constitution Role Play lesson in my classroom as a hook for a larger unit, in tandem with Teaching Tolerance's unit "Did the Constitution establish a just government?" The students were very engaged during the activities and created a much more just constitution in our role-play. Really appreciated the resource.

Teacher, Providence, Rhode Island

See how teachers in California, New York, North Carolina, and Illinois used the lesson in their classrooms:

Building alliances, making deals. 1787, a more democratic constitutional convention. @ZinnEdProject pic.twitter.com/Ss0GuMnQeu

- Lisa Steiner (@HistorySteiner) January 15, 2019

Making alliances for the Constitutional Convention! @ZinnEdProject #naplescsd pic.twitter.com/h1Miop3K5L

- Anneke Radin-Snaith (@AnnekeRadin) February 11, 2016

The People's Constitutional Convention role play from @ZinnEdProject never disappoints! 1st period broke into applause after abolishing slavery and expanding democracy this morning, which led to a great discussion about why the oft-celebrated Framers did the opposite 🤔🤔🤔 pic.twitter.com/yftyMxPYYC

- Tracey Barrett (@traceyebarrett) September 6, 2018

Welcoming so many new faces to our #AmericanStudies Unconventional Constitutional Convention @YorkD205 w @KellyDeloriea Thank you @ZinnEdProject and Bill Bigelow for another successful debate. Democracy is not a spectator sport! #IgniteD205 #teachingoutsidethetextbook pic.twitter.com/09SyoSv0kM

- Lindsey DiTomasso (@laldtd) September 10, 2018

Finished our @ZinnEdProject Constitutional Convention today. Students formed alliances, proposed resolutions, and voted on them 🗳 #WeAreCarter #LionPride #BucklesHeroes pic.twitter.com/EpjXAocsW2

- Jessica Buckle (@JBuckLearns) August 29, 2019

We want to share your classroom story. If you use the lesson and tweet about it, consider tagging @ZinnEdProject.

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Constitution Role Play: Whose "More Perfect Union"? and The Constitutional Convention: Who Really Won? - Zinn Education Project

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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. 24 pages. The U.S. Constitution endorsed slavery and favored the interests of the owning classes. What kind of Constitution would have resulted from founders who were representative of the entire country? That is the question addressed in this role play activity.

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In 30 years of teaching, I'd never taught explicitly about coal. Coal appeared in my social studies curriculum solely as a labor issue. We read passages about the 1914 Ludlow Massacre of striking coal miners and their families in Colorado, and watched John Sayles' excellent film when we looked at early 20th-century labor struggles. But coal was mostly invisible in my history classes. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, the world cannot afford this kind of curricular invisibility today. Forty percent of the main greenhouse gas produced in the United States, carbon dioxide, comes from burning coal for electricity; so does two-thirds of all the sulfur dioxide pollution.

According to the American Lung Association, coal is responsible for thousands of premature deaths every year. Almost 40 percent of this country's electricity comes from burning coal: a billion tons of coal every year-more than 15 pounds of coal burned each day for every person in the United States. And most coal mining in the United States these days is strip mining-the Earth is essentially skinned alive to get at the coal seams within.

Coal companies have sliced the tops off 500 mountains in Appalachia and dumped the waste in the valleys, burying 1,200 miles of streams and poisoning residents' water. The term for this is mountaintop removal, and it's not a metaphor.

So I decided that it was time to break my curricular silence on coal.

In this teaching activity, students have the opportunity first to play and later to analyze a game created by The American Coal Foundation. In this way they learn to think critically about the coal industry's motives and goals. By writing creatively from the perspective of the coal-mining environment, its residents, and environmental activists, and by watching excerpts from films portraying the effects of U.S. coal mining after playing the game, students also expand their contextual knowledge of coal mining and its consequences.

This teaching activity was originally published by Rethinking Schools and is included in A People's Curriculum for the Earth.

Classroom Stories

Students learning about coal mining with an activity from @ZinnEdProject. We mined the "coal" today, and will discuss the environmental/ethical and political considerations later this week. pic.twitter.com/Xr9pADX3sX

- Brian Bigioni (@MrBigioni308) June 11, 2019

I used the Coal, Chocolate Chip Cookies, and Mountaintop Removal lesson most recently with a group of mostly 9th grade Earth & Environmental Science students.

My high schoolers pointed out how the activity shows that mining and reclamation are seemingly equal processes, according to amounts of time, even though reclamation of land post-mining would actually be a lengthy and sometimes impossible project. One student shared how silly that thought was, "You can't just gather the crumbs and stick them back, those are plants and animals and homes and peoples livelihoods." It was easy for them to connect this to environmental issues on water and erosion, how the loose crumbs would actually travel everywhere (as they actually did for some of the students), carrying valuable land away as well as any toxins they picked up.This led us into a natural conversation about other waste products from coal beyond mining, something missing from the cookie activity, which was very pertinent in my North Carolina classroom, where a coal ash spill had recently taken place. We coupled the activity with watching clips from Coal Ash Stories, a compilation of six short films that illustrate the public health concerns and community response to this byproduct.

To note, I modified the activity on two different occasions with inclusion classes (and might do the same in elementary classes). In one class, students got to choose whichever type of cookie they'd like and we just focused on the money related to their mining success and the reclamation. This still allowed us to compare how mining affects different land types and still talk about the destruction and reclamation of the land, as well as what the simulation didn't show. I also tried it once using "play money" as in the original plans and without the actual calculations sheet, which was more tangible and easier for several students. Both methods were effective in helping all the students in the classroom participate without having to keep track of calculations on a separate paper.

High Science Teacher, Durham, North Carolina

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Coal, Chocolate Chip Cookies, and Mountaintop Removal - Zinn Education Project

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In 30 years of teaching, I'd never taught explicitly about coal. Coal appeared in my social studies curriculum solely as a labor issue. We read passages about the 1914 Ludlow Massacre of striking coal miners and their families in Colorado, and watched John Sayles' excellent film when we looked at early 20th-century labor struggles.

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Our response to the climate crisis depends on who or what we think is causing it. This trial role play helps students understand how complicated it is to assess "guilt." It's an engaging activity in which students defend entities charged with causing the climate crisis, as they point the finger at others. Ultimately, it asks them to consider how different factors are linked together, and, depending on their assessment of blame, to propose what justice looks like. The climate crisis is no laughing matter, but this activity provides a lively and playful way to explore the issues.

In groups, students will represent five different "defendants" in a mock trial: The "Market"-the System of Global Capitalism; the U.S. Government; U.S. Consumers; the Governments of China, India, and Other "Developing" Countries; and Oil and Coal Companies. Explain that in this trial role play, each group is charged with causing the climate crisis and all its ravages: the destruction of cultures, extinction of species, putting at risk the lives of people all over the world, and even threatening the lives of people in future generations.

Descriptive indictments for each defendant are included in the lesson for students to study and refer back to. Groups of students will prepare a defense for their role and you as teacher will play the prosecutor.

Explain that students' responsibility will be both to defend their own group and to explain which group or groups they think are guilty, and why. If students are puzzled by any of the defendants, tell them not to worry: The charges are explained in each indictment and, in any event, it's your job as the prosecutor to argue the charges against them. Tell them each group will receive a written copy of their indictment.

In their groups, students will read the indictments and will prepare a defense against the charges. Select several students to be jurors, and will swear them to neutrality. As prosecutor, you will begin by arguing the guilt of one group. The students in the accused group will defend themselves and will offer their thoughts on who is the guilty party or parties. The jury then questions the accused group, and others may question the group and offer direct rebuttals.

This process is repeated until all groups have been accused and have defended themselves. The jury then deliberates and makes its decision.
Note: Especially if this trial role play is taught at the end of a unit, it lends itself to a writing assignment. The trial deals with the question: Who or what is responsible for the climate crisis and all the misery it brings, and will bring-and what does that mean for what should be done? Ask students to write an essay that "answers" this question and that also proposes what should be done about it.
This lesson was originally published by Rethinking Schools in A People's Curriculum for the Earth.

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The Climate Crisis Trial: A Role Play on the Roots of Global Warming - Zinn Education Project

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Our response to the climate crisis depends on who or what we think is causing it. This trial role play helps students understand how complicated it is to assess "guilt." It's an engaging activity in which students defend entities charged with causing the climate crisis, as they point the finger at others.

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In her book A Century of Dishonor, published in 1881, Helen Hunt Jackson wrote, "There will come a time in the remote future when, to the student of American history [the Cherokee removal] will seem well-nigh incredible."

The events leading up to the infamous Trail of Tears, when U.S. soldiers marched Cherokee Indians at bayonet-point almost a thousand miles from Georgia to Oklahoma, offer a window into the nature of U.S. expansion-in the early 19th century, but also throughout this country's history.

The story of the Cherokees' uprooting may seem "well-nigh incredible" today, but it shares important characteristics with much of U.S. foreign policy: economic interests paramount, race as a key factor, legality flaunted, the use of violence to enforce U.S. will, a language of justification thick with democratic and humanitarian platitudes. The U.S. war with Mexico, the Spanish-American War, Vietnam, support of the Contras in Nicaragua, the Gulf War, and the invasion and occupation of Iraq come readily to mind. These are my conclusions; they needn't be my students'. Our task as teachers is not to tell young people what to think but to equip them to search for patterns throughout history, patterns that continue into our own time.

The Cherokees were not the only indigenous people affected by the Indian Removal law and the decade of dispossession that followed.

The Seminoles, living in Florida, were another group targeted for resettlement. For years, they had lived side by side with people of African ancestry, most of whom were escaped slaves or descendants of escaped slaves. Indeed, the Seminoles and Africans living with each other were not two distinct peoples. Their inclusion in this role play allows students to explore further causes for Indian removal, to see ways in which slavery was an important consideration motivating the U.S. government's hoped-for final solution to the supposed Indian problem.

Originally published by Teaching for Change in Beyond Heroes and Holidays: A Practical Guide to K-12 Multicultural, Anti-Racist Education and Staff Development.

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The Cherokee/Seminole Removal Role Play - Zinn Education Project

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In her book A Century of Dishonor, published in 1881, Helen Hunt Jackson wrote, "There will come a time in the remote future when, to the student of American history [the Cherokee removal] will seem well-nigh incredible." The events leading up to the infamous Trail of Tears, when U.S.

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This lesson focuses on a key event in the labor renewal of the 1930s. The workers' victory in the longshore strike gave a powerful impetus toward the revitalization of an existing union and toward organizing new ones. The union that eventually resulted, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), is still one of the more democratic in the United States.

In the activity, students role-play an industry-wide strike that took place up and down the entire West Coast. This story has most often been told from the standpoint of San Francisco, which was the hub of the strike. This lesson is set in Portland instead. In Portland, the importance of the ties built with other groups in the region, including farmers, is particularly clear.

The Power In Our Hands-Available for Download

This is one of the 16 lessons available from The Power In Our Hands. Other lessons available for individual download are:

Opening

Unit I: Basic Understandings

Unit II: Changes in the Workplace/"Scientific Management"

Unit III: Defeats, Victories, Challenges

Unit IV: Our Own Recent Past

Unit V: Continuing Struggle

Order the book online from Rethinking Schools

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The 1934 West Coast Longshore Strike - Zinn Education Project

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This lesson focuses on a key event in the labor renewal of the 1930s. The workers' victory in the longshore strike gave a powerful impetus toward the revitalization of an existing union and toward organizing new ones. The union that eventually resulted, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), is still one of the more democratic in the United States.