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Answers to your toughest social justice questions.

Our online Teaching Hard History Text Library includes a wealth of primary and secondary source documents about slavery to share with students of all ages.

Read why this teacher thinks more social studies education should focus on activism in the past.

More states are including American Indians in their mainstream curricula.

Teaching Tolerance director Lecia J. Brooks reflects on the still segregated nature of our public schools.

Among my third-graders, conflicts often arose over the issue of skin color. “Your mama left you in the oven too long. You look just like a burnt cookie!” “Oh yeah, well you look like a white boy. I bet you ain’t even black.” As a young white teacher coming into a school that is about half African-American and half Latino, I knew there would be racial conflicts, but I didn’t know how they would manifest themselves. I assumed that both groups’ first concern would be the oppression and racism from white people. I was not expecting the intense criticism that I found within the African-American community of its own members.

Critical literacy can expose the assumption that whiteness is “normal” and provide students support for talking about difficult topics.