1
10
4
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Teaching Activity
Objectives
<ul><li>
<p>Students will compare two statements by former slaves to identify and interpret acts of resistance. Â </p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Students will create a journal entry from the perspective of a slave describing how he or she would respond to the conditions of enslavement. Â </p>
</li>
</ul>
Materials
1245, 972, 1469, 1477
Historical Context
In the antebellum period, many southern as well as northern commentators on slave life countered abolitionist opinion by arguing that slaves were content with their existence. Well into the twentieth century, historians tended to agree. To support their argument historians often noted that massive slave revolts, while common in Latin America and the Caribbean, were rare in the United States (the 1831 revolt of Nat Turner being a major exception). In recent decades, though, based in part on the study of new sources such as interviews with ex-slaves concluded in the 1930s by the Works Progress Administration, scholars have suggested that African Americans were resistant and resourceful within the harsh confines of slavery.
Lesson Plan Text
<p><strong>Step 1:</strong> Divide students into small groups of 3-5 people. Individually, students should read the two documents, "No Progress Without Struggle!" and Josie Jordan's description of malitis. </p>
<div>
<div>
<p><strong>Step 2:</strong>Â In their groups students should discuss and answer the following questions.</p>
<p>Questions for "No Progress Without Struggle"</p>
<div>
<ul><li>
<p>Reading comprehension: Underline or list vocabulary words that you believe are key to understanding Douglass's message. Â Look them up in the dictionary, if necessary. Â What do these words mean? Â How do they contribute to the message Douglass is trying to get across?</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>List and discuss examples of specific actions you believe Douglass wanted slaves to take in response to their enslavement. Â At the same time, what specific behaviors or actions do you believe Douglass might have critiqued? Â </p>
</li>
</ul><p>Questions for "Malitis"</p>
<div>
<ul><li>
<p>Reading comprehension: What was "malitis"? Summarize the actions of the slaves on this plantation. Â </p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Analysis of the source's "point of view" (not opinion, but vantage point): Whose point of view is revealed here? Â How does this source's point of view compare with that of Douglass?</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>How might Douglass have responded to this story? Would he have considered these slaves' actions to be a form of what he called "resistance"? Â "Agitation"? "Struggle"? Â </p>
</li>
<li>
<p>How might a white observer such as a journalist visiting from the North, or the master himself, have interpreted these slaves' behavior and their attitudes about slavery?</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Read pages 9-10 of <a href="http://ashp.cuny.edu/ashp-documentaries/doing-as-they-can/" target="_blank"><span style="color:#000000;">Doing As they Can</span></a> Viewer's Guide and consider what you saw and heard in the video. Â List and give examples of the various ways in which slaves responded to their situations. Â Into which category would you put Douglass and his message? Â What about the slaves from the "Malitis" reading? Â </p>
</li>
</ul><p><strong>Step 3:</strong> Still as a group, students should use the worksheet to construct an identity for a particular slave on a plantation and to discuss how that slave might react to his or her situation. Â </p>
<p><strong>Step 4:</strong> Ask students to individually write journal entries, from the perspective of the characters they created in Step 3, about what that persons' situation was like and what strategies he or she would have taken in response. Â Students' journal entries should draw upon what they have learned form the documents and their group's discussion (and the video and viewer's guides, if applicable). Â </p>
<p><strong>Step 5: </strong>When finished, have students share their journal entries with their groups and discuss the following questions:</p>
<div>
<ul><li>
<p>How and to what extent did the identities and situations of particular slaves affect their responses to enslavement? Â </p>
</li>
<li>
<p>What major conclusions and further questions emerged from the group about the slaves and their responses to slavery? Â </p>
</li>
</ul></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Publisher
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American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
Title
A name given to the resource
Slavery: Acts of Resistance
Description
An account of the resource
In this activity students compare an excerpt of a WPA interview with an ex-slave with a more famous statement by Frederick Douglass to arrive at their own interpretations of slave resistance. This lesson is designed to work with the film <a href="http://ashp.cuny.edu/ashp-documentaries/doing-as-they-can/" target="_blank"><em>Doing As They Can</em></a>, but parts of it can be completed without the film.
Creator
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American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning, 2008.
Rights
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Copyright American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning
<div><br />This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License</a>.</div>
Relation
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1746
Date
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2008
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Antebellum America (1816-1860)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Slavery and Abolition
Frederick Douglass
Group Work
-
Speech
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound.
<p>Mr. Chairman, Friends, and Fellow Citizens:</p>
<p>This infamous decision of the Slaveholding wing of the Supreme Court maintains that slaves are within the contemplation of the Constitution of the United States, property; that slaves are property in the same sense that horses, sheep, and swine are property; that the old doctrine that slavery is a creature of local law is false; that the right of the slaveholder to his slave does not depend upon the local law, but is secured wherever the Constitution of the United States extends; that Congress has no right to prohibit slavery anywhere; that slavery may go in safety anywhere under the star-spangled banner; that colored persons of African descent have no rights that white men are bound to respect; that colored men of African descent are not and cannot be citizens of the United States.</p>
<p>You will readily ask me how I am affected by this devilish decision—this judicial incarnation of wolfishness? My answer is, and no thanks to the slaveholding wing of the Supreme Court, my hopes were never brighter than now.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court of the United States is not the only power in this world. It is very great, but the Supreme Court of the Almighty is greater. Judge Taney can do many things, but he cannot change the essential nature of things—making evil good, and good evil.</p>
<p>Such a decision cannot stand.</p>
<p>The cries of the slave have gone forth to the world, and up to the throne of God. This decision, in my view, is a means of keeping the nation awake on the subject. It is another proof that God does not mean that we shall go to sleep, and forget that we are a slaveholding nation.</p>
<p>Those who seek slavery in the Union, and who are everlastingly dealing blows upon the Union, in the belief that they are killing slavery, are most woefully mistaken. They are fighting a dead form instead of a living and powerful reality. It is clearly not because of the peculiar character of our Constitution that we have slavery, but the wicked pride, love of power, and selfish perverseness of the American people. Slavery lives in this country not because of any paper Constitution, but in the moral blindness of the American people, who persuade themselves that they are safe, though the rights of others may be struck down.</p>
Dublin Core
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Type
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Speech
Title
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The Dred Scott Decision "Cannot Stand"
Language
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English
Publisher
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American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
Description
An account of the resource
Frederick Douglass was an escaped slave and leader of the anti-slavery movement in the North. This excerpt is from an address he delivered to the Anniversary of the American Abolition Society held in New York, May 14, 1857.
Creator
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Frederick Douglass
Source
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Frederick Douglass, "The Dred Scott Decision: Speech, Delivered, in part, at the Anniversary of the American Abolition Society, Held in New York, May 14th, 1857," in <em>Two Speeches by Frederick Douglass</em>, on <em>The Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress</em>, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/doughtml/doughome.html
Primary
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1
Date
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1857
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Antebellum America (1816-1860)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Slavery and Abolition
Constitution and Government
Frederick Douglass
-
Speech
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound.
<p>Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reforms. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. . .</p>
<p>If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the roar of its mighty waters.</p>
<p>The struggle may be a moral one or it may be a physical one, or it may both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.</p>
<p>In the light of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted in the North, and held and flogged at in the South so long as they submit to those devilish outrages, and make no resistance, either moral or physical.</p>
<p>Men may not get all they pay for in this world, but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppression and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and, if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others.</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Type
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Speech
Title
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Frederick Douglass Declares There Is "No Progress Without Struggle"
Language
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English
Publisher
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American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
Description
An account of the resource
Frederick Douglass was an escaped slave, a leader of the anti-slavery movement in the North, editor of the abolitionist newspaper <em>The North Star</em> and, after the Civil War, a diplomat for the U.S. government. This excerpt is from an address on West India Emancipation, delivered August 4, 1857.
Creator
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Frederick Douglass
Source
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Frederick Douglass, "No Progress Without Struggle," available from <em>The W.E.B. DuBois Learning Center</em>, http://www.duboislc.org/html/BlackStruggle.html.
Primary
Is this Primary or Secondary? Enter 1 for Primary or 2 for Secondary.
1
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1857
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Antebellum America (1816-1860)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Slavery and Abolition
Frederick Douglass
-
https://shec.ashp.cuny.edu/files/original/douglasswithstatue_1258771766.tif
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Omeka Image File
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Height
741
Width
541
Photograph
Dublin Core
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Type
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Photograph
Title
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Frederick Douglass Works at a Desk in Haiti
Language
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English
Publisher
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American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
Description
An account of the resource
Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery and became a leader of the anti-slavery movement in the North, editor of the abolitionist newspaper the North Star, and, after the Civil War, a diplomat for the U.S. government. This photograph was taken in his study in Haiti where he served as the U.S. <span>Minister Resident and Consul General</span> from 1889-1891.
Creator
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Unknown
Source
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Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, Catalog Number: FRDO 3899
Date
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1889 - 1891
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Industrialization and Expansion (1877-1913)
Frederick Douglass