This event is hosted by Haymarket Books and the Chicago Teachers Union. Both books will be available for purchase, and a book signing will follow the discussion.

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About Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education

In the face of relentless attacks on antiracist education, a much-needed reckoning with the roots of this latest wave of censorship and an urgent call to action to defend education.

In just the last few years, scores of states have introduced or passed legislation that would require teachers to lie to students about structural racism and other forms of oppression. Books have been cut from curricula and pulled from school library shelves. Teachers have been fired and threatened with discipline.

As long-time organizer, writer, and high school teacher Jesse Hagopian argues in Teach Truth, at stake is our democracy, not to mention the annihilation of entire systems of knowledge that challenge the status quo. As Hagopian shows by exploring the origins, philosophy, and manifestations of these attacks, the Right’s effort to regulate knowledge is an attempt to maintain its power over the American capitalist system, now and into the future.

Yet the struggle for a liberatory education has a long history in the United States, from the days when it was illegal for Black people to be literate, to the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, to Black Lives Matter at School today. Teachers, students, and their allies are already building a movement – in the classroom, on campus, and in the streets – to defend antiracist education.
 

About Original Sins: The Miseducation of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism

If all children could just get an education, the logic goes, they would have the same opportunities later in life. But this historical tour de force makes it clear that the opposite is true: The U.S. school system has played an instrumental role in creating and upholding racial hierarchies, preparing children to expect unequal treatment throughout their lives.

In Original Sins, Ewing demonstrates that our schools were designed to propagate the idea of white intellectual superiority, to “civilize” Native students and to prepare Black students for menial labor. Education was not an afterthought for the Founding Fathers; it was envisioned by Thomas Jefferson as an institution that would fortify the country’s racial hierarchy. Ewing argues that these dynamics persist in a curriculum that continues to minimize the horrors of American history. The most insidious aspects of this system fall below the radar in the forms of standardized testing, academic tracking, disciplinary policies, and uneven access to resources.

By demonstrating that it’s in the DNA of American schools to serve as an effective and underacknowledged mechanism maintaining inequality in this country today, Ewing makes the case that we need a profound reevaluation of what schools are supposed to do, and for whom. This book will change the way people understand the place we send our children for eight hours a day.

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Speakers:

Dr. Eve L. Ewing is a writer, scholar, and cultural organizer from Chicago. She is the award-winning author of four books: the poetry collections Electric Arches and 1919, the nonfiction work Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago's South Side, and a novel for young readers, Maya and the Robot. She is the co-author (with Nate Marshall) of the play No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks. She has written several projects for Marvel Comics, most notably the Ironheart series and Black Panther, and is currently writing Exceptional X-Men. Ewing is an associate professor in the Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and many other venues. Her next book, Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism, will be published by One World in February 2025.

Jesse Hagopian has taught in the public schools for over 20 years, serves on the Black Lives Matter at School steering committee, organizes for the Zinn Education Project, and founded the Ethnic Studies course at Seattle’s Garfield High School. He is an editor for Rethinking Schools magazine, the co-editor of Black Lives Matter at School and Teaching for Black Lives, and the editor of More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High Stakes Testing.

Monica Rickert-Bolter is a Chicago-based visual artist and journalist of Potawatomi and Black. Her artwork consists of traditional mediums, such as charcoals and pastels, graphic design, and digital coloring to create expressive characters and tell their diverse stories. After receiving her undergrad in Media Arts and Animation, Monica became more involved with Native nonprofits, where she combined her love of art and education to develop programs and resources for children. She worked with Chicago Public Schools to create a new interdisciplinary Latino and Latin American Studies curriculum incorporating Indigenous history and contributions. Passionate about storytelling through art and writing, she advocates for cultural representation in any project she undertakes and serves as a consultant for various institutions and organizations, like The Field Museum and the Terra Foundation for American Art. Monica writes under the pen name “Whitepigeon,” her family name, for online publications related to Native issues, creatives in the entertainment industry, and Indigenous-owned businesses. In 2020, she completed two children’s books as an illustrator and layout designer, Journey of the Freckled Indian by Alyssa London and J.W. The Deaf Drummer by Myles Hunt. The following year, Monica co-founded the Center for Native Futures, a nonprofit for Natives in the arts, with a fellow artist group to nurture, elevate, and advocate for Indigenous Futurists. Monica has multiple installations in the “Native Truths” permanent exhibition at the Field Museum and is part of the “Ancestors Know Who We Are” online exhibition at the National Museum of the American Indian.