Tangible items can be reminders of the value of people’s unique stories, of building relationships with students and colleagues, and of our mission as educators to teach acceptance and respect.
LFJ Director Jalaya Liles Dunn emphasizes that “Teaching an honest history counters a prevailing narrative that denies the real origins of this country and maintains an unjust society.”
This piece is to accompany The Freedom Riders video and lesson. In 1961, the Civil Rights Movement took another strategic turn. A small group of activists, both black and white, calling themselves the Freedom Riders, decided to travel by bus through the Deep South, where segregation in bus facilities wasn’t just the custom, it was the law, and where the simple act of boarding a bus was enough to put one’s life on the line.
Before joining Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, Heffernan was the director of the Genocide Prevention Initiative at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. As a senior investigator with Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), he led three investigations to the Darfur region of Sudan and was the lead author of PHR’s report, Assault on Survival. Previously, he served as the Chief of Party for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs in Guyana. In 1995, Heffernan helped establish and run, as executive director, the Coalition for International Justice, a Washington, D.C.-based
Tracking and ability grouping remain common practices in schools across the country despite research showing these practices contribute to segregated classes and opportunity gaps. In Walla Walla, Washington, a group of educators decided to try something different.
A number of years ago, I asked my ninth-grade English students to make a bucket list of at least three things they’d like to do before they die. Examples of what they wrote down include “riding a motorcycle,” “becoming a