Veterans Day

Teach Outside the Textbook

For Veterans Day, we share stories about African Americans who faced terrorism in the United States before and after their deployment, soldiers who organized against the Vietnam War, and veterans of an early fight against fascism who were criminalized by the U.S. government.

Black Veterans Face Terrorism

in the United States

“What shall it profit us to cross the seas to destroy Hitler,

if Hitlerism is to rise triumphant over our homes?”

— Chicago Defender

Many Black veterans who fought overseas were murdered for exercising their democratic and human rights on their return. We share stories about these veterans in our This Day in People’s History series.

As Matthew Delmont describes in his book, Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad, Black soldiers experienced terrorism in training camps before they were deployed. One soldier wrote that his battalion faced “an unholy alliance of state police, southern white MPs, and southern sheriffs.”

Free Book

African Americans in World War II

Thanks to a generous donation by historian Matthew Delmont and Dartmouth College, the Zinn Education Project can offer 1,500 hardback copies of Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad to public school teachers, school librarians, and teacher educators who share a plan for using the text.

Request Book

Listen to the audio recording of Matthew Delmont in conversation with Jeanne Theoharis in our Teach the Black Freedom Struggle online class. They examine the connections between the struggle for Black liberation in the United States and the fight against fascism abroad during the 1930s and 1940s.

The Lincoln Brigades

Fighting Fascism in Spain

In 1936, the day after Christmas, 96 Americans sailed from New York to help Spain defend its democratic government against fascism. Ultimately, 2,800 U.S. volunteers reached Spain to become the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.

They were poets and blue-collar workers, professors and students, seamen and journalists, lawyers and painters, Christians and Jews, Blacks and whites. The Brigade was the first fully integrated armed force from the United States.

Langston Hughes reported from Spain. Matthew Delmont explains, “Each dispatch warned that a life-and-death struggle against fascism was under way in Spain and that Black Americans were among the first to try to stop Franco, Mussolini, and Hitler.”

Lincoln Brigades

Veterans Against War

Although not visible in textbooks, veterans played a major role in the anti-Vietnam War movement.

As described in the excellent documentary, Sir! No Sir!: more than 200 underground newspapers were published by soldiers around the world; thousands joined local and national antiwar GI organizations; thousands more demonstrated against the war at every major base in the world in 1970 and 1971, including in Vietnam itself; stockades and federal prisons filled with soldiers jailed for opposition to the war and the military.

Sir! No Sir!

Howard Zinn on the Bomb

The late historian and activist Howard Zinn was familiar with bombs — he dropped them on people during World War II, flying as a bombardier in Europe. This is Zinn’s passionate and readable denunciation of bombs — not just “the bomb,” but all bombs.

In the The Bomb’s two chapters — one on Hiroshima and one on Royan, France, where Zinn dropped napalm late in World War II — Zinn poses the crucial question: “What can we learn to free us from the thinking that leads us to stand by . . . while atrocities are committed in our name?” The Bomb is the kind of critical, angry, but hopeful history telling for which Howard Zinn is so deservedly well known. — Bill Bigelow, Rethinking Schools

The Bomb

The Fight for

Black History in Schools

Online Class on November 13

On Monday, November 13, 2023, historian Michael Hines will discuss his book, A Worthy Piece of Work: The Untold Story of Madeline Morgan and the Fight for Black History in Schools, which details how African American education activists in the early 20th century created new curriculum around race and historical representation.

Hines will be in conversation with Jesse Hagopian and Cierra Kaler-Jones. Hagopian is a Rethinking Schools editor and on the Zinn Education Project leadership team. Kaler-Jones is executive director of Rethinking Schools.

ASL interpretation and professional development credit certificate provided.

Join Us In Nashville

Annual Social Studies Teachers Conference

Are you going to the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) Annual Conference in Nashville in early December?

If so, check out our workshops on Reparations, the Black Panther Party, climate justice, and more. Visit our interactive booth to learn about our people’s history lessons, climate crisis timeline, Reconstruction report, and Teaching for Black Lives study groups. Meet Rethinking Schools editors and see a collection of Rethinking Schools publications.