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Kroner, Bernd. „Materialien-Handbuch Englisch / Minorities“. Materialien-Handbuch Englisch / Minorities, published by Heinz Simons , Bd. 3, Köln, Aulis Verlag, 

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These are eight tasks on an article by The Times (1993) about Martin Luther King´s vision of America thrity years prior. The article discusses what has changed in thirty years for African Americans in the US.

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Kings Vision After 30 Years I (1)-zusammengefügt

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green: teaching materials
blue: background information
purple: methods
red: books or films that can be discussed in multiple lessons

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Chapter 2: "Konstruktionen des Rassediskurses in Englisch-Schulbüchern".

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© 2020

Theoretische Reflexionen und fachdidaktische Entwürfe rassismuskritischer Unterrichtsplanung

Rassismuskritik als fachdidaktisches Professionswissen

Umsetzungsoptionen für den Unterricht an Schulen

Theoretische Reflexionen und schulpraktische Beispiele

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Der Anspruch, Theorie und Praxis mit Blick auf rassismuskritische Fachdidaktiken zu verzahnen, ist für die Konzeption dieses Bandes handlungsleitend. Die Beiträge bestehen aus jeweils zwei Teilen: Im

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Teaching Race: How to Help Students Unmask and Challenge Racism

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Teaching Race: How to Help Students Unmask and Challenge Racism

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These are teaching materials from the Landesbildungsserver Badenwüttemberg on the police use of force against African Americans. They contain several tasks within a planned lesson.

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Zum Thema:
Immer wieder erscheinen in den US-Medien verstörende Bilder von toten Schwarzen, die Kugeln aus Polizeiwaffen zum Opfer fielen. Ihren vorläufigen traurigen Höhepunkt erreichten diese Vorfälle Anfang Juli 2016, als innerhalb von 48 Stunden in zwei Bundestaaten zwei Schwarze von der Polizei erschossen wurden und daraufhin ein schwarzer Ex-Soldat als Racheakt fünf Polizisten tötete.
Dieses Unterrichtsmodell greift das Thema anhand von Fällen aus den letzten Jahren auf und versucht, mögliche Erklärungsmuster zu finden. Es bietet damit auch Anknüpfungspunkte an das alte Schwerpunktthema "Challenges and Choices", vor allem an den Film Crash.

Zielgruppe: Kursstufe Gymnasium

Bildungsplanbezug: soziokulturelles Wissen (Kultur der USA)
Kompetenzen: Sprechen, Leseverständnis
Zeitbedarf: 1-2 Doppelstunden

Einstieg:
Es empfiehlt sich ein gallery walk oder eine Bildcollage, z.B. mit diesen Fotos

Arbeitsauftrag: With a partner, describe the pictures and try to find out what they have in common. Share any background knowledge you might have.

Arbeitsphase #1: Police use of force against blacks

Arbeitsphase #2: The reasons
Variante 1 ist durch relativ kurze Texte wenig zeitaufwändig. Variante 2 benötigt durch die umfangreichen und nicht immer einfachen Texte deutlich mehr Zeit. Die beiden Varianten unterscheiden sich auch in einem möglichen Erklärungsgrund (Variante 1: social circumstances, Variante 2: police training). Für die Bearbeitung der einzelnen Texte sowie den Austausch im Kurs empfiehlt sich ein Gruppenpuzzle mit Sicherungsblatt, z.B. placemat. Falls eine weniger zeitaufwändige Variante gewünscht wird, schließt sich an die Austauschphase nur noch eine Diskussion im Plenum an.
Arbeitsphase #3: Panel discussion
Zum Herunterladen: Alle Materialien in den Formaten Word, OpenOffice-Writer und PDF (neues Fenster)

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Blacks vs. police use of lethal violence

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Zum Thema: Immer wieder erscheinen in den US-Medien verstörende Bilder von toten Schwarzen, die Kugeln aus Polizeiwaffen zum Opfer fielen. Ihren vorläufigen traurigen Höhepunkt erreichten diese Vorfälle Anfang Juli 2016, als innerhalb von 48 Stunden in zwei Bundestaaten zwei Schwarze von der Polizei erschossen wurden und daraufhin ein schwarzer Ex-Soldat als Racheakt fünf Polizisten tötete.

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This is an article on racial profiling that can be used as a listening comprehention in classroom.

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subscribe to Code Switch podcast

subscribe to Code Switch podcast

The Los Angeles Police Department is under scrutiny again. This time it's for sending almost 80 officers to break up a college house party. Most of the partygoers were African-American students from the University of Southern California.

USC senior Nate Howard organized the party that was shut down by the police. At a protest on campus Monday he condemned the response.

"Seventy-plus officers?" he said. "What else was going on at that time in the community that you needed to be at a party of students getting ready to graduate?"

Howard says LAPD sent officers in riot gear and a helicopter to break up his party after they received noise complaints. Students were handcuffed and detained, and six were arrested. Howard says it was a peaceful event: registered with campus police, student IDs checked at the door - no fights, no guns - just black college kids having fun.

"And here we have LAPD who are still trying to make us live in 1963!" Howard said. "Brothers like me go to college, they go to college, they look like me, they look like us! Here we are!"

Surrounding him were about 100 students, mostly black and Latino, some holding signs that read, "We are scholars not criminals."

Just a day after that student protest, a panel of LAPD officers, USC campus police and city and university officials addressed a crowd squeezed into a 1,200-capacity auditorium on campus.

"What I'd like to do before we move forward is really address the race issue," said LAPD Captain Paul Snell. He spoke to a room so packed, people were being turned away at the door.

"We have looked at this and we do not believe that this was race-based," he said.

Snell said his officers responded to a noise complaint and felt threatened, so they called for help. Routine. But when it was time for audience questions, white USC students got up and said it was all about race. Sarah Tither-Kaplan, a senior at USC, was partying with friends across the street. No one there was arrested.

"My house was treated with respect and the only difference between the two parties was that racial component. And if you're going to deny that, then I'm sorry, I'm just not going to stand for it," said Tither-Kaplan.

USC is in South L.A., surrounded by a poor black and Latino neighborhood. Police brutality led to the '92 riots there, which were mentioned a number of times during the forum. Many said the issue is bigger than one house party - it's about racial profiling. There's a history of that kind of policing in South L.A.

Commander Bill Scott of LAPD's South Bureau stopped taking questions to ask one: "How many people - just by a show of hands - think this incident was based on race?"

Virtually every hand in the auditorium went up. One woman asked if she could raise two.

"We take that seriously and that really matters to us," Scott said. "And the hands that I saw were white hands, black hands, brown hands, everybody in the room. So that means something to us."

Scott says there's an investigation in progress and that he doesn't want to see an incident like this repeated.

As for those arrested, they've been released and their charges may or may not be dropped, but their responsibilities as students haven't gone away.

Finals at USC start today.

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USC Students Allege Racial Profiling By LAPD

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subscribe to Code Switch podcast subscribe to Code Switch podcast The Los Angeles Police Department is under scrutiny again. This time it's for sending almost 80 officers to break up a college house party. Most of the partygoers were African-American students from the University of Southern California.

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Here you can find several materials from the Landesbildungsserver Baden-Wüttemberg about the film Crash.

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Kursstufe
Zeitbedarf: 2 Doppelstunden

Als Vorbereitung auf die Behandlung und Interpretation des Films empfiehlt es sich, die wichtigsten Begriffe der Filmanalyse vorweg zu nehmen. Ausgehend von den Kenntnissen zu "plot, setting, characters, narrative techniques", die die Schüler mit der Behandlung von Literatur bereits erworben haben, kann man auf die zusätzlichen visuellen Aspekte "field size, camera angle, camera movement, cut" eingehen.

Für die Einführung eignet sich das Arbeitsblatt Redemittel Kamera unter Filmanalyse.

Gleichzeitig sollen die Lernenden erkennen, welchen Effekt der jeweilige Einsatz der Technik auf den Zuschauer hat, und umgekehrt, welche Botschaft der Regisseur durch deren Einsatz vermitteln will.

Mit verschiedenen Filmausschnitten oder Fotos können die Schüler ihre erworbenen Fähigkeiten einüben.

Ein möglicher Verlauf der Doppelstunden sowie eine kurze Hörverstehensaufgabe zur Anfangssequenz des Films finden sich unten.

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Kursstufe Zeitbedarf: 2 Doppelstunden Als Vorbereitung auf die Behandlung und Interpretation des Films empfiehlt es sich, die wichtigsten Begriffe der Filmanalyse vorweg zu nehmen. Ausgehend von den Kenntnissen zu "plot, setting, characters, narrative techniques", die die Schüler mit der Behandlung von Literatur bereits erworben haben, kann man auf die zusätzlichen visuellen Aspekte "field size, camera angle, camera movement, cut" eingehen.

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Here you can find a worksheet by the Ministerium für Schule und Bildung des Landes NRW about the film The Hate U Give

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Hier gestalten die Schülerinnen und Schüler den Unterricht

Filmanalyse ist einer der Inhalte, die immer im Lehrplan Englisch auf fortgeschrittenem Niveau auftauchen. Es gibt viele verschiedene Möglichkeiten, dies im Unterricht umzusetzen. Ich zeige euch heute mal, wie ich das mit einer 12. Klasse Fachhochschulreifeniveau gemacht habe.

Einführung in den Film L.A. Crash

Als Einstieg habe ich nur das Cover der DVD gezeigt und gefragt, was sich die Schülerinnen und Schüler darunter vorstellen. Die Stichpunkte haben wir an der Tafel gesammelt. Dann haben wir den Film gemeinsam angesehen, aufgrund des Niveaus in der englischen Sprache mit englischen Untertiteln. Meine Erfahrung hat mir gezeigt, dass viele so wesentlich mehr verstehen!

Verständnis sichern

Im Anschluss an den Film habe ich ein Meinungsbild eingeholt und einige Verständnisfragen gestellt. Dadurch habe ich noch mal sichergestellt, dass auch wirklich alle den Film verstanden haben. Die Erstellung einer Mindmap mit im Film behandelten Themen half ebenfalls. Hier habe ich die Schülerinnen und Schüler immer wieder ermutigt, bei Vokabellücken ihr elektronisches Wörterbuch von CASIO zu verwenden - was viele auch schon völlig selbstständig im Unterricht machen! 😊

Projekt: Unterrichtseinheit entwickeln

Nach Auswertung der Mindmap habe ich das Projekt vorgestellt und ein Aufgabenblatt dazu verteilt (Download-Link am Ende des Artikels).

Die Schülerinnen und Schüler sollten sich in Kleingruppen zusammentun und einem Thema aus dem Film widmen. In ihren Gruppen haben sie eine 90-minütige Unterrichtseinheit vorbereitet. Wie ihr an dem Arbeitsblatt sehen könnt, ging es also nicht um ein 90-Minuten-Referat, sondern eine richtige Unterrichtseinheit, inklusive Aufgaben für die restlichen Schüler.

Hier war erstmal gehöriger Respekt seitens der Schüler angesagt! Mit Ermutigung und Ideen ließen sich jedoch alle vom Projekt überzeugen und es ging an die Arbeit. Drei Doppelstunden gab es dafür Zeit. Diese wurde auch wirklich genutzt und ich stand die gesamte Zeit beratend zur Seite. Jedes Thema sagte den Schülerinnen und Schülern grob natürlich schon etwas. Bei der Arbeit stellten alle Gruppen jedoch fest, dass sie zwar einen kleinen Wortschatz für jedes Thema besaßen, der aber noch ausbaufähig war. Also wurde nicht nur an den kurzen Einführungspräsentationen und Arbeitsaufträgen gearbeitet, sondern auch am eigenen Wortschatz. Hier kam das CASIO Ex-word dann wirklich viel zum Einsatz! Neu erarbeitetes Vokabular wurde auch für den Rest der Klasse im Handout, an der Tafel oder in den Arbeitsaufträgen festgehalten - schließlich sollten ALLE davon profitieren.

Schon bei der Vorstellung des Projektes wurde auch die Bewertung der Einheit vorgestellt. Es gab eine Gruppennote für die Vorbereitung, das Handout, die Präsentation, die Aufgaben usw. und eine individuelle Note für die Verwendung der Fremdsprache, Einbringung in den Gruppenprozess etc. während der 90 Minuten. Daraus habe ich dann eine Gesamtnote gebildet.

Die Durchführung: Unterrichtsstunden aus Schülerhand

Wie bei jedem Referat oder jeder Präsentation konnte man auch hier Unterschiede zwischen den Gruppen mit viel und mit weniger Engagement feststellen! Die ausgearbeiteten Aufgaben und Handouts habe ich vor jeder Stunde kopiert und der Präsentationsgruppe zur Verfügung gestellt. Eventuelle Fehler konnten so auch noch korrigiert werden.

Feedback an die Gruppen

Abschließend haben eigentlich alle Gruppen zurückgemeldet, dass diese Art des Projektes ihnen viel Freude bereitet hat und es am Ende doch gar nicht so schlimm war, wie zu Anfang befürchtet! Alle meinten, die 90 Minuten seien wie im Flug vergangen. Durch die Aufgaben und Handouts haben alle Schülerinnen und Schüler wichtiges Material an der Hand, um später darauf zurück greifen zu können. Ich wurde gleich gefragt, wann wir so etwas nochmal machen!

Natürlich ist das eine eher unkonventionelle Art der Filmanalyse. Durch die verpflichtenden und freiwilligen Themen habe ich jedoch versucht, lehrplanrelevante Inhalte abzudecken und auch noch Freiraum für eigene Ideen zu lassen. Es gibt immer wieder weniger motivierte oder kreative Schülerinnen und Schüler, die gerne auf vorgegebene Themen zurückgreifen - und andere, die sich gerne etwas Eigenes überlegen. Somit war für jeden etwas dabei.

Jetzt bin ich neugierig, wie ihr mit Filmen im Unterricht umgeht. Über Anregungen und Ideen freue ich mich.

Download Unterrichtsmaterial: PDF Aufgabenblatt, PDF Bewertungsblatt (Copyright Eva Bär)

Beitragsbild: Mohamed Hassan, Pixabay

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L.A. Crash - Filmanalyse mal anders " Wortschatz-Blog

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Filmanalyse ist einer der Inhalte, die immer im Lehrplan Englisch auf fortgeschrittenem Niveau auftauchen. Es gibt viele verschiedene Möglichkeiten, dies im Unterricht umzusetzen. Ich zeige euch heute mal, wie ich das mit einer 12. Klasse Fachhochschulreifeniveau gemacht habe. Als Einstieg habe ich nur das Cover der DVD gezeigt und gefragt, was sich die Schülerinnen und Schüler darunter vorstellen.

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Themes: police brutality, racial profiling

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The film opens with a commentary by Detective Graham Waters. He and his partner, Ria, have been involved in a car accident with an elderly Asian woman. Ria exits the car and exchanges a series of racially charged insults with the woman. It is revealed that the accident occurred while Waters and Ria were en route to a crime scene. Waters exits the vehicle to investigate the discovery of a "dead kid."

The film cuts to "yesterday," as Farhad, a Persian shop owner, and his daughter Dorri are purchasing a weapon at a gun store. Aggravated with Farhad's indecision, the owner of the gun shop begins insulting Farhad's race, at one point calling him "Osama." Farhad becomes irritated with the owner's insults, and he is ultimately escorted away from the premises. Dorri, left alone with the store owner, insists that she purchase the bullets that come "in the red box."

Across town, Anthony and Peter, two young black men, discuss the stereotypes they face as African Americans. After noticing the discomfort of Jean Cabot as she passes them on the street, Anthony and Peter carjack Cabot and her husband, who also happens to be the Los Angeles District Attorney. Following their robbery, they call Daniel Ruiz, a Latino locksmith, to change the locks at their house. After seeing Daniel, Jean is insistent that her locks be changed again in the morning-she is worried that Daniel will give a copy of their keys to one of his "gang banger friends." After hearing this comment, Daniel decides to leave the keys on Jean's kitchen counter.

Waters and Ria arrive at the scene of a shooting between two drivers, and it is revealed that both shooters are undercover police officers. The dead shooter, a black male, appears to have carried a large amount of cash in his trunk at the time of his death. The surviving shooter, a white male, has previously shot and killed two other black men without legal consequence. In another sequence, LAPD Officer John Ryan calls a health insurance company on behalf of his father. After he fails to receive the answers he desires, Ryan racially insults Shaniqua Johnson, the representative on the other line.

Ryan enters his squad car, and the viewer is introduced to his partner, Officer Tom Hansen. After seeing a vehicle that looks similar to the one that has been carjacked, the two pursue the black Navigator. During their pursuit, they discover that a passenger in the car is performing a sexual act on the driver. Despite discrepancies in the vehicle's descriptions, Ryan insists that they pull over the Navigator. As they order the couple out of the car, Cameron Thayer, a television director, cooperates, while his wife, Christine, is argumentative. Annoyed with her frustration, Ryan molests Christine during a supposed "pat-down." The couple is let off with a warning, but Cameron and Christine get into an intense argument about Cameron's passivity during Christine's assault.

Arriving home after a long day of work, Daniel finds his five-year-old daughter, Lara, hiding under her bed. After Lara tells Daniel she is afraid of the gunshot she heard outside, Daniel gives her an "invisible impenetrable cloak" to protect her against all danger. The scene cuts to Anthony and Peter, who are arguing in the SUV they have carjacked. Engrossed in their debate, Anthony runs over a Korean man. The victim is severely injured, and after Anthony and Peter take a moment to argue what to do with him, they ultimately decide to drop him in front of a hospital.

Disgusted by Ryan's behavior the night before, Officer Hansen talks to his boss, Lieutenant Dixon, about switching partners. Dixon, a black officer, is insistent that Ryan not be exposed as a racist-doing so would cost everyone in their division their jobs. In order to separate himself from Ryan, Dixon suggests that Hansen lie and claim to have "uncontrollable flatulence" so that he can ride in a one-man car.

Ryan visits Shaniqua Johnson in-person to beg for a different health plan for his father. Recognizing Ryan from his racist comments over the phone, Johnson orders to have the officer removed from her property. Before he leaves, Ryan insults Shaniqua again, calling her an affirmative action hire. Meanwhile, Daniel repairs a broken lock at Farhad's shop. Though he fixes the lock, Daniel explains to Farhad that the door frame is broken. Farhad, who does not understand English well, thinks that Daniel has "cheated him."

The following morning, Farhad finds that his store has been broken into and defaced with graffiti. The insurance company refuses to cover the damages, as they claim that the defective door is a result of Farhad's negligence. Feeling that Daniel has wronged him, Farhad vows to get revenge.

Detective Waters visits his weak, elderly mother in her run-down home. She begs him to search for his missing brother, and he agrees to help. Later, Waters arrives at an LA courthouse to deliver a verdict regarding the shooting between the two undercover officers. There, his boss instructs him to not reveal the presence of the cash in the black officer's trunk in order to put forth an image of a non-racist LAPD. Though Waters disagrees with this verdict, he understands that he will be rewarded with a job promotion if he adheres to his superior's request.

Jean Cabot comes home and sees that her dishes remain in the dishwasher. She becomes aggravated at Maria, her Latina maid. In another part of town, Officer Ryan encounters a grave car accident. As a first responder, he crawls into the overturned vehicle and finds Christine Thayer trapped inside. Once Christine recognizes Ryan, she becomes hysterical and refuses his assistance. However, after calming and reassuring Christine, Ryan rescues her from the vehicle seconds before it explodes into flames.

Anthony and Peter attempt to carjack another vehicle, which happens to belong to Cameron Thayer. After the events of the previous night, Cameron is incredibly frustrated and combative. Against Anthony and Peter's request, he fails to exit the car. Anthony hops into the car, and Cameron begins driving erratically. A group of police officers, led by Officer Hansen, pursue Thayer and Anthony. The passengers are ordered to exit the vehicle, and Cameron decides to step out alone. He pushes against the LAPD, but Hansen, attempting to redeem himself for the night before, defends Cameron. Thayer is ultimately let off with a warning, and Anthony remains undiscovered.

In an effort to avenge Daniel, Farhad brings his gun to the locksmith's house. From her home's front window, Lara watches as the situation between her father and Farhad escalates. Lara decides to jump into her father's arms so that she can protect him with her invisible cloak. Farhad shoots as Lara enters the scene, and Daniel, his wife, and Farhad all believe that the little girl has been shot dead. However, it is revealed that Dorri's "red box" of ammunition was actually a box of blanks. Back at his store, Farhad tells Dorri that Lara is his "guardian angel."

At night, Peter is hitch-hiking in a deserted part of town. He is picked up by Officer Hansen, who is initially friendly to his passenger. After noticing that a Saint Christopher statuette is on Hansen's dashboard, Peter chuckles. Hansen interprets Peter's laughter to be directed at him, and Hansen grows increasingly aggravated. Peter reaches into his pocket to reveal that he, too, carries a Saint Christopher statuette. However, Hansen wrongly assumes that Peter is reaching for a gun, and he shoots Peter before the statuette is revealed. Hansen dumps Peter's body on the side of the road and sets his car on fire, thus destroying all evidence of his crime. The scene circles back to the film's opening, and Peter is revealed to be Waters's missing brother.

Following his attempted carjacking, Anthony is taking a city bus. He passes the scene where he hit the Korean man the night before, and he notices that the keys remain in the Korean man's ignition. He steals the van, and, upon opening the trunk, he discovers numerous Cambodian immigrants chained inside. Anthony decides to drive the car to Chinatown and set the Cambodian human trafficking victims free. After their release, Anthony passes a car crash that involves Shaniqua Johnson. As Anthony drives away, he hears the exchange of a series of racial slurs between those involved in the car accident.

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The film opens with a commentary by Detective Graham Waters. He and his partner, Ria, have been involved in a car accident with an elderly Asian woman. Ria exits the car and exchanges a series of racially charged insults with the woman.

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Documentary: Mighty Times - The Children`s March

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Documentary: Mighty Times - The Children`s March

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Mighty Times: The Children's March tells the story of how the young people of Birmingham braved arrest, fire hoses, and police dogs in 1963 and brought segregation to its knees. In the spring of 1963, Birmingham, Alabama, was the "do-or-die" battleground for the Civil Rights Movement. Heavy intimidation by Birmingham authorities left the Movement floundering. Using word-of-mouth under a veil of secrecy, more than 4,000 African American schoolchildren organized to desert classrooms at exactly 11 a.m. on "D-Day," May 2, 1963, touching off a week of mass demonstrations and rioting that shocked the nation. Police tried to stop them. Yet, the children prevailed.

Mighty Times: The Children's March offers a rare glimpse into the 1963 Birmingham children's march from the ground up. More than 100 eyewitnesses contributed to the storytelling, with appearances by notable participants and organizers James Orange, Gwendolyn Webb, James Bevel, Harry Belafonte, Dick Gregory, and Andrew Young. [Producer's description.]

"The Children's March" is not available to stream. Check your library for a DVD version.

Trailer

Produced by Learning for Justice in association with HBO.

Background on the Birmingham Children's March

As is explained on the Stanford University's Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project, the King Research and Education Institute website:

Aware that support for protests in Birmingham was waning during April 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the SCLC looked for ways to jumpstart the campaign. When the arrest and jailing of King did little to attract more protestors, SCLC staff member James Bevel proposed recruiting local students, arguing that while many adults may be reluctant to participate in demonstrations for fear of losing their jobs, their children had less to lose. King initially had reservations, but after deliberation he agreed, hoping for the action to "subpoena the conscience of the nation to the judgment seat of morality." SCLC and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) members immediately canvassed colleges and high schools for volunteers and began training them on the tactics of nonviolent direct action.

As is described on the Civil Rights Movement Archive:

A passion for freedom sweeps through Parker High and the other Black schools of Birmingham and Bessemer, an emotional firestorm ignited by SCLC's young field workers, led by class presidents and prom queens, cheerleaders and football players like big James Orange. A fire stoked and spread by "Tall Paul" White and other DJs at the Black radio stations.

Thursday, May 2nd, is "D-Day" as students "ditch" class to march for justice. In disciplined groups of 50, children singing freedom songs march out of 16th Street Baptist church two-by-two. When each group is arrested, another takes its place. There are not enough cops to contain them, and police reinforcements are hurriedly summoned. By the end of the day almost 1,000 kids have been jailed.

The next day, Friday May 3rd, a thousand more students cut class to assemble at 16th Street church. With the jails already filled to capacity, and the number of marchers growing, Eugene "Bull" Connor (Commissioner of Public Safety in charge of the police and fire departments) tries to suppress the movement with violence. Instead of arresting the first group of marchers he orders his fire department to disperse them with firehoses. But the students hold their ground, singing " Freedom" to the tune of the ancient hymn " Amen." Connor orders the water pressure increased to knock them off their feet and wash them away. Still singing, the young protesters sit down on the pavement and hunch their backs against the torrent. Continue reading.

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Mighty Times: The Children's March - Zinn Education Project

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Film. By Hudson and Houston. Learning for Justice. 2005. 40 minutes. This Academy Award-winning documentary film tells the heroic story of the young people in Birmingham, Alabama, who brought segregation to its knees.

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African American students attending previously all-white schools

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African American students attending previously all-white schools

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Teaching materials on the first African American students attending previously all-white schools. The materials are centered around the  video Eyes on the Prize: “Fighting Back: 1957-1962".

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"A school year like no other." That's the narrator's understated description of the 1957-58 school year at Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., in the dramatic episode, "Fighting Back: 1957-1962," in the PBS Eyes on the Prize series. More than 50 years after heavily armed federal troops escorted nine African American students into Central High School, it's easy to scoff at the results of desegregation. So black children can go to public schools formerly reserved for whites.

So what? Is life within integrated schools equitably structured? Has desegregation significantly reduced the achievement gap between black and white children? Have income disparities withered away? Can we even say that schools are less segregated than they were 50 years ago? This is not a lesson that attempts to analyze the ambiguous legacy of desegregation. Instead it celebrates the determination and sacrifice of those individuals who were the shock troops in this struggle. And, to a lesser extent, it attempts to examine some of the resistance to school integration. Students watch the video, but through writing they are also invited to "become" the individuals whose lives shaped and were shaped by these key civil rights battles.

This lesson by Bill Bigelow was published in the Spring 2004 special edition of Rethinking Schools magazine, "The Promise," on the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board decision. See Table of Contents.

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"A School Year Like No Other": Eyes on the Prize: "Fighting Back: 1957-1962" | Zinn Education Project

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"A school year like no other." That's the narrator's understated description of the 1957-58 school year at Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., in the dramatic episode, "Fighting Back: 1957-1962," in the PBS Eyes on the Prize series.

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A non fiction book with stories on 13 African Americans living under different coditions during the American Revolution.

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Answering the Cry for Freedom features engaging stories that use original sources and news accounts of the lives of 13 African Americans-few of whom have made it into standard history textbooks.

Some are free, others enslaved, some side with Britain and others with the patriots. All of them are fighting for the rights promised in the Declaration of Independence but denied to many.

Excellent for read alouds, book circles, or background research for role plays about the U.S. Revolutionary War and the writing of the Constitution. [Review by Rethinking Schools.]

Even as American Patriots fought for independence from British rule during the Revolutionary War, oppressive conditions remained in place for the thousands of enslaved and free African Americans living in this country. But African Americans took up their own fight for freedom by joining the British and American armies; preaching, speaking out, and writing about the evils of slavery; and establishing settlements in Nova Scotia and Africa. The 13 stories featured in this collection spotlight charismatic individuals who answered the cry for freedom, focusing on the choices they made and how they changed America both then and now. These individuals include: Boston King, Agrippa Hull, James Armistead Lafayette, Phillis Wheatley, Elizabeth "Mumbet" Freeman, Prince Hall, Mary Perth, Ona Judge, Sally Hemings, Paul Cuffe, John Kizell, Richard Allen, and Jarena Lee. Includes individual bibliographies and timelines, author note, and source notes. [Publisher's description.]

ISBN: 9781629793061 | Published by Calkins Creek Books.

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Answering the Cry for Freedom: Stories of African Americans and the American Revolution | Zinn Education Project

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Answering the Cry for Freedom features engaging stories that use original sources and news accounts of the lives of 13 African Americans-few of whom have made it into standard history textbooks. Some are free, others enslaved, some side with Britain and others with the patriots.

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These teaching materials are comlex and are not directly targeted towards EFL learners but can be an interesting inspiration on what can be potentially done if the language proficiency of the students in the class is generally quite high. This might be interesting for a Leistungskurs in the Abitur.

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There are moments in history that give us a glimpse of a different world - moments that force us to wonder if things could have turned out differently. One of those moments occurred at the end of the Civil War in 1865 on what are known as the Sea Islands of the Georgia and South Carolina coast. Freedmen and women divided up land, planted crops, started schools, and created a new society in the ashes of the old.

Many historians term this experiment in grassroots democracy and Black self-determination that occurred in the coastal Sea Islands a "rehearsal" for Reconstruction. But the Sea Islands experiment was more than a rehearsal; subsequent Reconstruction plans lacked the key ingredient that made it revolutionary: the redistribution of land.

For a brief moment in U.S. history, the property of some of the wealthiest people was handed over to some of the poorest. The story of what happened to the land illuminates so much of what was possible and what went wrong during the Reconstruction era and helps us better understand how racism and inequality still shape the United States today.

As a high school history teacher, I wanted to design a lesson that would both introduce students to the ways African American life changed after the Civil War and take them through the dramatic story of the Sea Islands. I created a multiday role play that utilized creative writing, map-making, and film clips to introduce students to this crucial chapter of early Reconstruction history that set the stage for the battles to come.
Role-Playing Freed Families
Social studies teacher Mark Cichon invited me into his Hillcrest High School classroom in Queens to teach this lesson to his 12th-grade government class. Mark's class resembled the overall school demographics: almost entirely students of color and evenly split between Black, Latina/o, and Asian students. More than 80 percent of the students at Hillcrest receive free or reduced lunch.

After a quick review of the Civil War, we jumped into the role play. I asked Mark to group students into six "families" that would stay together throughout the weeklong lesson. Then I started explaining to the class that to learn about the Reconstruction era, we would start in Georgia immediately following the Civil War.

"Something remarkable happened there," I told them.

After explaining to students that they were grouped into "families," I passed out a role sheet that would set the stage for the lessons to come:
In the final months of the Civil War, Union Army General William Tecumseh Sherman had a problem. He had marched 60,000 Union soldiers 285 miles from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia, striking fear into the Confederacy and landing a decisive blow for the Union. But along the march thousands of newly freed people began following Sherman's army. Finding housing, employment, food, clothes, and medicine for the refugees soon became impossible. Sherman and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton decided to hold a meeting with a delegation of Savannah's Black leaders to get their advice on what to do with the 10,000 formerly enslaved people now marching with Sherman's army. Garrison Frazier, a Baptist minister and the group's spokesman, made clear the demands of the freedmen and women: "The way we can best take care of ourselves is to have land." Four days later, Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15. The order redistributed 400,000 abandoned acres of land, in 40-acre plots, to newly freed Black families. Later Sherman agreed to lend Black settlers army mules to work the land. This gave birth to the famous phrase "40 acres and a mule," as a small reparation for years held in slavery. Before the war, you lived with your family on the Sea Islands of Georgia. You were enslaved and worked on the coastal plantations for some of the richest slave owners. . . . While you worked in the hot sun, your "owners" usually retreated to better weather in Savannah, Charleston, or New York. Under slavery, you were forced to work, farming rice and cotton. Those crops were sold and the profits made your "owner" one of the wealthiest people in the country. They lived in luxury, while you barely survived. Even when your "owners" left the plantation, they hired overseers to make sure you continued to work. If you didn't do as you were told or tried to escape, you were subject to severe beatings, whippings, and possibly even death. But when the Union Army came to the Georgia coast, your "owner" again left the plantation - this time, you hope, for good. You are now free. Your freedom means that you can leave the plantation, but Sherman's Field Order means that you can stay, claim 40 acres of land for your family, and start a new life.
When we finished reading, I distributed instructions for the first activity. My goal was to have students grapple with both the legacy of slavery in defining Black family life in the postwar South, as well as the important changes freedom brought. I gave each group of students a different surname from one of the wealthy slave owners who had ruled the Sea Islands before the Civil War and created four short scenarios to draw out some of the key aspects of postwar life for formerly enslaved African Americans. As a group, students discussed each scenario and decided which individual roles each student would play in the family. After discussing all four, they wrote individual interior monologues or diary entries about one of the scenarios.

In the first scenario, I had students look at advertisements that were placed in the personal or information-wanted sections of Black newspapers across the South in hopes of locating family members who had been sold as a result of slavery. I changed the surnames in the ad to reflect the family names the students had been given. In each group, I asked students to "determine whether your family placed that ad looking for lost family members or whether a lost family member placed the ad looking for you. Once you have decided who is looking for whom, decide whether you were reunited with those family members or not."

Angela wrote about the joy of being reunited with her children, "I am so happy that we found Nancy, Ben, and Tempa. . . . It felt like my soul was being torn apart when we were all separated. Thank you, God, for returning my three children to me. It's hard to explain the joy I feel now that we are back together."

The second scenario involved a family heirloom. Borrowing a strategy another Rethinking Schools editor learned from Toronto teachers at a conference on teaching apartheid in South Africa, I carefully gathered real objects for the lesson because I wanted students to be able to physically connect with something, but printing out images of objects could have also worked. I passed out one object to each group: a blanket, a necklace, a photograph of a Black soldier, a map of the Georgia and South Carolina coast, a wooden cup-and-ball toy, and a leather journal. Each one "is an object that your family would never part with," the instructions explained. "Invent a backstory to this object that helps us understand your family and why this object is so important to all of you."

The stories students came up with revealed both the horribly repressive nature of slavery and the various ways enslaved people resisted. As Ankur wrote, "This toy has been in my family for generations . . . it's one of the things that helps me escape my traumatic past. Knowing that this toy has been passed from child to child, it helps me feel connected to my siblings, some of whom were sold off before the war." Corina wrote that for her family, the map they received "represented our freedom as it pinpoints the location we would meet if we managed to escape slavery together."

The third scenario asks students to imagine they either took part in or witnessed one of the mass wedding ceremonies that occurred in the aftermath of the Civil War. As Allie explained in her diary entry, unlike under slavery, an official marriage license meant that husbands and wives could "now claim each other, their children, and their property," all of which enslaved people had no legal claim to. "For these reasons" as the handout explains, "many newly freed couples were eager to obtain an official marriage license and hold a public ceremony to celebrate unions that had received only partial recognition under slavery . . . mass wedding ceremonies involving as many as 70 couples at a time became a common sight in the postwar South."

And finally, I asked students to decide whether or not to change their family's surname. As the handout explains, "During the war, many Black soldiers began using new last names as a way of asserting their new freedom. Others chose to maintain their old surnames as a tie to their birthplace and ancestors or to make it easier for lost family members to find them. Now it's time for your family to decide."

"We've come a long way. Our family has been enslaved for generations, but now that we are free, everything is different," Patrisse wrote about her group's decision. "One thing, however, still doesn't feel right. It's our surname. For so long we've been addressed by the name of our brutal slave owner. However, now that we are free, we are changing our name. . . . This new name will finally free our family from our horrible past."

After giving students a chance to write about their stories, they read their writing to the other members of their group. Each group picked one piece of writing to share with the larger class and gave all of us a sense of the family backstory they had discussed together.

It took one 45-minute class period for students to discuss each scenario, and another 45-minute class period to write and share their stories. By the end of the two days, students seemed proud of the stories they created. But to capture the story of freedpeople in the Sea Islands, I wanted them to also experience - as much as one can in a classroom - what it must have felt like to build a new society out of the ashes of the old.
Mapping Out 40 Acres and Building a Community
For the next activity, I used an online map creation tool from RollForFantasy.com to make maps where students could plot out their family's 40 acres. I also created a handout that provides some basic information about how land passed into the hands of freed families:
General Rufus Saxton, currently in control of the Georgia and South Carolina Sea Islands, has demanded General Sherman's order be enforced and has named Tunis Campbell, a Black Northern abolitionist, as superintendent to help settle freedmen and women on St. Catherine's Island on the Georgia coast. Campbell has split up the island into 40-acre plots for each family. . . . Campbell has been in touch with Northern missionaries and abolitionists who have created freedmen's aid societies. These organizations have donated clothing, seeds, plows, and hoes. Your family must decide what your priorities are for your land: What do you want to grow? Many people are watching this experiment in the Sea Islands, so it's important that you, your family, and your community prove that you can make it on your own.
To reinforce this information and give students a visual of the Sea Islands, I played a short clip from PBS's Reconstruction: The Second Civil War (Part 1, Scene 5, 23:02-25:42). During the clip, historian Eric Foner explains, "There were a lot of people in 1865 who were trying to tell Blacks what freedom is and tell them what they ought to be doing. [Tunis] Campbell reflects the impulse 'We should really determine ourselves what we're doing.' Independence from white control - that's critical to their definition of what freedom is."

After the clip we returned to the handout and went through the instructions for creating a map of their family's 40-acre plots. The instructions take students step-by-step through the process of creating their map. Students determine what acres on their map are tillable, decide where they would like to build their family's new home, and debate whether they want to produce cotton to sell or food to grow for subsistence. Finally, following simple guidelines, students indicate with colored pencils where each crop is grown on their map.

The main learning that occurs during this map activity comes in the decision about whether or not to grow cotton. The handout emphasizes that "Many in the North . . . want you to produce cotton to sell up North. Northern industries depend on a supply of cheap cotton from the South and they want you to continue selling to them." But like the newly freed people on the Sea Islands, most students are reluctant to grow a crop they can't eat and is associated with slavery. The idea of building a community that can sustain itself by growing its own food is attractive.

When students finished coloring their map, I had each group roll a die to determine how well their first crop did. As the handout explains, their die roll determines whether their family ends the growing season in debt, breaking even, or with a profit. If students choose to grow cotton, there is a higher risk their family won't break even, but also higher possible profits. At Hillcrest, every group chose to grow food, not wanting to be dependent on white cotton dealers and the ups and downs of the market. With several high rolls, only one group ended up in debt, with almost all groups having a profit at the end of the day.

The next day, I sat students in a circle and went from family to family asking each to remind me how much money they made the day before. This is important because the questions we were about to debate ask students to sacrifice some of this money for the greater good.

I then played another short clip from Reconstruction: The Second Civil War that shows the community on the Georgia Sea Islands thriving. After quoting a letter from Campbell that discusses the various crops planted, the narrator describes the government the community created: "There would be a Congress with eight men in the Senate and 20 in the House of Representatives. A Supreme Court, and Campbell himself as president" (Part 1, Scene 5, 25:42-26:50). I stop the clip immediately after the sentence above, before the narrator mentions the militia.

Next, I told students that for this lesson I would play the role of Tunis Campbell, who has convened a "community meeting" with all the families on the island. I then gave a handout to each student outlining the two key questions we would discuss: Do you want to devote time and money to building and maintaining a school? Do you want to devote time and money to forming a militia? Each question is introduced with some background. For example, question two begins:
Jacob Waldburg, the prewar owner of St. Catherine's Island, is back in town and demanding that his land be restored to him. . . . In addition, the community on St. Catherine's Island has increasingly become a symbol of Black freedom and self-determination. Many of you are worried that the community might become a target for whites on the mainland. . . . Campbell suggests that the community pass a law to keep white people off of the island and set up an armed militia to enforce the law.
Because almost every group had money to spare after the previous day's die rolls, spending some of it to set up a school and a militia seemed like a no-brainer. Nevertheless, a few students still questioned both ideas. Brandon argued, "We made a ton of money yesterday. We're already doing so well. Why do we need schools?" But Sequanna replied, "How do you know we'll always be doing well? What happens when we're in debt and we can't read or write? We could easily get taken advantage of." Lori added, "And there was a reason white people didn't want us to read in the first place. They wanted to keep us in a lower position."

After students made a decision to fund the school, I played another short video clip from Reconstruction (Part 1, Scene 8, 38:49-43:05) that details the tremendous efforts freedpeople made on the island to gain an education and sets up the second question by discussing the return of Waldburg demanding his land.

The next debate was more controversial. Although most agreed a militia should be formed for protection, especially from Waldburg, banning all white people from the island did not sit well with several students. Ali argued, "You can't fight racism with racism and that's what we're doing if we ban all white people." Brandon added, "Also we could sell white people our crops. Why do we want to ban them?" Nathan disagreed, "Most white people were racists, they're not coming on to our island to buy food from us. They're coming to mess up the community we created."
Responding to Presidential Reconstruction
Students decided against the law. I explained that in reality, the Sea Islands government did indeed ban white people from the island and enforced that law through their militia. As the bell was about to ring, we briefly discussed why people on the Sea Islands might have passed this law in contradiction to what our class decided.

Listening to their passionate discussions, it was clear that students had become deeply invested in the community they had created. So while learning what happened next was tough on students emotionally, I felt like it was important to give them a small taste of what it might have felt like for the people of the Sea Islands to lose their land.

When students returned to class the following day, I informed them that something terrible had happened: "The president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, has been shot. The vice president, Andrew Johnson, is being sworn in as the new president." I then turned to another clip from Reconstruction (Part 1, Scene 9, 47:00-51:38) that discusses the ascension of Andrew Johnson and his policy of pardoning thousands of former Confederate plantation owners. In the clip, historian Russell Duncan explains, "The planters only want to be pardoned so that they could get their land back. And so Andrew Johnson complies with their wishes, pardoning 15,000 to 20,000 planters, hundreds of them being pardoned every day. When these planters then are pardoned, they return to their islands and to their acreages all over the South, and they want the people who are then living there removed."

I end the clip after a scene that reenacts a powerful meeting on Edisto Island in South Carolina. General O. O. Howard, the head of the Freedmen's Bureau, established by Congress in 1865 to help formerly enslaved people, travels to the island to meet with freedpeople who had been living independently in the Sea Islands. He explains to them that they must return their land to its prewar owners. I stop the clip after a quote from a letter sent by representatives of the Edisto Island community: "You ask us to forgive the landowners of our island . . . the man who tied me to a tree and gave me 39 lashes, who stripped and flogged my mother and my sister and will not let me stay in his empty hut, except I will do his planting and be satisfied with his price - that man I cannot well forgive."

I then explained to students that Johnson's new policy means that the land and the community that they have been cultivating is also now in jeopardy. I asked them to write their own letters - either to President Johnson or General Howard - about why these lands should not be returned. The letters students wrote were full of anger and anguish. Shaunté wrote, "I must have been a fool to believe that we had some type of freedom in this country. For many years I have suffered, been beaten, and robbed of my education all because of my skin color. Once again, my rights as a human being are being taken from me. This land that I put my blood, sweat, and tears into is going to be given to the people who have done nothing but rob us of everything."

Josh pointed out the debt that the country owed enslaved people: "We deserve this land! Our family has been tortured by this man. We've been beaten and treated like animals. So as a punishment you give them their land back? We refuse to give up this land. It's the least this country can do for us. We refuse to become someone else's laborers again. We refuse to work for a white man and live a miserable life. We deserve better!"
In January of 1866, a battalion of Black U.S. Army soldiers arrive on the island with orders to protect (the prewar owner of the island) Jacob Waldburg's property rights. Waldburg has rented the plantation to two white Northern capitalists who want the freedmen, women, and children to sign labor contracts with them. These Northern capitalists hope to return all the land to the production of cash crops. There is a debate in your community about how to respond. Of course, if you chose to create a militia, you could try to fight. But you'd be going up against the U.S. Army - even worse, you'd be fighting other African Americans. Some argue that as hard a pill as it is to swallow, if you want to stay on the land you invested so much time in, the land of your ancestors, you have to sign contracts to work for these Northern capitalists. Others argue that it's time to leave. When you were enslaved, you couldn't leave the plantation without your owners' permission, but now you're free to leave and find work elsewhere - maybe you could even use the money you've saved up to buy land somewhere else.
After students shared their letters with one another, I presented them with a final decision to debate as a community:

Students argued forcefully against Nathan, a particularly defiant young man who wanted to turn their militia against the Black U.S. Army troops. While it quickly became clear the class would not fight the Army, the decision on whether to stay or leave was not as easy. Many of the family groups had built into their storyline that they hoped to find a relative who had been sold away under slavery. They worried that if they left they might never be able to find that person. Ultimately, the class decided that this was a decision that each family had to make for themselves. Like in real life, some decided to stay and others to leave.
Lessons from the Sea Islands
When the class finished debating, I told them the real historical outcome of both groups. Those who decided to stay initially signed contracts for high pay, but at the end of the season the new white Northern owners of the land refused to pay them. Like many freedpeople across the South they engaged in a long battle with new white employers over pay and working conditions. Those who left, led by Tunis Campbell, established another Black cooperative community farther inland in McIntosh County. This county became a center of Black Power during Radical Reconstruction in Georgia and was the base upon which Campbell was elected both justice of the peace and representative to the Georgia State Legislature in 1868.
* What emotions did you have after finding out you would lose your land? How do you think freedmen and women who participated in the Sea Islands community felt when they lost their land?
* Why do you think the U.S. government decided to give former plantation owners back their land?
* Was Andrew Johnson solely responsible for what happened? Who could have challenged him?
* Was there anything freedpeople could have done to keep their land?
* Why was land so important to newly freed people?
* Is this story simply a tragedy? Is there anything that brings you hope?
When students returned the following day, I had them step out of their roles to write and discuss the role play they had participated in over the course of the week. I asked them:

The next time I teach this lesson I want to add questions about how this history helps us understand race and racism today. My main regret in implementing the lesson is that most of our discussions remained in the past. I also wish I had spent more time asking students to reflect on their experiences during the role play and what had stuck with them. Nevertheless, students' answers revealed how well this role play had introduced them to the larger themes of the Reconstruction era.

About the people who had participated in the Sea Islands community, Brandon wrote, "I think they felt betrayed. They worked this land and built a community as a symbol of Black freedom and that was taken away." Combining his feelings with those he imagined for the Sea Islands community, Josh added, "The government just teased us. They mocked us by giving us land and then taking it away like it was on a fish hook. The freedmen and women probably felt outraged . . . like the government didn't care about them."

Students had many opinions about why the government gave back land to former plantation owners. Josh believed it was to "establish that whites have more power." Paul thought that the government didn't think formerly enslaved people "deserved the land that white people originally owned." Gaby, on the other hand, thought it was because the government wanted "to make money off of it and sell cotton to the North." Angela agreed, writing that "the U.S. government decided to give former plantation owners back their land because they knew those former owners would produce cotton. These people committed treason but were pardoned and given back their land to boost the economy."

Indeed, what is often missing in the telling of presidential Reconstruction is that Andrew Johnson was not only thinking about restoring white rule in the South, he was also carrying out the wishes of a section of the industrial and financial elite of the North who preferred a return to business as usual. Several Northern businesses profited immensely from the production of cash crops before the war and their owners hoped the end of the war would signal a shift back to cash crop production in the South. Furthermore, if enslaved people could successfully make a case that the wealth of their former owners should be redistributed to them, what was to prevent the workers of the North from making similar demands on the wealth of Northern capitalists? The titans of Northern industry and finance and their representatives in the government decided that the revolution in the South had to have limits and property rights had to be respected. This meant that freedpeople who had been farming the land, growing crops for their own sustenance, had to be dispossessed. The land was given back to the former slave owners or leased to Northern capitalists hoping to make a buck off the new South.

Although it's true that many Republicans and business owners would come to reject Johnson's Reconstruction plan and embrace Black civil and political rights, few were willing to envision Blacks in the south as landowners rather than workers. When Radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens proposed redistributing the land of former Confederates, his bill couldn't even get out of committee. It's hard to imagine how deeply history might have changed if land distribution was expanded from the Sea Islands to the rest of the South, rather than reversed. When Blacks won the right to vote a few years after the Sea Islands experiment, for the first time in history more than 1,500 Black people were elected to local, state, and federal offices throughout the South. Despite the acquisition of tremendous political power, control of the Southern economy remained in the hands of the white elite who were determined to win back the reins of the government - by violence if necessary. The lack of economic power left Blacks vulnerable. Furthermore, taking land redistribution off the table undermined the potential coalition between freedpeople and land-hungry poor whites who were ultimately swayed by the white elites' appeal to racism.

While the story of the Sea Islands is a profound tragedy, students could also clearly see the promise in this experiment in Black self-determination. Corina felt it was "inspiring to see how newly freed slaves never gave up. Even though they were constantly made to feel less than, they still fought for their rights and their survival." Allie wrote that the story of the Sea Islands "shows the will and strength people have to gain freedom. . . . The desire to not just survive but thrive together." Greta summed it up by saying, "This story is not simply a tragedy because it did not end here. People were freed, they established their own land, schools, homes, government. They came a long way even though they had to continue to fight for their rights." For Angela, the Sea Islands community "was a symbol of Black freedom. . . . It represented hope."

For teaching materials related to this article, including handouts, maps, and examples, go to bit.ly/40AcresMaterials (opens in Google Drive).
Illustrator Keith Henry Brown's work can be found at keithhenrybrown.com.
Adam Sanchez teaches at Harvest Collegiate High School, a public school in New York City. He is a Rethinking Schools editor and is also editor of the new book Teaching a People's History of Abolition and the Civil War .

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40 Acres and a Mule: Role-Playing What Reconstruction Could Have Been | Zinn Education Project

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There are moments in history that give us a glimpse of a different world - moments that force us to wonder if things could have turned out differently. One of those moments occurred at the end of the Civil War in 1865 on what are known as the Sea Islands of the Georgia and South Carolina coast.

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Police violence against black people is a fixture of students' lives in the 21st century. It is a brutal reality that my students cannot always remember which unarmed Black victim they're thinking of.

I recall a discussion at the beginning of the 2019-20 school year in which one student remarked, "I mean, what about the case of Botham Jean? That dude was just standing in his grandma's backyard with his phone."

Actually, that was Stephon Clark.

Botham Jean was killed while eating ice cream in his own apartment by an off-duty cop who said she thought she was entering her own apartment. My students' confusion is both understandable and horrifying. But the shamefully long list of Black people murdered by police in the last decade can also lead to a major misconception: that we're witnessing something altogether new.

The oppressive and violent relationship between police and Black communities is not new. Indeed, the history of Black people in the United States is scarred by perennial state violence. (While the focus here is on African Americans, the U.S. state has also wielded its genocidal and oppressive machinery against many others: Native Americans, Asian Americans, Latinx people, immigrants, and, of course, against countless peoples in the path of its war-making across the globe.)

I created this lesson to kick off a unit that asks "What is the function of the police? And are they serving that function?" Ultimately, the unit aims to help students articulate their own understanding of what constitutes security and safety and learn enough about the history of the police in the United States to grapple with the question of abolition versus reform. But first, I wanted students to grasp the historical magnitude of the problem, to understand that Black distrust of police is not new nor are the police practices that give rise to it.

In this lesson, students examine excerpts from three reports, written in 1922, 1968, and 2015, about three major episodes of racial violence, the Chicago Riot of 1919, the "long, hot summer" of 1967, and the Ferguson Uprising of 2014.

Analyzing these documents does not enable students to answer the questions "What is the function of the police?" and "Do the police create conditions of safety and security?" Rather, this lesson clarifies for students the long trajectory of police violence and misconduct in Black communities, critical information for evaluating the most common proposals offered by policymakers. The older and more entrenched the problem, the more likely that quick fix reforms will fail. For example, in any inquiry into debates around police reform, students will surely encounter the notion that one solution to racist police violence is to hire more Black and People of Color cops. With these reports in hand, students may well wonder, "If the percentage of Black police officers has steadily risen over the last 100 years, but these three reports identify the same problems, then how effective are diversity initiatives in police departments?"

The goal of the lesson is simple but ambitious: I want my students to recognize the continuities between past and present, better equipping them, I hope, to dream up new solutions to old - and very dangerous - problems.

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"Riots," Racism, and the Police: Students Explore a Century of Police Conduct and Racial Violence | Zinn Education Project

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Police violence against black people is a fixture of students' lives in the 21st century. It is a brutal reality that my students cannot always remember which unarmed Black victim they're thinking of. I recall a discussion at the beginning of the 2019-20 school year in which one student remarked, "I mean, what about the case of Botham Jean?

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A lot of free education materials can be found on the website of the Zinn Education Projects. This site is not targeted towards EFL learners, therefore many materials need alteration or can be used with students in a Leistungskurs. All materials can be accessed for free and via download after registrating on this website.

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The Zinn Education Project is my compass in a sea of corporate textbooks, packaged common core curriculum and standardized testing. My entire curriculum is based on lessons that can be found on the Zinn Education Project.

High School Social Studies Teacher, Portland, Ore.

Your support is needed to help more students learn people's history. 100% of Zinn Education Project funding comes from individuals like you. Donate today.

By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca

From voter ID laws to voter-roll purges, gerrymandering to poll closures to the deadly in-person voting conditions during a pandemic, the right to vote is under attack and the stakes are high. It is critical that students learn about the fight for voting rights, past and present.

Nov. 30, 1924: Shirley Chisholm Born...

Teaching About the Violence in Palestine and Israel...

I can UNDERSTAND pessimism, but I don't BELIEVE in it. It's not simply a matter of faith, but of historical EVIDENCE. Not overwhelming evidence, just enough to give HOPE, because for hope we don't need certainty, only POSSIBILITY.

-Howard Zinn

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Zinn Education Project: Teaching People's History

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The Zinn Education Project promotes and supports the teaching of people's history in middle and high school classrooms across the country. Based on the lens of history highlighted in Howard Zinn's best-selling book A People's History of the United States, the website offers free, downloadable lessons and articles organized by theme, time period, and reading level.

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The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas describes the how the main character Starr Carter becomes a black activist after witnessing her friend getting shot by the police. The book shows Starr Carter as she navigates her life living in an predominatly African American neighborhood but attending a private school in which she is one of only a few African American students.
The book was adapted into film in 2018.

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Reviewed by Lyn Miller Lachman

The Hate U Give is inspired by THUG LIFE, Tupac Shakur's famous acronym that stood for "The Hate U Give Little Infants F***ks Everybody." (Sorry, but this is a family-friendly blog.) It is both a statement that Black lives matter and the story of a 16-year-old girl, Starr Carter, with her own life and problems who is thrust into the spotlight when she accepts a ride home from a party with childhood friend Khalil, only to watch police stop the car and shoot him before her eyes.

Her beloved uncle is a police officer, caught in the middle when she bravely testifies against Officer One-Fifteen, who treated her and her friend abusively before gunning down her friend. Starr, whose mother is a nurse and whose father owns a grocery store in their mostly poor, mostly African-American community, attends a private school in a suburb 45 minutes away and navigates the two very different worlds, serving as a guide to readers through her first person narrative.

Hardly an activist before the shooting (though a picture of Emmett Till's body that she posted on her Tumbler the previous year led to tension with one school friend), Starr learns both the importance of and the costs of speaking out. Often the cognitive dissonance - she writes, "I hope none of them asks about my spring break. They went to Taipei, the Bahamas, Harry Potter World. I stayed in the hood and saw a cop kill my friend." - seems too much for her to bear. Continue reading.

Find an additional review at The Atlantic, The Hate U Give Enters the Ranks of Great YA Novels.

Publisher's synopsis: Eight Starred Reviews! #1 New York Times Bestseller!
"Absolutely riveting!" -Jason Reynolds
"Stunning." -John Green
"This story is necessary. This story is important." -Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Heartbreakingly topical." -Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A marvel of verisimilitude." -Booklist (starred review)
"A powerful, in-your-face novel." -The Horn Book (starred review)
Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.
Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil's name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.
But what Starr does-or does not-say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.

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Reviewed by Lyn Miller Lachman Review Source: Pirate Tree Book Author: The Hate U Give is inspired by THUG LIFE, Tupac Shakur's famous acronym that stood for "The Hate U Give Little Infants F***ks Everybody." (Sorry, but this is a family-friendly blog.) It is both a statement that Black lives matter and the story of a [...]

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A video with interviews on codeswitching and African American Vernacular English

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Lessons from Lucy Laney:  African American Vernacular English (AAVE)

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`Black Panther`and representation in film

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`Black Panther`and representation in film

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The website LearnEnglishTeens provides a Blogpost on why representation matters in the film industry. The text is easy to read and can create an interesting dialogue in class. The text would also suit a mediation task.

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Our Magazine is written by young people from the UK. Each year we select a new group of bloggers, from the British Council's language assistants, who share their experiences of learning languages and living abroad. The views and opinions expressed in the articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the LearnEnglish Teens team.

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Perspectives of African American teens on racism

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Perspectives of African American teens on racism

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The website LearnEnglishTeen by the British Counsil provides a listening comprehention in which  two African American teens tell their perspective and experiences with racism in an interview.

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In this video, two young people talk about the racism they've faced and how they want things to change in the future.

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Intersectionality of Race, Ethnicity, Class, and Gender in Teaching and Teacher Education

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Intersectionality of Race, Ethnicity, Class, and Gender in Teaching and Teacher Education

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Chapter 5: The Elephant in the Room: Approaches of White Educators to Issues of Race and Racism by Amy J Samuels

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Intersectionality of Race, Ethnicity, Class, and Gender in Teaching and Teacher Education

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Contents Foreword: Considering Another View of Intersectionality vii Geneva Gay Acknowledgement of Reviewers xii Notes on Contributors xiii 1 Introduction: Intersectionality Related to Race, Ethnicity, Class and Gender 1 Norvella P. Carter 2 Intersectionality, Colonizing Education, and the Indigenous Voice of Survivance 17 John P. Hopkins 3 Intersectional Considerations for Teaching Diversity 30 China M.

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Scholz, Lothar. „Schreibgespräch.“ Methoden-Kiste, 5. ed., Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2012,p. 11, 978-3-8389-7020-2.

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Scholz, Lothar. "Fiktives Interview.“ Methoden-Kiste, 5. ed., Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2012,p. 37, 978-3-8389-7020-2.

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Scholz, Lothar. "Kreativitäts-Pool.“ Methoden-Kiste, 5. ed., Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2012,p. 44, 978-3-8389-7020-2.

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Scholz, Lothar. Methoden-Kiste, 5. ed., Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2012,p. 1-17, 978-3-8389-7020-2.

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Films and books that can generate a dialogue about racism:

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Films and books that can generate a dialogue about racism:

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In the book Blindspot, the authors reveal hidden biases based on their experience with the Implicit Association Test. Project Implicit is graciously hosting electronic versions of Blindspot 's IATs. These should work properly on any desktop computer and on several touch-screen devices including iPads, Android tablets, Nook tablets, and the Kindle Fire.

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Bocklage, Karina, u. a. „Baustein 3 Julius Lester: The Child“. AbiBox Englisch Schülerarbeitsbuch, E-Book, Brinkmann Meyhöfer, 2018, S. 76–109.

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Short Story: The Child; Julius Lester + African American history tasks

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Short Story: The Child; Julius Lester + African American history tasks

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Here you can find tasks about Julius Lester´s short story The Child and tasks about Milestones in African American History

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Kroner, Bernd. „Materialien-Handbuch Englisch / Minorities“. Materialien-Handbuch Englisch / Minorities, published by Heinz Simons , Bd. 3, Köln, Aulis Verlag, 

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In these materials you can find six tasks about Frederick Douglass poem "What to the American slave, is your 4th of July?".

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Kroner, Bernd. „Materialien-Handbuch Englisch / Minorities“. Materialien-Handbuch Englisch / Minorities, published by Heinz Simons , Bd. 3, Köln, Aulis Verlag, 

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This lesson on activism in African American hip-hop music is structured around a 90 -minute time frame and is targeted towards students of the Sekundarstufe II.

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History of racial segregation in America

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History of racial segregation in America

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Black Codes and Jim Crow

The first steps toward official segregation came in the form of " Black Codes." These were laws passed throughout the South starting around 1865, that dictated most aspects of Black peoples' lives, including where they could work and live. The codes also ensured Black people's availability for cheap labor after slavery was abolished.

Segregation soon became official policy enforced by a series of Southern laws. Through so-called Jim Crow laws (named after a derogatory term for Blacks), legislators segregated everything from schools to residential areas to public parks to theaters to pools to cemeteries, asylums, jails and residential homes. There were separate waiting rooms for whites people and Black people in professional offices and, in 1915, Oklahoma became the first state to even segregate public phone booths.

Colleges were segregated and separate Black institutions like Howard University in Washington, D.C. and Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee were created to compensate. Virginia's Hampton Institute was established in 1869 as a school for Black youth, but with white instructors teaching skills to relegate Black people in service positions to whites.

The Supreme Court and Segregation

In 1875 the outgoing Republican-controlled House and Senate passed a civil rights bill outlawing discrimination in schools, churches and public transportation. But the bill was barely enforced and was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1883.

In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that segregation was constitutional. The ruling established the idea of "separate but equal." The case involved a mixed-race man who was forced to sit in the Black-designated train car under Louisiana's Separate Car Act.

Housing Segregation

As part of the segregation movement, some cities instituted zoning laws that prohibited Black families from moving into white-dominant blocks. In 1917, as part of Buchanan v. Warley, the Supreme Court found such zoning to be unconstitutional because it interfered with property rights of owners.

Using loopholes in that ruling in the 1920s, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover created a federal zoning committee to persuade local boards to pass rules preventing lower-income families from moving into middle-income neighborhoods, an effort that targeted Black families. Richmond, Virginia, decreed that people were barred from residency on any block where they could not legally marry the majority of residents. This invoked Virginia's anti-mixed race marriage law and was not technically in violation with the Supreme Court decision.

Segregation During the Great Migration

During the Great Migration, a period between 1916 and 1970, six million African Americans left the South. Huge numbers moved northeast and reported discrimination and segregation similar to what they had experienced in the South.

As late as the 1940s, it was still possible to find "Whites Only" signs on businesses in the North. Segregated schools and neighborhoods existed, and even after World War II, Black activists reported hostile reactions when Black people attempted to move into white neighborhoods.

Segregation and the Public Works Administration

The Public Works Administration's efforts to build housing for people displaced during the Great Depression focused on homes for white families in white communities. Only a small portion of houses was built for Black families, and those were limited to segregated Black communities.

In some cities, previously integrated communities were torn down by the PWA and replaced by segregated projects. The reason given for the policy was that Black families would bring down property values.

Red-Lining

Starting in the 1930s, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and the Home Owners' Loan Corporation conspired to create maps with marked areas considered bad risks for mortgages in a practice known as "red-lining." The areas marked in red as "hazardous" typically outlined Black neighborhoods. This kind of mapping concentrated poverty as (mostly Black) residents in red-lined neighborhoods had no access or only very expensive access to loans.

The practice did not begin to end until the 1970s. Then, in 2008, a system of "reverse red-lining," which extended credit on unfair terms with subprime loans, created a higher rate of foreclosure in Black neighborhoods during the housing crisis.

Housing Segregation

In 1948, the Supreme Court ruled that a Black family had the right to move into their newly-purchased home in a quiet neighborhood in St. Louis, despite a covenant dating back to 1911 that precluded the use of the property in the area by "any person not of the Caucasian race." In Shelley v. Kramer, attorneys from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), led by Thurgood Marshall, argued that allowing such white-only real estate covenants were not only morally wrong, but strategically misguided in a time when the country was trying to promote a unified, anti-Soviet agenda under President Harry Truman. Civil rights activists saw the landmark case as an example of how to start to undo trappings of segregation at the federal level.

But while the Supreme Court ruled that white-only covenants were not enforceable, the real estate playing field was hardly leveled. The Housing Act of 1949 was proposed by Truman to solve a housing shortage caused by soldiers returned from World War II. The act subsidized housing for whites only, even stipulating that Black families could not purchase the houses even on resale. The program effectively resulted in the government funding white flight from cities.

One of the most notorious of the white-only communities created by the Housing Act was Levittown, New York, built in 1949 and followed by other Levittowns in different locations.

Segregation in Schools

Segregation of children in public schools was struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional in 1954 with Brown v. Board of Education. The case was originally filed in Topeka, Kansas after seven-year-old Linda Brown was rejected from the all-white schools there.

A follow-up opinion handed decision-making to local courts, which allowed some districts to defy school desegregation. This led to a showdown in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower deployed federal troops to ensure nine Black students entered high school after Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus had called in the National Guard to block them.

When Rosa Parks was arrested in 1955 after refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama, the civil rights movement began in earnest. Through the efforts of organizers like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the resulting protests, the Civil Rights Act was signed in 1964, outlawing discrimination, though desegregation was a slow process, especially in schools.

Boston Busing Crisis

One of the worst incidents of anti-integration happened in 1974. Violence broke out in Boston when, in order to solve the city's school segregation problems, courts mandated a busing system that carried Black students from predominantly Roxbury to South Boston schools, and vice versa.

The state had passed the Elimination of Racial Balance law in 1965, but it had been held up in court by Irish Catholic opposition. Police protected the Black students as several days of violence broke out between police and Southie residents. White crowds greeted the buses with insults, and further violence erupted between Southie residents and retaliating Roxbury crowds. State troopers were called in until the violence subsided after a few weeks.

Segregation in the 21st Century

Segregation persists in the 21st Century. Studies show that while the public overwhelmingly supports integrated schools, only a third of Americans want federal government intervention to enforce it.

The term "apartheid schools" describes still-existing, largely segregated schools, where white students make up 0 to 10 percent of the student body. The phenomenon reflects residential segregation in cities and communities across the country, which is not created by overtly racial laws, but by local ordinances that target minorities disproportionately.

Sources

Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi, published by Bodley Head.
The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates, The .
Dismantling Desegregation by Gary Orfield and Susan E. Eaton by the New Press.

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

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Segregation in the United States - Meaning, Facts. & Legacy

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After the United States abolished slavery, Black Americans continued to be marginalized through Jim Crow laws and diminished access to facilities, housing, education-and opportunities.

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When Did Slavery Start in America?

In the 17th and 18th centuries, enslaved Africans worked mainly on the tobacco, rice and indigo plantations of the southern coast, from the Chesapeake Bay colonies of Maryland and Virginia south to Georgia.

After the American Revolution, many colonists-particularly in the North, where slavery was relatively unimportant to the agricultural economy-began to link the oppression of enslaved Africans to their own oppression by the British, and to call for slavery's abolition.

Did you know? One of the first martyrs to the cause of American patriotism was Crispus Attucks, a former enslaved man who was killed by British soldiers during the Boston Massacre of 1770. Some 5,000 Black soldiers and sailors fought on the American side during the Revolutionary War.

But after the Revolutionary War, the new U.S. Constitution tacitly acknowledged the institution of slavery, when it valued each enslaved individual as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of taxation and representation in Congress. The Constitution's drafters also guaranteed the right to repossess any "person held to service or labor" (an obvious euphemism for slavery).

Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, people were kidnapped from the continent of Africa, forced into slavery in the American colonies and exploited to work in the production of crops such as tobacco and cotton.

By the mid-19th century, America's westward expansion and the abolition movement provoked a great debate over slavery that would tear the nation apart in the bloody Civil War. Though the Union victory freed the nation's four million enslaved people, the legacy of slavery continued to influence American history, from the Reconstruction to the civil rights movement that emerged a century after emancipation and beyond.

Cotton Gin

In the late 18th century, with the land used to grow tobacco nearly exhausted, the South faced an economic crisis, and the continued growth of slavery in America seemed in doubt.

Around the same time, the mechanization of the textile industry in England led to a huge demand for American cotton, a southern crop whose production was limited by the difficulty of removing the seeds from raw cotton fibers by hand.

But in 1793, a young Yankee schoolteacher named Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, a simple mechanized device that efficiently removed the seeds. His device was widely copied, and within a few years, the South transitioned from the large-scale production of tobacco to that of cotton, a switch that reinforced the region's dependence on enslaved labor.

Slavery itself was never widespread in the North, though many of the region's businessmen grew rich on the slave trade and investments in southern plantations. Between 1774 and 1804, most of the northern states abolished slavery or started the process to abolish slavery, but the institution of slavery remained vital to the South.

Though the U.S. Congress outlawed the African slave trade in 1808, the domestic trade flourished, and the enslaved population in the United States nearly tripled over the next 50 years. By 1860 it had reached nearly 4 million, with more than half living in the cotton-producing states of the South.

Living Conditions of Enslaved People

Enslaved people in the antebellum South constituted about one-third of the southern population. Most lived on large plantations or small farms; many masters owned fewer than 50 enslaved people.

Landowners sought to make their enslaved completely dependent on them through a system of restrictive codes. They were usually prohibited from learning to read and write, and their behavior and movement were restricted.

Many masters raped enslaved women, and rewarded obedient behavior with favors, while rebellious enslaved people were brutally punished. A strict hierarchy among the enslaved (from privileged house workers and skilled artisans down to lowly field hands) helped keep them divided and less likely to organize against their masters.

Marriages between enslaved men and women had no legal basis, but many did marry and raise large families. Most owners of enslaved workers encouraged this practice, but nonetheless did not usually hesitate to divide families by sale or removal.

Slave Rebellions

Rebellions among enslaved people did occur-notably, ones led by Gabriel Prosser in Richmond in 1800 and by Denmark Vesey in Charleston in 1822-but few were successful.

The revolt that most terrified enslavers was that led by Nat Turner in Southampton County, Virginia, in August 1831. Turner's group, which eventually numbered around 75 Black men, murdered some 55 white people in two days before armed resistance from local white people and the arrival of state militia forces overwhelmed them.

Supporters of slavery pointed to Turner's rebellion as evidence that Black people were inherently inferior barbarians requiring an institution such as slavery to discipline them. And fears of similar insurrections led many southern states to further strengthen their slave codes in order to limit the education, movement and assembly of enslaved people.

Abolitionist Movement

In the North, the increased repression of southern Black people only fanned the flames of the growing abolitionist movement.

From the 1830s to the 1860s, the movement to abolish slavery in America gained strength, led by free Black people such as Frederick Douglass and white supporters such as William Lloyd Garrison, founder of the radical newspaper The Liberator, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, who published the bestselling antislavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.

While many abolitionists based their activism on the belief that slaveholding was a sin, others were more inclined to the non-religious "free-labor" argument, which held that slaveholding was regressive, inefficient and made little economic sense.

Free Black people and other antislavery northerners had begun helping enslaved people escape from southern plantations to the North via a loose network of safe houses as early as the 1780s. This practice, known as the Underground Railroad, gained real momentum in the 1830s.

Conductors like Harriet Tubmanguided escapees on their journey North, and " stationmasters" included such prominent figures as Frederick Douglass, Secretary of State William H. Seward and Pennsylvania congressman Thaddeus Stevens. Althoughestimates vary widely, it may have helped anywhere from 40,000 to 100,000 enslaved people reach freedom.

The success of the Underground Railroad helped spread abolitionist feelings in the North. It also undoubtedly increased sectional tensions, convincing pro-slavery southerners of their northern countrymen's determination to defeat the institution that sustained them.

Missouri Compromise

America's explosive growth-and its expansion westward in the first half of the 19th century-would provide a larger stage for the growing conflict over slavery in America and its future limitation or expansion.

In 1820, a bitter debate over the federal government's right to restrict slavery over Missouri's application for statehood ended in a compromise: Missouri was admitted to the Union as a slave state, Maine as a free state and all western territories north of Missouri's southern border were to be free soil.

Although the Missouri Compromise was designed to maintain an even balance between slave and free states, it was only temporarily able to help quell the forces of sectionalism.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

In 1850, another tenuous compromise was negotiated to resolve the question of slavery in territories won during the Mexican-American War.

Four years later, however, the Kansas-Nebraska Act opened all new territories to slavery by asserting the rule of popular sovereignty over congressional edict, leading pro- and anti-slavery forces to battle it out-with considerable bloodshed-in the new state of Kansas.

Outrage in the North over the Kansas-Nebraska Act spelled the downfall of the old Whig Party and the birth of a new, all-northern Republican Party. In 1857, the Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court (involving an enslaved man who sued for his freedom on the grounds that his master had taken him into free territory) effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise by ruling that all territories were open to slavery.

John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry

In 1859, two years after the Dred Scott decision, an event occurred that would ignite passions nationwide over the issue of slavery.

John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia-in which the abolitionist and 22 men, including five Black men and three of Brown's sons raided and occupied a federal arsenal-resulted in the deaths of 10 people and Brown's hanging.

The insurrection exposed the growing national rift over slavery: Brown was hailed as a martyred hero by northern abolitionists but was vilified as a mass murderer in the South.

Civil War

The South would reach the breaking point the following year, when Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln was elected as president. Within three months, seven southern states had seceded to form the Confederate States of America; four more would follow after the Civil War began.

Though Lincoln's anti-slavery views were well established, the central Union war aim at first was not to abolish slavery, but to preserve the United States as a nation.

Abolition became a goal only later, due to military necessity, growing anti-slavery sentiment in the North and the self-emancipation of many people who fled enslavement as Union troops swept through the South.

When Did Slavery End?

On September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued a preliminary emancipation proclamation, and on January 1, 1863, he made it official that "slaves within any State, or designated part of a State...in rebellion,...shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free."

By freeing some 3 million enslaved people in the rebel states, the Emancipation Proclamation deprived the Confederacy of the bulk of its labor forces and put international public opinion strongly on the Union side.

Though the Emancipation Proclamation didn't officially end all slavery in America-that would happen with the passage of the 13th Amendment after the Civil War's end in 1865-some 186,000 Black soldiers would join the Union Army, and about 38,000 lost their lives.

The Legacy of Slavery

The 13th Amendment, adopted on December 18, 1865, officially abolished slavery, but freed Black peoples' status in the post-war South remained precarious, and significant challenges awaited during the Reconstruction period.

Previously enslaved men and women received the rights of citizenship and the "equal protection" of the Constitution in the 14th Amendment and the right to vote in the 15th Amendment, but these provisions of the Constitution were often ignored or violated, and it was difficult for Black citizens to gain a foothold in the post-war economy thanks to restrictive Black codes and regressive contractual arrangements such as sharecropping.

Despite seeing an unprecedented degree of Black participation in American political life, Reconstruction was ultimately frustrating for African Americans, and the rebirth of white supremacy-including the rise of racist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK)-had triumphed in the South by 1877.

Almost a century later, resistance to the lingering racism and discrimination in America that began during the slavery era led to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, which achieved the greatest political and social gains for Black Americans since Reconstruction.

America's First Memorial to its 4,400 Lynching Victims

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U.S. Slavery: Timeline, Figures & Abolition | HISTORY

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Slavery in America was the legal institution of enslaving human beings, mainly Africans and African Americans. Slavery existed in the United States from its founding in 1776 and became the main cause behind the country's bloody Civil War. Slavery officially ended in America with the passage of the 13th Amendment following the Civil War's end in 1865.

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The protest song deals with Lil Baby´s perspective on police brutality against African Americans and showcases the protests by the Black Lives Matter movement. The song shows Lil Baby´s lived reality and struggles of growing up as an African American in the United States and focuses on the violence and fear that the community of African Americans has to endure due to the neglect of authorities.

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Lil Baby - The Bigger Picture (Official Music Video)

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Black Lives and African American hip-hop

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Black Lives and African American hip-hop

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This news article provides information about protest songs by African American hip-hop artists

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Decades before "Black Lives Matter" became a global hashtag touted by celebrities and leading politicians, hip-hop artists were profiled, targeted and vilified for broadcasting those same systemic injustices that plagued Black America -- a reality that for decades was shut out of mainstream media.

In the early 1970s when hip-hop was born in the Bronx, New York, poverty and brutality plagued Black communities, but discussions on race and racism in America were considered taboo and, in the media, the Black experience was stigmatized and suppressed.

Detroit rapper and activist Royce da 5'9'' said that amid this void, hip-hop artists in the '80s "pushed the envelope in terms of exercising their First Amendment right" and became "the voice of the streets."

"It was that voice that America couldn't control ... it was that voice of the streets that they didn't know what the next line is gonna be and that scared them," he told ABC News. "Because we spoke our own unapologetic truth. We spoke about environments that were overlooked, that didn't have a voice, you know, that didn't have a say, that didn't have pretty much anything."

Compton, California, rapper Day Sulan, who was arrested last month during a police brutality protest, said that even when the debate on racism in America is no longer in the national spotlight, it will always be at the center of hip-hop.

"If Black lives matter, hip-hop is Black people, it's something we started, something we originated so it's not just a hashtag," she told ABC News. "Hip-hop is gonna continue that movement and it's never gonna stop because that's what we are, that's what we stand for."

From legends and icons to underground trailblazers, hip-hop artists weaved a rich, uniquely American art form that not only documents inequities and racism in America, but the movements and leaders that rose up in the face of oppression.

From 1982 to 2020, here are 15 memorable records and lyrics that reflect hip-hop's roots in activism:
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, "The Message" (1982) "A child is born with no state of mind/ Blind to the ways of mankind/ God is smiling on you, but he's frowning too/ Because only God knows what you'll go through/ You'll grow in the ghetto living second-rate/ And your eyes will sing a song of deep hate."
When "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five was released in 1982, Chuck D, who would become a hip-hop icon himself, was only a teenager. But the future Public Enemy emcee told ABC News that he was "stunned by it."

"When 'The Message' came out, there was nothing like it. Nothing. Ever. Like that. So the change, it came overnight," Chuck D said. "It was a non-danceable record. That's the thing that blew a lot of people away was like, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five made some very danceable hip-hop music, but when that record came out, it totally changed everything."

Asked what the title of the song meant to him, Chuck D said, "It means pay attention to the words of hip-hop instead of just the beat."

"The Message," which features only Duke Bootee and Melle Mel from the group, was the most prominent hip-hop song at the time to feature social commentary. In the last verse, Melle tells a gut-wrenching story about a young man who drops out of school, ends up in jail and dies by suicide after getting repeatedly raped behind bars.

The song was named in 2017 by Rolling Stone as the best hip-hop record of all time and has been archived by the Library of Congress.
NWA, "F--- Tha Police" (1988) "F--- the police comin' straight from the underground/ A young n---- got it bad 'cause I'm brown/ And not the other color so police think/ They have the authority to kill a minority."
When NWA released its debut album, "Straight Outta Compton," in 1988, featuring songs like "Gangsta Gangsta," "Straight Outta Compton" and "F--- the Police" -- a bombastic anthem against police brutality -- white America was outraged.

The Parents Music Resource Center launched a public campaign against the group and its use of profanity, while the FBI targeted and investigated its members -- Eazy-E, Ice Cube, Arabian Prince, DJ Yella, Dr. Dre and MC Ren.

But for Black Americans who experienced the disenfranchisement and brutalization of their communities, songs like "F--- the Police" were "liberating," Royce da 5'9'' said.

"To me like, as a young kid, I was just like, 'Wow, they curse really good. They curse better than my dad, they say 'F--- the police,' that's crazy,'" he added. "I didn't know you can get on a song and say that, you know, right. It was like, almost liberating -- liberating in a way to a young kid who isn't used to really having a voice or being heard or people or feeling like anything about him matters."

In 2017, NWA's "Straight Outta Compton" was archived by the Library of Congress.
KRS-One, "You Must Learn" (1989) "Teach the student what needs to be taught/ 'Cause Black and white kids both take shorts/ When one doesn't know about the other ones' culture/ Ignorance swoops down like a vulture."
Arguably one of the most successful politically and socially conscious emcees of all time, KRS-One is a teacher. For decades, the Bronx native and standing member of Boogie Down Productions, has used his voice to educate -- eloquently rhyming about social ills like police brutality, poverty, lack of education and racism.

"When I came out with my music at that time there was a major crack cocaine epidemic in New York," the Bronx rapper told CNN in 2015. "The music that I would do would speak to these issues, would speak to why are we living in these conditions. It's like no one has any power to lift us from these conditions."

"You Must Learn" provides a history lesson in religion, war and education, as well as the rich contributions of Africans Americans in this country.
Public Enemy, "Fight the Power" (1989) "Our freedom of speech is freedom or death/ We got to fight the powers that be."
When film director Spike Lee approached Public Enemy to write a song for his upcoming movie, "Do The Right Thing," Chuck D named it after a 1974 protest song he had heard as a child -- "Fight the Power" by the R&B, soul and funk group The Isley Brothers.

"'Fight the Power' is very important because that's the song that influenced me. When I was 14 years old, 15 years old, that record came out and it resonated with me," Chuck D said. "And it was the first record I heard they had a curse word. ... And that was riveting in itself and had a lot of meaning and youth rebellion in the song."

But according to Chuck D, the song would not have been as successful had it not been featured in the film.

"We had allies who are just as rebellious," the rapper said, crediting Lee with the song's success. "'Fight the Power' really doesn't exist in the same way if you don't have a lot of Black movies, and everybody went to see this one Black movie by a Black filmmaker -- Spike Lee ... so that right there just dissolved a lot of the difficulties. It might have had more difficulty if it was a standalone song on its own trying to penetrate the marketplace; we would have found resistance."

The song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2018 and music by Public Enemy's 1990 album "Fear of a Black Planet," which includes the song, was archived by the Library of Congress in 2004.
Queen Latifah, "U.N.I.T.Y." (1993) "I walked past these dudes when they passed me/ One of 'em felt my booty, he was nasty/ I turned around red, somebody was catching' the wrath/ Then the little one said, 'Ha ha, yeah me, b----,' and laughed."
In a male-dominated industry riddled with misogyny, many female emcees work tirelessly to carve out a space.

Before becoming a prominent Hollywood actress and producer, Queen Latifah demanded respect and asserted herself as hip-hop royalty. "U.N.I.T.Y." challenged everyone to make room for the queen, and gave women permission to be powerful, graceful and strong, and to expand, not shrink.

"U.N.I.T.Y." won the Grammy for best solo rap performance in 1994.
Tupac, "Me Against the World" (1995) "The question I wonder is after death, after my last breath/ When will I finally get to rest through this oppression?/ They punish the people that's asking questions/ And those that possess steal from the ones without possessions."
The life of iconic rapper Tupac Shakur can be described as a lesson in politics, justice and Black activism. Seen as both a hero and a villain, Tupac was one of hip-hop's most powerful and outspoken voices for social justice and radical change.

Sulan said that Tupac is the "No. 1 influence for why I am the activist I am."

"He really helped a lot of my mindset, my growing up watching his interviews," the 22-year-old artist said. "He was just one of the people that really used his voice for the right reason to show people like what real is like. ... He said, 'I'm gonna spark the mind of somebody who's gonna change the world if I don't,' and he really did."

Tupac was locked in a prison cell when "Me Against The World," one of his most personal and introspective albums, was released. The song of the same title was a soulful, poetic display of raw, honest and dark lyrics rooted in vulnerability and trauma.
Nas, "One Mic" (2002) "Police watch us, roll up and try knockin' us/ One knee I ducked, could it be my time is up?/ But my luck, I got up, the cop shot again/ Bus stop, glass burst, a fiend drops his Heineken."
The multi-platinum Queensbridge, New York, native is a powerful narrator who masterfully strings together street tales of desperate neighborhoods.

In a world of abundance and overindulging, "One Mic" demonstrates the power of one: one mic, one prayer, one breath. Nas' powerful and passionate delivery is a cry for immediate action, ending each refrain with "the time is now."

"'One Mic' is how I've been feeling," Nas told MTV in 2002. "'One Mic' has been on my mind for a long time. I knew that people weren't being for real and truthful from the heart with the music that was coming out. 'One Mic' represents my every emotion, everything that's in my mind."
Kanye West featuring Jay Z and J Ivy, "Never Let Me Down" (2004) "Racism still alive, they just be concealin' it."
In his debut album, "The College Dropout," Kanye West teamed up with Jay Z, spoken word poet J Ivy and Tracie Spencer on vocals for a melodic and poetic song about being true to yourself and to your roots.

Jay Z raps about being true to himself and to his fans from day one in his music and West raps about his family's history in the civil rights fight and how this has become an intrinsic part of him: "I get down for my grandfather who took my mama/ Made her sit in that seat where white folks ain't want us to eat/ At the tender age of 6, she was arrested for the sit-ins/ And with that in my blood I was born to be different."

The song, which was originally recorded for Jay Z's seventh studio album, "The Blueprint²: The Gift & The Curse," ends with a powerful delivery by J Ivy of his poem, "Never Let Me Down."
Talib Kweli, "Eat to Live" (2007) "Anyway, grandma say Jesus will be here any day/ Good -- 'cause with nothing to eat it's gettin' hard to pray."
Talib Kweli has built his career on exposing injustice, racism and rampant systemic flaws. "Eat to Live" is an important song that addresses food deserts, malnutrition and the consumption of non-life-giving foods.

Science has linked poor eating habits with health conditions like high blood pressure and diabetes, which are both prevalent in Black communities.

This issue has been brought to light amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which has disproportionately been killing Black Americans. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, individuals who suffer from health conditions like obesity and diabetes often experience worse outcomes when contracting the virus.
Meek Mill, "Dreams and Nightmares" (2012) "I used to pray for times like this, to rhyme like this/ So I had to grind like that to shine like this/ And the matter of time I spent on some locked-up s---/ In the back of the paddy wagon, cuffs locked on wrists/ Seen my dreams unfold, nightmares come true."
Before the Philadelphia rapper rose to the national spotlight in 2017 as one of the most prominent criminal justice reform advocates, Meek Mill recounted his struggles and his triumphs in "Dreams and Nightmares," the first track on his 2012 album bearing the same title.

In the first part, "Dreams," Mill recounts his rise in the rap game through reflective lyrics, but halfway through, his tone becomes angry and bombastic depicting his "nightmares."

When the rapper was sentenced to two to four years in prison in November 2017 after a pair of arrests that violated his probation from a 2008 gun and drug case (including popping a wheelie on a motorcycle), his case sparked outrage among criminal justice reform advocates and reinvigorated a national debate on mass incarceration.

While he was in prison, "Dreams and Nightmares" became an anthem of the #FreeMeekMill movement. The song was blasted by protesters and was chosen by the Philadelphia Eagles as their anthem during Super Bowl Lll to show solidarity with the rapper.
Lauryn Hill, "Black Rage" (2012, re-released in 2014) "Black rage is founded on blatant denial/ Squeezing economics, subsistence survival/ Deafening silence and social control/ Black rage is founded on wounds in the soul."
In 1961, famed author and activist James Baldwin said, "To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost, almost all of the time."

More than 50 years later, in 2012, musical genius Lauryn Hill, whose debut album was the first hip-hop album to earn a Grammy for album of the year, affirmed Baldwin's sentiment with "Black Rage."

The poignant song was re-released among the Ferguson, Missouri, protests in 2014, and the themes remain today. The unaddressed inequities that resurface decade after decade is another example of why Black rage exists.
Kendrick Lamar, "Alright" (2015) "Uh, and when I wake up/ I recognize you're looking at me for the pay cut/ But homicide be looking at you from the face down."
Soulful and introspective with an ever-present political charge, Kendrick Lamar has mastered Black storytelling in rap music.

"Alright" is a powerful, poetic glimpse at the Black experience, one that transcends pain and oppression. The message is hope and faith, and while the story's imagery is dark, light emerges through Kendrick's courage, beauty and pride.

"Alright" won a Grammy for best rap song at the 2016 awards and Lamar's "To Pimp a Butterfly," which features the song, won a Grammy in the best rap album category that year.
Meek Mill featuring Jay Z and Rick Ross, "What's Free" (2018) "Tryna' fix the system and the way that they designed it/ I think they want me silenced/ Oh, say you can see, I don't feel like I'm free."
Meek Mill enlisted industry powerhouse and billionaire Jay-Z to discuss modern-day freedom on this track.

While Meek draws on his personal experiences and hardships with the judicial system, Jay talks about narrowly escaping the system, building wealth and civil liberties.

Last year, the two rappers, who have used their fame, access and fortune to affect change, co-founded Reform Alliance, an organization committed to prison reform.
Rapsody, "Nina" (2019) "I'm from the back woods where Nina would/ Sing about the life we should lead/ A new dawn, another deed, I try to do some good/ I felt more damned than Mississippi was."
Rapsody's "Nina" is a tribute to Nina Simone and begins with the legendary singer's rendition of "Strange Fruit" - a poem by Abel Meeropol published in 1937 protesting the lynching of Black Americans.

The Grammy-nominated North Carolina rapper references Simone's first protest anthem, "Mississippi Goddamn," a response to the 1963 assassination of American civil rights activist Medgar Evers in Mississippi amid his fight against Jim Crow laws.

"Nina" is one of the songs on Rapsody's album "Eve" -- an ode to the history of the civil rights movement and the Black women who broke barriers, including Queen Latifah, Aaliyah and Maya Angelou.

"There's a beauty and a strength that all of them have because to break the barriers that they had to do, you had to be unwavering, you had to have this undeniable, undying fight within you," Rapsody told ABC News in August 2019.
Lil Baby, "Bigger Picture" (2020) "F---ed up, I seen what I seen/ I guess that mean hold him down if he say he can't breathe/ It's too many mothers that's grieving/ They killing us for no reason."
Politically conscious rappers aren't nearly as popular today, but the message always finds its way to the music.

Popular rapper Lil Baby released "Bigger Picture" after the recent death of George Floyd and the racial protests that followed. The anthem, which demands a stop to police brutality, garnered more than 65 million audio and video streams in its first two weeks, according to Nielsen Music.

In an Instagram post, Lil Baby said that the proceeds from the song will benefit organizations like the National Association of Black Journalists, the attorneys for the family of Breonna Taylor, who died at the hands of Louisville police, the Black Lives Matter movement and The Bail Project.

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Hip-hop has been standing up for Black lives for decades: 15 songs and why they matter

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Decades before "Black Lives Matter" became a global hashtag touted by celebrities and leading politicians, hip-hop artists were profiled, targeted and vilified for broadcasting those same systemic injustices that plagued Black America -- a reality that for decades was shut out of mainstream media.