FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
May 6, 2004

CONTACT: Kate Munning
Tel: (202) 588-7206
Email: kmunning@teachingforchange.org

Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching
Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. and Dr. Dorothy Height
Featured at Book Launch

WASHINGTON, DC, April 2, 2004—Most people think that a stubborn, weary Rosa Parks singlehandedly desegregated the Montgomery, Alabama bus system in 1956 by refusing to give up her seat to a white man. However, that version of history leaves out Jo Ann Robinson, E. D. Nixon, and the thousands of people who walked and carpooled to work for 381 days.

In too many American classrooms, the Civil Rights Movement is taught as an exercise in lauding a handful of saintly heroes. The Movement has the capacity to help students develop a critical analysis of United States history, but the empowering potential is often lost in a pursuit of names and dates. Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching, a new book by Teaching for Change and the Poverty & Race Research Action Council (PRRAC), provides lessons and articles for classrooms and communities on how to go beyond a heroes approach to the Civil Rights Movement. It offers interactive and interdisciplinary lessons, readings, artifacts, and interviews, with sections on education, citizenship, culture, economic justice, and reflections on teaching about the Movement.

The book’s editors—Deborah Menkart, Alana D. Murray, and Jenice View—know their stuff. Menkart is the founder and executive director of Teaching for Change (www.teachingforchange.org), a nonprofit organization for classroom equity and one of the book’s co-publishers. Murray is a Fulbright Scholar and middle-school teacher with a Movement legacy: Her grandfather, Donald Murray, desegregated the University of Maryland Law School in 1935. When View isn’t teaching eighth-graders, she is executive director of Just Transition Alliance, an economic and environmental justice nonprofit.

The success of this endeavor is equally credited to a powerful advisory board, including Danny Glover, Howard Zinn, Sonia Sanchez, and Juan Williams, to oversee the production of a truly one-of-a-kind publication. Public Education Network (PEN) president Wendy D. Puriefoy says of the book: “Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching is a unique collection of urgent voices who remind us that true and lasting movements for social, economic, and racial justice begin with you and me.” Howard University Law School professor and distinguished author Frank Wu calls it “as academically rigorous as it is innovative.” He adds, “The struggle is depicted here vividly and profoundly by a distinguished roster of authors.”

The editors will be promoting their anthology at high-profile conferences and in major media outlets nationwide. The official book launch was held on Wednesday, March 31 at the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) headquarters, with NCNW Chair and President Emerita Dr. Dorothy Height offering welcoming remarks and Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL) as a featured speaker. Book orders have already been placed from over 200 school districts throughout the country.

Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching, which has a foreword by Congressman John Lewis (D-GA), is a joint publication by Teaching for Change and the Poverty & Race Research Action Council (PRRAC), two DC-based nonprofits working for equity in education. A companion website at www.civilrightsteaching.org invites visitors to order the book, peruse web-exclusive content, or find an event in their area commemorating the celebrated Brown v. Board court decision.