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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Robert Smalls: Warrior and Peacemaker

For Teachers 4th - 6th
Students research the events that led to the Civil War and the Reconstruction. In this Civil War history instructional activity, students study images of Robert Smalls and research his role in the Civil War. Students review the South...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Through Their Eyes: Perspectives on Slavery

For Teachers 3rd - 6th
Young scholars examine different perspectives of slavery. They write a personal account of slavery as a slave trader, a plantation owner, and fugitives and working slaves. They role-play these roles for the class.
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Torn From Each Other's Arms

For Teachers 7th - 8th
Students explore the transformations that the institution of slavery underwent in the English Colonies. They study the impact of slavery on black families.
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Trusting Statistics Lesson Plan

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Students read a section of the Runaway Journey narrative and conduct a survey. They use survey statistics to question their validity and decide why a respondent might not answer truthfully.
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

The Fugitive Slave Law and Migration

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Students examine the Fugitive Slave Law as a motivating factor for slaves to emigrate outside the United States. After discussing the relationships between fugitive slaves and North American and Caribbean countries, they write essays...
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Article
Khan Academy

Khan Academy: Us History: 1844 1877: Life for Enslaved Men and Women

For Students 9th - 10th
During the nineteenth century, enslaved African Americans worked on large plantations in the US South under brutal conditions.
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Website
The Henry Ford

Living Under Enslavement: African Americans on Hermitage Plantation

For Students 9th - 10th
This virtual tour of the slave quarters of the Hermitage Plantation tells of the family life of slaves, their skills, and their resistance to the institution of slavery.
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Article
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Teacher Serve: How Slavery Affected African American Families

For Students 9th - 10th
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor Heather Andrea Williams discusses the lives of enslaved African American families and how slavery made their lives different from other families.
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Primary
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: An Enslaved Person's Life, Making of African American Identity

For Students 9th - 10th
Various photographs of slaves from the pre-Civil War era, an autobiographical narrative of slavery, and three accounts recorded in the 1930s of the lives and conditions of former slaves are included in this large set of information...
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Website
Digital History

Digital History: Enslaved African Americans and Religious Revivalism

For Students 9th - 10th
A brief look at the role of Christianity in the lives of slaves in the 1800s. See how evangelicalism was reflected in the way slaves practiced their religion.
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Primary
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Enslavement, Making of African American Identity: V. 1, 1500 1865

For Students 9th - 10th
Twenty-eight primary sources-historical documents, literary texts, and visual images-that explore plantation life, the qualities and conditions of slavery, work, and resistance to oppression.
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Primary
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Plantation, Making of African American Identity: V. 1

For Students 9th - 10th
Numerous photographs of a Virginia plantation (taken in 1960), an autobiographical account of life on a Mississippi plantation from the nineteenth century, and an interview with a former slave about a Louisiana plantation recorded in 1937.
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Handout
PBS

Wnet: Thirteen: Slavery & the Making of America

For Students 9th - 10th
Using primary documents, oral histories, and other historical resources, discover how the arts of Africa, Europe, and pre-Civil War America influenced the culture of enslaved African Americans.
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Primary
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: The Enslaved Family, Making of African American Identity: Vol. 1

For Students 9th - 10th
This site offers two letters and a memoir from the mid-nineteenth century, and interviews from the early-twentieth century, about the importance and the roles of enslaved families.
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Primary
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Community, Making of African American Identity: V. 1, 1500 1865

For Students 9th - 10th
Twenty nine primary sources-historical documents, literary texts, and visual images-that explore how enslaved individuals and families coped with, adjusted to, maintained communities within, and opposed the system of oppression.
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Handout
Other

African American Registry: The Moving Sacrifice of Margaret Garner

For Students 9th - 10th
Read the tale of Margaret Garner, a runaway slave who took the life of her own child rather than see her returned to slavery. Click on Learn More to get the complete story.
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Website
PBS

Wnet: Thirteen: Slavery and the Making of America: Slave Religion

For Students 9th - 10th
What religions did slaves bring from Africa to America? This PBS series site provides the historical overview of how early African Americans preserved African spiritual beliefs and practices while enslaved, converted to Christianity, and...
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Handout
CommonLit

Common Lit: Text Sets: Slavery in America

For Students 9th - 10th
People enslaved Africans for their enforced labor from before America's founding until the end of the Civil War. Learn about the history of slavery, its effects on a budding nation, and the fight to abolish it. This collection includes...
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Primary
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Driver, Making of African American Identity: V. 1

For Students 9th - 10th
Unusual letters from black slave drivers, and in one case, letters in reply from the white slave owner, about crops, labor, and conditions on plantations in the mid-1850s.
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Primary
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Labor, Making of African American Identity: V. 1

For Students 9th - 10th
Selections of original accounts either written during slavery or recorded in the 1930s that depict work as a plantation laborer, house servant, shipyard worker or boatman.
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Handout
National Women’s History Museum

National Women's History Museum: Phillis Wheatley

For Students 9th - 10th
Despite spending much of her life enslaved, Phillis Wheatley was the first African American woman to publish a book of poems.