If We Knew Our History - Zinn Education Project Monthly Column
Presented by the Zinn Education Project
A Collaboration between Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change
Why We Should Teach About the FBI's War on the Civil Rights Movement
By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca

Some of the groups targeted by the FBI's COINTELPRO.
This month marks the 45th anniversary of a dramatic moment in U.S. history. On March 8, 1971, a group of peace activists broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, and stole every document they could find.

Delivered to the press, these documents revealed an FBI conspiracy---- known as COINTELPRO----to disrupt and destroy a wide range of protest groups, including the Black freedom movement. The break-in, and the government treachery it revealed, is a chapter of our not-so-distant past that all high school students----and all the rest of us----should learn, yet one that history textbooks continue to ignore. Continue reading.
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"Why We Should Teach About the FBI's War on the Civil Rights Movement" is the newest article in the Zinn Education Project series, If We Knew Our History, posted on Common Dreams and Huffington Post. You can help us reach a
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Related Resources
Teaching Activity. Text of speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the Vietnam War, followed by three teaching ideas. Also available in Spanish. Download lesson.
Teaching Activity. By Wayne Au. Help students assess issues in their own communities and to develop Ten Point Programs of their own. Available in Spanish. Download lesson.

Film. Produced by Henry Hampton. Blackside. 1987. 360 min.
Comprehensive documentary history of the Civil Rights Movement. Learn more.
Film. By the Freedom Archives. A primer to the FBI's covert Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO), featuring interviews by people targeted in the operation. Learn more.

Book Contest Results
Five Teachers Win Class Set
of Books
We are pleased to announce the five winners of a class set of A People's History of the United States: Sharla Crawford, Helena, Montana; Charles Duthu, Long Island City, New York; Christina Hendrix, Kansas City, Missouri; Daniel Morgan, Louisville, Kentucky; and Greg Smith, Chicago, Illinois. These teachers were among hundreds who entered our contest last fall, with many inspiring stories about how they use the lessons from the Zinn Education Project website to teach outside the textbook. Here are two examples. Continue reading. 
  
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