Concept
: The Negro population of New Haven
Generalization
: Through the year 1930 Negroes represented a small percentage of the total population of New Haven and other northeastern cities.
Objectives
: Students will learn how to read a chart and will learn or review percents.
Materials
: Chart showing the Negro population as a part of the total population of New Haven, Hartford, New York, Boston, and Connecticut.
Activities
: Students and teacher will look together at the chart which, ideally, should be reproduced on a transparency and shown on an overhead projector. The teacher will explain how to find information on the chart and will then ask questions to elicit:
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- how the total population of the city grew in the period from 1790 to 1930
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- how many Negroes lived in the city and what part of the total population they represented.
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- at what point the Negro percentage of the population was largest and smallest.
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- how New Haven’s Negro population compared with other cities and the entire state.
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- how the free population compared with the slave population from 1791-1840.
Teacher’s note
: It is important for the teacher to be sure that students understand that percents are parts of one hundred. Although this is not the ideal place to teach it, it may be useful or interesting for students to learn how to find percents if they have never learned or have forgotten how to do so. The teacher can consult a math teacher in the school about how the department does it, or can use this formula:
1.
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Take the two numbers and write them in the form of a fraction in which the numerator is less than the denominator.
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2.
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Perform the division of the denominator into the numerator.
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3.
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Multiply the quotient by 100, and place a percent sign (%) after the product.
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Although it may seem that a study of percents is a strange diversion from a study of two ethnic groups in New Haven, we feel that it may well be worthwhile in order to enable students to understand information that may be presented at other times in the unit, particularly when studying blacks or Italians in the economy. If the class works on percents at this point in the unit, there are several opportunities to review and follow up the study later on.