Zinn Education Project

CTL-E-5255 · Organization · other · 2008–present

VERIFIED evidence grade of this record

The Zinn Education Project (ZEP) is a United States education project that promotes the teaching of people's history — history told through the experiences of working people, women, people of color, and organized social movements — in middle and high school classrooms. It was founded in 2008, after historian Howard Zinn referred a former student, William Holtzman, to fund an effort to bring that approach into classrooms; it is the only project Zinn allowed to bear his name. ZEP is coordinated jointly by two nonprofit organizations, Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change, and offers hundreds of free, downloadable lessons and film and book listings organized by theme, period, and grade level, along with a daily This Day in People's History series. In CultureTechLens research, ZEP's materials library is the cited distribution source for Stanley Nelson's documentary The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords, whose interviews include Chicago Defender publisher John Sengstacke.

The record

• Also known as: ZEP, Zinn Education Project: Teaching a People's History

Notes

Staged 2026-10-15 under CTL-GOV-006; Gate A clear (no entity for the project, for Howard Zinn, or for either coordinating organization exists in the graph); Gate B met (4 sources, three of them the project's own and its coordinators' official pages, plus the independent ERIC scholarly record). CTL treatment: distributor source for 'The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords' in CTL-RB-BIZ-000004 sources; named in 17 CTL research files per the 2026-10-15 corpus gap scan. Statistic carried: more than 177,000 registered educators (Zinn Education Project About page, checked 2026-10-15; organization-reported). Photo slot: HELD — no rights-cleared image of the project itself; Commons portraits depict Howard Zinn the person rather than the project and would misidentify the subject, and the project's logos and site graphics are not openly licensed.

Sources

• Zinn Education Project (official site), “About the Zinn Education Project” (coordinated by Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change; since 2008; more than 177,000 registered) — https://www.zinnedproject.org/about/ (primary source)
• Teaching for Change, “Teaching People's History” (in 2008 Howard Zinn referred a former student to Teaching for Change and Rethinking Schools to fund the effort; the only project Zinn allowed to be named for him) — https://www.teachingforchange.org/anniversary-teaching-peoples-history (primary source)
• ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), EJ932754, Bigelow, “'One Long Struggle for Justice': An Interview with Historian Howard Zinn,” Rethinking Schools 24(3), 2010 (in 2008 Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change joined together to form the Zinn Education Project) — https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ932754
• Zinn Education Project, materials listing, “The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords” (film, directed and produced by Stanley Nelson) — https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/soldiers-without-swords/ (primary source)

Record CTL-E-5255 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · evidence grade: VERIFIED · 4 sources (3 primary) · CTL research: PPL-001.
Directory: all entity records · the knowledge graph

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