“The History of Slavery is Sometimes Hidden in Plain Sight.” – Clint Smith

As part of the Zinn Education Project’s Teach the Black Freedom Struggle online people’s history series, author Clint Smith joined Rethinking Schools editor Jesse Hagopian and educator Jessica A. Rucker about the new young readers edition of How the Word Is Passed, adapted by Sonja Cherry-Paul.

Several Teaching for Black Lives study group members were in attendance along with other social justice educators, students, parents, and community members. Here are a few comments shared in the evaluation:

This session gave me courage to go on, and more to use in the resistance space I have access to.

If teachers see their work as activism, then we can change the world.

I really appreciated what Clint Smith touched on about the relation of time — particularly how the institution of slavery lasted for 250 years and we have only lived 160 years past that. As a 5th grade teacher, it can seem like a really long time ago for my 10-and-11-year-old students, but when put in the context of “your grandma’s grandma was alive during this time,” it becomes much more real.

The Zinn Education Project hosted a follow-up curriculum workshop on an abbreviated version of “Echoes of Enslavement” lesson by Ursula Wolfe-Rocca, which is part of a suite of activities developed to accompany Clint Smith’s How the Word Is Passed. Hagopian invited all participants to think about how slavery impacted even places where it later was abolished, areas that greatly profited from the institution of slavery in the South, while they watched a 4-minute from the online class.

Educators engaged with the lesson by considering “echoes of enslavement” in their own locale and sharing what they found in small breakout groups. Then, they brainstormed ways to adapt the lesson and other resources for the classroom. Here are key takeaways from the evaluation:

I enjoyed speaking with other educators about the resources available in their communities. I would say that our area of our state tends to act as if there were not enslaved peoples. There were.

The connection to place-based learning!

Ideas! Brainstorming new ways and connections that will make this real to students.

I appreciated the access to more resources and the opportunity to converse and hear more insight.

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