Brooklyn Resists Curriculum

Curriculum: Black Brooklynites Stories of Resistance and Perserverance

In 2020, the Center for Brooklyn History, in conjunction with Dr. Brian Purnell, curated Brooklyn Resists exhibition, a Public History Project that explores the history of Black Brooklynites and their stories of resistance and perseverance.

Introduction

This curriculum is an adaptation of the Brooklyn Resists (2020) exhibition. The featured case studies and contextual videos are derived from the exhibition and the Brooklyn Public Library's collections, incorporating materials that range in origin from the 1600s to the 2020s. The curriculum is divided into six separate sections, which correspond to the sections of the exhibition. This curriculum expounds the history of Black Brooklynites with the objective of tailoring the exhibition content to a social studies Scope & Sequence framework.

About this curriculum

We suggest using this curriculum with students in grades six and up. It is categorically grouped by theme and can be taught chronologically or out of order.

This curriculum is divided into the following sections:

Each section includes:

  • Primary sources such as newspapers, diary entries, oral histories, and photographs.
  • Worksheets with questions worded to illicit an examination of sources.
  • Contextual videos with related information. 
Suggested Teaching Tools for Online Learning

We suggest using Padlet and Jamboard as interactive online learning tools with this curriculum. You can add the links to Padlet and have students write comments about each of the sources. With Jamboard, placing one of the primary sources on the board and/or having students listen to an oral history or watch one of the contextual videos enables them to write their thoughts on virtual post-it notes.

A special thank you to Dr. Brian Purnell, Akane Okoshi, and Jules David Bartkowski, for all of their hardwork on this curriculum. We also wish to thank Dr. Aja Lans and Nona Faustine for their time and wonderful insights. Thank you.

 

Upcoming Events

Trace/s Exhibition Tour

Fri, May 30 3:00pm
Center for Brooklyn History

brooklyn history Center for Brooklyn History exhibitions

Come for a free curator-guided tour of the exhibition Trace/s: Family History Research and the Legacy of Slavery in Brooklyn.

Visitors will get an in-depth tour of the artwork and archival documents that make up the heart of this exhibition, and will get to explore the historical…

Environmental Injustice: Race, Class, and Toxic Inequality | The Path to Today

Wed, Jun 4 6:30pm
Center for Brooklyn History

anti-racism BPL Presents Center for Brooklyn History

Join us for the first event in a three-part series exploring the intersection of racial inequality and the environment. Part 1 delves into the systemic roots of environmental racism and confronts a critical question: Why are communities of color and low-wealth populations…

Trace/s Exhibition Tour

Fri, Jun 6 3:00pm
Center for Brooklyn History

brooklyn history Center for Brooklyn History exhibitions

Come for a free curator-guided tour of the exhibition Trace/s: Family History Research and the Legacy of Slavery in Brooklyn.

Visitors will get an in-depth tour of the artwork and archival documents that make up the heart of this exhibition, and will get to explore the historical…

CBH Talk | Deborah Archer and James Forman Discuss “Dividing Lines”

Mon, Jun 9 6:30pm
Center for Brooklyn History

author talks book discussion BPL Presents

In her new book, Dividing Lines: How Transportation Infrastructure Reinforces Racial Inequality, acclaimed scholar and ACLU President Deborah Archer shows how seemingly innocuous transit planning functions – the development of roads, sidewalks, dividers, and other infrastructures –…

Children of the Movement: Growing up with Parents in the Black Panther Party

Thu, Jun 12 6:30pm
Center for Brooklyn History

BPL Presents Center for Brooklyn History conversations

 This program is offered in partnership with The Guardian. 

 

In March, The Guardian published a landmark article and produced a short film spotlighting the self-described “Panther cubs”—offspring of members of the Black Panther Party. This project, two…

Trace/s Exhibition Tour

Fri, Jun 13 3:00pm
Center for Brooklyn History

brooklyn history Center for Brooklyn History exhibitions

Come for a free curator-guided tour of the exhibition Trace/s: Family History Research and the Legacy of Slavery in Brooklyn.

Visitors will get an in-depth tour of the artwork and archival documents that make up the heart of this exhibition, and will get to explore the historical…

Environmental Injustice: Race, Class, and Toxic Inequality | The Present Crisis

Mon, Jun 16 6:30pm
Center for Brooklyn History

anti-racism BPL Presents Center for Brooklyn History

Join us for Part 2 of a three-part series exploring the intersection of racial inequality and the environment. This time we explore the situation today. Leaders from across the country share solutions to environmental crises within their communities and discuss a new urgent challenge…

Opening the Archives: Finding LGBTQ+ History in the CBH Collections

Tue, Jun 17 6:30pm
Center for Brooklyn History

BPL Presents Center for Brooklyn History LGBTQ

When author Hugh Ryan researched his 2019 book When Brooklyn Was Queer, he delved deep into the archives at the Center for Brooklyn History. Queer history is rarely neatly labeled in finding aids or research guides. And so Hugh brought a queer lens to an array of seemingly unrelated…

CBH Talk | Rules and Rutabagas: A Conversation about the Park Slope Food Coop with Joe Holtz, Sun Yu, and Alexandra Schwartz

Wed, Jun 18 6:30pm
Center for Brooklyn History

BPL Presents brooklyn history Center for Brooklyn History

In the early 1970s, a remarkable experiment in collective action took root in Park Slope: the Park Slope Food Coop (PSFC). Founded in 1973 as a members-only, collectively-run buying club, the Coop has grown over 52 years into the largest single store food cooperative in the United…

Trace/s Exhibition Tour

Fri, Jun 20 3:00pm
Center for Brooklyn History

brooklyn history Center for Brooklyn History exhibitions

Come for a free curator-guided tour of the exhibition Trace/s: Family History Research and the Legacy of Slavery in Brooklyn.

Visitors will get an in-depth tour of the artwork and archival documents that make up the heart of this exhibition, and will get to explore the historical…

Browse the Curriculum

Brooklyn Resists tells the stories of Black Brooklynites and how they have responded to systemic racial injustice, risen up against those systems, and how the protest movement of the present ties to the generations of activists and leaders who came before. The curriculum is divided into six separate sections, which correspond to the sections of the exhibition. 

View the first section

 

Learn more about the Brooklyn Resists exhibition

Brooklyn Resists tells the stories of Black Brooklynites and how they have responded to systemic racial injustice, risen up against those systems, and how the protest movement of the present ties to the generations of activists and leaders who came before. 

 

Credits

Special thanks to the National Grid Foundation and Nissan Foundation for supporting this curriculum.

Brooklyn Resists: How Black Brooklynites Resisted Racism and Persisted was written and created by Akane Okoshi and Shirley Brown Alleyne, in collaboration with Dr. Brian Purnell.

Brooklyn Resists Curriculum Development Team

  • Project Manager and Co-Curriculum writer: Shirley Brown Alleyne
  • Project Historian/Brooklyn Resists Curator: Dr. Brian Purnell
  • Co-curriculum Writer/Advisor: Akane Okoshi
  • Videographer/Editor: Jules David Bartkowski
  • Narrator: Barry Stephenson
  • Bioarcheologist, Consultant: Dr. Aja Lans
  • Visual Artist, Consultant: Nona Faustine
  • Consultant: Dr. Prithi Kanakamedala
  • Graphic Designer: Carl Petroysan
  • CBH Educator: Sonya Ochshorn
  • CBH Education Fellow: Chava Zakheim

Center for Brooklyn History Staff

  • Director: Heather Malin
  • Assistant Director, Collections and Public Service: Natiba Guy-Clement
  • Manager of Education: Shirley Brown Alleyne
  • CBH Educator & Internship Coordinator: Julia Palaez
  • CBH Educator & NYCHD Co-Coordinator: Nathaniel Weisberg
  • CBH Educator & NYCHD Co-Coordinator: Sonya Ochshorn
  • Chief Historian, Center for Brooklyn History: Dominique Jean-Louis
  • Director of Public Programs: Marcia Ely
  • Special Collections Cataloguer: Deborah Tint
  • Former Brooklyn Connections Educator: Brendan Murphy
  • Former Education Coordinator: Charles Rudoy
  • Former Art Collections and Outreach Librarian: Anna Schwartz
  • Former Special Collections and Outreach Librarian: Cecily Dyer
  • Former Reference Librarian: Michelle Montalbano