Featured
The anniversary of our nation offers a moment to reckon with our history — and its contradictions — to determine our democracy’s future.
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The Ella Baker Conversation Series
This Learning for Justice series of conversations with host Hasan Kwame Jeffries builds on Civil rights leader and organizer Ella Baker’s model of democratic learning and dialogue as foundational to the freedom movement and democracy.
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An Indigenous Perspective of the 250th Anniversary of the United States
Many Americans have traditionally privileged the telling of events that address conquest and the conquered, and that America’s genesis derives from the East and moves westward. Diné stories like those of my family are overlooked, though they played a part in the greater picture of events that shaped the formation of the United States.
The Other Legacy: A Counternarrative to Celebrating America 250
(Series Editors: Marty Blatt and Andreas Etges)
Creating a mythical and purely celebratory narrative of the past erases historical truths. This series is offered in the spirit of a counternarrative to the official America 250 celebrations.
The Learning Center
Learn with us to strengthen democracy and build a more just society. Explore More.
Teaching and Learning Hard History
Reconstruction: Democratic Promise — and Defeat
This video and discussion toolkit features a conversation between historian Hasan Kwame Jeffries and Ahmad Ward, executive director of Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park, in which they explore Reconstruction as a profound struggle over the meaning of freedom, citizenship and democracy. Jeffries and Ward center the experiences of Black people in Mitchelville, then widen the lens to South Carolina’s larger role in the Reconstruction period, and address the defeat of Reconstruction and lessons for today as we once more face a moment of democratic abandonment.
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Liberation Lit
These LFJ book reviews encourage us all to keep reading and learning together for liberation.
Analyzing Liberation in Film
This community conversation toolkit builds on Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail” as a lens for analyzing liberation.
Why the 1965 Voting Rights Act Is Crucial for Democracy
The 1965 Voting Rights Act — a landmark federal law that removed barriers and affirmed the right to vote for millions of African Americans — remains essential for ensuring equal access to the ballot.
Introduction to Civics for Democracy
Building a democracy for the 21st century requires transformation built on three essential principles: inclusive participation, institutional accountability and equitable representation.
Out of the Ashes: Building a New American Democracy
The erosion of institutions to safeguard democracy is an invitation to imagine a new democracy resilient enough to resist authoritarianism and inclusive enough to serve all.
How We Got Here and How We Move Forward (With Our Heads Held High)
Bold action and transformative interventions are necessary to reimagine and create an education system that ends harm and advances justice and racial equity.
Permission To Learn: Cultivating Lifelong Learning in Students and Educators
Reimagining education to cultivate curiosity, questioning, dialogue and critical thinking can develop students’ lifelong learning disposition and capacity for meaningful participation in a democratic society.
Support Democracy and Education Justice
To build a multiracial inclusive democracy requires educating for liberation and civic and political participation across the South and the nation.
