Deborah Menkart

Deborah Menkart is the executive director of Teaching for Change, the co-editor of Putting the Movement Back Into Civil Rights Teaching, and co-director of the Zinn Education Project. Menkart’s activism began in junior high school when she joined protests of D.C.’s “taxation without representation” and the “dresses-only” dress code for girls. During the 1970s, she lived in San Diego, California, where she worked as a shipyard electrician and was involved in the antiwar, women’s, international solidarity, and labor movements. Menkart received a master’s in curriculum and instruction from George Washington University and taught at a high school in Prince George's County. As executive director of Teaching for Change for the past 35 years, she has played an active role in shaping and implementing its many programs that address Central America, social justice children's literature, people's history, the Civil Rights Movement, the freedom to learn, and more.