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Exploring Slave Life Through Found Poetry
In this lesson students look at primary source images and read short secondary texts to understand slave life. In the activity, the teacher models and students practice differentiating between different types of text (primary, secondary, etc.) [...]
Scaffolded Reading of "Drawing of an African Burial Ground Grave In Situ"
This brief activity leads students through analysis of an archaeologist's sketch of the grave of an African buried in colonial New York.
Virginians Petition to Prevent the Emancipation of Slaves (with text supports)
The spirit of the American Revolution inspired some slaveholders to manumit, or free, their slaves. In 1782, Virginia passed a law that allowed slaveholders to set slaves free in their wills, where before manumission required a special act of the [...]
"Arrest of Stephen S. Hill" (with text supports)
As this newspaper announcement indicates, the status of slaves in California was unclear and fluid. Even though California was admitted as a free state to the Union in 1850, many southerners, claiming their stay was temporary, brought their slaves [...]
John Parker Describes the Challenges of Running Away (with text supports)
John Parker was born in Virginia in 1827, and was the son of a wealthy white man and an enslaved woman. He spent the first 18 years of his life as a slave and earned a reputation as a troublemaker for regularly trying to escape. In 1845, he [...]
Harriet Tubman Warns "Kill the Snake Before It Kills You" (with text supports)
Harriet Tubman was among the best known conductors of the Underground Railroad, a network of enslaved people, free blacks, and white sympathizers that assisted thousands of runaway slaves escape north. During the Civil War, Tubman offered her [...]
A Runaway Slave Predicts "Freedom Will Reign" (with text supports)
During the Civil War, John Boston took advantage of the nearby presence of Union troops to runaway. But in this case, Boston had run into a Union camp in Maryland, a slave state fighting on the side of the Union. This meant that the regiment from [...]
Analysis Worksheet: Harriet Tubman Warns "Kill the Snake Before It Kills You"
This worksheet helps students analyze a letter in which Lydia Maria Child describes Harriet Tubman's vivid allegory about the necessity of destroying slavery during the Civil War.
Comparing Slaves and Servants in Colonial New York
In this activity students read a list of laws regulating Africans and African Americans and a servant's indenture contract from colonial New York. Then students find evidence in the primary sources to support a series of statements about the [...]
Lessons in Looking: Contraband in Paintings
In this activity students analyze Theodor Kaufmann's 1867 painting On to Liberty. Students practice finding information and making inferences based on the painting by completing a graphic organizer. Then students read a descriptive paragraph of the [...]