Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #tdih

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Zinn Ed Project

#tdih 2015, nine African American churchgoers killed 💔inside Charleston’s historic Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church in act of white supremacist terrorism, 1 of countless (ongoing) massacres in US.

Read @RevDrBarber & @BreeNewsome ⬇️
Art by Panhandle Slim
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/char…

"One of the things that was so tough about the immediate aftermath of the massacre was not just the violence itself, but the apparent, like, obfuscation about what had actually just happened, that it was a terrorist attack." @BreeNewsome via @democracynow
democracynow.org/2015/7/6/bree_…

"Perpetrator has been caught, but killers are still at large: the deep wells of US racism & white supremacy that DR drank from. |. . . challenging schizophrenia of US morality that allows political leaders to condemn the crime but embrace policies that are its genesis." - Barber

Zinn Ed Project

"Because a terrible crime was committed, it does not follow that other wrongs be permitted. . . I will not lend my office to practices which subvert legal processes & deny justice to some because they are poor or Black." -- Judge Crockett #tdih 1969 ⬇️🧵
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/judg…

"Can you imagine the Detroit Police invading an all-white church & rounding up everyone in sight to be bussed to a wholesale lockup in a police garage? . . . Can anyone explain in other than racist terms the shooting by police into a closed & surrounded church?" -- Judge Crockett

Three fold pamphlet with Judge Crockett’s statement and hi

The story above about Judge George Crockett Jr.'s courtroom statement on #otd April 3, 1969 was shared with ZEP by @sayburgin, author of a chapter on Crockett in "The Strange Careers of the Jim Crow North: Segregation and Struggle Outside of the South" ⬇️

zinnedproject.org/materials/stra…

Zinn Ed Project

#tdih 1960 SC college students, labeled outside agitators & Communist for protests of segregation, were violently attacked by police & placed in a stockade.

Judge jailed their @NAACP lawyer for “pursuing his case vigorously.” Read ⬇️ via CRMvet website.
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/poli…

"City passes an ordinance to prohibit picketing. . . Almost 400 students are arrested. Soaking wet from the hoses & rain, shivering from 40-degree weather, they are forced into an outdoor stockade that may have been used in the past for enslaved people." -- CRMvet

#TeachTruth

"They cling together for warmth and sing 'God Bless America,' 'The Star-Spangled Banner,' and newly learned freedom songs like 'We Shall Overcome.'"

"Supporters who try to pass them food and blankets are also arrested." -- CRMvet

Empathy, humanity, & solidarity criminalized.

Zinn Ed Project

#tdih 1861 Confederate Constitution adopted

"The Confederates won with the pen (and the noose) what they could not win on the battlefield: the cause of white supremacy and the dominant understanding of what the war was all about." -- James W. Loewen 🧵
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/conf…

"So thoroughly did this mythology take hold that our textbooks still stand history on its head & say secession was for, rather than against, states’ rights." -- J. Loewen ⬇️

This is why the right wants to make it illegal to teach outside the textbook.
zinnedproject.org/materials/myth…

We highly recommend the new children's picture book, "The Flag, by Tameka Fryer Brown @teebrownkidlit, illustrated by Nikkolas Smith @4NIKKOLAS ⬇️
zinnedproject.org/materials/that…

Zinn Ed Project

#tdih 1955 "I could not move, because history had me glued to the seat. . . Sojourner Truth’s hands were pushing me down on one shoulder & Harriet Tubman’s hands were pushing me down on another, & I could not move. — Claudette Colvin, #TeachTruth ⬇️🧵
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/clau…

At 15, Claudette Colvin had been politicized by false arrest & torture of her classmate, poet Jeremiah Reeves . . . she refused to move on bus. "'We’d been studying Constitution [in school during #BHM] I knew I had rights.'” -- Read: rosaparksbiography.org/bio/claudette-… via @JeanneTheoharis

photo of young man with glasses and white jacket, head and s

Colvin’s case went to trial in May. The judge strategically dropped two charges (for disturbing peace and breaking the segregation law), found her guilty of assaulting officers. Therefore, appealing her case could not directly challenge the segregation law. -- @JeanneTheoharis

Zinn Ed Project

#tdih 1954: Green Feather Movement launched.

Creative effort to expose & resist #RedScare attempt by Indiana Textbook Commission to ban Robin Hood from all school books for "promoting communism because he stole from the rich to give to the poor." 🧵 ⬇️
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/gree…

In face of Red Scare today, we can learn from five brave IU students.

They dyed chicken feathers green (not easy) & spread them around IU campus to protest censorship & McCarthyism.

Movement caught on. One of the 5, Bernard Bray, interviewed by ZEP ➡️: zinnedproject.org/materials/the-…

Photo of man with white beard and green beret, red brick wal

Bernard Bray, who teaches at @TalladegaColleg, said he was inspired to take action based on Baptist Fellowship youth group discussions of burning social issues; influences of seminarian who was jailed for refusal to participate in WWII; & religious convictions of his parents.

Zinn Ed Project

"Until the killing of Black men, Black mothers' sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a white mother's son, we who believe in freedom cannot rest . . ." -- Ella Baker

#tdih 2012 Murder of Trayvon Martin, Sanford, Fla. 🧵
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/tray…

Trayvon Martin was murdered in Sanford on land that had been home of Mayaca people, later the Seminoles.

Town incorporated during Reconstruction. Named for Henry Sanford who secured US recognition of King Leopold II’s colonial claim to the Congo. ⬇️
zinnedproject.org/news/peoples-h…

#tdih 1965 Jimmie Lee Jackson, civil rights activist & Baptist church deacon, was shot by state troopers in Marion, Ala. during peaceful voting rights march.

His murder was catalyst for Selma to Montgomery march, attacked by troopers on Bloody Sunday.
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/jimm…

Zinn Ed Project

#tdih 1870, Hiram Revels was sworn into office as senator from Mississippi, becoming the first African American to serve in the U.S. Senate.

Do you know how many African Americans have served in the Senate to date? #TeachReconstruction
Read ⬇️ 🧵
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/hira…

In a white supremacist attempt to prevent Revels from assuming his elected position, his opponents said that despite living in U.S. all his life, he could not be seated b/c Senate required 9 years of citizenship. The 14th Amend. had passed only two years earlier. ("birtherism")

Story of Revels is one of countless examples of why we need to #TeachReconstruction.

Check out our report: “Erasing the Black Freedom Struggle: How State Standards Fail to Teach the Truth About Reconstruction.”

Find state assessments & resources. See: teachreconstructionreport.org

Quote and photo by middle school teacher Lois Hammond.

Zinn Ed Project

#tdih 1969, SCOTUS ruled that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate" in Tinker v. Des Moines -- students (age 8-17) suspended b/c they wore armbands to school to protest Vietnam war. 🧵
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/cons…

Precedent for Tinker v. Des Moines was a 1966 case where Mississippi HS students bravely protested Freedom Summer murders & segregation with buttons saying “One Man, One Vote. SNCC.”

They were suspended for wearing "freedom buttons," went to court, & won in Burnside v. Byars.

Black text on white background of round button, "we sha

Iowa is one of the states with a law to ban teaching about systemic racism & sexism.

So, can teachers address Tinker v. Des Moines history? Students protesting war, including the racism of who the U.S. was fighting & the racism of who was being sent to die on the frontlines.

text on white background, Lawmakers across the United States

Zinn Ed Project

Born #tdih 1868: William Edward Burghardt (W. E. B.) Du Bois, one of most important scholars of 20th century. Sociologist, historian, Pan-Africanist, author, editor; co-founder of @NAACP, leader of Niagara Movement, & editor of NAACP’s @thecrisismag. 🧵 ⬇️
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/web-…

"One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over. . . The difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is that . . . it paints perfect man & noble nations, but it does not tell the truth." ― W.E.B. DuBois

Text: "One is astonished in the study of history at the

"The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery." -- W. E. B. Du Bois in "Black Reconstruction in America" (1935), reissued 2021.

Video ⬇️of talk on book by Eric Foner, @KeeangaYamahtta, & @HenryLouisGates ⬇️
zinnedproject.org/materials/blac…

Zinn Ed Project

#tdih 1968, 27,000+ teachers & administrators from Florida Education Assoc. walked out.

First U.S. statewide teachers strike. (Later banned in Fla.)

Focus on salary, school budget, & overall failure of Florida legislators to fund public ed. Read ⬇️🧵
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/flor…

Corporate media lambasted teachers.

STUDENTS offered most support for strike with WALKOUTS for better schools. Strike was continuation of CRM activism & strengthened by '66 integration of Fla. teachers unions.

See related @RethinkSchools book ⬇️.
zinnedproject.org/materials/teac…

This is one of many people's history stories in Florida history that could be labeled too "controversial" to teach -- in Florida & other states.

What's the "danger" of these stories? That young people learn from the past how to shape a more just future.
zinnedproject.org/news/peoples-h…

Zinn Ed Project

#tdih 1942, Huey Newton was born in Monroe, LA. His family (sharecroppers) fled to Oakland as part of Great Migration after his father was almost lynched. (h/t @Isabelwilkerson) Newton co-founded Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in 1966. Read more ⬇️
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/huey…

"Thank you for posting the picture of Huey Newton and the children. I am the girl in the picture. I was 11-years-old and volunteering as a typist for the Black Panther Party . . . Today I work on computers, so I am still typing!" -- Annissa Nadirah Karim
zinnedproject.org/news/memories-…

Here is a lesson that introduces students to the pivotal and largely untold (in schools) history of the Black Panthers. By @JessedHagopian and Adam Sanchez of @RethinkSchools. Download for free. #teachoutsidetextbook #peopleshistory
zinnedproject.org/materials/blac…

Zinn Ed Project

#tdih 1900 At Lincoln bday event, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was first publicly performed by 500 school children at Stanton School in Jacksonville, Fla.

School principal James Weldon Johnson wrote the words & his brother Rosamond set them to music. ⬇️🧵
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/lift…

Art on book cover in tweet ⬆️ is by sculptor & printmaker, Elizabeth Catlett.

Don't know her art & story? Read here via @TheRoot
incl. attacks under McCarthyism: theroot.com/happy-95th-bir…

Introduce her life to students with lesson, "Subversives": zinnedproject.org/materials/subv…

Black and white photo of Elizabeth Catlett, seated, wearing

Picture book "Sing a Song: How Lift Every Voice and Sing Inspired Generations" by @kelstarly introduces young readers to 120-yr history of song & its role through Great Migration, Jim Crow, Civil Rights Movement, HBCU graduations, @NMAAHC opening, & today. zinnedproject.org/materials/lift…

Zinn Ed Project

#tdih 1990, Nelson Mandela released from prison after 27 years.

The U.S. gov't classified Mandela a terrorist.

While Mandela was in jail, U.S. corporate investment in apartheid South Africa grew, & R. Reagan had policy of “constructive engagement.” 🧵
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/mand…

Hundreds of thousands of people in U.S. & around the world mobilized to oppose apartheid in the 1980s. That successful movement built on decades of links between African liberation movements & activists in the U.S. Rosa Parks in photo ⬇️in D.C. & SNCC in next tweet. #TeachTruth

Book cover, No Easy Victories

Rosa Parks (wearing hat and glasses) with Freedom Yes, Apart

In March, 1966, James Forman, John Lewis, Bill Hall, Cleve Sellers, & Willie Ricks occupied 14th floor of South African Consulate to “protest the inhuman and barbaric system of apartheid by the South African government.” Read more via @snccdigital at
snccdigital.org/events/sncc-pr…

Demonstrators with signs at Chase-Manhattan Bank, March 19,

Zinn Ed Project

#tdih 1950 Wisc. Senator Joseph McCarthy delivered a speech in WV; he claimed to hold list of known communists (“enemies from within”) in U.S. State Dep't.

Ask students: What was impact of McCarthyism on labor, civil rights, & anti-colonial movements? 🧵zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/mcca…

"The textbook periodization of anti-communist repression, which posits

-- the Red Scare in years following WWI, &
-- the 2nd Red Scare in late 1940s & early 1950s,

ERASES the continuity & pervasiveness of anti-communist politics & policies. . ." -- ⬇️
zinnedproject.org/if-we-knew-our…

"Whenever organizers challenged the status quo — racism, sexism, capitalism, militarism, & colonialism — its defenders screamed 'communism.' [Yet] . . .it has always been about a lot more than Russian spies, a blustering senator from Wisconsin, and a blacklist in Hollywood."

Zinn Ed Project

You've heard of Kent State (1970) & maybe Jackson State (1970). Did you know #tdih 1968, 28 students were injured and three killed (one a HS student) — most shot in the back by state police while involved in a peaceful protest in Orangeburg, SC? 🧵Read ⬇️
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/oran…

The three young men murdered were Henry Smith and Samuel Hammond Jr., both SCSU students, and Delano Middleton, a local student at Wilkinson HS on his way home.

Listen to this @StoryCorps interview with Hammond Jr.’s sisters. #TeachOutsideTextbook
npr.org/templates/stor…

SNCC organizer Cleveland Sellers was arrested for inciting a riot & sentenced to a year in prison. He'd been minimally involved and was the only person to serve time for the massacre. (Later served as president of Voorhees College.)

Read: snccdigital.org/people/clevela… at @snccdigital

Four men, two with glasses. Cleveland Sellers, with Stokely

Zinn Ed Project

"This crusade is much more important than the anti-lynching movement, because there would be no lynching if it did not start in the schoolroom." — Carter G. Woodson

#tdih 1926, Woodson initiated Negro History Week which led to Black History Month. 🧵⬇️
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/cart…

Carter Woodson pressed for schools to use Negro History Week to demonstrate what students learned ALL year.

Woodson co-founded the "Association for the Study of African American Life and History" @ASALH which continues with an annual theme.

See asalh.org/black-history-…

"I could not move, because history had me glued to the seat. . . It felt like Sojourner Truth’s hands were pushing me down on one shoulder & Harriet Tubman’s hands. . .on another." — Claudette Colvin 3/2/1955 (days after Black History Month at her school)
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/clau…

Zinn Ed Project

#tdih 1960, four African-American NC A&T students began a sit-in (planned at Bennett College) at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro.

While not first sit-in of modern CRM, it triggered wave of direct action U.S. & founding of SNCC. 🧵#TeachTruth
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/gree…

"The Greensboro sit-ins inspired mass movement across the South. By April 1960, 70 southern cities had sit-ins of their own. Direct-action sit-ins made public what Jim Crow wanted to hide – Black resistance to segregation." via youth-led @snccdigital⬇️
snccdigital.org/events/sit-ins…

Read about earlier sit-ins: 1943 with Pauli Murray & other @HowardU students; 1958 with high school teacher Clara Luper & NAACP Youth Council in Oklahoma; 1958 with students Ron Walters and members of the @NAACP Youth Council in Wichita, Kansas, & more.
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/katz…

Zinn Ed Project

WWII vet Louis Allen was murdered #tdih 1964. Why?

Allen was willing to testify about murder he had witnessed of African American @NAACP member & SNCC supporter Herbert Lee by a white state legislator.

FBI refused protection. #TeachVotingRights🧵
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/wwii…

Allen knew his life was in danger in Amite County, Miss. He stayed because his mother was elderly & needed care.

When his mother died, Allen made plans to move to Milwaukee. (Great Migration continues.)

The night before Allen was to leave, he was murdered. #terrorism

Traditional Civil Rights Movement narratives ignore that fight for civil, voting, & human rights was frequently met with terrorist violence, as exemplified by story of Louis Allen and countless others. #TeachOutsideTextbook

See more in @snccdigital ➡️
snccdigital.org/events/louis-a…

Gravestone, outdoors, with ...

Zinn Ed Project

“It is essential to resist the depiction of history as the work of heroic individuals in order for people today to recognize their potential agency as a part of an ever-expanding community of struggle." -- A. Davis, born #tdih 1944 🧵📷by Ilka Hartmann ⬇️
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/ange…

"KKK & the racial segregation that was so dramatically challenged during mid-20th cent. freedom movement was produced not during slavery but rather in an attempt to manage free Black people who would have been far more successful in pushing forward democracy for all." -- A. Davis

Angela Davis is named in attacks on Black history AP in Florida. But not just South. In Nov. a student-hosted event was cancelled by school district in Rockland, NY.

Students & local NAACP organized and hosted Davis at a church. See ⬇️via @democracynow
democracynow.org/2022/12/2/ange…

Zinn Ed Project

"Our will can create a new America in 1972, one where there’s freedom from violence & war at home & abroad. Where there’s freedom from poverty and discrimination."

#tdih 1972 Shirley Chisholm opened campaign for U.S. President. #TeachOutsideTextbook 🧵
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/shir…

Teach story of Shirley Chisholm in context of long and ongoing history of fight for voting rights & democracy in U.S. by Black women.

Read "Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, & Insisted on Equality for All" by @marthasjones_
zinnedproject.org/materials/vang…

Free lesson ⬇️for gr. 7+, an interactive activity with excerpts from @marthasjones_' book for students to learn about leading role of Black women in fight for voting rights throughout U.S. history. Includes Mary McLeod Bethune in Florida #AllorNothingAP
zinnedproject.org/materials/teac…

Zinn Ed Project

#tdih 1964, Amendment ratified to eradicate poll tax in federal elections. Read ⬇️

Two yrs later, Vernon Dahmer killed for offering to pay poll taxes in Miss. (See 🧵)

#tdih is also birthday of SNCC vet & voting rights organizer Bob Moses (1935 - 2021).
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/24th…

Jan. 1966: Vernon Dahmer said on radio he'd pay Miss. poll tax for anyone who couldn't afford to register to vote.

Next day, Klan firebombed his home, killing Dahmer. His sons, in U.S. military to "defend democracy" overseas, returned home for funeral.
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/vern…

In March 1966, SCOTUS banned poll taxes for state & local elections in 1963 lawsuit initiated by Joseph Jordan Jr., a Norfolk attorney on behalf of Evelyn T. Butts. (Virginia poll tax had been made law in 1902, to reverse Reconstruction era gains.) See ⬇️
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/harp…

Zinn Ed Project

"Bob Moses of SNCC is arrested for 'Disturbing the Peace' when he tries to escort an elderly Black women into the courthouse to register." -- #tdih 1964, Freedom Day in Hattiesburg, Mississippi

Read report from movement veterans ⬇️ #TeachVotingRights
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/free…

“You know they said outsiders was coming in & beginning to get the people stirred up because they’ve always been satisfied. Well, as long as I can remember, I’ve never been satisfied.” -- Fannie Lou Hamer to Howard Zinn, Freedom Day in Hattiesburg More ⬇️
zinnedproject.org/materials/howa…

"Textbooks offer false impression that history of voting rights in US is hopeful tale of steady progress, culminating in 1965. Provides them no context to understand our current moment." More ⬇️
Anti-history (anti-"CRT") bills designed to keep it that way.
zinnedproject.org/if-we-knew-our…

Zinn Ed Project

#tdih 1848 "Our nation seems resolved to rush on in her wicked career, though the road be ditched with human blood, and paved with human skulls. Well, be it so." -- Frederick Douglass on U.S. war with Mexico, in North Star editorial
1/4🧵
zinnedproject.org/materials/nort…

"The taste of human blood and the smell of powder seem to have extinguished the senses, seared the conscience, and subverted the reason of the people." -- Frederick Douglass on U.S. war with Mexico 2/4

Editorial read by Benjamin Bratt ⬇️for @vph
vimeo.com/1366819

"Let the press, the pulpit, the church, the people at large, unite at once; & let petitions flood the halls of Congress . . ., asking for the instant recall of our forces from Mexico. This may not save us, but it's our only hope." --Frederick Douglass 3/4
zinnedproject.org/materials/sold…

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