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African American Protest Poetry, Freedom's Story, TeacherServe®, National Humanities Center
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Given the secondary position of persons of African descent throughout their history in America, it could reasonably be argued that all efforts of creative writers from that group are forms of protest. However, for purposes of this discussion, Defining African American protest poetrysome parameters might be drawn. First—a definition. Protest, as used herein, refers to the practice within African American literature of bringing redress to the secondary status of black people, of attempting to achieve the acceptance of black people into the larger American body politic, of encouraging practitioners of democracy truly to live up to what democratic ideals on American soil mean. Protest literature consists of a variety of approaches, from the earliest literary efforts to contemporary times. These include articulating the plight of enslaved persons, challenging the larger white community to change its attitude toward those persons, and providing specific reference points for the nature of the complaints presented. In other words, the intention of protest literature was—and remains—to show inequalities among races and socio-economic groups in America and to encourage a transformation in the society that engenders such inequalities. For African Americans, Some of the questions motivating African American protest poetrythat inequality began with slavery. How, in a country that professed belief in an ideal democracy, could one group of persons enslave another? What forms of moral persuasion could be used to get them to see the error of their ways? In addition, how, in a country that professed belief in Christianity, could one group enslave persons whom Christian doctrine taught were their brothers and sisters? And the list of “hows” goes on. How could white Americans justify Jim Crow? Inequalities in education, housing, jobs, accommodation, transportation, and a host of other things? In response to these “hows,” another “how” emerged. How could writers use their imaginations and pens to bring about change in the society? Protest literature, therefore, focused on such issues and worked to rectify them. Poetry is but one of the media through which writers address such issues, as there are forms of protest fiction, drama, essays, and anything else that African Americans wrote—and write.

Subject:
English Language Arts
Reading Literature
Material Type:
Lesson
Reading
Author:
National Humanities Center
Trudier Harris
Date Added:
05/03/2019
Asian Pacific American Heritage Month
Unrestricted Use
Public Domain
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LOC has compiled a consortium of primary sources to work in the classroom. Ready-to-use lesson plans, student activities, collection guides and research aids to spread awareness and highlight the Asian Pacific American experience.

Subject:
History
U.S. History
Material Type:
Lesson Plan
Primary Source
Reading
Syllabus
Provider:
Library of Congress
Author:
Library of Congress
National Archives
National Endowment for Humanities
National Gallery of Art
National Park Service
Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center
Smithsonian Institution
Date Added:
06/02/2021
Black Lives Matter in Historical Context
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Using a variety of primary sources, Dr. Yohuru Williams explores the history of the struggle for racial equality in the United States—from the Civil Rights era through the contemporary Black Lives Matter movement—with an exploration of key episodes and moments in U.S. history.

Subject:
History
U.S. History
Material Type:
Lecture
Primary Source
Author:
Yohuru Williams
National Humanities Center
Date Added:
05/03/2019
“A Dangerous Unselfishness”: Understanding and Teaching the Complex History of Blackface
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When the news story broke that Virginia Governor Ralph Northam and other politicians wore blackface and Klan regalia while in school, institutions across the nation suddenly were confronted with their all too recent blackface past. Princeton Professor Rhae Lynn Barnes, the foremost expert on amateur blackface minstrelsy, has spent over a decade cataloging 10,000 minstrel plays and uncovered their prolific use on Broadway, in schools, the military, churches, political organizations, and even the White House. This webinar will help educators master the basic history of blackface in America, strategies to discuss this difficult topic with students, and ways to think about the incredible social, political, and economic power blackface held as America’s most pervasive entertainment form in the American North and West between the American Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement. By the end of this webinar, educators will be able to teach what a minstrel show was, how the genre developed, who participated in this form, how it was central to mass popular entertainment globally, they will be able to teach the construction of key stereotypes for minorities and women, and how it was pushed underground through a coordinated Civil Rights campaign after being openly celebrated for over a century.

Subject:
History
U.S. History
Material Type:
Lecture
Primary Source
Author:
Rhae Lynn Barnes
National Humanities Center
Date Added:
10/29/2019
The Enslaved Family, African American Community during Slavery, African American Identity: Vol. I, 1500-1865, Primary Resources in U.S. History and Literature, Toolbox Library, National Humanities Cen
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"I never knew a whole family to live together, till all were grown up, in my life," recalls Lewis Clarke of his twenty-five years enslaved in Kentucky.1 Families were separated due to sale, escape, early death from poor health, suicide, and murder by a slaveholder, overseer, slave patroller, or other dominant person. Separation also occurred within the plantation itself, e.g., by segregating "field slaves" from "house servants," removing children from parents to live together with a slave caretaker, or bringing children fathered by the slaveholder to live in the "Big House." How, then, did the slave family provide solace and identity? "What the family does, and what the family did for African Americans," writes historian Deborah White Gray, "was create a world outside of the world of work. It allowed for significant others. It allowed a male slave to be more than just a brute beast. It allowed him to be a father, to be a son. It allowed women to be mothers and to take on roles that were outside of that of a slave, of a servant."2 When did the enslaved child realize how his or her family life differed from the slave-holder's? How did enslaved adults cope with the forced disintegration of their families? Here we read a collection of texts—two letters, a memoir, and interview excerpts—to consider these questions. (See also Theme II: ENSLAVEMENT, #2, Sale.)

Subject:
History
U.S. History
Material Type:
Assessment
Homework/Assignment
Lecture
Lecture Notes
Lesson
Primary Source
Reading
Teaching/Learning Strategy
Author:
National Humanities Center
Date Added:
05/03/2019
Frederick Douglass "What to the Slave..."
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In addition to making historical points about nineteenth-century attitudes toward slavery, race, and abolition, you can use this speech to teach formal rhetoric. We have divided the address into four sections according to the function of each one. This division follows the classic structure of argumentative writing:

paragraphs 1–3: introduction (exordium)
paragraphs 4–29: narrative or statement of fact (narratio)
paragraphs 30–70: arguments and counter-arguments (confirmatio and refutatio)
paragraph 71: conclusion (peroratio)
We have included notes that explain the function of each section as well as questions that invite discussion of the ways in which Douglass deploys rhetoric to make his case.

This lesson features five interactive activities, which can be accessed by clicking on this icon . The first explores the subtle way in which Douglass compares the patriots of 1776 with the abolitionists of 1852. The second challenges students to determine how Douglass supports his thesis. The third focuses on his use of syllogistic reasoning, while the fourth examines how he makes his case through emotion and the fifth through analogy.

We recommend assigning the entire text . For close reading we have analyzed eighteen of the speech’s seventy-one paragraphs through fine-grained questions, most of them text-dependent, that will enable students to explore rhetorical strategies and significant themes. The version below, designed for teachers, provides responses to those questions in the “Text Analysis” section. The classroom version , a printable worksheet for use with students, omits those responses and this “Teaching the Text” note. Terms that appear in blue are defined on hover and in a printable glossary on the last page of the classroom version. The student worksheet also includes links to the activities, indicated by this icon .

This is a long lesson. We recommend dividing students into groups and assigning each group a set of paragraphs to analyze.

Subject:
History
U.S. History
Material Type:
Assessment
Lecture Notes
Lesson Plan
Primary Source
Reading
Teaching/Learning Strategy
Author:
James Engell
National Humanities Center
Date Added:
05/03/2019
James Madison Debates a Bill of Rights – America in Class – resources for history & literature teachers
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In this lesson students will explore some of the doubts and misgivings that arose as the Continental Congress debated whether or not to add a bill of rights to the Constitution. They will investigate a letter James Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson on October 17, 1788, in which Madison discusses the pros and cons of a bill of rights. It is part of a series of letters these men exchanged on the topic. Jefferson, who was in Paris at the time, strongly supported inserting a list of fundamental liberties into the Constitution, and he asked Madison to keep him abreast of the debate. In this letter Madison not only updates Jefferson on the bill’s progress but also explains his thoughts about a bill of rights and its role in the American Constitution.

We have excerpted three passages from Madison’s letter, each accompanied by a series of close reading analytical questions for students to answer. The first excerpt explains the context of the debate, including reasons why a bill of rights might not be necessary. The second explores Madison’s reasons for supporting a bill of rights, and the third discusses how he believed such a list of rights, if written, should be structured. We have provided a short summary at the beginning of each excerpt. Spellings are retained from the original document.

You will find two interactive exercises in this lesson. The first allows students to review vocabulary found throughout the text. The second, recommended for use after you have conducted the close reading, reviews the central points of the textual analysis. You may want to use its first slide to direct whole class discussion in which you ask students to support their answers with evidence from the text. The second slide provides the correct responses with textual support.

It is important to remember that here the term “majority” refers to large groups of powerful politicians and legislators, not to a mass of voters. Moreover, Madison did not conceive of “minorities” as we do today — groups like women, African-Americans, Latinos, or other social or ethnic groups. Rather, when he uses the word, and when we use it in this lesson, it simply refers to a political group whose numbers are less than the majority.

This lesson consists of two parts, both accessible below. The teacher’s guide includes a background note, the text analysis with responses to the close reading questions, access to the interactive exercises, and an optional follow-up assignment. The student’s version, an interactive worksheet that can be e-mailed, contains all of the above except the responses to the close reading questions and the follow-up assignment.

Subject:
History
Political Science
Social Science
U.S. History
Material Type:
Assessment
Interactive
Lecture Notes
Lesson Plan
Primary Source
Reading
Author:
National Humanities Center
Date Added:
05/03/2019
Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase – America in Class – resources for history & literature teachers
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In this lesson students will analyze a private letter that President Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) sent to Robert Livingston (1746–1813), his minister plenipotentiary (ambassador) to France, regarding the negotiations for what would become the Louisiana Purchase. Livingston and James Monroe (1758–1831, 6th president of the US) negotiated the Louisiana Purchase Treaty. It is important to note that at the time this letter was written — April 18, 1802 — the area had not yet been offered for sale.

In this letter Jefferson, unaware of the possibility of outright purchase, focuses upon retaining commercial access to the Mississippi River and rights of deposit (economic access) in New Orleans. He also comments upon the danger of an aggressive France locating outposts just across the Mississippi River from the United States. While some historians characterize Jefferson as a Francophile, in this letter Jefferson sees France as a potential enemy to the United States.

This lesson allows students to contextualize what will become the Louisiana Purchase prior to its acquisition by viewing the Purchase through a lens of national economic and military defense rather than an act of territorial expansion. As Jefferson considers the possibility of an aggressive France led by Napoleon Bonaparte on America’s doorstep, he states, “…perhaps nothing since the revolutionary war has produced more uneasy sensations through the body of the nation.” Original spellings and punctuation are retained.

This lesson is divided into two parts, both accessible below. The text is accompanied by close reading questions, student interactives, and an optional follow-up assignment. The teacher’s guide includes a background note, the text analysis with responses to the close reading questions, access to the interactive exercises, and the follow-up assignment. The student’s version, an interactive PDF, contains all of the above except the responses to the close reading questions and the follow-up assignment.

Subject:
Arts and Humanities
English Language Arts
History
Literature
Reading Informational Text
U.S. History
Material Type:
Interactive
Lecture Notes
Lesson
Primary Source
Reading
Author:
National Humanities Center
Date Added:
05/03/2019
Medieval Chivalry, the Crusades, and the Modern Far-Right
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The Middle Ages are in the news a lot these days—from the invocation of the “Crusades” after 9/11 to the “medieval” plight of women in some areas of the modern Middle East to alt-right protestors dressing as chivalric knights and Vikings and using medieval symbols during the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. How do we teach students to understand and navigate a historical period that justifies ideas as varied as the Disney princess and terroristic violence? In this webinar, medieval studies and history of race expert Cord J. Whitaker leads participants through an exploration of far- and alt-right understandings of feudalism, caste systems, and racial homogeny in medieval Europe. We will also consider the Middle Ages’—and especially the Crusades’—roles in constructing the racial concepts of blackness and whiteness in the modern world. The webinar will include strategies for using students’ everyday experiences to teach these concepts inductively and intellectual strategies for resisting the further cooptation of the Middle Ages for racist objectives.

Subject:
History
Political Science
Social Science
World History
Material Type:
Lecture
Author:
Cord Whitaker
National Humanities Center
Date Added:
10/30/2019
Modern Slave Narratives
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Legalized slavery has been abolished around the world, yet human trafficking remains a significant problem. Though slavery may not take the exact forms it did in the nineteenth century, approximately 45.8 million persons in 167 countries endure modern forms of slavery. Fellow Laura Murphy, Associate Professor of English and Director of the Modern Slavery Research Project at Loyola University New Orleans, is currently at work on a book about the way survivors of forced labor have mobilized the discourse of slavery in the twenty-first century to reinvigorate their struggles for freedom.

In this podcast, Murphy discusses the generic conventions of the slave narrative and how they complicate our notions of what it means to be free. For instance, in what she terms the “not-yet-freedom narrative,” survivors of slavery find their lives still circumscribed by systemic injustices, even after emancipation. By approaching the topic of slavery through the lens provided by literary analysis, Murphy argues it is possible to discover new insights into the conventions surrounding modern enslavement and more fully understand the experiences of those caught up in them.

Subject:
History
U.S. History
World History
Material Type:
Lecture Notes
Author:
Laura Murphy
National Humanities Center
Date Added:
05/03/2019
Supporting Transitions: Resources for Building Collaboration
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Public Domain
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The Office of Head Start contracted to create the Early Childhood Learning & Knowledge Center as a repository to support all Head Start Program Guidelines. In this section, four briefs support Head Start programs and other early learning partners, including school districts, to create smooth transitions for children and families. Each brief focuses on a level of the transition: children and families, early educators (teachers, family child care owners, assistant teachers or paraeducators), early childhood education partners (school districts, state preschool, centers, and homes), or programs/ policies/ practices (alignment, tools).

Subject:
Early Childhood Development
Education
Elementary Education
Material Type:
Reading
Author:
Administration of Children & Families
National Center on
Office of Head Start
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
Date Added:
12/30/2020