Emancipation
Skills Goals:
1.03 Draw inferences.
4.01 Use hypothetical reasoning processes.
4.03 Recognize and analyze values upon which judgments are made.
4.06 Draw conclusions.
This lesson is designed for students to answer the following questions:
Where did newly emancipated slaves live and why?
What were the attitudes of newly emancipated slaves towards former slave masters?
Warmup Question: When you graduate high school, will you stay at/near your home or will you live far away from where you grew up? Explain your answer.
The class should have a discussion on the merits of staying in familiar surroundings versus traveling to a strange place.
The class will access plantationletters.com/letters.html to get to the letters. They should use the document viewer to search emancipation letters. They should find and read the three letters of former slaves of the Cameron plantation. With a partner, they should determine the reasons each slave stayed and compare and contrast them to the reasons why students would or would not stay at home after graduation. As a class, we would evaluate the logic of each slave's decision based on their skills/occupation.
The second part of the lesson would to analyze the attitudes of the slaves towards the slavemaster by reading the letters. Students would choose one of the three letters and I would give each student interview questions (about the attitude they have towards Cameron). Based on the tone and mood of the interview, the students would have to answer the questions as that former slave would have answered it while referring back to the original interview.
1.03 Draw inferences.
4.01 Use hypothetical reasoning processes.
4.03 Recognize and analyze values upon which judgments are made.
4.06 Draw conclusions.
This lesson is designed for students to answer the following questions:
Where did newly emancipated slaves live and why?
What were the attitudes of newly emancipated slaves towards former slave masters?
Warmup Question: When you graduate high school, will you stay at/near your home or will you live far away from where you grew up? Explain your answer.
The class should have a discussion on the merits of staying in familiar surroundings versus traveling to a strange place.
The class will access plantationletters.com/letters.html to get to the letters. They should use the document viewer to search emancipation letters. They should find and read the three letters of former slaves of the Cameron plantation. With a partner, they should determine the reasons each slave stayed and compare and contrast them to the reasons why students would or would not stay at home after graduation. As a class, we would evaluate the logic of each slave's decision based on their skills/occupation.
The second part of the lesson would to analyze the attitudes of the slaves towards the slavemaster by reading the letters. Students would choose one of the three letters and I would give each student interview questions (about the attitude they have towards Cameron). Based on the tone and mood of the interview, the students would have to answer the questions as that former slave would have answered it while referring back to the original interview.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John Lee on -
This is a great idea for a lesson and the slave narratives from Doc Edwards, Abner Jordan, and Cy Hart on the Plantation Letters would be a great start. Students could extend the activity by reading additional letters at the Library Congress http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/
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