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A Latin-American holiday offers an opportunity for discussion and grieving

By Dale Weiss

Illustrator: AP/World Wide Photos

Students in Albequerque, N.M. wear traditional Latin American puppets in a Day of the Dead parade.
- photo: AP/World Wide Photos

Although death and dying are not topics usually covered in elementary school curricula, I had a powerful experience when I taught a unit on Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), a Latin-American holiday celebrated in early November that honors deceased family members and friends. The unit helped integrate an understanding of other cultures into my second/ third grade classroom of predominantly white students.

With the exception of one student, whose mother was Mexican, none of my other students were familiar with Day of the Dead. Though the customs of Día de los Muertos vary regionally, one common element is constructing commemorative altars. The relatives decorate altars with photos of the departed, their favorite mementos and foods, and an adornment of flowers and candles. Most people honor Día de los Muertos by remembering deceased infants and children on November 1 (All Saints Day) and adults on November 2 (All Souls Day). It is thought that the spirits of the dead are expected to pay a holiday visit home and should be provided with bountiful sustenance for the journey.

Most children in the classroom had not experienced the death of a family member. But they had heard stories of relatives who had died. I asked each student to decide which deceased family member they would like to commemorate for our Día de los Muertos unit. At the same time, I communicated with the parents of my students my intentions for our study of Día de los Muertos.

Through interviews with family members and looking through family photos, students discovered valuable information about the family members that they were honoring. Each student created a diorama inside an empty shoebox, where they placed tiny photos, mementos, and food made from clay. We placed the dioramas - referred to as altars - in one corner of the classroom. Students decided that when they entered this area, they should remove their shoes and become silent.

The students loved visiting the altar area. Though it was not blocked off in any particular way, it held a sacred kind of warmth. Students could often be found "speaking with the ancestors," both their own and those of their classmates. Other times they would comment to one another about the family members being honored.

"I liked learning about your grandpa because of all the jokes everybody said he told."

"I think that person looks really nice in the picture and that they were probably a very nice person too."

"I think it's sad that people die but I'm glad we get to know them from the altars."

As our Día de los Muertos unit continued, my students asked many questions about death and dying. "Why do people die?" "Do people only die when they get real old?" "How come animals don't live as long as people?" I read several books to the students about life cycles of plants and animals, which eventually led to questions about people dying. I have often found that the topic of death is shunned in school settings, a practice I do not agree with. It was important to me that my students felt comfortable asking their questions, that their questions be taken seriously, and that the topic of death and dying be approached as an ongoing, open discussion.

Several students chose to write a poem together during our Writing Workshop time. They always enjoyed writing group poems, where a group would agree on a core set of ideas and each student would write a line about the topic. Then they worked together to fine tune the poem.

This poem, "The Circle of Life" was also set to music by a local cellist, Jami:

"The Circle of Life"
There's a beginning and an end
And a life in between
And this we know
For all living things.
For plants and people
And trees and animals
Life circles round
As we sing this song.
The world is a big chain of life
The world is a big chain of life
For plants and people
And trees and animals
Life circles round
As we sing this song.

In their best penmanship, each student wrote a short biography of the family member they had honored, and included why this person was important to them. I duplicated the biographies in a spiral-bound a book for each student. As our Día de los Muertos unit came to an end, students hosted a celebration for their family members. Each student read the tribute they had created for their deceased family member, and we invited everyone to join in singing "The Circle of Life." Students then proudly acted as tour guides in the altar area. Many family members expressed gratitude for experiencing their children so deeply honoring a loved one from their family.

I learned many things that year. I learned that children are able to embrace difficult topics and do not fear talking about death nearly as much as adults do. Death is a topic largely avoided in the United States, and in our curricula.

I also realized it is not only students' minds that walk through the classroom door day after day, their hearts show up as well. Some days children come to school in great pain. Was I, as a teacher, welcoming their fears, doubts, grief, and sadness? What was I doing to encourage or discourage students' ability to share from a place deep within them? What topics do I have great difficulty discussing and as a result pass onto my students the message that "we just don't talk about that in here?"

I learned that children need the opportunity to honor their ancestors and the safety in which to do this.

And finally, when one of our cherished classmates and friends passed away towards the end of our school year (see Remembering Tyson), we were better equipped as a group to share our grief and process our loss together.

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By Dale Weiss Illustrator: AP/World Wide Photos Although death and dying are not topics usually covered in elementary school curricula, I had a powerful experience when I taught a unit on Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), a Latin-American holiday celebrated in early November that honors deceased family members and friends.

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The 1619 Project Curriculum in Lesson Plan Grouping - The 1619 Project, inaugurated with a special issue of The New York Times Magazine, challenges us to reframe U.S. history by marking the year when the first enslaved Africans arrived on Virginia soil as our nation’s foundational date. Here you wil…

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Social justice lessons, resources, mentoring, and consulting for educators, parents, and schools.

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This summer, I wrote a book about the guiding principles.

The book just came out on October 27, 2020! You can order it at:

Do you really talk to little kids about Black Lives Matter?

I sure do. Want to know more? Click below to watch me explain what I do in more detail.

And then some! The Thirteen Principles are woven into our Social Studies curriculum, all year long; this year, lots of other schools are also participating in the Year Of Purpose. During the Black Lives Matter in School Week of Action, we focus on the demands. We talk about our responsibility as community members of our larger society to work together for equity. Like many big ideas, the demands are simple when viewed from the point of view of a child. Of course, "kids need teachers to help them make a better choice another time." Of course, "kids should have some teachers who look like them and some teachers who don't; that way they know everybody could be a teacher." And so on and so forth.

Great question! Here are some great articles by two organizations every educator should know about: Rethinking Schools and Teaching Tolerance. Definitely read them both (you can click on the pictures).

To sum up:

2017-18 - goes national: New York City and over a dozen other cities join in

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This summer, I wrote a book about the guiding principles. The book just came out on October 27, 2020! You can order it at: Do you really talk to little kids about Black Lives Matter? I sure do. Want to know more? Click below to watch me explain what I do in more detail.

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Acknowledging or celebrating holidays in early childhood programs can bring pleasure to many families, staff, and children and can be useful in building connections between school and families. However, holidays also pose a range of challenges to ensuring that all children, families, and staff feel respected and to children learning about diversity of families. Whether or not to include any holidays in your curriculum, and what activities to use if you do, requires thoughtful decision making.

In this blog, by the authors of the current as well as the upcoming second edition of Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves, Louise Derman-Sparks and Julie Olsen Edward lay out some principles about how programs and teachers can think about holidays in their classrooms. Catherine Goins, who worked with Louise and Julie on the second edition, and Julie Bisson's book Celebrate! An Anti-Bias Guide to Including Holidays in Early Childhood Programs, have contributed to the authors' thinking.--Editors

Specific holidays and religious observances are not universal

All cultures commemorate beliefs, historical events, and people significant to the culture through special celebrations and holidays from daily work. These differ from each other. In almost all early childhood settings, the beliefs and traditions of some families may differ from those of others. Even within groups that honor the same holiday, how individual families celebrate will reflect both similarities and differences. Yet, conflicting celebrations may also have common ground. Knowing the purpose and worldview underlying a holiday will help you make decisions about what role, if any, you want that holiday to play in your program.

Secularized or commercialized versions of holidays are not culturally or religiously neutral

Both the NAEYC Code of Ethics and the anti-bias education approach make respecting family diversity a cornerstone of quality early childhood programs. Honoring the cultural diversity among the families you serve means recognizing that all have the right to their traditions and that the ECE program does not favor one category of families over another.

Arguing that it is okay for a program to celebrate a dominant culture religious holiday, on the rationale that the props and activities connected to the holiday are "not specifically religious, but just fun" and therefore okay for everyone (e.g., Christmas trees, Santa Claus, cards, and gift giving, or Easter bunnies and egg hunts), does not respect cultural and religious diversity. Instead, it lifts up one group's holidays above others. Regardless of how commercially advertised or widespread these secular approaches may be, they are grounded in specific religious and cultural assumptions. Even some Christian families see these as pagan appropriations that trivialize one of their two most important holy days of the year. For the many families of other faiths, the activities are inseparable from the underlying meaning of the religious rituals themselves (after all, a Christmas tree is still a Christmas tree, and the Easter bunny is the Easter bunny). Other kinds of designated holidays often included in early childhood program activities may be based on beliefs or practices that negate some families. For example, Mother's Day and Father's Day, in the traditional narrative, recognize only one type of family. Yet, most early childhood education programs now serve a wide range of families, many of which have configurations that differ from the one mother and one father family structure. And all dominant culture holidays reflect a particular perspective about historic events and particular groups of people who are admired and those who are erased.

So what is a teacher to do? Are there ways to acknowledge holidays, to have celebrations, to honor families that are respectful in a highly diverse world? The answer is yes. Here are some key ideas.

Emphasize children learning about each other's family holidays, rather than celebrating them

Celebrating a holiday engages children in holiday activities as full-fledged participants, on the assumption that their families believe in the holiday's purpose and meaning. Learning about a holiday means teaching children about what the holiday means to different people and about the many different ways those families who honor the holiday celebrate it. Teaching about a holiday requires that teachers make very clear that the class can enjoy learning about each other's holidays while holding to their own family's beliefs and traditions. Celebrating a particular holiday is appropriate in faith-based programs or in programs in which the holiday is truly lived by every family in the program. Even then, it's important to clarify that within any belief system, different families celebrate in different ways.

Respect all families' holiday traditions and their specific ways of celebrating-or not celebrating

It is hurtful to children and families to impose celebrating of the holidays of one group on all the children and staff, or to make the holiday traditions of some groups visible while others are invisible. Respecting the cultural diversity among the families you serve means recognizing that all have the right to their traditions. This does not mean that you must teach about every holiday your families practice. It does mean that you make choices that do not disrespect or leave out any family.

Pay attention to the language you use in holiday activities

This is an important element in children learning about, rather than celebrating, a holiday grounded in a specific faith or celebrating a historic event. This is especially necessary in publicly funded programs where religious teaching is not allowed by law. Your language choices also support or undercut the concept of religious diversity and each family's freedom of choice. The challenge is to choose words that focus on the history of the special day and that also make clear the diversity of beliefs. These are topics that require clarifying conversations.

Consider creating unique class or school celebrations

In addition to, or instead of, celebrating the holidays observed by children's families, some teachers create their own celebrations for various parts of the school year. This approach makes it possible for every child to participate in shared special days with the rest of the class. They also can build school-family connections and community within a program. Celebrations can be respectful-for example, "Honoring Our Families" get-togethers; "Thanking the People Who Make Our School Work" (cook, janitor, bus driver, etc.) days; or occasions for "Recognizing Family and Neighborhood Heroes."

Celebrations can also be whimsical and playful-for example, "Bring Books Alive Day" (making and wearing costumes from books, eating foods from favorite books, acting out favorite stories); "Pajama Day" (wearing pjs and slippers to school, telling bedtime stories, sharing family bedtime rituals); or "Backwards Day" (wearing clothes backwards, doing things in reverse order of an ordinary day). They can also be used to mark the passing of the year with an annual end-of-year picnic or potluck dinner. Some schools also have graduation ceremonies or "You're Off to Kindergarten" parties for children transitioning out of the programs.

Help children understand when a staff member or child cannot participate

Teaching respect for diversity includes helping children understand that families have different ways of acting, and these may not be the same as the behaviors in their own family. This is certainly true regarding holiday practices. Consider the following holiday examples:

A mother brings a special lunch to school for her child's birthday. She does not realize it is Ramadan, when observant adult Muslims fast between dawn and dusk. She is upset when Edward, a student teacher, doesn't eat anything. She complains to the head teacher that both her and her daughter's feelings were hurt. The head teacher explains Edward's right to practice fasting. She also tells Edward that the child was puzzled by his not eating the special lunch. Edward makes sure to talk with the child that the next day. He explains why he hadn't eaten and assures the child that he is happy for her birthday.

Here is an incident where a student teacher allows her personal feelings to undercut a basic practice of the Jewish holiday of Passover.

The kindergarten has spent a few days learning about Passover. During a discussion of the Seder ceremony, the teacher explains the meaning and tradition behind matzo. Esther, one of the Jewish children, states that she cannot eat leavened bread during the whole week of Passover. The next day a birthday celebration for another child includes cupcakes from the birthday child's family.

A student teacher, enjoying her cupcake, gives Esther a piece because she feels sorry about "depriving" Esther. Luckily, the teacher notices the conflicted expression on Esther's face and intervenes: "Esther, do you know that cake is made with leavened flour and that you can't eat it during Passover?" Esther nods her head. "Let's freeze your piece and you can eat it after the holiday." Esther relaxes, gives her cake to the teacher, and goes off to play. Unfortunately, the teacher had not thought to check ahead of time with Esther's family when the birthday celebration was scheduled during the Passover holiday. If she had, she might have planned with them-for example, asking if the the birthday child's family might check with Esther's family about bringing a non-leaven cookie or pastry for Esther.

Understanding the different ways people do and don't celebrate; learning accurate, respectful vocabulary about holidays; broadening children's worldview of what a holiday is-these are all wonderful, powerful learning outcomes for children about holidays. Activities that foster these objectives prepare children to live in a diverse society with respect while cherishing their own beliefs. Taking the time to thoughtfully discuss how to make respectful learning about holidays a part of your curriculum is worth the results when all children and families feel that they are cared about and belong in your program.

This blog is a part of Equity in Action, a blog series exploring the many ways early childhood educators and administrators, higher education faculty members, policymakers, advocates, and other ECE allies can bring the new Advancing Equity in Early Childhood Education position statement to life in practice and policy.

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Anti-Bias Education and Holidays: Making Thoughtful Decisions

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Knowing the purpose and world view underlying a holiday will help you make decisions about what role, if any, you want that holiday to play in your program.

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Banned Books Week is an annual event that highlights the value of free and open access to information.

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We lead with the heart and courageously work to address racial injustice in education, embodying Black joy, confronting anti-Blackness, and building authentic partnerships with all who support creating equitable school communities across the nation.

​In September 2016, DeShawn Jackson, along with Black Men Uniting to Change The Narrative, planned a day of encouragement. The previous school year, another local elementary school had more than 200 Black men show up to greet students as they arrived at school. The men wore their uniforms, regalia, and Sunday best in hopes of disrupting the inaccurate imagery students have of Black men. Black men make up only 3% of teachers in k-12 education.​

DeShawn had taught at the school for six years and even attended the elementary school as a child. He wanted students to see Black men in a positive light, not like they often are portrayed in media. A bomb threat was called into the school on the day of the event, so school leadership officially canceled it. Yet, after the threat was investigated, nothing was found, and the school remained open. So, DeShawn personally greeted students and about fifty others joined him.

When students arrived at John Muir Elementary School, they were greeted with cheers and high-fives while drums played in the background. Black men showed up because they wanted to counter the perception students have about education and race. Inside the school, staff wore shirts that said "Black Lives Matter We Stand Together."Julie Trout, the art teacher, designed the shirts. Teachers' lessons for the day were focused on racial justice.

​Social Equality Educators (SEE), a group within the Seattle teachers union, decided October 19th would be "Black Lives Matter At School Day." They'd wear Black Lives Matter shirts to school, created a second design with "#Say Her Name," and educators picked from several options. Parent Teacher Associations made buttons and stickers for teachers and students to wear. This attracted national news, which spread to Philadelphia, where the Racial Justice & Organizing Committee of the Caucus of Working Educators was inspired to plan a similar action.

We envision a nation in which we live in authentic and conscious relationship with ourselves, each other, and the lands we occupy with the least amount of harm and violence, in which we are unapologetically Black and collectively love and care for one another as extended intergenerational families. To achieve safety, equity, and liberation for all Black lives, we attend to systems and networks of care to make the domination, erasure, and dehumanization of Black life obsolete. ​

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National coalition organizing for racial justice in education.

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Documentaries and movies are highly effective tools for teaching civil rights history. They make the movement come alive, breathing life into the nameless and faceless masses who mobilized and organized for change. People are generally aware of Rosa Parks's role in the Montgomery bus boycott but are wholly unaware of the thousands of Black domestic workers who made victory possible by refusing to ride the buses for an entire year. Films add depth and dimension to the famous leaders who spearheaded the struggle, such as Martin Luther King Jr. Everyone knows who Dr. King is, but too few know him beyond sound bites from his "I Have a Dream" speech. And films generate empathy by capturing and conveying deep emotion, such as the paralyzing fear brought about by night riders. It is one thing to read about racial terror; it is another thing entirely to see it in high definition.

The pedagogical power of film is strengthened when documentaries and movies are paired with one another. The lessons learned in the former are reinforced in the latter. Pairing films also sharpens critical analysis of popular narratives of the movement. People are conditioned to believe what they see on screen. Pairing films challenges this basic assumption when what appears in a documentary, such as the presence of Black women in leadership positions, fails to show up in a movie.

An explosion of films on civil rights history over the last twenty-five years has created abundant options for using film in the classroom. Scores of documentaries have been produced, touching on subjects ranging from the origins of the movement to its aftermath. Although fewer movies have been produced, and their subject matter has been less varied, the selection is still strong.

Of course, not all films are equal. There are good ones that get the basic history correct and great ones that totally disrupt the Master Narrative. There are also terrible ones that reinforce the Master Narrative, and God-awful ones that simply fabricate history. Yet nearly all of them are useful, with the best ones revealing the truth about the past, and the worst ones exposing entrenched falsehoods. Thus, films about the movement, from the exceptional to the dreadful, that examine a broad cross section of subjects, from the origins of racism to contemporary civil rights struggles, can significantly deepen understanding of civil rights history.

Tedx Talk by Hasah Kwame Jeffries on "Hard History"

This 13-minute talk by Hasan Kwame Jeffries can be a useful companion to this critical list of films about the Civil Rights Movement and institutionalized racism in U.S. history.

Racism has shaped the contours of America from the earliest days of the Republic, fueling the need for a civil rights movement. Race: The Power of an Illusion (2003) is a great primer for discussing the role of racism in American society. The three-hour documentary begins by explaining race as a pseudoscientific invention designed to justify European capitalist exploitation of African labor. It then pivots toward racism, moving quickly beyond personal prejudice to look at the racialization of political structures and economic systems. Finally, it looks specifically at the racialization of the housing market to illustrate the harmful effect racial discrimination has had on contemporary African Americans.

I Am Not Your Negro (2017) explores racism in a completely different way, from the perspective of civil rights-era essayist James Baldwin. But it is equally effective as a springboard for an opening discussion on the need for a civil rights revolution. Using Baldwin's searing words, the documentary draws viewers in, making the pain of the Black past feel present. For some, Baldwin's indictment of white Americans for their commitment to white supremacy will confirm long-held suspicions. For others, it will be a revelation. But for all, it will prompt deep introspection, a necessary ingredient for frank and honest conversation.

Civil rights protest challenged contemporaneous patterns and practices of racial discrimination. For much of the twentieth century, this meant taking on Jim Crow. The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow (2002) provides a thorough overview of Jim Crow and the Black response to it. The four-hour documentary explores the history of segregation from emancipation through World War II, chronicling both its formal and informal manifestations in the South and beyond. The second and third episodes, which examine the Black experience from Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 through the start of the NAACP's school desegregation campaign in the 1930s, is particularly useful for establishing the movement's precursors and preconditions.

Dramatizations of Black life during the era of legal segregation help make clear that Jim Crow was much more than just a bundle of unfair laws. Mudbound (2017) explores personal interactions across and on either side of the color line in the Mississippi Delta during World War II. The film's gaze is intimate, providing a close look at the racialized customs that simultaneously separated and tied together Black tenant farmers and white landowners, showing how Jim Crow linked Black fates to white fortunes. The Great Debaters (2007) chronicles the trials and triumphs of the debate team at Wiley College, a historically Black college in Marshall, Texas, during the Depression. One scene in particular, "The Pig Farmer," effectively re-creates the kind of life-threatening, random encounters that African Americans often had with whites and is worthy of showing on its own. Something the Lord Made (2004), the story of pioneer heart surgeon Vivien Thomas, explores the less dramatic, daily indignities of segregation, rendering unmistakable the ways that Jim Crow customs, as practiced by both individuals and institutions, stifled human potential at great cost to society. The movie parallels the documentary Partners of the Heart (2002) but is far more emotionally engaging.

Two films set in the Jim Crow era that are inspiring tales of persistence and perseverance but are far less useful as overviews of the period are Hidden Figures (2016) and Loving (2016). Although both films treat their subjects thoughtfully and compassionately, and each has the added benefit of revolving around Black women, which too few films do, neither provides a clear enough sense of the scale and scope of segregation to effectively convey the intractable nature of Jim Crow. Another film set in the Jim Crow era that is of no use at all is The Help (2011). The movie fixates on normalizing white privilege and Black subservience and completely marginalizes the Mississippi freedom movement.

Violence was the cornerstone of Jim Crow. Whites resorted to it to regulate Black behavior, control Black labor, and steal Black wealth. The documentary Banished: How Whites Drove Blacks out of Town in America (2006) examines three incidents of early twentieth-century racial violence that resulted in Black landowners losing their lives and property. It also shows how the land grab impeded Black economic upward mobility for generations. An Outrage (2017) takes a personal look at lynching through the eyes of its victims and their descendants. It is a hauntingly moving portrayal of Jim Crow's strange fruit.

The kind of mob violence that led to lynching can be hard to fathom, but Rosewood (1997), which depicts the 1923 racial pogrom in the all-Black town of Rosewood, Florida, reveals the mechanics of lynch mobs, including the rapidity with which they formed, and captures the unspeakable horror of their murderous rampages.

White sheriffs rarely protected the targets of racial violence, and white judges and juries almost never provided justice to victims. Instead, they worked to uphold Jim Crow laws and enforce Jim Crow customs. Few cases illustrate this better than that of the Scottsboro Boys. Scottsboro: An American Tragedy (2000) recounts the conviction of nine innocent Black teenagers accused of raping two white women in Alabama in 1931. Slavery by Another Name (2012) takes a broader look at the justice system under Jim Crow by detailing the ways white southerners used convict leasing to reestablish and maintain white supremacy after Reconstruction. It is a harrowing account of brutal capitalist excess.

A southern prison labor camp, not unlike Mississippi's infamous Parchman Prison Farm, is the backdrop for Life (1999), a comedy featuring Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence as two would-be bootleggers sentenced to life in prison for a murder they did not commit. The film touches on many of the themes discussed in Slavery by Another Name, including judicial malfeasance, creating the opportunity for critical analysis of popular representations and misrepresentations of segregation.

Depicting Black suffering during the Jim Crow era makes clear why African Americans were so desperate for change. Highlighting Black organizing during the same period is just as important because it demonstrates African Americans' refusal to accept the status quo. Birth of a Movement: The Battle Against America's First Blockbuster (2017) describes the effort led by William Monroe Trotter, a Boston-based activist and newspaper editor, to ban D. W. Griffith's white supremacist propaganda film Birth of a Nation. Marcus Garvey: Look for Me in the Whirlwind (2000) examines the life of the Jamaican-born activist, who through the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and its newspaper, the Negro World, spread the gospel of Black nationalism and Pan-Africanism. Much like these documentaries, 10,000 Black Men Named George (2002), a fictionalized account of civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph's effort to organize the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in the 1920s, introduces viewers to a grassroots campaign that not only challenged Jim Crow but also helped create the organizing infrastructure that enabled the civil rights movement to flourish years later.

World War II looms large in civil rights history. "Deadly Calling," the third episode of The War (2007), provides a useful overview of the Black wartime experience at home and abroad, albeit interspersed between stories of military developments overseas. The Black Press: Sol diers Without Swords (1999) probes much deeper by tracking the unheralded effort of Black journalists to advance democracy for black soldiers on the frontlines and for Black citizens on the home front. In Their Own Words: The Tuskegee Airmen (2012) uses oral history to zero in on the civil rights hardships and military heroism of Black flyers. By contrast, the major motion picture Red Tails (2012) omits the airmen's fight against racial discrimination on U.S. soil before, during, and after their time in the army. An egregious oversight, it nonetheless creates an opportunity to use the film to interrogate the idea that Black military service and sacrifice were enough to rid whites of racial prejudice.

When northern Black servicemen and servicewomen who had been stationed in the South returned home, they were unable to escape racial discrimination. Like the waves of Black southerners who had left the region during the war years, they could not outrun white supremacy. To be sure, a different kind of Jim Crow reigned up north, but it was still Jim Crow. Neither New York nor Cleveland nor Oakland turned out to be the fabled Promised Land.

Goin' to Chicago (1994) demystifies northern Jim Crow by examining the lives of a group of older Black Chicagoans who migrated from the Mississippi Delta. A common experience in nearly all of their personal stories is housing discrimination. The Pruitt-Igoe Myth (2011), which explores the creation and collapse of a massive public housing complex in St. Louis, masterfully unpacks housing discrimination, including the central role played by the state and federal governments. The movie Fences (2016) is the perfect complement to these documentaries. Set in Pittsburgh, it shows how working-class African Americans tried to get the most out of life despite the constant pressure of racial discrimination. Sports animated the protagonist in Fences, Troy Maxson, like nothing else in life. Baseball in particular was his salvation and refuge, and to hear him tell it, he was spectacular. But sports did not unburden him of the weight of racism, just as it did not relieve those in the real world who either toiled in segregated Black leagues or broke into white professional leagues. Their struggle provides a window through which to view not only the intersection of race and sports but also Jim Crow America, especially in the North.

Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (2004) chronicles the first Black heavyweight boxing champion's brazen exploits in and out of the ring during the first part of the twentieth century. Jesse Owens (2012) follows the journey of the 1936 Olympic gold medalist in track and field from Cleveland to Berlin, highlighting the many obstacles Jim Crow placed before him. Olympic Pride-American Prejudice (2016) pushes beyond the Owens narrative to share the experiences of the seventeen Black athletes, including two Black women, who joined Owens on the 1936 U.S. Olympic team. Only the Ball Was White (1980) provides an excellent overview of the Negro Leagues, a key example of a Black parallel institution. "Shadow Ball," the fifth "Inning" of Baseball (1994), also explores the Negro Leagues and its star players but in greater depth. Jackie Robinson (2016) offers a detailed glimpse of the on-the-field achievements and off-the-field civil rights advocacy of the Brooklyn Dodgers' legend. Black Magic (2008) looks at the history of basketball at historically Black colleges and universities and the impact desegregation had on the sport, Black athletes, and Black coaches, while Breaking the Huddle: The Integration of College Football (2008) does the same for football. And Muhammad Ali: Through the Eyes of the World (2001) tells of the far-reaching impact that the boxing great's stand against white supremacy and opposition to the Vietnam War had on people.

Sports movies abound, making it possible to pair nearly all of these documentaries with direct cinematic counterparts. Race (2016), (2013), and Ali (2001) are biopics about Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, and Muhammad Ali, while Glory Road (2006) and Remember the Titans (2000) revolve around the integration of college basketball and high school football. But every one of these films treat civil rights more or less the same - racism is reduced to personal prejudice practiced by a handful of rednecks; it is overcome by Black athletes through nonviolent perseverance; and it is rejected by whites once they witness African American athletes performing at a high level. The usefulness of these films, then, is mainly as prompts for analyzing the shortcomings of normative narratives of the persistence and eventual demise of Jim Crow.

Much like movies on race and sports during the Jim Crow era, movies specifically about the civil rights movement tend to follow the Master Narrative, with storylines revolving around preachers and presidents and a heavy emphasis on nonviolence. Documentaries about the movement, however, are generally much better, shifting the focus away from great men and broadening the range of strategies and tactics beyond nonviolence.

Eyes on the Prize remains the gold standard for documentaries on the civil rights movement. Its fourteen hour-long episodes draw on a rich array of primary source material, including original broadcast news footage and interviews with movement leaders and foot soldiers, to weave together an accessible overview of the movement. It is not, however, without shortcomings. At times it is overly event and leader driven, especially its early episodes, causing the complexity of the movement, including its geographic diversity, to be lost. The pacing is also a bit slow for today's younger viewers, who have grown up watching films with more visual activity. It is best used, then, selectively, in segments, as an introduction to key events and people.

By contrast, Soundtrack for a Revolution (2009), which tells the story of the movement through freedom songs, pulsates with energy. Civil rights music inspired, encouraged, and energized movement participants, who are called on here to explain their purpose and importance. Although contemporary artists, such as John Legend, perform the songs, the arrangements are traditional. Unfortunately, so too is the narrative arc. The film adheres too closely to the Montgomery to Memphis framework, privileging the experiences of Dr. King above all else.

Lee Daniels's The Butler (2013), whose lead character, Cecil Gaines, serves as a valet to eight U.S. presidents, is one of a small handful of movies that attempt to engage the entire history of the civil rights movement. Not surprisingly, its take on the movement is conventional, emphasizing decisions made in the Oval Office over those made at mass meetings. Indeed, the movement does not even seem to exist until Gaines arrives at the White House, and it loses steam completely when Black Power emerges. In this sense, it is a classic depiction of the Master Narrative and should only be shown as such. At the same time, the film re-creates a few pivotal movement moments that are almost always ignored on screen, most notably the nonviolent direct action workshops led by Rev. James Lawson in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1959.

Most treatments of the civil rights movement are far less ambitious than Eyes, Soundtrack, or The Butler. Rather than tackling the subject as a whole, they focus instead on a specific event, historical figure, or both. Beginning with school desegregation, The Road to Brown (1990) traces the history of the NAACP's southern school desegregation campaign, which culminated in the US Supreme Court's landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. The film introduces Charles Hamilton Houston, the architect of the NAACP's strategy, and shines a light on the segregated communities involved in the cases. Mr. Civil Rights: Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP (2014) recounts the NAACP's long legal battle to desegregate southern schools that Marshall, a protégé of Houston, helped lead. The biopic Marshall (2017) dances around the edges of this history, choosing instead to focus on Marshall's early courtroom activism outside the South. Laurence Fishburne's one-person play, Thurgood (2011), however, fits perfectly with these documentaries. It is unusually comprehensive in its coverage of the courtroom challenge, and Fishburne's performance is masterful. In fact, Thurgood is strong enough historically and theatrically to be shown on its own.

It is well established that the civil rights movement did not begin with Brown, but the Supreme Court ruling, along with the murder of Emmett Till and the start of the Montgomery bus boycott one year later, are critically important to the movement's evolution. Together, they mobilized new constituencies and created new possibilities for pursuing change.

The Murder of Emmett Till (2003) details the events surrounding the lynching of the fourteen-year-old Chicago boy at the hands of two white men in Money, Mississippi, making direct connections to the Great Migration and rabid white resistance to Brown. The filmmaker's interview with Mamie Till, young Emmett's mother, in which she describes the impact of her son's murder, is particularly powerful. "Awakenings, 1954-1956," the first episode of Eyes on the Prize, discusses the death of Till and the emergence of the Montgomery bus boycott, showing how their combined force pushed the movement in a new direction. The movie Boycott (2001), which is based on historian Stewart Burns's edited collection of oral histories with movement participants, stands out as the best film or documentary on the Montgomery protest. It makes clear the mechanics of the movement, depicts the central role of women, and portrays King as he was-a reluctant leader struggling to catch up to his people.

Returning to school desegregation, the crisis in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957 is explained succinctly in "Fighting Back, 1957-1962," the second episode of Eyes on the Prize. This segment nicely sets up Nine from Little Rock: Pioneers of Desegregation (1964). This documentary short, filmed seven years after the highpoint of the conflict, profiles the lives of the nine Black students who desegregated Central High School. Little Rock Central: 50 Years Later (2007) shares the perspectives of students and community members five decades removed from the crisis, creating an opportunity to discuss school segregation and desegregation in a contemporary context.

The Little Rock Nine were the vanguard of southern student protest, which exploded into full public view with unimaginable energy in February 1960 with the lunch counter sit-ins. A Force More Powerful (1999), which examines a half-dozen, nonviolent, direct action campaigns across the globe during the twentieth century, draws on rare archival footage to take viewers inside the Nashville sit-in movement, revealing the practicalities of a nonviolent campaign. Meanwhile, Fundi: The Story of Ella Baker (1981) introduces viewers to veteran activist Ella Baker, the guiding force behind the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Baker infused SNCC with a commitment to grassroots democratic organizing, enabling the organization to catapult the movement forward in the early 1960s.

Some of the tough decisions that SNCC activists had to make are beautifully dramatized in Freedom Song (2000), a fictionalized account of a SNCC direct action and voter registration campaign. Rather than focusing on a single, large-scale, mobilizing event, Freedom Song hones in on the slow, hard work of organizing, making grassroots activism visible, a rarity in movies. Freedom Song also touches directly on the Freedom Rides, making it a terrific companion for Freedom Riders (2011), which tells the story of the more than four hundred African American and white activists who traveled to the South in 1961 to challenge segregation in interstate travel.

Young people remained at the forefront of the struggle in 1963. In Birmingham, Alabama, they forced white elected officials and business leaders to desegregate downtown by taking to the streets and filling the city's jails. Mighty Times: The Children's March (2004) documents their courage and heroism. There was, however, a steep price to be paid, and four young people paid it with their lives when Klansmen bombed Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church. 4 Little Girls (1997) revisits that horrible moment, recalling the lives lost and explaining the far-reaching and long-lasting impact of their deaths.

The next year, in St. Augustine, Florida, young people conducted wade-ins at beaches and a swim-in at a hotel pool to desegregate America's oldest city. Often overlooked, the struggle in "Florida's Birmingham" drew national attention to the brutality that undergirded Jim Crow, helping to bring about the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Dare Not Walk Alone (2008) places St. Augustine back in the national narrative, connecting the actions of local people with those of Martin Luther King Jr. and President Lyndon B. Johnson. But only the first half of the eighty-minute documentary examines the movement in 1964. The second half looks at local Black life nearly fifty years later, pointing out the underlying reasons for the persistence of poverty, rising incarceration rates, and failing schools. A sobering reminder of the movement's limits, this part of the film creates an opportunity to reflect on the long-term impact of the fight for civil rights.

Whereas St. Augustine has been underemphasized, Freedom Summer has been overemphasized, owing to the participation of large numbers of northern white students who joined the effort to break segregationists' stranglehold on Mississippi. Freedom Summer (2014) chronicles the events of those intense months, from the formation of freedom schools to the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party's Atlantic City challenge. Freedom on My Mind (1994) covers the same subject but looks more closely at the years leading up to 1964, providing a much better sense of the Mississippi movement's evolution. The experiences of one white activist are the subject of An Ordinary Hero: The True Story of Joan Trumpauer Mulholland (2013), creating space for dialogue about the role of whites in the movement.

The flipside of white participation in the freedom struggle - white opposition to it - is covered in Spies of Mississippi (2014), which examines the state of Mississippi's use of intelligence gathering, economic coercion, political intimidation, and murder to thwart the freedom struggle. Neshoba: The Price of Freedom (2011) turns a spotlight on organized racial terror groups by looking at the infamous murder of three civil rights workers by Klansmen at the start of Freedom Summer.

More movies have been made about civil rights in Mississippi than have been made about any other civil rights topic, but with the notable exception of Freedom Song, none are especially good, and a few are just plain bad. Of the latter, Mississippi Burning (1988), possibly the most watched civil rights film of all time, tops the list, having managed to make the movement's success hinge totally on the wit and wisdom of white FBI agents. It is worth showing only to interrogate a fabrication of movement history.

Selma (2015) is everything that Mississippi Burning is not. It centers African Americans - they are the primary shapers of their own destiny, and it portrays the FBI with much greater accuracy, as more adversary than ally. These reasons alone make it worth watching. But as a depiction of the 1965 Selma voting rights campaign, it is not without flaws. Local Alabama activists take a backseat to national leaders, and advocates of self-defense, especially within SNCC, are depicted as overly emotional and irrational. This is not totally unexpected because the movie is actually a biopic, a portrayal of Dr. King revolving around his civil rights leadership and nonviolent approach to change. As such, it works well with the documentaries Citizen King (2005) and King in the Wilderness (2018), which examine the final years of King's life; The March (2013), which goes behind the scenes of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom; and At the River I Stand (1993), a chronicle of King's time with striking Memphis sanitation workers shortly before his death. It also pairs nicely with King: A Filmed Record . . . Montgomery to Memphis (1970), which pulls together rare footage of King delivering some of his most important speeches, including "I Have A Dream."

As seen in Selma, King's outsized presence in civil rights narratives obscures key elements of the freedom struggle, chief among these being self-defense. Negroes with Guns: Rob Williams and Black Power (2004) addresses this oversight by sharing the story of Williams's armed defense of the Black community in Monroe, North Carolina, and full-throated advocacy of self-defense via the radio waves. Deacons for Defense (2003), a fictionalized account of the Deacons for Defense and Justice, the armed self-defense group founded in Jonesboro, Louisiana, in 1964 to protect local movement participants, including nonviolent activists, complements Negroes with Guns perfectly. The story of the Deacons, which is ably captured here, demonstrates the ways armed self-defense could make nonviolent direct action possible and compel reluctant federal officials to act on behalf of African Americans.

But it is neither the Deacons nor Rob Williams who come most immediately to mind when thinking about African Americans and armed self-defense, but rather Malcolm X. Even in Selma, the former spokesperson for the Nation of Islam (NOI) makes a cameo appearance as the foil to King's nonviolence. Malcolm, of course, was much more than a voice of Black rage; he was an astute political thinker with a constantly evolving worldview, which comes across clearly in Malcolm X: Make It Plain (1994), the most comprehensive documentary on his life. Spike Lee's artful Malcolm X (1992) is also a viable option for introducing Malcolm as it cleaves closely to The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

Malcolm lived his entire life in the Midwest and the Northeast. Treatments of his life, therefore, can be used to offer insights into the northern freedom struggle. So too can The Hate That Hate Produced (1959), a news exposé on the NOI. Although the program frames the group as a Black supremacist cult, the interviews with Malcolm, NOI spiritual leader Elijah Muhammad, and NOI members are revelatory in terms of perspectives on racism from Black northerners who rejected integration.

The view of moderate, mainstream Black northerners comes across in two biographies. The first is Adam Clayton Powell (1989), which explores the life and politics of the outspoken civil rights activist who represented Harlem in Congress in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. And the second is The Power Broker: Whitney Young's Fight for Civil Rights (2012), which delves into the political machinations of the head of the National Urban League.

The sentiments of everyday Black northerners trapped in declining, deindustrializing, urban centers are discernible through documentaries on the uprisings of the mid- to late 1960s. July '64 (2006) offers insights into the thoughts of ordinary African Americans in Rochester, New York, through its exploration of the causes and consequences of the three-day rebellion that took place there in the summer of 1964. Revolution '67 (2007) does the same for African Americans living in Newark, New Jersey, during that uprising three years later. Both documentaries work with Detroit (2017), a severely flawed dramatization of the murder of three African Americans by police at the Algiers Motel during the 1967 Motor City rebellion. The documentaries make visible what is rendered invisible in Detroit, most notably the local movement and the institutionalized nature of police terror.

Urban uprisings offer a convenient entry point for discussing the transition from civil rights to Black Power, but jumping immediately from one to the other misses Black Power's southern roots. "Out of the Shadows," the first episode of Black America since MLK: And Still I Rise (2016), and "The Time Has Come, 1964-1966," the seventh installment of Eyes on the Prize, explain the genesis of Black Power in SNCC's Lowndes County, Alabama, organizing project. The Black America episode also introduces the Oakland, California, Black Panther Party for Self Defense (BPP), the most iconic organization of the Black Power era.

The BPP straddles the civil rights and Black Power periods, making it the ideal organization for studying the transition between the eras. The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (2015) offers a rich and engaging overview of the BPP, although it privileges what was happening at the party's headquarters in Oakland over everything else. The documentary short Emory Douglas: The Art of the Black Panthers (2015) provides a succinct, yet revealing, look at the political thinking of party leaders, rank-and-file members, and supporters. And The Murder of Fred Hampton (1971) exposes the government's criminal conspiracy to crush the BPP that led to the assassination of Hampton, the Chicago Panthers' bold, brash, and brilliant leader.

The Black Panthers are generally treated harshly in movies. In For rest Gump (1994), and more recently in The Butler, they are mocked as gun-toting, wannabe revolutionaries who contributed nothing to the movement other than violence. Scenes from both films are worth showing as examples of gross mischaracterizations in popular portrayals of civil rights and post-civil rights Black radicalism. The scene in Forrest Gump is especially worth deconstructing because it is the only exposure most students have to the BPP and Black Power.

A notable exception to these kinds of distorted depictions emanating from Hollywood is Blood Done Sign My Name (2010), an account of white racial violence and Black protest in the small town of Oxford, North Carolina, in 1970. The film casts Black Power protest as an extension of civil rights activism and treats Black Power advocates as serious political thinkers. Both of these points are also well made in Scarred Justice: The Orangeburg Massacre, 1968 (2008), which examines Black activism at South Carolina State University and investigates the murder of three students by state troopers. The emphasis on student activism in both films makes pairing them together work for the purpose of discussing the emergence of Black Power.

"Move On Up," the second episode of Black America since MLK, covers the 1970s, providing a good sense of those areas of Black life where civil rights victories had made a substantial difference and those areas where radical change was still needed. The final three episodes of Eyes on the Prize do similar work, but in a bit more detail. Meanwhile, The Black Power Mixtape, 1967-1975 (2011), a compilation of interviews with activists and movement footage shot by Swedish journalists during the period, offers a narrower kind of overview of the era by analyzing Black Power ideology as a response to conditions left unaddressed by the civil rights movement.

Finally, there are several noteworthy documentaries on contemporary topics through which to explore the legacy of the movement. The development of hip-hop, from the streets of the Bronx to the concert stages of Europe, is chronicled in Hip Hop Evolution (2016). Letter to the President (2005) and Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982-1992 (2017) examine the devastating impact that Reaganomics had on the African American community, the former through rap music and the latter through the 1992 Los Angeles uprising. The cultural influence and economic exploitation of Black athletes at predominantly white universities is the subject of The Fab Five (2011). OJ Made in America (2016) ties all of these themes together into a coherent and compelling narrative of Black life from the 1960s through the 1990s by chronicling football legend O. J. Simpson's phenomenal rise and spectacular fall. The destruction wrought in New Orleans by decades of discriminatory housing policy and the federal government's grossly negligent response to Hurricane Katrina is explored in When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006). The House I Live In (2012) and The 13th (2016) offer micro- and macro-level views of mass incarceration. The Central Park Five (2012) and Every Mother's Son (2004) take intimate, deeply personal looks at unconstitutional police practices and their collateral consequences. And Whose Streets? (2017) tells the story of the Ferguson, Missouri, uprising in 2014, from the killing of eighteen-year-old Michael Brown by local police to the birth of the Movement for Black Lives, from the point of view of the activists who led it.

There are very few major motion pictures on contemporary civil rights topics as powerful as Fruitvale Station (2013), a heart-wrenching dramatization of Oscar Grant III's last day alive. The twenty-two-year-old African American was shot and killed by Bay Area transit police on New Year's Day in 2008. The film is the perfect complement to any of the documentaries on contemporary topics, especially the ones on mass incarceration and policing, including Whose Streets?

Documentaries and movies are incredible resources for teaching civil rights history, and never before have so many been available for classroom instruction. The best ones can truly deepen understanding of the movement, but even the worst ones can be used to make clear what the struggle was about. The right documentary, paired with the right movie, can help students wrap their minds around even those aspects of the movement that are the hardest to comprehend.

Hasan Kwame Jeffries is associate professor of History at The Ohio State University where he teaches courses on the Civil Rights and Black Power Movement. Jeffries is the author of Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama's Black Belt (NYU Press, 2009) and the editor of Understanding and Teaching the Civil Rights Movement (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019). Jeffries has worked on several public history projects including the renovation of the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee. He hosts the podcast Teaching Hard History: American Slavery for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

From Understanding and Teaching the Civil Rights Movement edited by Hasan Kwame Jeffries. Reprinted by permission of the University of Wisconsin Press. © 2019 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. All rights reserved.

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Two Thumbs Up: Movies and Documentaries to Use (and Avoid) When Teaching Civil Rights - Zinn Education Project

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Documentaries and movies are highly effective tools for teaching civil rights history. They make the movement come alive, breathing life into the nameless and faceless masses who mobilized and organized for change.

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The Zinn Education Project's COINTELPRO lesson plan made for a remarkable class session. I used the lesson as a capstone to a Civil Rights/Black Power unit.

While the underlying background sometimes astounded students, it was being able to see the historical narrative grounded in primary source documentation - to see a story that might seem beyond belief for some of them - that really inspired them to pay closer attention to their work.

They dug into and debated every paragraph of every document! It was an energy boost, new fuel for their thinking and communicating, for the remainder of the semester.

High Social Studies Teacher, California

This site is an essential tool when trying to untangle the complex history of race in America.

No matter what, the lessons that seem to shock my students the most center on the Black Panther Party and COINTELPRO. Even though I'm providing the materials to students, they still come up to me aghast and say, "Did you know about this?" The demonization still present when speaking about the Black Panther Party in this country is astounding. Even students who grew up in predominately black communities have only learned about the black freedom movement as one of violence and hatred. When they learn of the murder of Fred Hampton, there is nearly palpable anger.

The last time I taught with these materials, I had a student who almost never did his work. He was trying to graduate and had to do one final project and chose this time period. When he realized no one had taught him this history in his 12 years of school, he was astounded. He put in more effort on that project than any of the 60 other students with similar projects. The idea that he had been manipulated and taught to hate people who were trying to help their own community resonated as a reflection of what is happening with the Black Lives Matter movement and the classification of that group as a hate group.

As a teacher of African American history, my class generally centers on how the shaping of narratives changes the way that history is interpreted. Students come to my class used to talking about slavery and black struggle, but also having a limited understanding of the overall scope of the African American experience. They presume history goes like this: Slavery was bad, then it ended, things got a little better but not enough, so MLK came along and everything was good, until some people turned their back on his peaceful mission and ruined it for everyone. This is the traditional narrative that I get when I ask students to write out what they know about black history.

Once we start to delve into the stories, the students start to see how much manipulation is built into the U.S. education system.

High Social Studies Teacher, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

I was incredibly impressed with the materials presented during a workshop on the Civil Rights Movement and a COINTELPRO lesson by the Zinn Education Project during the NCSS conference in 2018. Since then, I have used facets of that specific lesson, such as the sources on the Black Panthers, in class to spark discussions with my students.

I was so happy I discovered both the Zinn Education Project and this lesson, in particular. It provides a different lens that I had not previously given to my class, regarding the Black Panthers. The lesson as a whole allows for links to current events and issues in today's society as well.

High School Social Studies Department Chair, Grayslake, Illinois

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COINTELPRO: Teaching the FBI's War on the Black Freedom Movement

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The Zinn Education Project's COINTELPRO lesson plan made for a remarkable class session. I used the lesson as a capstone to a Civil Rights/Black Power unit. While the underlying background sometimes astounded students, it was being able to see the historical narrative grounded in primary source documentation - to see a story that might seem beyond belief for some of them - that really inspired them to pay closer attention to their work.

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One of the most fascinating things about working on KidsPost is learning about kids who use their time and talents to help others. We've written about kids who are famous for their efforts - yes, a certain teen climate activist comes to mind - but we've profiled many more who become leaders in their schools or their communities. They have fostered abandoned kittens, collected eyeglasses for those who can't afford them and created artwork for the apartments of people moving out of homelessness. And they have raised awareness of countless issues, including hunger, gun violence and bullying.

To mark 20 years of KidsPost, we wanted to highlight 20 kids and teens from around the world who have noticed problems in their communities or countries and are working to solve them. We then realized that 20 is a lot to read in one sitting, so we have profiled 12 here. We would like you to help us decide on eight more to feature through the rest of this year. (Send your suggestions to kidspost@washpost.com with the subject heading "kid activist.") We hope these stories inspire you to figure out what your community needs and use your considerable energy and creativity to bring about change.
- Christina Barron, KidsPost editor
Shana Grant, 17, Washington, D.C.

Cause: Gun control and nonviolence

There were 116 homicides in the nation's capital in 2017. It took just one to change Shana Grant's life.

"I had always been interested in social justice and how I could improve my community," the 17-year-old Washington native said. "But I wasn't sure how to go about it."

After September 20, 2017, she knew. That was the night that her 16-year-old friend, Zaire Kelly, was shot to death outside his home by a teenager trying to rob him.

Zaire was the first person Shana knew personally who had died from gun violence. And she wanted him to be the last. Police statistics showed that the percentage of gun-related deaths in the city was rising.

"It was time for it to be enough," Shana said.

Believing strongly that youths can make a difference, she engaged in anti-violence activism. She was on Pennsylvania Avenue a few months later for the student-led March for Our Lives demonstration supporting gun-control measures. Other rallies and meetings followed. Last year, she was elected a D.C. youth "mayor" through a city-run program that develops future leaders.

"I have a unique perspective as an African American girl living in Ward 8 and seeing how gun violence and poverty affect families in my community," Shana said.

Now she is working on a proposal to help students who are at risk of turning to a life of crime. She calls it "preventing the school-to-prison pipeline."

At youth government meetings and town hall gatherings, she urges nonviolent solutions to problems. She calls it "practicing peace."

Here are some of her suggestions for young people feeling angry or stressed: Breathe deeply, write down your feelings, talk to someone, try to see the other person's point of view, and look for activities you enjoy, such as listening to music.

Shana expects to graduate in May from BASIS DC charter school. She wants to attend Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, in the fall and plans to become a doctor. She is not planning on giving up her activism, though.

"Things need to be changed," she said. "I want to be part of that change."
- Marylou Tousignant
Kauã Rodolfo, 11, Brazil

Cause: Raising environmental awareness

One natural disaster after another had sent Brazil reeling. There had been a massive mudslide in the country's southeast, then a mysterious oil spill along the northeastern shore, and finally the fires in the Amazon rainforest.

That was when Kauã Rodolfo, 11, decided it was time to help. The way he sees it, the planet is in big trouble - and it's up to kids to solve it. So he started planting trees in the southern Brazilian city of Curitiba, one after another.

"It's important to save the planet," Kauã said, "and it's important to protect the trees, because they make us better."

Kauã is an ambassador of an organization called Plant-for-the-Planet. Conceived in 2007 by a 9-year-old German named Felix Finkbeiner, it is an international awareness campaign led by children that began with an ambitious goal: plant 1 million trees. But soon, what began as the one tree Felix planted at his school had turned into several thousands, then several hundreds of thousands, then, within a few years, 1 million.

But the campaign - and the mission - didn't stop there. It has sprouted in dozens of countries across the world. Last autumn, it reached Kauã's classroom. He immediately fell in love with the idea of planting trees and raising awareness about the environment, so he signed up for a day-long training course to become an ambassador of Plant-for-the- Planet.

What's happening in the environment is unpredictable. It's a scary time to be a kid. But Kauã doesn't think it has to be.

The planet will find a way if people can learn to work together, he says. It is a value he is trying to instill by making frequent environmental presentations and planting trees.

"I'm not scared of the future of the planet, because I'm going to help the planet," he said. "I'm going to do this. I'm going to go forward with this project. You don't have to be scared."

He's already planted seven trees. And he's excited to plant more.

"I don't know why I love nature, but if I stopped planting trees, I would be sad," he said.
- Terrence McCoy
Maimouna Ndiaye, 14, Mali

Cause: Get more girls involved in programming

The youngest kid on Mali's national robotics team wants to build the perfect assistant.

"Artificial intelligence that is extremely precise," Maimouna Ndiaye said, "for someone who is very busy."

Like her - the teenager in the West African country's bustling capital, Bamako, spends most afternoons behind a Dell laptop, coding away while pop stars such as Shawn Mendes croon through her speakers.

Maimouna, 14, is one of two girls on her high school's elite programming squad, balancing a full load of schoolwork on top of technology competitions across Africa. They create, among other projects, applications that translate Mali's mother tongue, Bambara, into French and English.

"She is a master," said her coach, Malick Traore, the technical manager at RobotsMali - and very unusual in a conservative region where some frown upon women who choose to work.

"That mentality is old-fashioned," said Maimouna, a numbers lover who applied for her first computer camp at age 9. A group of engineers had visited her school, she said, inspiring her to take the leap.

Today she sees robotics as the future - a path to speed up development in a nation where the average worker earns just more than $2,100 a year - and nudges other girls in town to pursue their machine dreams.

The first step, she tells them, is shushing the internal voice that says, "You can't do it."

"You're capable," she gushes in these pep talks. "We need everyone to get involved and build a better world."

Plus, she said, it's fun.

Maimouna has designed a remote-controlled robot on wheels that flashes a rainbow of colors. She hopes to construct something more humanlike as technology advances, an android that handles everyone's chores.

For now, she's busy studying artificial intelligence - the focus of her next competition this summer in Rwanda.
- Danielle Paquette
William Winslow, 14, North Carolina

Cause: Ending childhood hunger

William Winslow could spend the long Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend playing basketball in the driveway at his home in Raleigh, North Carolina. Instead, the founder of the Food Drive Kids sits at the kitchen table with his 10-year-old brother, Alexander, and their parents to plan his nonprofit's annual food drive.

"I will do whatever it takes to end childhood hunger," he said.

William was in the first grade when he first learned that as many as 1 in 5 kids in his state were at risk for hunger - including some of his classmates.

"That came as a shock," he said. "I thought everyone had the same life as me. It was a rude awakening to the real world."

He persuaded his mom to drive him to a local Food Lion. There, he talked shoppers into buying food - 1,400 pounds worth - to send home in backpacks with kids during spring break.

Seven years later, he's collected more than 55,000 pounds of food, raised $63,000 and been recognized as a Prudential Spirit of Community honoree.

He's expanded his mission, too. With Alexander working as head of advertising, Food Drive Kids also provides emergency food relief to the community, has helped build four school gardens to give kids access to healthy food and has set up two Little Food Pantries, which the brothers stock with food and toiletries each Friday.

"I didn't imagine that William would be 14 and still doing this, but the older he gets, the more passionate he is," his mom, Blythe Clifford, said.

Many children, not just William and Alexander, still help make Food Drive Kids' food drive a success. More than 100 kids from the boys' school and Scout groups turn out in April to hand out food lists to shoppers, collect purchased boxed and canned items and load them into trucks.

Said William: "We prefer kid [volunteers] over adults because they don't think something is impossible. They just want to do it, and it ends up being possible."
- Lela Nargi
Haaziq Kazi, 13, India

Cause: Ocean trash

It was the sight of a dead whale in a National Geographic documentary that moved Haaziq Kazi to act. Washed ashore, the whale had 37 pounds of plastic inside its bloated stomach.

"Two things stuck to me: The first was the magnitude of the problem, and the second was the impact it has on life," he said.

So when the time came for a school project, when students had to come up with solutions to a problem they felt strongly about, Haaziq chose to work on ocean trash.

"There are about 5 trillion pieces of plastic floating in the ocean," he said. "This would be enough to stack two-liter plastic bottles from here to the moon and back - twice."

Haaziq, then 9 years old, attempted to create a device that could help clean the oceans. Finished in three years, the first concept design of the device - called ERVIS - is a ship with saucers and chambers. While saucers would float on the surface of the ocean, creating a whirlpool to suck the waste inside, the chamber compartments would store the waste. The ship would then separate the waste into large, medium, small and plastic particle categories. The waste would be forwarded for recycling on land. It would be powered by renewable energy and have a mechanism to filter out marine life that may get pulled inside.

He has worked with a product designer to make a 3-D printed model, and he intends "to work on a real-life model in the next stage," said Haaziq, who is collaborating with scientists and engineers. "This is literally a moonshot project with huge funding requirements."

While the ship is the long-term goal, he has not stopped his fight against plastic. Six months ago, he set up the ERVIS Foundation to bring a "generational change," by educating kids about the effects of plastic usage. The foundation has created an app to track daily consumption of plastic, provide tips on how to cut down plastic use and sell zero-waste products.

"You are never too young to make a difference," says the eighth-grader from the city of Pune in western India. Haaziq was invited to New York in 2017 for a Ted-Ed talk about his project. In his free time, he likes having fun with Nintendo video games and playing the piano.

"When I grow up, I see myself as problem solver," said Haaziq, who admires technology entrepreneur Elon Musk. "He challenged the status quo and made what people perceive as impossible possible, and that's what I want to do."
- Niha Masih
Genesis Butler, 13, California

Cause: Animal rights and environmental protection

Genesis Butler has three dogs and loves all animals. Just not on her dinner plate.

When she found out where her favorite meal - chicken nuggets - came from, she became a vegetarian, someone who doesn't eat meat. She was 3 years old.

At age 6, she went further, going vegan. A vegan doesn't eat any animal products, including eggs and dairy products.

Then she decided to persuade her family and friends to join her.

"It's not as hard as you think," said Genesis, now 13. Her parents and three younger siblings became vegan, although Genesis likes to tell how she once caught her mom hiding in a closet with a chocolate bar.

Genesis's passion led her to start the nonprofit GenesisForAnimals.org to help animal shelters and sanctuaries. She began with $5,000 saved from talks she gives. One talk, posted online in 2017, has been viewed by thousands of people. Her delivery includes rattling off statistics faster than the Washington Nationals' Stephen Strasburg throws fastballs.

When she was 8, she went before the city council in Long Beach, California, where she lives, to support "Meatless Mondays." The advisory measure, which recommends that people eat more plant-based food, passed. A TV reporter called Genesis "the most effective speaker" there.

Last year, she wrote to Pope Francis, asking him to give up meat for Lent. A spokesman replied, saying the pope is proud of her.

On the state level, Genesis worked to promote the passage of laws requiring prisons and nursing homes to offer vegan meals, and limiting the sale of cosmetic products that use animal testing.

More recently, she expanded her activism to include protecting the environment, saying that raising animals for food is "the primary cause" of pollution, loss of biodiversity and water shortages.

"If people can change the way they eat, it will have an immediate impact on the planet," she said.

For her efforts, Genesis was chosen for the 2020 "Marvel Hero Project" about "real kids making a real difference." She's the star of her own mini-comic book and will appear in a Disney video.

But she doesn't think of herself as a hero, just an ordinary kid who enjoys painting, writing and sleepovers with friends.

"And I still love chicken nuggets," she said, "but now they are vegan."
- Marylou Tousignant
Naudia Greenawalt, 10, and Linkin Eger, 10, Wisconsin

Cause: Raising awareness about childhood cancer

When Naudia Greenawalt's friend Linkin Eger was facing cancer, Naudia had a lot of questions. What kind of medicine would Linkin take? Was it possible to get rid of the cancer? Would her friend still be the same goofy, fun-loving Linkin?

Linkin was 2 years old when doctors found his brain tumor. Surgeons removed most of it. But a few years later, the tumor came back, and Linkin needed chemotherapy - medication that kills cancer cells.

Naudia, who attends school with Linkin in West Allis, Wisconsin, wanted to understand what her friend was going through - not only the medical parts, but also what it was like to be a regular kid dealing with a serious illness. She decided to turn Linkin's story into a book, sell it and donate the profits to Linkin's family. "I was trying to create awareness about childhood cancer," said Naudia, 10.

Before writing the book, Naudia joined Linkin at hospital appointments, took pictures and interviewed his family and medical team. In 2017, "My Friend Linkin" was published.

"I thought it was awesome," said Linkin, now 10. The book sold 500 copies and became the subject of an Emmy-nominated documentary produced by Milwaukee PBS.

In the book, Naudia describes what it was like to see Linkin go through chemotherapy. "To be honest, it was a little bit scary, but once I got used to everything, I wasn't scared anymore."

Linkin is done with treatment now, and he's stable. He and Naudia are continuing to promote childhood cancer awareness by interviewing other young patients and writing their stories.

"They are a great team," said Kelly Eger, Linkin's mom. "Linkin brings the experience, and Naudia brings the questions."

Last year, Linkin finished his first book, "My Friend Mackenzie," about an 8-year-old girl with brain cancer. "If Mackenzie had a superhero power, it would be to help people beat cancer. I wish I had that super power too," Linkin wrote.

In the future, Naudia wants to become a primatologist like Jane Goodall and study monkeys. Linkin wants to be a brain surgeon.

But first, they'll write more books.
- Gina Rich
Sidney Keys III, 14, Missouri

Cause: Improving literacy among boys

From a young age, Sidney Keys III loved to read. But finding characters he could relate to was a challenge, because most of the books at his school library featured white protagonists. "I'd never been exposed to African American literature in a fun way," Sidney said.

That changed when Sidney's mother, Winnie Caldwell, took him to EyeSeeMe, an African American children's bookstore in University City, Missouri. Sidney, then 10 years old, picked up "Danny Dollar Millionaire Extraordinaire: The Lemonade Escapade," by Ty Allan Jackson. "I couldn't put that book down, because it was about a black boy who looked like me," said Sidney, now 14.

Sidney wanted his peers to experience the same excitement in finding characters that resonated with them. In 2016, he created Books n Bros, a reading club for boys ages 7 to 13. The club, which now has 100 members, focuses on African American literature and meets each month to discuss a book; past topics have included history, sci-fi and fantasy genres.

Meetups take place in the Saint Louis area, but out-of-town "bros" can participate by Skype. Caldwell, who manages the club's business and communications, said Books n Bros wants to eventually offer the program in schools.

The club is open to boys of all races and backgrounds and has an "Adopt a Bro" option enabling donors to sponsor memberships, which cost $25 a month.

People assume boys don't enjoy reading, Sidney said. But he hasn't found that to be true.

"Now that kids are having fun while reading, boys don't want to leave the meetups," he said.

"Marvel's Hero Project," a new Disney Plus series recognizing kids who are making a positive impact, profiled Sidney in a documentary and comic book titled "The Spectacular Sidney." The video premiered in January.

Getting to be in the documentary was "definitely pretty awesome," Sidney said. But his favorite part of the Books n Bros experience has been helping boys like him improve their literacy skills and enjoy themselves at the same time.

"It really warms my heart knowing they're having fun," he said.
- Gina Rich
Milena Radoytseva, 16, Bulgaria

Cause: Encouraging better behavior online

Have you ever been a bully? Or not stopped a bully when you had the chance? Those are important questions, says Milena Radoytseva, who is on the youth panel of the Bulgarian Safer Internet Centre (SafeNet). She remembers when she was in a group chat a few years ago, and another kid became the target of mean attacks.

"It started as a joke," she said, so she didn't do anything about it. "I sat and watched."

"We won't let that happen again," declared Milena, who helped develop the youth panel's new campaign to raise awareness about online aggression. The approach isn't to criticize kids, but to educate them about how to change their perspective - and hopefully their behavior. For example, they made a video featuring an angry boy furiously typing messages on his computer. When he sees that his little sister's drawings show him as a superhero, he realizes he hasn't been acting like one.

"The Internet will never be this totally happy place with rainbows," she said. But the experience can be improved by being thoughtful and careful, added Milena, who purposely keeps her social media profiles private.

Being part of a team that encourages kids to speak out is new for Milena. She didn't know that opportunities like this existed a year ago. But when she entered (and lost) an essay competition, she wound up at an event promoting youth participation. That's how she found SafeNet, and she has since joined other groups, including the youth network Megaphone and the Eurochild Children's Council. Milena jokes she had to make her parents a chart so they could understand all of her activities.

At a recent children's rights event in Brussels, Belgium, Milena took the microphone and introduced herself - unexpectedly in French, the native language of most of the audience.

"She took the moment and put everyone at ease," said Alice Hagger-Vaughan, Eurochild's child participation and policy officer.

Milena's best languages (other than her native Bulgarian) are English and German, and she hopes that communication plays a big part in her future. When she was younger, she pretended to host a talk show in her living room. Her goal now isn't so different: "I want to speak about things that need to be spoken about."
- Vicky Hallett
Demetri Sedita, 16, Florida

Cause: Protecting Tampa Bay waterways

Each January, the Gasparilla Pirate Festival attracts crowds to Tampa, Florida. They line Seddon Channel to watch a pirate ship pretend to attack the city. They cheer and toss thousands of glittery bead necklaces.

Demetri Sedita knows the dark side of these festivities. Many beads wind up in the city's waterways, where they're eaten by marine animals or break down into tiny bits of toxic plastic that "work their way up the food chain," said Demetri, a high school sophomore. They pose a threat to the area's shorebirds, manatees, dolphins, stingrays, common fish such as sheepshead and "to all levels of the ecosystem."

He and his 14-year-old brother, Ethan, founded Green Gasparilla in 2015 to try to stop the problem. They organize post-festival bead cleanups - with parents and friends using weighted hooks to snag the strands, or with volunteers in scuba gear. More critically, they work to keep beads from getting into the water to begin with.

The month before the parade, Demetri and Ethan do media interviews to spread the word that "tossing beads is simply littering," Demetri said. For 2020, the boys also enlisted the help of Tampa's mayor, Jane Castor, and appeared with her as she announced her Bead-Free Bay initiative.

"Our goal is to let the public know that future generations won't be able to enjoy the waterways because of their reckless practices," Demetri said.

He was frustrated to see that, despite his efforts, most people continued to throw beads this year. But he's determined to figure out a way to make Green Gasparilla's message and mission more effective.

Last August, Demetri was named a "youth ambassador" by the ocean conservation group, EarthEcho International. Speaking with adult mentors and activist peers has given him ideas for improvement. One is drafting sample anti-bead legislation to present to Tampa's lawmakers.

Exploring with his underwater drone is a favorite activity - Demetri once spotted a Civil War shipwreck in the Hillsborough River. It's also part of his advocacy strategy.

"When I showed the mayor underwater footage of all the beads, she was shocked," he said.

If he can similarly shock his fellow Floridians, they might take bigger, better action in time for next year's festival.
- Lela Nargi
Alice Imbastari, 10, Italy

Cause: Picking up trash

Wiggling her toes in the sand, Alice Imbastari surveys a stretch of Mediterranean coastline near her home south of Rome. But she's not looking at the waves or even the paraglider soaring above. She's searching for trash. "See that?" she shouts, and rushes to grab a ripped chip bag.

In minutes, she fills up a sack with all sorts of things that shouldn't be here - deflated balloons, hot dog wrappers, a hair comb. They range in size from a chunk of plastic foam to a tiny dot of plastic. "Birds think they're eggs and eat them," said Alice, who dreams of being a vet when she grows up.

Alice has learned a lot about litter in the past year since she spoke in Rome in front of a crowd of thousands gathered for the first Global Climate Strike for Future. "I counted to 100, and then I gave up," she said of the crowd.

Although giving that speech - and others that have followed - was scary, Alice is more terrified for the environment. That's why she begged her parents to let her protest just like her role model, Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenage activist who has attracted worldwide attention with her campaign to fight climate change.

Because they wouldn't let her skip classes every Friday, Alice came up with another plan. "From school, I looked out the window and I could see the sea," she said. So she got trash bags, rubber gloves and a pair of chimney tongs, and started doing weekly beach cleanups. She tries to reuse whatever possible, often to make crafts.

"When she was smaller, we used to take shells. Now we take plastic," said her mother, Paola Bernasconi, who has noticed other changes, too. For snacks, Alice prefers cut-up veggies instead of sweets wrapped in packaging. For her 10th birthday last May, she asked to plant fruit trees.

It's often lonely on the beach - other kids from school haven't been interested in helping, and some even bullied her about her activism. So she recently switched schools. But she won't stop cleaning.

"I go home, and there's plastic again the next day," Alice said. "It keeps coming."
- Vicky Hallett Illustrations by Natalya Balnova for The Washington Post. Art direction by Alla Dreyvitser. Design by Victoria Adams Fogg.

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12 kids who are changing their communities and our world

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12 young people from around the world are tackling problems in their communities and the world.

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Every now and then an article comes along that takes such a novel approach to an issue, I feel like I''m seeing something with new eyes. Such was the case when I read Bill McKibben's 2012 Rolling Stone article, " Global Warming's Terrifying New Math." It made me see our climate predicament with such clarity that I knew immediately I had to figure out how to turn this article into a curriculum.

The "terrifying new math" is pretty simple. McKibben, the founder of 350.org and the world's most prominent climate campaigner, proposes that there are just three numbers that we need to pay attention to in order to reach some radical conclusions about the future of fossil fuels.

The first number is two degrees Celsius, or about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. In the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Accord, 167 countries, including the United States, pledged that "deep cuts in global [greenhouse gas] emissions are required . . . so as to hold the increase in global temperature below two degrees Celsius." The Copenhagen Accord was a timid, inadequate document. According to McKibben, even a two-degree rise in global temperatures is fraught with danger, but it' is the only international consensus on a climate target, -"the bottomest of bottom lines," he writes. The first scary number.

Student handouts include:

Three Scary Numbers Clues

Three Scary Numbers Questions

* "Keeling Curve" Graph

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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Mystery of the Three Scary Numbers: A Climate Change Teaching Activity - Zinn Education Project

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Every now and then an article comes along that takes such a novel approach to an issue, I feel like I''m seeing something with new eyes. Such was the case when I read Bill McKibben's 2012 Rolling Stone article, " Global Warming's Terrifying New Math."

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When I wrote this introduction in the summer of 2020, there had already been more than five weeks of nightly Black Lives Matter demonstrations in my city of Portland, Oregon, sparked by the brutal murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. This exhilaratingly extended period of nationwide protest can be attributed to many factors: the steady drumbeat of new revelations of equally awful examples (Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain) of state-sanctioned murder of Black people; widespread teargassing, pepper-spraying, use of "nonlethal" projectiles, and beating of protestors by police in dozens of cities; and the coronavirus pandemic, which has disproportionately infected and killed Black people in terrifying numbers, and has also created disruptions to daily life that, paradoxically, opened up space for rallies, marches, organizing. More than anything, this moment feels like a reckoning with the United States' past, with its long history of white supremacist violence, from slavery to George Floyd, and equally long history of Black resistance.

To reckon means to establish by counting or calculation. What would it mean to really reckon with the historical costs of white supremacy on Black life? What would it mean to count up all the violence, theft, harm, and injustice inflicted on Black people in the last 400+ years of white settlement of this land? It would mean establishing what actually happened, not what our historical fables and corporate textbooks peddle. More critically, it would be a first step in calculating what is owed.

Reparations for Black people in the United States is not a new idea. Before the Civil War was even over, Special Field Order No. 15 was issued to confiscate land from Confederate land owners to be divided among newly freedpeople "to establish a peaceable agricultural settlement." Activist Callie House called on Congress in the late-19th and early 20th-century to provide formerly enslaved people like her, and 4 million others, modest "pensions." In the 1950s, Queen Mother Moore founded the Universal Association of Ethiopian Women, where she started investigating the idea of reparations. When the Black Panthers issued their 10-point program in 1966, they demanded compensation for stolen wages and genocide: "the payment in currency that will be distributed to our many communities."

In spite of this rich genealogy, reparations are nowhere in the textbooks my school district has adopted to help me teach young people in the United States about their past. Looking up the word "reparations" in the three recently published textbooks on my shelf is to find it absent altogether, or only in reference to the end of World War I or U.S. payments to Japanese Americans (incarcerated in concentration camps during World War II) in the 1980s.

The message of the corporate textbook committees is clear: Reparations for Black people is so outlandish an idea as to not even merit mention.

But not so outlandish anymore. In 2014, Ta-Nehisi Coates published his gorgeous essay, " The Case for Reparations" in The Atlantic, which persuasively and painstakingly laid out how 20th-century structural racism stole Black people's wealth just as surely as 19th-century slavery stole their bodies, labor, and knowledge. Also in 2015, activists in Chicago won a long-fought battle to win reparations for victims of Jon Burge and the Chicago Police Department's campaign of torture and won " the Burge torture curriculum," a requirement that the story of the torture and the activists who fought it be taught to Chicago students.

In 2019, for the first time in more than a decade, Congress held hearings on the decades-old bill, HR 40, a modest effort to simply establish a committee to develop reparative proposals. 2019 was also the first time in U.S. history that presidential contenders - in the Democratic primaries were expected to have a "reparations position," so common was it for them to be asked about it. Long overdue, reparations have entered the mainstream. It's surely time then, for it to enter our classrooms and curriculum too.

The premise of this lesson is that Congress has finally taken on the task of reparations legislation. But what Congress offers is extraordinarily weak sauce. Students take on the role of activist-experts working in one of the following domains of racial justice: Education, voting, housing, labor, health care, or criminal punishment. They talk back to Congress' flimsy legislation and design a more robust alternative. In crafting amendments and additions to the bill, students must decide what form the reparations should take, how much is due, and argue which needs are the most immediate, pressing, and fundamental. As racial justice activists, students are all on the "same side" in this role play, but they come to the discussion with different expertise and priorities. As they struggle to design reparative policies that will address the needs of all the groups present (and thereby garner support in the mock congressional hearing), their discussions reveal the deep interconnectedness of different forms of oppression and how critical it is to untangle the symptoms of a disease from their underlying causes.

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Repair: Students Design a Reparations Bill - Zinn Education Project

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When I wrote this introduction in the summer of 2020, there had already been more than five weeks of nightly Black Lives Matter demonstrations in my city of Portland, Oregon, sparked by the brutal murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

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Library of Congress: Civil Rights History Project

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Library of Congress: Civil Rights History Project

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On May 12, 2009, the U. S. Congress authorized a national initiative by passing The Civil Rights History Project Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-19). The law directed the Library of Congress (LOC) and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) to conduct a national survey of existing oral history collections with relevance to the Civil Rights movement to obtain justice, freedom and equality for African Americans and to record and make widely accessible new interviews with people who participated in the struggle. The project was initiated in 2010 with the survey and with interviews beginning in 2011.

The activists interviewed for this project belong to a wide range of occupations, including lawyers, judges, doctors, farmers, journalists, professors, and musicians, among others. The video recordings of their recollections cover a wide range of topics within the freedom struggle, such as the influence of the labor movement, nonviolence and self-defense, religious faith, music, and the experiences of young activists. Actions and events discussed in the interviews include the Freedom Rides (1961), the Albany Movement (1961), the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (1963), the Selma to Montgomery Rights March (1965), the Orangeburg Massacre (1968), the Poor People's Campaign (1968), sit-ins, and voter registration drives in the South. The murder of fourteen year old Emmett Till in 1955, a horrific event that galvanized many young people into joining the freedom movement, looms large in the memories of many movement veterans.

Many interviewees were active in national organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Black Panther Party. Other interviewees were key members of specialized and local groups including the Medical Committee for Human Rights, the Deacons for Defense and Justice, the Cambridge (Maryland) Nonviolent Action Committee, and the Newark Community Union Project. A few interviews focus on Chicano activists who were influenced by the African American freedom struggle and their recollections of the occasional coalitions that developed between the black and brown power movements. Several interviews include men and women who were on the front lines of the struggle in places not well-known for their civil rights movement activity such as Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Saint Augustine, Florida; and Bogalusa, Louisiana. The collection also includes the reflections of the children of grass-roots activists including Clara Luper, Robert Hicks, and Gayle Jenkins.

A number of organizations and individuals were responsible for the Project from inception to completion. Curation, preservation and access to the interviews was, and remains, a joint undertaking of the Library's American Folklife Center and the NMAAHC. The American Folklore Society (AFS) oversaw the research team of four scholars who gathered the information for the CRHP National Survey Database of Civil Rights Collections; the database was developed by Washington State University's Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation. The Southern Oral History Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill coordinated the production of the interviews, the majority of which were conducted by leading historians on the topic of the long black freedom struggle and (with a few exceptions) were recorded in born-digital video format by Media Generation.

This site guides researchers to collections in several Library divisions that specifically focus on the movement as well as the broader topic of African American history and culture. The Civil Rights History Project Collection (AFC 2010/039) contains more than 1200 items consisting of born-digital video files, digitized videocassettes, digital photographs and full-text transcripts for all interviews. The interviews are also accessible through the Library's YouTube site and the NMAAHC website.

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About this Collection | Civil Rights History Project | Digital Collections | Library of Congress

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On May 12, 2009, the U. S. Congress authorized a national initiative by passing The Civil Rights History Project Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-19).

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"Often cast in a 'Montgomery to Memphis' frame that parallels the public life of Martin Luther King Jr., the Civil Rights Movement has taken on an air of inevitability in the popular imagination. Images and film footage have frozen the movement in time as an era when people risked their lives to end the crippling system of segregation in the South, and to secure the rights and privileges fundamental to American citizenship. For many young people, it looms as a shining moment in the distant past, with little relevance to contemporary issues concerning race, democracy, and social justice."

- Waldo E. Martin Jr. and Patricia Sullivan, Introduction, Teaching the American Civil Rights Movement: Freedom's Bittersweet Song, p. xi.

The civil rights movement is one of the defining events in American history, during which Americans fought to make real the ideals of justice and equality embedded in our founding documents. When students learn about the movement, they learn what it means to be active American citizens. They learn how to recognize injustice. They learn about the transformative role played by thousands of ordinary individuals, as well as the importance of organization for collective change. They see that people can come together to stand against oppression.

We are concerned that the movement, when it is given classroom time, is reduced to lessons about a handful of heroic figures and the four words "I have a dream." Students need to know that the movement was much bigger than its most notable leaders, and that millions of people mustered the courage to join the struggle, very often risking their lives in the process. They need to know that the dream to which Dr. King gave voice has not yet been fully realized, despite the election of an African-American president. They need to know that as long as race is a barrier to access and opportunity, and as long as poverty is commonplace for people of color, the dream has not been achieved.

We are also concerned about the historical narrative promoted by some pundits and political figures who would deny the nation's legacy of institutionalized oppression. There is tremendous pressure from the political right to teach a wholly false history that ignores the nation's blemishes and misrepresents struggles for social justice. In this revisionist version, the framers worked tirelessly to end slavery, the nation was perfect at birth, and states' rights-not slavery-was the motivation behind Southern secession. Together, these interpretations deny the everyday reality of millions of today's students-that the nation is not yet perfect and that racism and injustice still exist. This narrative also ignores the agency of people of color and denies the need for group action to promote social justice.

Beyond being false, these narratives are no longer persuasive to many of our students. Teaching the civil rights movement is essential to ensuring that American history is relevant to students in an increasingly diverse nation. Terrie Epstein's research has shown that students enter classrooms with preexisting worldviews that differ, often dramatically, depending on race, ethnicity, class and other demographic factors. 3 Students whose real-life experience suggests that history is being "white-washed" are unlikely to accept lessons to the contrary. These worldviews are very difficult to dislodge, especially when the standard narrative used to teach the civil rights movement is simplistic or distorted.

What we know about civil rights movement instruction is not promising. We know that textbooks and core materials too often strip out context and richness to present a limited account of the movement. 4 We know that no comprehensive content standards exist for teaching about the movement. We know that even the most experienced teachers of U.S. history tend to rush to the finish line once their courses pass World War II. In 2011, when we examined state requirements, we were shocked to learn that 16 states did not require any instruction at all about the civil rights movement. This year, we decided to dig deeper-in addition to identifying areas for improvement, we sought models for the rest of the nation.

This report continues our call for change. The United States has a civic and moral imperative to ensure that all children learn about the history of the civil rights movement. As Jeremy Stern notes, "Today's students need to actively learn what older generations either lived through or experienced as a strong part of their cultural surroundings: Even basic knowledge of the civil rights movement cannot be taken for granted among today's children." As the movement recedes from recent memory into history, it is more important than ever to assess the state of learning and teaching about these quintessential American events.

For a decade, we have been in the midst of anniversaries, commemorations and memorials of the civil rights movement. As movement figures die or withdraw from the public sphere, the struggle for civil rights will recede from active memory into historical memory. While there has never been a unified understanding of the movement, the disappearance of key actors brings risks that its lessons will be simplified and ultimately lost to students and society.

In many ways, the civil rights movement has been separated from a "movement" for quite some time. 5 Popular narratives create the impression that a small group of charismatic leaders, particularly Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., were primarily responsible for civil rights gains. Parks is justly venerated for her activism in triggering the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Yet too many depictions of her portray a lone woman who was simply tired and did not want to give up her seat on a bus to a white person. In reality, she was a trained participant in a well-organized social movement.

The reduction of the movement into simple fables obscures the broad social, institutional and personal sacrifices of the people who engaged in the struggle. The King-and-Parks-centered narrative limits what we teach students about the range of possible political action. Students deserve to learn that individuals, acting collectively, can make powerful institutions change.

We should be just as concerned that the civil rights movement will be recast in a conciliatory frame. "[T]here is a powerful tendency in the United States to depoliticize traditions for the sake of 'reconciliation,'" writes historian Michael Kammen. "Memory is more likely to be activated by contestation, and amnesia is more likely to be induced by the desire for reconciliation." 6 Kammen observes that King's image has been depoliticized, turning him in the eyes of the public from a radical antipoverty activist into a charismatic integrationist. Small wonder, then, that it is now commonplace for some politicians and media figures to use King's words about a color-blind society as a wedge against expanded opportunities for people of color while drawing a curtain across contemporary injustices.

Teachers and textbooks routinely avoid conflict and controversial issues while creating what Terrie Epstein has called "sanitized versions" of important national events-slavery without enslavers, struggles for civil rights without racism and resistance-all culminating in a national triumph of good over evil. 7 "As a consequence of teaching a disingenuous national history," writes Epstein, "millions of young people leave the public schools knowing a nationalistic perspective but not believing it, while those who accept it have no framework for understanding racism and other forms of inequality today." ⁸

Even as we face these pitfalls, we must do the best we can to teach the civil rights movement just as we teach other parts of American history. It is clear from our review that the civil rights movement is seen mainly as African-American or regional history. This view is profoundly misguided. Understanding the movement is essential to understanding American history. When students learn about the movement, they study more than a series of dates, names and actions. They learn about what it means to be American and come to appreciate the importance and difficulty of struggling against tyranny. We teach the civil rights movement to show that injustice can be overcome.

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"Often cast in a 'Montgomery to Memphis' frame that parallels the public life of Martin Luther King Jr., the Civil Rights Movement has taken on an air of inevitability in the popular imagination.

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Please note: this is NOT a perfect resource! It is very likely that if you do not do any further research or verify our results, you will err in your acknowledgements. We recommend contacting the nations you get in your results directly, to learn more about how they want to be acknowledged and any other nations or peoples in the area.
Why acknowledge territory?

Territory acknowledgement is a way that people insert an awareness of Indigenous presence and land rights in everyday life. This is often done at the beginning of ceremonies, lectures, or any public event. It can be a subtle way to recognize the history of colonialism and a need for change in settler colonial societies.

However, these acknowledgements can easily be a token gesture rather than a meaningful practice. All settlers, including recent arrivants, have a responsibility to consider what it means to acknowledge the history and legacy of colonialism. What are some of the privileges settlers enjoy today because of colonialism? How can individuals develop relationships with peoples whose territory they are living on in the contemporary Canadian geopolitical landscape? What are you, or your organization, doing beyond acknowledging the territory where you live, work, or hold your events? What might you be doing that perpetuates settler colonial futurity rather than considering alternative ways forward for Canada? Do you have an understanding of the on-going violence and the trauma that is part of the structure of colonialism?

As Chelsea Vowel, a Métis woman from the Plains Cree speaking community of Lac Ste. Anne, Alberta, writes:

"If we think of territorial acknowledgments as sites of potential disruption, they can be transformative acts that to some extent undo Indigenous erasure. I believe this is true as long as these acknowledgments discomfit both those speaking and hearing the words. The fact of Indigenous presence should force non-Indigenous peoples to confront their own place on these lands." - Chelsea Vowel, Métis, Beyond Territorial Acknowledgements

How to acknowledge territory?

Often, territory acknowledgements are concise, along the lines of: "I want to acknowledge that we are on the traditional territory of [nation names]." Some people may also mention the name of a local treaty. Some may learn the language and speak a few words in it.

If you are not sure how to pronounce a nation's name, there are a number of ways to learn, including:

Respectfully asking someone from that nation or from a local organization such as a Friendship Center or Indigenous Student Center;

Check the nation's website, they may have a phonetic pronunciation on their "About" page, an audio-recording of their name, or videos that include people saying the nation's name; or

Call the nation after hours and listen to their answering machine recording.

While a brief acknowledgement may work for some groups, others wish to add more intention and detail to acknowledgements. To thoughtfully prepare an in-depth acknowledgement requires time and care. You may find it helpful to reflect on and research questions such as:

Why is this acknowledgement happening?

How does this acknowledgement relate to the event or work you are doing?

What is the history of this territory? What are the impacts of colonialism here?

What is your relationship to this territory? How did you come to be here?

What intentions do you have to disrupt and dismantle colonialism beyond this territory acknowledgement?

Territory acknowledgements are one small part of disrupting and dismantling colonial structures. You may also want to get in touch with local Indigenous nations or organizations to build relationships and support their work. Use our tools to find some contacts!

Are you planning to do a Land Acknowledgement?
Debbie Reese for American Indians in Children's Literature
March 9, 2019
https://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/2019/03/are-you-planning-to-do-land.html

'I regret it': Hayden King on writing Ryerson University's territorial acknowledgement
Unreserved, CBC
January 20, 2019
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/unreserved/redrawing-the-lines-1.4973363/i-regret-it-hayden-king-on-writing-ryerson-university-s-territorial-acknowledgement-1.4973371

Territory Acknowledgement Panel TalkCentre for Teaching, Learning and Technology, University of British Columbia October 18, 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzqe2fh4Zdc

Making Coast Salish Territorial Acknowledgements MatterCoast Salish Cultural Network November 25, 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Tei5tGoQ4s

Beyond Territorial AcknowledgementsChelsea Vowel September 23, 2016

What is the significance of acknowledging the Indigenous land we stand on? (CBC) Ramna Shahzad July 15, 2017

Know the Land: Territories CampaignLSPIRG

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Thanks to Allison Jones and others for putting this together! Please note: this is NOT a perfect resource! It is very likely that if you do not do any further research or verify our results, you will err in your acknowledgements. We recommend contacting the nations you get in your results directly, to learn more about [...]

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Civil Rights Teaching: Black Panthers - Social Justice Books

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Elementary, Middle, and High School | Adult | Black Power Visit the Zinn Education Project for more resources, lessons, and readings, including People's Historians Online: Women in the Black Panther Party. Teaching for Change carefully selects the best multicultural and social justice books for children, young adults, and educators.

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Zinn Education Teaching Resources (Grades 3-5)

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Zinn Education Teaching Resources (Grades 3-5)

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Teaching Activity. By S.J. Childs. Rethinking Schools. The author describes how she introduces students to the classic 1953 film, Salt of the Earth, about a miners' strike in New Mexico.

Continue reading

Teaching Activity. By S.J. Childs. Rethinking Schools. The author describes how she introduces students to the classic 1953 film, Salt of the Earth, about a miners' strike in New Mexico.

Continue reading

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Teaching Activity. By S.J. Childs. Rethinking Schools. The author describes how she introduces students to the classic 1953 film, Salt of the Earth, about a miners' strike in New Mexico. Continue reading Teaching Activity. By S.J. Childs. Rethinking Schools.

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Based on "Ten Quick Ways to Analyze Children's Books for Racism and Sexism." Updated in 2013.*
Children's books continue to be an invaluable source of information and values. They reflect the attitudes in our society about diversity, power relationships among different groups of people, and various social identities (e.g., racial, ethnic, gender, economic class, sexual orientation, and disability). The visual and verbal messages young children absorb from books (and other media) heavily influence their ideas about themselves and others. Depending on the quality of the book, they can reinforce (or undermine) children's affirmative self-concept, teach accurate (or misleading) information about people of various identities, and foster positive (or negative) attitudes about diversity. Children's books teach children about who is important, who matters, who is even visible. Consequently, carefully choosing quality children's books is an indispensable educational and child-rearing task.

It is important to offer young children a range of books about people like them and their family - as well as about people who are different from them and their family. All of the books should be accurate and appealing to young children. Fortunately, there are some good anti-bias children's books, which are available as a result of the ongoing activism of many individuals and groups over many years. However, while choices have improved over past decades, the lack of quality multicultural kid's books currently being published has frustrated many communities. The number of children of color in the United States continues to rise, but the number of books published by or about people of color stays the same or even decreases.

Check the Illustrations

Look for Stereotypes: A stereotype is an oversimplified generalization about a particular identity group (e.g., gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, ability/disability), which usually carries derogatory, inaccurate messages and applies them to ALL people in the group. Stereotypes dehumanize people. So, too, does misinformation. ( See Box 1 below for a list of common, harmful stereotypes).

Unfortunately, all of us absorb socially prevailing stereotypes about a range of people, even if we do not consciously subscribe to them. To alert you to stereotypes in children's books, as well as other media, it is useful to list all the stereotypes you know about various groups of people as precondition for critically reviewing children's books. The books you choose should depict people compassionately and as real human beings. Also consider if images depict all people as genuine individuals with distinctive (rather than stereotypical) features. Books containing stereotypes require you to engage children in critical thinking, but should probably be eliminated from your collection.

BOX 1: Common Harmful/Undermining Stereotypes

Strong, independent girls and women are "manlike"

Book-loving or nonathletic boys and men are "effeminate"

Latino men talk funny, are lazy, gang members, or wear oversize sombreros

Latina women are earth mothers or subservient

African American men are gang members, oversexed, or underemployed

African American women are too independent, oversexed, or "welfare moms"

Arab and/or Muslim men are terrorists

Arab and/or Muslim women are voiceless and passive

All Muslims are Arab / All Arabs are Muslim

American Indians live in teepees, carry bows and arrows, or are half-naked in winter

American Indians were only significant in the past (read)

Disabled people are not independent or are to be pitied

Disabled people must "overcome" their disabilities rather than just live with their disabilities

LGBTQ+ people are invisible

Poor people are invisible

Poor people are depicted as passively needing help from others

AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islanders) are depicted as the "model minority"

AAPI are exotic or their food is exotic/abnormal

All AAPI know martial arts or are meek and compliant

AAPI are portrayed with slanted eyes or just lines to represent eyes

Jewish people are all Zionists (read)

Jewish people are wealthy and yield undue influence in the financial and political world

Look for Tokenism: This is the "one only" message. Regularly seeing only "one" person of any group in a book teaches young children about who is more or less important. Examples of tokenism include books with only one African American child among many white children or having only one book about children with disabilities among many other books. Tokenism also becomes stereotypical. It only allows children to see one view of a group of people, rather than the diversity that exists among all groups.

Look for Invisibility: What children do not see in their books also teaches them about who matters and who doesn't in our society. Invisibility in their storybooks - as well as in textbooks as they get older - undermines children's affirmative sense of themselves and reinforces prejudiced ideas about people who are not seen (See Box 2 for examples of groups who tend to be invisible). The booklists on this website include a great variety of books with groups who are often excluded. (The titles are vetted by Teaching for Change.)

BOX 2: Examples of Groups of People Who Are Often Invisible in Children's Books or Mainstream Media

Families who live in rural areas

Blue-collar workers

Musicians, artists, and writers

Families with two dads or two moms

Single mothers or fathers

Homeless families

Families with an incarcerated parent

People of Middle Eastern descent

Families who practice Islam

Transgender adults and children

Check the Story Line and the Relationships Between People

Even if a book shows visual diversity, the story line may carry biases related to how it handles power relationships among people of various identities. Are whites or male characters the central figures with people of color or female characters in essentially supporting roles? To gain acceptance and/or approval does a child of color, a girl, or child with a disability have to exhibit extraordinary qualities or be the one to understand, forgive, or change? Are the achievements of girls and women based on their own initiative and intelligence, or are they due to their looks or relationship with boys/men?

Are people of color, women, low-income families, or people with disabilities depicted as needing help or in passive roles, while whites, men, and "able-bodied" people are in leadership and action roles? How are problems presented, conceived, and resolved? Who typically causes a problem and who resolves it? Your book collection needs a balance of different people in "doer" roles.

Look at Messages About Different Lifestyles

Do the lives of people of color or people living in poverty in the story contrast unfavorably with the norm of white, middle-class suburban life? Are negative value judgments implied about ways of life that differ from the dominant culture or economic class (e.g., people are to be pitied, or the story is about one person who "gets out" of the less desirable way of life)? Do images and information go beyond oversimplification and offer genuine insights into the lifestyle of the characters in the story? Does the setting reflect current life - or past assumptions about life? Does your book collection depict diversity among people within a specific racial/ethnic group, such as a range of family structures, living environments, socioeconomic conditions and types of work, and male/female roles within the family? (Remember that every racial/ethnic group has diversity, including people who self-identify as white).

Consider the Effects on Children's Self and Social Identities

In addition to specific books, also examine your book collection. Do your books reinforce or counteract messages that teach children to feel inferior or superior because of their skin color, gender, family income, able-bodiedness, or type of family structure? At school, will all of the children you serve see themselves and their family's way of life reflected in your book collection? Will all children of color, including those with mixed heritage, girls, and children from the many types of family structures, children living in poverty, and children with disabilities see one or more characters with whom they can readily and positively identify? If they are visible in your book collection, are the illustrations and information accurate and respectful? Does your overall collection balance the backgrounds of all the children in your program? Does it also show diversity within the social indentity groups to which the children belong (e.g., a range of ways to be female and male, families reflecting different kinds of jobs within a racial/ethnic group). Does your book collection also include a balance between diversity within your classroom and beyond your classroom?

At home, does your book collection reflect diversity among the groups to which your family belongs? Does it have stories about people like you who have contributed to creating a more just world? Does it also include a range of books showing diversity beyond your family and neighborhood?

Look for Books About Children and Adults Engaging in Actions for Change

To fully develop a strong sense of self and a disposition toward cooperation and fairness, children need to know how to stand up for themselves and others when faced with unfairness. They also need to know about people from all social identity groups who have - and are currently - working for justice for all. In addition to previous criteria, here are more items to consider: The story line should be about children and adults working together, rather than perpetrating the myth that change happens because of special, individual people who do it by themselves. Does your book collection include a balance of people who have made important and honored contributions to American life as well as the world community - and not just the traditional white, male "heroes?" Do some of your books about important people include struggles for justice? Do they show people who were/are poor or from racial/ethnic groups of color? Are people with disabilities engaged in these struggles for justice?

Consider the Author's or Illustrator's Background and Perspective

All authors write from a cultural as well as from a personal context. In the past, most children's books were by authors and illustrators who were white and members of the middle class. As a result, a single cultural and class perspective dominated children's literature. There are now excellent books by people of color from a range of backgrounds - although not nearly enough. Consider the biographical material on the jacket flap or back of the book. What qualifies the author or illustrator to deal with the subject? If the book is not about people or events similar to the author or illustrator's background, what specifically recommends them as creators of the book? What is the author's attitude toward her/his story characters? Are the images accurate and do the illustrators respectfully render the people in the story? Do you have books reflecting a balanced range of author and illustrator identities and experiences?

Watch for Loaded Words

A word is loaded when it in any way demeans or makes people invisible because of any of their identities. One example is the generic use of the word "man" to stand for women as well as men (although the opposite never occurs). This traditional terminology is now questioned by many because of its sexist implications. Here are some examples of ways to avoid sexist language: community instead of brotherhood; firefighters inserted of firemen; human family instead of family of man; ancestors instead of forefathers; chairperson instead of chairman. Examples of adjectives applied to people of color that carry racist messages include: "savage," "primitive," "superstitious," "backward," "inscrutable" and "treacherous." Always consider the context in which a word is used and to whom it applies.

Look at the Copyright Date

Copyright dates indicate the publication year, not the time of its writing, which might be two to three years before the copyright date. Although a recent copyright date is no guarantee of a book's relevance or sensitivity, copyright dates are useful information. More children's books began to reflect the reality of a pluralistic society and nonsexist and non-ableist perspectives in the 1970s. Since then, the range of accurate, respectful, and caring books reflecting diversity has increased significantly (unfortunately the diversity of books published in the United States still does not accurately reflect the actual diversity of the people living here). When considering new books for your collection, begin with most recently published ones and then continue with descending copyright dates.

Assess the Appeal of the Story and Illustrations to Young Children

Although these guidelines focus on the messages about diversity and equality reflected in children's books, it is also important to take quality into account. Be sure the book is a "good read." If children find the story or illustrations boring, a book will not hold their attention, even if the book adds a specific kind of diversity you need. Check for active, interesting story lines where different kinds of people are integral to the people in the story, not the main topic. For example, in A Chair for My Mother, a young child tries to save money to get a comfortable chair for her waitress mother. Although the book shows a single parent, working-class family, and a resourceful girl, it is not didactic. Also look for illustrations that are colorful and recognizable to young children. Although they enjoy a range of styles, illustrations that are too subdued or abstract may not hold their attention.

Check for age appropriateness. Most booksellers list any picture book as appropriate for early childhood even if the story line is really for primary grade children. Sometimes a book for older children will work if you simplify the story or "tell" the story rather than read it. In some cases, this is the only way to get books that present specific groups of children (e.g., stories with Cambodian children or children with learning disabilities). Some additional issues to consider:

Many children's books use animal characters instead of people and there are some excellent books that explore diversity with animal characters (e.g., And Tango Makes Three or A Coyote Solstice Tale). Children enjoy these. However, such books are not a substitute for exploring issues of diversity and anti-bias fairness with people as the main characters.

Some early childhood teachers wonder if it is necessary for every book in their collection to show diversity. Every book needs to be accurate, caring, and respectful. However, you will want individual books about specific kinds of people (e.g., a biracial family or a family with adopted children). Diversity becomes essential in the balance of your book collection, where you want to avoid invisibility or tokenism of any group.

Folk and fairy tales have long been a mainstay of children's literature. In the cultures from which they come, folk and fairy tales were used to teach important lessons and values related to their culture of origin. Children love them in their original versions - not their commercially sanitized adaptations. However, folk and fairy tales also carry messages that convey sexism, classism, and racism and must be used thoughtfully as part of introducing young children to diversity and anti-bias values of quality and fairness.

Overuse of folk tales to "teach" about a specific ethnic/cultural group leads to misinformation and confusion. They are about animals and occasionally people from a mythical past and are designed to teach core values and beliefs in their culture of origin. They are not about how people actually live in contemporary society - and that is what young children need to understand. Information and images about how people really live now is what enables young children to build connections to people who are from different cultures while countering stereotypes that children have already absorbed (e.g., how American Indians really live).

Finally there is the somewhat sensitive issue of what to do about "classic" or "well-beloved" children's books. Many of these are wonderful as children's literature, but unfortunately they often convey values of sexism, racism, ableism, or even colonialism. People who love the books that pose this dilemma argue that it is OK to use them because they "reflect their times," which they imply somehow excuses their biased messages. For example, I adored the Babar series of books as a young child and was unpleasantly shocked to realize as an adult how much the images and story lines reflected messages of European colonialism in Africa. I chose not to use them with my own children, wanting them to learn accurate information about how people in Africa really live. Not sharing childhood favorites may sadden some, but it is far better than the harm caused by reinforcing messages of racism and colonialism.
In a nutshell - as you choose books or critically examine your current book selection, always keep in mind the power of books - their words and their images - to nurture or, conversely, to undermine a child's sense of self, positive attitude toward others, and motivation to act for fairness.
Additional Resources

Louise Derman-Sparks is an internationally respected anti-bias educator and author (along with Julie Olsen Edwards) of Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves. She has co-authored several additional books with Dr. Carol Brunson Day (Teaching/Learning Anti-Racism), the ABC Task Force ( Anti-Bias Curriculum: Tools for Empowering Young Children), Dr. Patricia Ramsey (What If All the Kids Are White?), and Dr. John Nimmo and Debbie Leekeenan ( Leading Anti-Bias Early Childhood Programs: A Guide for Change). She speaks throughout the United States and abroad, and served on the NAEYC Governing Board from 1998 to 2001. Louise has a lifelong commitment to building a more just society for all people. Her children Douglass and Holly, now grown, were her inspiration. A Pacific Oaks College faculty member for 33 years - when its mission and pedagogy reflected anti-bias education principles - Louise is now retired.
*In 1980, the Council on Interracial Books for Children published the book Guidelines for Selecting Bias-Free Textbooks and Storybooks. A shorter version of the book in pamphlet form, "Ten Quick Ways to Analyze Children's Books for Racism and Sexism," followed. One of the first guides written for teachers and families, it became an invaluable tool for hundreds of thousands of people. Both the book and pamphlet have been out of print for several years. Rethinking Schools published their adaptation of the original Guidelines in 1994.

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Guide for Selecting Anti-Bias Children's Books - Social Justice Books

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By Louise Derman-Sparks Based on "Ten Quick Ways to Analyze Children's Books for Racism and Sexism." Updated in 2013.* Children's books continue to be an invaluable source of information and values. They reflect the attitudes in our society about diversity, power relationships among different groups of people, and various social identities (e.g., racial, ethnic, gender, [...]

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During a lesson about George Washington and the American Revolution, I explained to my 5th graders that Washington owned over 300 people. One student added that Thomas Jefferson also was a slave owner. And then, in part to be funny and in part expressing anger-over vote fraud involving African Americans in the then-recent 2000 election and the U.S. Supreme Court's subsequent delivery of the presidency to George W. Bush-one of my students shouted, "Bush is a slave owner, too!"

"No, Bush doesn't own slaves," I calmly explained. "Slavery was finally ended in this country in 1865." Short exchanges such as this often pass quickly and we move onto another topic. But this time one student asked, "Well, which presidents were slave owners?"

She had me stumped. "That's a good question," I said. "I don't know." Thus began a combined social studies, math, and language arts project in which I learned along with my students, and that culminated in a fascinating exchange between my students and the publishers of their U.S. history textbook. After I admitted that I had no clue exactly which presidents owned slaves, I threw the challenge back to the students. "How can we find out?" I asked.

Originally published in Rethinking Multicultural Education: Teaching for Racial and Cultural Justice. Check out Rethinking Multicultural Education for more articles and lessons that move beyond a simplistic focus on heroes and holidays to demonstrate a powerful vision of anti-racist, social justice education.

Related Resource

UnderstandingPrejudice.org: This website, referenced in the article by Bob Peterson, provides a quiz and information for students called "Slavery and the U.S. Presidents."

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Presidents and the Enslaved: Helping Students Find the Truth - Zinn Education Project

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During a lesson about George Washington and the American Revolution, I explained to my 5th graders that Washington owned over 300 people. One student added that Thomas Jefferson also was a slave owner. And then, in part to be funny and in part expressing anger-over vote fraud involving African Americans in the then-recent 2000 election and the U.S.