For the last three years, educators all over the country led rallies, set up information tables, and hosted events for what the Zinn Education Project calls #TeachTruth Day, an event designed to push back against what organizers call the “anti-CRT movement.”
Although the work to counter censorship happens every single day inside and outside schools, efforts to suppress truth are also continuing—which is why Zinn Education Project, educators, and organizations joined a call to discuss the fourth annual Teach Truth Day of Action.
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With over 169 events in 40 states and territories, organizations like ZEP, the National Education Association, GLSEN, and many more are equipping students, communities, and leaders to fight efforts to ban the teaching of historical and scientific facts in schools — and let their voices be heard on issues they care about.
Participants discussed why they are acting against a wave of state laws and education policies restricting what can or can’t be taught in classrooms. Although bans in states like Florida, Tennessee, and Texas have made national news, lawmakers and school board members nationwide are working to suppress the truth. For example, in some states, educators are now banned from teaching — or discussing — the evils of slavery and Jim Crow. They also can’t teach why the rights of LGBTQ+ students and educators matter or discuss why protests against Israel’s war in Palestine should be allowed.
The Right to Learn About Racism
On the call, Courtland Cox, a civil rights activist and leader who was involved in the 1963 March on Washington, recalled a time when learning how to read or write was dangerous for Black people. Cox said it’s similar to the state of teaching about race and queer topics today.
“I’ve been involved in the movement for over 60 years,” Cox said. “I’ve seen what the policy of destroying education for people has done, particularly in the South. When I was in Mississippi, Alabama, Southwest Georgia — you know, most Black students did not get past the fourth grade.”
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Greg Wickenkamp, an Iowa educator and co-host of Iowa City’s Teach Truth event, is participating this year because he experienced firsthand being pushed out of K-12 teaching. Wickenkamp said he was accused of “indoctrinating” students.
“I was teaching critical thinking, and they accused me of indoctrinating students. Administrators didn’t stand up to them. This was 2021, and Iowa had just passed its history censorship law,” Wickenkamp said. “It criminalizes teaching about systemic racism and oppression. Now, like every classroom, mine had a bias, and my classroom’s bias was in favor of an inclusive democracy.”
“Iowa’s law created so much fear, confusion, and discomfort,” Wickenkamp said, that the superintendent wasn’t sure if Wickenkamp could still teach students that chattel slavery was wrong. But he said schools need teachers who inspire critical thinking and public servants who won’t stand for anything less than teaching truth.
Book Bans Affect Authors, Too
Megan Madison, an educator and children’s author, comes from a line of early childhood educators. She said accurately teaching history to people of all ages enables them to make “more powerful and strategic choices” about their lives and those of people they care about.
“We are a beautifully resilient species, and we are not OK right now,” Madison said. “At the same time, we’re seeing a blossoming of a long-existing white Christian nationalist movement, delivering the expected backlash to the world’s largest Black liberation movement in human history, the movement for Black lives.”
Author Nikki Grimes said book bans are directly impacting those in the school system, but also the authors who pour their passion and creativity into writing.
“Thanks to fear-inducing pro-censorship legislation, author book sales are slipping,” Grimes said. “But the biggest losers here are children.”
LGBTQ+ Students Need a Voice
Michael Rady, GLSEN Senior Education Programs Manager, said queer students should be exposed to historic LGBTQ figures like Bayard Rustin and Congresswomen Sharice Davids, who both made history by fighting for civil rights while embracing their true identities.
“This is GLSEN’s second year co-sponsoring the Teach Truth Day of Action,” Rady said. “Again, we’re seeing record numbers of (state-level) bills being introduced — 500 so far in 2024 — targeting LGBTQ+ people, bills censoring LGBTQ+ stories and history from classrooms — like the one passed by the Louisiana legislature just last week, bills banning Diversity Equity and Inclusion initiatives.”
Julie Womack, head of organizing for Red, Wine, and Blue, said the organization supports Teach Truth Day of Action because parents don’t know—or can’t believe—what’s happening in their schools, and this is a way to help them understand the severity of it.
“I talk daily to parents who cannot believe that a book ban is being proposed in their school district, or that there’s an anti LGBTQ+ policy that would exclude their child and probably lead to even bullying, and that this is happening at their school board,” Womack said. “Mainstream parents in these communities are standing up and saying no.”