Objective:
Students will examine the effects of slavery on the people of Africa and America. Because of the number of plays that fit nicely with this topic, this lesson will take two class sessions.
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A) After a discussion about the middle passage and the numbers of slaves brought to the various parts of the world, students will be asked to find the slaves’ destinations on world maps.
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B) Students will be asked to silently read “Freedom Train” by Craig Sodaro, and “Abe Lincoln and the Runaways” by Wenta Jean Watson. Upon their completion, students will select speaking parts, and will participate in the oral reading of the plays. Students will also read, “Git On Board” from The Colored Museum by George C. Wolfe and “W.E.B.Du Bois, Black Educator” by Mary Satchell.
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C) Students will be asked to write letters to the editor of a fictitious, eighteenth century newspaper. Students should impart facts about the hardships and injustice of slavery. They should include reasons why it should be abolished and offer remedies to bring about a just and racially harmonic country.
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D) Students will produce the editorial page of their fictitious newspaper, with their letter as the main feature. The newspaper page must be complete with a historically accurate date, name of the paper, city, state and volume number.
The next class session will be devoted to the discussion of post-slavery conditions for African-Americans. Students will be given the following handout
Freedom?
After the end of institutionalized slavery, many white Southerners proceeded with institutionalized racism. Jim Crow laws made separate public facilities, separate schools, segregated movie theaters, and back entrances, for African-Americans, to restaurants legal.
While America embraced foreigners with white skin, African-Americans continued to be treated as an underclass. Hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan , were formed to ensure the oppression of the African-American people. Dressed in white robes and hoods, they dragged African-American men from their homes, and often shot, burned or hung them in front of their screaming wives and children. Their burned bodies were left dangling from trees to serve a reminders to those who might have ideas about their right to freedoms guaranteed them under the Constitution of the United States. Although many whites were hate-mongers, there were numerous white people who hated slavery, and fought violently against it. These people were known as abolitionists. They helped runaway slaves make it north to freedom, and participated in great debates fighting for laws to abolish slavery.