This collection uses primary sources to explore the Great Migration. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

The student will apply social science skills to understand how the nation grew and changed from the end of Reconstruction through the early twentieth century by e) evaluating and explaining the social and cultural impact of industrialization, including rapid urbanization; Great Migration.

This collection uses primary sources to explore Ida B. Wells and anti-lynching activism. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

The students will analyze the rise of violent activities against African Americans after the Civil War which lead to the addition of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. Begin with a KWL Jamboard (also attached, in a PDF format) which also includes an activity in analyzing primary resources about lynching.  Students will then develop their own 5-day trip itinerary using the Negro Green Book (see the list of free PDF versions for various years) as a travel reference guide. The objective of the lesson is to have the students understand the perils faced by US citizens of color during the Jim Crow Era and how prevalent the dangers were in some areas of the United States at that time. The teacher may wish to use a formative assessment in the form of an exit ticket (see attached). 

This curriculum unit is designed to uncover one of the numerous narratives that is
missing from the collective American memory. The history of lynching overall remains a memory
that America does not want to acknowledge as a piece of its past and part of its identity. Due to
the failure of America to acknowledge the terrorism of lynching as a form of social control
against the black community after the abolishment of slavery, its effects can still be felt today
through other forms of racial injustice. Black individuals have experienced police violence over
time, which spiked during the Civil Rights Movement to counteract and prevent racial equality.
Modern incidents regarding police violence are displayed through the disproportionate amount of
black victims of police involved shootings. This mirrors the racial terrorism of lynching that
ensued after the Reconstruction era to redeem white supremacy in the South. Throughout the unit
students will explore the history and purpose of lynching, research lynching victims and
individuals who fought against lynching, in addition to how lynching has been memorialized thus
far. In the latter half of the curriculum unit students will analyze the correlation of lynching to
police brutality, research victims of police involved shootings and individuals who currently fight
against police brutality, as well as how these victims have been memorialized thus far.

This three-day lesson is intended to guide students through the difficult history topic of lynching through the Billie Holliday song “Strange Fruit.”

On April 26, 1913, Confederate Memorial Day, thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan was murdered at the National Pencil Company in Atlanta, Georgia. Leo Frank, the Jewish, New York-raised superintendent of the National Pencil Company, was charged with the crime. At the same time, Atlanta’s economy was transforming from rural and agrarian to urban and industrial. Resources for investing in new industry came from Northern states, as did most industrial leaders, like Leo Frank. Many of the workers in these new industrial facilities were children, like Mary Phagan. Over the next two years, Leo Frank’s legal case became a national story with a highly publicized, controversial trial and lengthy appeal process that profoundly affected Jewish communities in Georgia and the South, and impacted the careers of lawyers, politicians, and publishers. By the early twentieth century, Jewish communities had become well-established in most major Southern cities, continuing a path of migration that began during colonial times. The Leo Frank case and its aftermath revealed lingering regional hostilities from the Civil War and Reconstruction, intensified existing racial and cultural inequalities (particularly anti-Semitism), embodied socioeconomic problems (such as child labor), and exposed the brutality of lynching in the South. The exhibition was created by the Digital Library of Georgia (http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/). Exhibition Organizers: Charles Pou, Mandy Mastrovita, and Greer Martin.

This lesson plan is about racial violence in the Postbellum American South. It includes essential questions, objectives, and assessment parameters.