Students will be exposed to a variety of literature that encompasses the topic of slavery and /or the blues. The stories and poems can be shared with students during Circle/Story Time. For each literary piece that is introduced, students must be given the time to respond through written, verbal, or artistic expression.
Some stories will be shared with students orally in the African American tradition of storytelling. These stories will touch upon the bitter reality of such horrors as lynchings and other cruelty invoked by slavery.
To get even a remote, modest understanding of enslavement, one must feel the pain and experience the horror of millions of human beings torn from their homeland, packed into overcrowded ships, and shipped halfway around the world. Uprooting Africans from their homes and forcing them to sail across the sea to a strange land was a terrible crime against humanity. For 300 years, European ships became chambers of horror for millions of Africans. The separation, pain, brutality, and death that resulted from this barbaric practice is perhaps truly impossible to comprehend. Yet young learners need to be exposed to this story of history. Storytelling is imperative. Here, students will also be exposed to the rhythm of the spoken word.
Reading List
Children’s
Poems That Sing to You
by Michael Strickland
Pass It On: African American Poetry for Children
Honey I Love and Other Poems by Eloise Greenfield
Nathaniel Talking
by Eloise Greenfield
Under The Sunday Tree
by Eloise Greenfield
Everett Anderson’s Goodbye
by Lucille Clifton
Everett Anderson’s Nine Months Long
by Lucille Clifton
Everett Anderson’s Friend
by Lucille Clifton
Harriet Tubman and the Promised Land
by Jacob Lawrence
Heritage Kids
by Empak “Black History” publication Series
Follow the Drinking Gourd
I Live in Music by Ntozake Shange paintings by Romare Bearden
My Many Colored Days
by Dr. Suess
The Genie in the Jar
by Nicki Giovanni
The Block
collage by Romare Bearden poems by Langston Hughes
Teacher’s
African American History: A Journey of Liberation
by Dr. Molefi Kete Asante
Betrayal By Any Other Name
by Dr. Khalid Abdullah Tariq—Al Mansour
