Josh Davidson 6/13/23 Josh Davidson 6/13/23

Significant Dates on Black Land Loss and Land Acquisition

Timeline by Federation of Southern Cooperatives Land Assistance Fund with additions from Teaching for Change
A timeline of significant dates.

Josh Davidson 6/12/23 Josh Davidson 6/12/23

The Great Land Robbery: The shameful story of how 1 million black families have been ripped from their farms

Reading by Vann R. Newkirk II
A war waged by deed of title has dispossessed 98 percent of black agricultural landowners in America. Through a variety of means—sometimes legal, often coercive, in many cases legal and coercive, occasionally violent—farmland owned by black people came into the hands of white people. It was aggregated into larger holdings, then aggregated again, eventually attracting the interest of Wall Street.

Josh Davidson 6/11/23 Josh Davidson 6/11/23

African Americans Have Lost Untold Acres of Land Over the Last Century: An obscure legal loophole is often to blame

Reading by Leah Douglas
In the years following the Civil War, formerly enslaved people and their descendants accumulated roughly 15 million acres of land, roughly 14 percent of all farms in the U.S. Today, African Americans compose less than 2 percent of the nation’s farmers and 1 percent of rural landowners.

Josh Davidson 6/5/23 Josh Davidson 6/5/23

African American Cooperatives Curriculum

Teaching Idea by Jessica Gordon Nembhard
Throughout history, among all groups and people in every country, cooperatives have facilitated economic development, stabilization, and independence, often for those who have been economically marginalized. Learn about the long history of African American cooperative economic thought and practice.

Josh Davidson 6/4/23 Josh Davidson 6/4/23

Murals: Redefining Culture, Reclaiming Identity

Reading by Eva Sperling Cockcroft and Holly Barnet-Sanchez
A powerful essay on the connections among art, identity, and activism excerpted from the introduction to Signs from the Heart: California Chicano Murals.

Allison Acosta 3/19/24 Allison Acosta 3/19/24

March on Washington Hidden History Quiz

Quiz by Teaching for Change
When most people think of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, what comes to mind is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic statement, “I Have a Dream.” In truth, there was much more to this historic event than these four words in King’s speech. Teaching for Change designed this quiz about the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom to challenge assumptions, deepen understanding, and inspire further learning.

Mykella Palmer 2/9/24 Mykella Palmer 2/9/24

Introduction: Labor and Land

Labor and land have always been central to the struggle for civil and human rights in the United States. In this introduction, we share a few examples.

Josh Davidson 10/31/23 Josh Davidson 10/31/23

Native American Land Loss Maps

Image by Sam B. Hilliard
Five maps in a chronological series showing post-colonial land cessions in the continental United States and two additional maps showing land claims by tribe and present-day Indian reservations.

Josh Davidson 10/31/23 Josh Davidson 10/31/23

Invasion of America

Interactive Map by Claudio Saunt
This interactive offers a time-lapse vision of the transfer of Indian land between 1776 and 1887.

Josh Davidson 6/30/23 Josh Davidson 6/30/23

March for Jobs and Freedom: Calculating the Crowd

Lesson by Louise Bock, Susan Guengerich, and Hope Martin
In this lesson, students use representations and computations to estimate the crowd at the 1963 March on Washington. Students strengthen critical thinking and mathematical skills through investigation and problem solving, and gain a deeper understanding of the issues related to protest demonstrations and media representations of events.

Josh Davidson 6/30/23 Josh Davidson 6/30/23

Call to Negro America to March on Washington for Jobs and Equal Participation in National Defense, 1941

Primary Document by A. Philip Randolph
In 1941, A. Philip Randolph, the president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, issued a call to African Americans to fight the unjust conditions in the workforce with a March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The threatened mass protest forced President Franklin Roosevelt to sign Executive Order 8802 in June 1941, banning discrimination in the federal government and the defense industry. On June 28, A. Philip Randolph postponed the march.

Josh Davidson 6/29/23 Josh Davidson 6/29/23

1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom Statement and Demands

By heads of ten organizations calling for the March of August 28, 1963
The 1963 March on Washington had a list of ten demands. Half of the demands were not about integration or education – they were about labor and economic rights.

Josh Davidson 6/29/23 Josh Davidson 6/29/23

Looking for Justice at Turkey Creek: Out of the Classroom and into the Past

Teaching Reflection by Hardy Thames
Students study the African-American community of Turkey Creek, Mississippi, exploring whether the changes in the community relate to social and economic growth or social justice issues and then create projects with research and action components.

Josh Davidson 6/28/23 Josh Davidson 6/28/23

Claiming and Teaching the 1963 March on Washington

Reading by Bill Fletcher Jr.
The March on Washington did not begin as a classic civil rights march. It is barely remembered that the March on Washington was for freedom AND jobs, or that the march was initiated by black labor leaders.

Josh Davidson 6/27/23 Josh Davidson 6/27/23

The Role of Black Landowners in the Civil Rights Movement

Teaching Idea by Tiferet Ani
Black landowners provided an indispensable support base for the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi, as documented in the 82-minute Emmy Award-winning documentary Dirt and Deeds in Mississippi. Find teaching ideas for use in conjunction with film: a Socratic Seminar, a textbook revision project, and ideas for further research.

Josh Davidson 6/27/23 Josh Davidson 6/27/23

At the River I Stand: The 1968 Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike and the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

Reading by California Newsreel
The documentary film At the River I Stand skillfully reconstructs the two eventful months that transformed a strike by Memphis sanitation workers into a national conflagration, and disentangles the complex historical forces that came together with the inevitability of tragedy at the death of Martin Luther King Jr.

Josh Davidson 6/26/23 Josh Davidson 6/26/23

Our House Divided: What U.S. Schools Don’t Teach About U.S.-Style Apartheid

Reading by Richard Rothstein
The widespread belief that our continued residential racial segregation, North and South, is “de facto,” not the result of explicit government policy but instead the consequence of private prejudice, economic inequality, and personal choice to self-segregate is false. In truth, our major metropolitan areas were segregated by government action.

Josh Davidson 6/25/23 Josh Davidson 6/25/23

The Case for Reparations

Interview of Ta-Nehisi Coates by Audi Cornish
Ta-Nehisi Coates describes how the legacy of slavery extends to geographical and governmental policies in the United States and calls for a "collective introspection" on reparations.

Allison Acosta 6/21/23 Allison Acosta 6/21/23

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

Lesson by Ursula Wolfe-Rocca
The mixer role play is based on Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law, which shows in exacting detail how government policies segregated every major city in the United States with dire consequences for African Americans.

Josh Davidson 6/17/23 Josh Davidson 6/17/23

The Unknown Origins of the March on Washington: Civil Rights Politics and the Black Working Class

Reading by William P. Jones
“The very decade which has witnessed the decline of legal Jim Crow has also seen the rise of de facto segregation in our most fundamental socioeconomic institutions,” veteran civil rights activist Bayard Rustin wrote in 1965. The March on Washington addressed the economic crisis facing working-class African Americans more effectively than any other mobilization since the Second World War.

Josh Davidson 6/17/23 Josh Davidson 6/17/23

Remembering the Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike: A Collaborative Mural

Lesson by Patty Bode and Stephanie Schmidt
An art lesson designed to introduce the complexity and role of ordinary people in the Civil Rights Movement. The addendum provides a practical guide to drawing images of people for murals.

Josh Davidson 6/16/23 Josh Davidson 6/16/23

Southern Tenant Farmworkers: Black and White Unite?

Lesson By Bill Bigelow
This lesson examines efforts by Black and white workers to overcome the deep divisions and suspicions of racial antagonism in 1934 Arkansas. Students are faced with a “What would you do?” assignment that helps them understand many of the difficulties in achieving some degree of racial unity. At the same time, they realize the importance of confronting and overcoming racist attitudes.

Josh Davidson 6/16/23 Josh Davidson 6/16/23

César Chávez on How It Began

Interview with César Chávez by Luis Torres
In an interview just before his death in 1993, César Chávez related the story of how the fledgling National Farm Worker Association (NFWA) union became involved with Filipino workers belonging to the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee and the strike against major grape growers.

Josh Davidson 6/15/23 Josh Davidson 6/15/23

Stealing Home: Eminent Domain, Urban Renewal, and the Loss of Community

Lesson by Linda Christensen
Teaching about patterns of displacement and wealth inequality through the history of Chávez Ravine and the building of Dodger Stadium.

Josh Davidson 6/14/23 Josh Davidson 6/14/23

A Brief History of Black Cooperatives in the United States

Interview of Dr. Jessica Gordon Nembhard By Mira Luna
For as long as there have been Africans in America, there have been examples of Black social, cultural and economic solidarity. Often formed in response to systemic exclusion and economic stagnation, examples range from mutual aid networks, to freedom farms and grocery cooperatives.