You are hereA Place at the Table: Struggles for Equality in America
A Place at the Table: Struggles for Equality in America
The student textbook examines the courageous
efforts of some "unsung heroes" who toppled barriers in education,
voting, employment, housing, and other areas to participate more fully
in democracy.
The book contains stories of women and men who crossed ethnic, racial,
religious, and other divides to help further the cause of justice.
PUBLISHED: Teaching Tolerance
PAGES: 48
YEAR: 2000
Reviews
“Each section
of A Place at the Table highlights a particular fight for
broadly-defined equality in America through the eyes of individuals and groups
fighting for their rights.
While themes are familiar, the actual stories usually fly well below the
radar. The result is a guide to the struggle for equality that includes enough
historical context to serve as an introduction for students, while still
providing details and stories that go beyond a simple summary. The ‘chapters’
are interspersed with primary source documents and “in context” sections that
focus on a particular lesser-known story. Take the case of Thomas Kennedy, a
Maryland state legislator in the 1810s who spent his career fighting for the
religious liberty of the 150 Jews in Maryland at the time. Likewise, an entire
chapter is devoted to the renewed fight for American Indian rights in the
Pacific Northwest during the 1960s and 1970s.
Many history classes, for example, might study the concept ‘melting
pot,’ but few critique the origination of the word, as A Place at the
Table does on page 65. Many history classes may pay tribute to the fight to
abolish slavery or for women’s rights, but rare is it to find the personal
stories combined with key historical background information and primary sources
all in one place. A Place at the Table provides teachers and students
with easy access to hard fights; it brings quality sources to the classroom,
making it possible to have difficult conversations about the meaning of
equality in this country. Students will grapple with how people have defined
equality throughout the centuries, if equality has ever been achieved, in what
form, and what it may take to get full equality today.”
- Ariela Rothstein, high school history teacher, NYC
“Thank you for the classroom set of A
Place at the Table! Due to a glitch, the textbooks for my college class on
multicultural education did not arrive and I have been using your book as the
centerpiece of my course.”
– Apanakhi Buckley, Heritage
University
Visit the Zinn Education Project for more reviews and additional information about A Place at the Table.
