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New York City is rolling out lessons on Jewish and Muslim American history. Too often, some leaders say, what students know comes from TikTok and social media.
March 23, 2026Updated 7:05 a.m. ET
It was anything but an average U.S. history lesson.
In Room 406 of an all-girls public school in Brooklyn, seventh graders learned about enslaved women and their resistance, hearing familiar names such as Ona Judge, who escaped George Washington’s Philadelphia mansion in 1796 and evaded his efforts to recapture her.
Then, their teacher turned to a more obscure duo who were held by Washington at Mount Vernon — but have rarely appeared in American textbooks: a mother and daughter known as “the Fatimas.”
It ignited a discussion about the widespread capture of Muslims from West Africa during the trans-Atlantic slave trade — and how their faith shaped their enslavement.
“How did Islam allow them to resist?” the teacher, Manjot Khehra, at the Urban Assembly School for Leadership and Empowerment, asked one recent afternoon during Ramadan.
“They were praying,” one student replied.
“But they had to keep it a secret,” another chimed in.
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The exercise was a window into a fresh set of lessons on Muslim and Jewish American history rolling out across New York City — the nation’s largest public school system — at a time when U.S. cities are struggling to quash a rise in hateful harassment, vandalism and rhetoric.
