One year into the second Trump administration, their agenda has become unmistakable:attack the living legacy of the Civil Rights Revolution. Through dozens of executive orders targeting Black history museums and exhibits, campaigns to restore Confederate monuments that grassroots movements fought to tear down, and the stripping of Indigenous names from landmarks, the administration and its billionaire backers have launched an all-out battle over history. But why has this been their cause? What is the battle of history that we are in now, and what role will we play in this moment?  

In 1816, Andrew Jackson launched a war against the Negro Fort—a free Black and Indigenous stronghold in Spanish Florida that terrified southern slave owners. But he wasn't just eliminating a military threat, he was trying to crush the vision of Black and Indigenous people united against the systems designed to destroy them.In this session, we will explore the revolutionary alliances forged in uprisings against the intertwined systems of settler colonialism and slavery, and the tradition of multinational solidarity that slave owners and colonizers feared most.

While thousands fled north on the famous Underground Railroad, between 3,000 and 10,000 enslaved people took a different, largely forgotten route to freedom south across the border into Mexico, where slavery had been abolished in 1837. This session explores how Mexico's radical antislavery policies became a magnet for enslaved people fleeing  Texas and the South, transforming the border into a flashpoint that slaveholders desperately tried to control through Texas annexation and the Mexican-American War. We'll explore the stories of the freedom fighters who carved this path, such as Silvia Hector Webber, a formerly enslaved woman who repeatedly guided enslaved people to freedom across the bends of the Rio Grande, and the many who actively organized, resisted, and created their own paths to liberation. 

In July 1877, when railroad workers in Martinsburg, West Virginia walked off the job to protest wage cuts, they sparked the first nationwide strike in U.S.  history—a massive uprising that shut down two-thirds of the country's rail network and brought commerce to a standstill. Within days, the strike spread like wildfire to dozens of cities, as workers from Baltimore to St. Louis battled state militias and federal troops, with some communities even seizing control of rail yards and switching stations. The Railroad Strike of 1877 reveals the explosive power of coordinated working-class action, terrifying industrialists and politicians who watched in horror as ordinary people demonstrated they could literally stop the nation. This session explores how railroad workers organized across state lines, why their struggle resonated so powerfully with workers in other industries, how we can understand this uprising in the shadows of the attacks on Reconstruction and what this forgotten uprising reveals about the possibilities and lessons from mass labor resistance in the Gilded Age, and today.

In August 1917, hundreds of poor white, Black, Seminole and Creek farmers in Oklahoma took up arms, refused the WWI draft as a "rich man's war and a poor man's fight," and planned to march on Washington to end American involvement in the war—an uprising that became known as the Green Corn Rebellion. Though the rebellion was crushed and over 450 were arrested, the Green Corn Rebellion stands as a powerful history of multiracial, class-based solidarity among the rural poor who recognized their shared enemy in capitalist exploitation and imperial war. In this class, we'll explore these alliances between tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and Indigenous peoples, examining the radical traditions that flourished across the rural West and asking why these histories have been so deliberately buried

“We have made our decision. We will not be a part of this unjust, immoral, and illegal war. We want no part of a war of extermination. We oppose the criminal waste of American lives and resources. We refuse to go to Vietnam!!!!!!” - Fort Hood Three 

When soldiers in Vietnam began refusing combat orders, organizing underground anti-war newspapers, and taking action against their officers, the U.S. military faced an army in rebellion against the war itself. This class examines the massive GI resistance movement that emerged within the ranks during the Vietnam War, from individual acts of defiance to organized mutinies, antiwar coffeehouses near military bases, and networks of active-duty soldiers who saw themselves not as heroes but as war criminals being ordered to commit atrocities. We'll explore how this internal revolt, spanning all branches of service and crossing lines of race and rank, helped force an end to the war and why the military establishment has worked so hard to erase this history of soldiers who chose conscience over orders.

In 1974, women at New York's Bedford Hills maximum-security prison staged the August Rebellion, fighting off guards, holding seven hostage, and seizing control of prison sections to protest the brutal beating of Carol Crooks (Crooksie). This uprising represents one of many instances of women fighting back against the racist carceral system - through prison takeovers, disruptions, lawsuits challenging unconstitutional practices, and creative strategies to maintain contact with children and combat sexual abuse. Yet these rebellions and countless other acts of resistance by incarcerated women remain relatively hidden. This session examines how ordinary women behind bars organized collectively to challenge inadequate medical care, sexual abuse, family separation, and lack of opportunities, building movements that demand outside solidarity and support for their ongoing struggles.