Author Bios

Allison Fletcher Acosta is the communications manager for Teaching for Change. She worked in the labor movement with Jobs with Justice for more than a decade. She is active in her children’s schools and in D.C. education issues. 

Derrick P. Alridge is a professor of education at the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education & Human Development. He leads the project Teachers in the Movement: Pedagogy, Activism, and Freedom and is the founding director of the Curry School’s Center for Race and Public Education in the South. He is the author of The Educational Thought of W. E. B. Du Bois: An Intellectual History and The Hip-Hop Mind: Ideas, History, and Social Consciousness.

Tiferet Ani is a social studies educator who has taught middle and high school students in Montgomery County, Maryland, and worked as a curriculum developer and teacher educator for the district. Ani has revised U.S. history curriculum to counter the dominant narrative and elevate Indigenous, Black, Latine, LGBTQ+, and women’s histories throughout. The Southern Poverty Law Center and CBS News have reported on this work.

Wayne Au is a professor in the School of Educational Studies at the University of Washington-Bothell. A former high school language arts and social studies teacher, he is an editorial board member of Rethinking Schools. He is the editor of Rethinking Multicultural Education: Teaching for Racial and Cultural Justice and the author of a number of books including Unequal by Design: High-Stakes Testing and the Standardizations of Inequality. 

Colleen Bell was a professor at Hamline University, where she was first inspired by observing in Southside Family School (SFS) classrooms in 1990. Hamline University students and SFS students have engaged in learning and teaching exchanges for two decades. In her retirement, Colleen continues to document social justice teaching and learning at SFS. 

Bill Bigelow is a curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools magazine and codirector of the Zinn Education Project. He is the author and coeditor of many Rethinking Schools publications, including A People’s History for the Classroom, A People’s Curriculum for the Earth, and The Line Between Us: Teaching About the Border and Mexican Immigration. He taught high school social studies in Portland, Oregon for almost 30 years. 

Louise Bock is the co-author of Multicultural Math Fun: Holidays Around the Year.

Patty Bode is the coordinator of the art education program at Southern Connecticut State University. Rooted in anti-racism and antibias activism, she works with PK -12 public schools, higher education teacher preparation programs, and community settings to integrate art into social justice teaching. She co-authored Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Multicultural Education. 

Grace Lee Boggs (1915–2015) was an activist, writer, speaker, and philosopher, whose political involvement encompassed labor rights, civil rights, black power, the Asian American movement, women’s rights, and environmental justice throughout her lifetime. She authored The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century and Living for Change: An Autobiography. Boggs’s life is the subject of the PBS film, American Revolutionary.

James Boggs (1919–1993) was a revolutionary socialist who played a leading role in organizing radical organizations in Detroit and nationally as well as theorizing and updating the political philosophy of Marxism-Leninism. He was also a career auto worker at the Chrysler Corporation from 1940 to 1968. He authored several books, including The American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker’s Notebook and Racism and Class Struggle: Further Pages from a Black Worker's Notebook.

Julian Bond (1940–2015) was a leader of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. He was a founder of the Atlanta sit-in movement and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). When elected in 1965 to the Georgia House of Representatives, he was prevented from taking his seat by members who objected to his opposition to the Vietnam War. He was re-elected to his own vacant seat, unseated again, and seated only after a third election and a unanimous decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. He served as chairperson of the NAACP.

John. H. Bracey Jr. (1941–2023) served as department chair in the W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro American Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. In the 1960s, he was active in the civil rights, Black Liberation, and other radical movements in Chicago. He authored and edited a number of books, including SOS — Calling All Black People: A Black Arts Movement Reader.

Allyson Criner Brown, MPA, was the associate director of Teaching for Change for 10 years. She is an educator, facilitator, public speaker, writer, advocate, and seasoned practitioner at the intersection of racial equity and family engagement. Criner Brown now works at the Office of Racial Equity for the Government of the District of Columbia.

Elsa Barkley Brown is an associate professor of history and women’s studies at the University of Maryland. She is co-editor of the two-volume Major Problems in African American History and the two-volume Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia.

David Busch is a lecturer in the history department at Case Western Reserve University. He uses mapping software, digital archives, and oral history videos to reconstruct the infrastructure of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Mississippi Freedom Summer, and student activism in the 1960s.

Linda Christensen is a Rethinking Schools editor and former director of the Oregon Writing Project at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. She is the author of a number of books, including Reading, Writing, and Rising Up: Teaching About Social Justice and the Power of the Written Word and Teaching for Joy and Justice: Re-imagining the Language Arts Classroom. 

Septima Clark (1898–1987) developed literacy and Citizenship Schools that were essential in the drive for voting rights during the Civil Rights Movement. In 1956, after 40 years of teaching, her contract was not renewed in South Carolina due to her refusal to resign from the NAACP. Her story is documented in Freedom’s Teacher: The Life of Septima Clark and her first person narrative edited by Cynthia Stokes Brown, Ready from Within: Septima Clark and the Civil Rights Movement.

Ta-Nehisi Coates is an award-winning author and journalist, widely known for his non-fiction books Between the World and Me and The Beautiful Struggle. He has also written for Marvel Comics.

Charles E. Cobb Jr. is the author of a number of books, including This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible. He was a field secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a journalist, and was a visiting professor of Africana Studies at Brown University. 

Fayette Colon consults with a school in Louisville, Kentucky and has articles published in Rethinking Schools. She taught social studies in New York City and served as coordinator of teacher engagement and professional development at Teaching for Change. 

Emilye Crosby is a professor of history and coordinator of Black Studies at SUNY Geneseo. She is the author of A Little Taste of Freedom: The Black Freedom Struggle in Claiborne County, Mississippi and editor of Civil Rights History from the Ground Up.

Elizabeth A. Davis (1951–2021) was the president of the Washington Teachers’ Union from 2013–2021 and an award-winning educator who taught in D.C. public schools for more than 40 years. 

Maggie Nolan Donovan (1944–2010) worked for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee from 1963 to 1967 during the Civil Rights Movement. She taught young children on Cape Cod for 30 years, was a teacher educator at the Wheelock College Graduate School in Boston, Massachusetts, and was a teacher-researcher with Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. 

Rita Dove, former Poet Laureate of the United States, is the recipient of many honors including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Medal in the Humanities, the Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities, and the Sara Lee Frontrunner Award. She is the author of a novel, a book of short stories, essays, and numerous volumes of poetry, among them the National Book Award finalist and NAACP Image Award winner Collected Poems 1974–2004 and Playlist for the Apocalypse, published in 2021.

Bill Fletcher Jr. is a longtime labor, racial justice, and international activist. Fletcher is an editorial board member of BlackCommentator.com and a senior scholar for the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. He is the author and co-author of a number of books including Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and A New Path Toward Social Justice and “They’re Bankrupting Us!” And 20 Other Myths about Unions.

Jennifer Gallagher is an associate professor in the College of Education at East Carolina University. She was a middle grades social studies teacher in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Carmen Gómez García is the senior director of Cuba’s National Archive in Havana. She is also a professor at the University of Havana in the department of History and Philosophy. Her articles on socialism, intellectuals, and race have appeared in the Revista Cubana de Ciencias Sociales and Granma.

Craig Gordon has been a teacher and a union activist in Oakland, California since 1990.

Eloise Greenfield (1929–2021) was a poet and children’s book author. She authored nearly 50 children’s books, including The Women Who Caught the Babies: A Story of African American Midwives and Honey I Love. Her work is widely known for its representation of Black children and families. She won numerous awards including the Coretta Scott King Award and the Living Legacy Award from the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. 

Susan Guengerich is a math teacher and has co-authored multiple books including Multicultural Math Fun: Holidays Around the Year and The Math of Sports: Integrating Math in the Real World.

Vincent Harding (1931–2014) was a theologian, historian, and nonviolent activist. In 1968, after several years as chairperson of the history and sociology department at Spelman College, he became director of the Martin Luther King Memorial Center. He served as senior advisor to the PBS television series, Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years. He founded Veterans of Hope Project with his wife Rosemarie Freeney Harding.

Josh Healey is a writer, performer, filmmaker, and creative activist. He has created digital series and comedic campaigns that have amplified social movements across the United States. He is the author of the poetry collection Hammertime.

Andrea Hernández Holm is a graduate of the doctoral studies program in the Mexican American Studies Department at the University of Arizona, with a research focus on borderland writing, storytelling, and knowledge-keeping. Born and raised in the desert of central Arizona, her first collection of poetry is Not Enough, Too Much.

Julian Hipkins III is an award-winning U.S. history teacher who serves as NAF Academy director at a high school in Washington, D.C. He worked at Teaching for Change as a curriculum specialist and Mississippi Teacher Fellowship Project director. 

Chris Hoeh was an elementary school teacher for over 20 years. As a 2nd-grade teacher with a passion for social justice, he was selected the 2015 National Elementary Social Studies teacher of the year by the National Council for the Social Studies and, in 2014 the recipient of a Teaching Tolerance Award for Excellence in Teaching, from the Southern Poverty Law Center. Following a spinal cord injury in 2017 he’s become a leading disability rights advocate in the state of Massachusetts.

John Hulett (1927–2006) was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement in Lowndes County, Alabama and the founder of the Lowndes County Christian Movement for Human Rights. He was the first chairperson of Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO), also known as the original Black Panther Party. In 1970, he was elected sheriff of Lowndes County on the LCFO ticket. He became a probate judge after 22 years as sheriff. 

Vincent J. Intondi is a professor, historian, and author. In 2018, Intondi founded Montgomery College’s Institute for Race, Justice, and Civic Engagement, which he directed until 2023. He is the author of African Americans Against the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons, Colonialism, and the Black Freedom Movement.

Hasan Kwame Jeffries is an associate professor of history at The Ohio State University, where he teaches courses on the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement. He is the author of Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt and editor of Understanding and Teaching the Civil Rights Movement.

June Jordan (1936–2002) was a poet, activist, journalist, essayist, and teacher. She professed a vision of liberation for all people and was active in the anti-war, feminist, civil rights, and LGBTQ+ movements. While a professor of African-American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, she founded the Poetry for the People program. Jordan died of cancer at the age of 65.

Akashi Kaul has a doctorate in philosophy from George Mason University. She is a researcher in New Dehli, India.

Herbert Kohl has written more than 40 books, including the classic 36 Children, I Won’t Learn From You, and Should We Burn Babar? Recipient of the National Book Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, he was founder and first director of the Teachers and Writers Collaborative. He established the Center for Teaching Excellence and Social Justice at the University of San Francisco School of Education.

Mark Levy served as the coordinator of the Meridian Freedom School during the summer of 1964 in Mississippi. Levy was a middle school and college teacher for more than a decade before working in the labor movement for 30 years. His published work includes articles and about Freedom Summer that have appeared in Jewish Currents, books, and teacher magazines.

John Lewis (1940–2020) served as chairperson of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which he helped form, from 1963-1966. At the age of 23, Lewis was one of the key planners and a keynote speaker at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Elected to Congress in November 1986, Lewis served 19 terms representing Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District. His autobiography, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement, was adapted into a graphic novel March (with Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell).

T.G. Lewis illustrated the Vietnam comic book written by Julian Bond. 

James Loewen (1942–2021) was a sociologist and historian. He was the author of many books including Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Textbook Got Wrong, The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader: The "Great Truths" about the "Lost Cause," and Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism. 

Hope Martin is the co-author of Multicultural Math Fun: Holidays Around the Year.

Robert P. “Bob” Moses (1935–2021) was the field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and director of its Mississippi voter project. He also served as the co-director of the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO). He worked for the ministry of education in Tanzania before returning to the United States to pursue doctoral studies at Harvard University. In 1982, Moses founded the Algebra Project. With Charles Cobb, he wrote Radical Equations: Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project.

Alana D. Murray is an educator-activist who has taught world history on both the middle and high school levels and currently serves as a middle school principal in Montgomery County, Maryland public schools. She is the author of The Development of the Alternative Black Curriculum, 1890-1940: Countering the Master Narrative.

Pauli Murray (1910–1985) was a lawyer, professor, episcopal priest, civil rights activist, feminist, and writer. She coined the term “Jane Crow” to refer to the institutional barriers and stereotypes that prevented Black women from reaching their full potential. Her story is told in the 2021 documentary, My Name is Pauli Murray and the young readers’ book, Pauli Murray: The Life of a Pioneering Feminist and Civil Rights Activist.

Jessica Gordon Nembhard is a professor of Africana Studies at John Jay College, City University of New York, where she is also director of the McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program. She is the author of Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice.

Susie Oppenheim taught elementary and middle school students at Southside Family School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she authored the “Kids Make History” curriculum.

Charles Payne is the Henry Rutgers Distinguished Professor of African American studies at Rutgers University Newark and the director of the Joseph Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Research. He is the author of numerous books, including the award-winning I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement. He is the co-editor of Time Longer Than Rope: A Century of African American Activism. 

Leonard Peltier is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa tribe, a member of the American Indian Movement, and lifelong Indigenous rights activist. He has been incarcerated since 1977. Considered by many to be a political prisoner, there is an international campaign for his release. Peltier paints portraits and writes poetry and prose, such as his 1999 biography Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance.  

Andrea Guiden Pittman is a professor of education at American University. An education historian, her research considers how race, class, and gender affect education policy making and school reform efforts. She is the co-editor of Teaching the New Deal, 1932-1941 in the Teaching Critical Themes in American History series.

A. Philip Randolph (1889-1979) was a U.S. labor union and civil rights activist. He established the first predominantly Black labor union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, to improve working conditions for Black railroad employees. He was one of the principal organizers of the 1963 March on Washington. 

Brenda Randolph worked as a media specialist in the Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland for 22 years. She is the director of Africa Access, which provides reviews of hundreds of books for teaching about Africa. 

Rachel Reinhard directed the UC Berkeley History-Social Science Project for ten years and is a high school U.S. history teacher.

Judy Richardson is a film producer and civil rights activist who worked in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s (SNCC) national office and is on the board of the SNCC Legacy Project. She has served in a production role on numerous documentaries, including Scarred Justice: Orangeburg Massacre 1968 and the award-winning 14-hour Eyes on the Prize series. She co-edited Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC. 

Richard Rothstein is a distinguished fellow of the Economic Policy Institute and a Senior Fellow (emeritus) at the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. He has authored many books on race and education, including The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America and Just Action: How to Challenge Segregation Enacted Under the Color of Law. 

Bayard Rustin (1912–1987) was an organizer for  causes of international peace and racial justice. He worked closely with A. Philip Randolph and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. His skills as a strategist and organizer were evident in the triumph of the 1963 March on Washington. He was an openly gay man, a socialist, and a conscientious objector. His life is documented in the film Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin.

Adam Sanchez taught high school in Philadelphia and is acting managing editor of Rethinking Schools magazine. He edited the Rethinking Schools teaching guide, Teaching a People’s History of Abolition and the Civil War.

Sonia Sanchez is a poet, writer, and professor. She was a leading figure in the Black Arts Movement and has authored over 16 books, including Homecoming, We a BaddDDD People, and Love Poems. She was named poet laureate for the City of Philadelphia. 

Stephanie Schmidt is an art educator in Golden, Colorado. She received a Master's Degree in Art and Design at University of Northern Colorado.

Paula Young Shelton has taught in early childhood education since 1990. She is the author of the children’s books, Child of the Civil Rights Movement and Just Like Jesse Owens.

The SNCC Digital Gateway is a collaborative project of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Legacy Project, Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies, and Duke University Libraries. The documentary website tells the story of how young activists in SNCC united with local people in the Deep South to build a grassroots movement for change that empowered the Black community and transformed the nation. SNCC organizers themselves shaped the vision and framework of the website, working collaboratively with historians of the Movement, archivists, and students to bring this history to life for a new generation.

James Smethurst is a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His books include Radicalism in the South Since Reconstruction and SOS — Calling All Black People: A Black Arts Movement Reader.

Andrea McEvoy Spero is an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco. She develops curricula and workshops for teachers focused on engaging youth in the historical and current contexts of race, gender, and human rights. She co-edited Bringing Human Rights Education to U.S. Classrooms.  

Kimberly Spotts taught middle and high school English for 16 years. She currently works as an instructional coach and instructional designer.

Katy Swalwell, formerly an associate professor in the School of Education at Iowa State University, is a lead equity specialist at the Equity Literacy Institute. She has published work in Rethinking Schools and is the author of a number of books including Amazing Iowa Women, Social Studies for A Better World: An Anti-Oppressive Guide for Elementary Educators, and Anti-Oppressive Education in "Elite" Schools: Promising Practices and Cautionary Tales from the Field.

Hardy Thames is a high school social studies teacher in Gulfport, Mississippi. 

Jeanne Theoharis is a distinguished professor of political science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. She is the author of a number of books including The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks and A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History.

Cristina Tosto is a high school teacher in Pascagoula, Mississippi. She was a Mississippi Civil Rights Fellow for Teaching for Change in 2015 and has participated in seminars and institutes by the National Endowment for the Humanities at Duke University and Delta State University. She has a M.S. in American History with a focus in African American Studies.

Kwame Touré (1941–1998), born Stokely Carmichael, was a leader in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Black Panther Party (BPP), and the All-African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP). He coauthored Black Power: The Politics of Black Liberation. Touré moved to Guinea in 1969, where he became an aide to Guinea’s Prime Minister, Ahmed Sekou Touré. 

Lynda Tredway is a senior associate at the Institute for Educational Leadership. In her educational career since 1969, she has been a D.C. school teacher, a Socratic Seminar coordinator, a project director for teacher education partnership at George Washington University and D.C. Public Schools, and an academic coordinator of the Principal Leadership Institute at U.C. Berkeley. She co-authored Leading from the Inside Out: Expanded Roles of Teachers in Equitable Schools.

Jenice L. View is an associate professor emerita at George Mason University. For more than 25 years, View has worked with a variety of educational and nongovernmental organizations, including a D.C. public charter school, the Just Transition Alliance, Rural Coalition, the Association for Community Based Education, and LISTEN, Inc. to create space for the voices that are often excluded from public policy considerations: women, people of color, poor urban and rural community residents, and especially youth. She has a B.A. from Syracuse University, an MPA-URP from Princeton, and a Ph.D. from the Union Institute and University.

Yohuru Williams is professor of history and dean at the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. He was previously a professor at Fairfield University and former chief historian of the Jackie Robinson Foundation. He has authored numerous books, including Rethinking the Black Freedom Movement and Teaching U.S. History Beyond the Textbook.

Ursula Wolfe-Rocca has taught high school social studies since 2000. She is on the editorial board of Rethinking Schools and is the Zinn Education Project writer and organizer. She has written articles and lessons on voting rights, redlining, deportations, COINTELPRO, climate justice, Red Summer, the Cold War, and more.

Malcolm X (1925–1965), also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, was born Malcolm Little to parents who were active in the Universal Negro Improvement Association. After being sentenced to prison, Malcolm X began to study the teachings of the Nation of Islam (NOI). By 1952, he was a devoted follower and was appointed as a minister and national spokesman for the NOI. After breaking with NOI leader Elijah Muhammad, he founded the Organization of Afro-American Unity.

Dave Zirin is a political sportswriter and The Nation’s sports editor. He has written multiple books including The Kaepernick Effect: Taking a Knee, Changing the World and A People's History of Sports in the United States: 250 Years of Politics, Protest, People, and Play. He is the coproducer and writer of the documentary Behind the Shield: The Power and Politics of the NFL and hosts The Nation’s “Edge of Sports” podcast.