ROELAND PARK, KANSAS — In the heartland that birthed Brown v. Board and the first wave of 21st-century fascist book bans, teachers and community organizers are once again raising the liberationist flag.
On Saturday, June 7, local educators will convene the 5th Annual Teach Truth Day of Action at Roots Church in Roeland Park, Kansas, arming attendees with radical lessons on Kansas-Missouri’s colonial violence and the insurgent movements that fought it.
The Modern Curriculum Wars
Kansas City is no stranger to the front lines of the knowledge struggle. In 2021, KC school boards here were the first in the United States to yank award-winning Black literature from classrooms, kicking off the modern fascist, right-wing book ban movement.
Additionally, Missouri’s flagship universities were the first in the country to gut and outlaw affirmative-action within days of the Supreme Court’s ruling, while statehouses in both Missouri and Kansas churned out gag bills designed to bleach racism, sexism, and queer struggle from lesson plans.
All this in the same borderland where Brown v. Board of Education detonated Jim Crow’s “separate but equal” myth 70 years ago.
“Deception, Not Education”
“The event comes as lawmakers in at least 47 states — including Kansas and Missouri — push bills that would require teachers to lie about the role of oppression in U.S. history,” explains Michael Rebne, Kansas City physics teacher and SURJ co-organizer. “Not acknowledging the country’s actual history, including racism and other oppression, is deception, not education.”
Ancestral Truth-Telling on Sacred Ground
This year’s action focuses on two flashpoints of Midwestern resistance:
- Shawnee Indian Mission — once a boarding-school cog in the federal project to erase Indigenous identity.
- Quindaro Township — a freedom settlement founded by abolitionists and Wyandot leaders that ferried enslaved people across the Missouri River toward liberation.
Speakers include Cornell Ellis of BLOC, Wyandot historians Holly Zane and Kristen Zane, and local archivist Anna Jacobson. Participants will leave with concrete toolkits: lesson plans, legal guidance for defying state censorship, and mutual-aid networks ready to defend any educator disciplined for teaching the truth.
The Political-Educational Landscape & Why This Event is So Timely
When Kansas City classrooms teach honest history, they expose how today’s housing segregation maps onto yesterday’s red-lined deeds, how Black and Indigenous resistance built the region’s backbone, and how present-day policing, deportations, and union-busting echo older regimes of control. That knowledge nurtures organizers, voters, and students who refuse fascism’s erasure.
Get Involved
- When: Saturday, June 7, 10 AM–12 PM
- Where: Roots Church, 5110 Cedar St., Roeland Park, KS
- Cost: Free — open to all educators, students, and community members
- RSVP: Link Here
As Kansas and Missouri legislators try to legislate historical eradication, KC’s liberation educators are flipping the script: We teach truth to build power. Bring a notebook, bring a comrade, and prepare to sharpen the curriculum into a weapon for freedom.
