People Make History
This Comes to Life for
Students in the Classroom 

With thousands of teachers using Zinn Education Project lessons each year, we hear powerful stories about the impact these lessons have in the classroom. Here are just a few. Please donate to help us reach more teachers in 2026.

The lessons referenced above include “We the People”: Whose Rights Does the Constitution Protect?, “Founding” Documents We Don’t Learn About, The Montgomery Bus Boycott: Understanding the Organizing Tradition, and How We Remember: The Struggle Over Slavery in Public Spaces.

We need YOUR support to produce more lessons and to keep our people’s history lessons, classes, and study groups free for teachers. Donate so that more students have the experience that the teachers above describe. 

Chip Away at the Wall

Intergenerational Project

The Zinn Education Project hosted an anniversary celebration in Washington, D.C., in early December.

One of the speakers was How the Word Is Passed author Clint Smith. He  concluded by noting that,

We’re all chipping away at this wall, and you don’t know if the wall is six inches thick or 6,000 miles thick. But what you know is that the more you chip away at it, the less the people who come after you will have to chip away at. . . .

We’re all collectively engaged in this intergenerational project of trying to build a better world and it is only if we chip away and chip away and chip away that the future generations will eventually get to the other side of that wall.

Treat yourself to the recording of Clint Smith’s remarks. (And listen to the other wonderful speaker, Jelani Cobb.) Then donate to support people’s history teachers who are working with young people to chip away at that wall. 

People’s History Events

We'd love to see you at these events hosted by the Zinn Education Project and our colleagues. Online unless noted otherwise.

2026 Black Lives Matter at School Curriculum Fair, January 24. Consider submitting a workshop proposal.

I’ll Make Me a World: The 100-Year Journey of Black History Month with Jarvis Givens, February 2. Drawing on archival research, personal stories involving family and students, and especially the wisdom of Black educators, Givens recovers the legacy of Carter G. Woodson and many others who envisioned Black history as a liberatory force — knowledge that shapes who we are, how we resist, and what we dream.

The annual Native Knowledge 360° Teach-In, hosted by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in collaboration with Teaching for Change on March 14, is an online opportunity for educators to access classroom resources from NMAI’s Native Knowledge 360° education portal, the Zinn Education Project, and more.

Freedom Ship: The Uncharted History of Escaping Slavery by Sea with Marcus Rediker, May 4. Rediker will talk about how many enslaved people fled successfully from the horrors of bondage in the antebellum South not by land but by sea.

National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE): The Zinn Education Project will participate in the 2026 NCTE convention in Philadelphia (Nov. 19–22). Proposal applications are due on Jan. 27. Let us know if you plan to attend.

We Need Your Help

Teachers are under attack for teaching truthfully about U.S. history. Please donate so we can continue to offer free people’s history lessons and resources, and defend teachers’ right to use them.

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