Teacher Lesson Plan - Two Unreconciled Strivings

The Library of Congress

Two Unreconciled Strivings

Overview

Examine the tension experienced by African-Americans as they struggled to establish a vibrant and meaningful identity based on the promises of liberty and equality in the midst of a society that was ambivalent towards them and sought to impose an inferior definition upon them.

The primary sources used are drawn from a time of great change that begins after Reconstruction's brief promise of full citizenship and ends with the First World War's Great Migration, when many African-Americans sought greater freedoms and opportunities by leaving the South for booming industrial cities elsewhere in the nation.

The central question posed by these primary sources is how African-Americans were able to form a meaningful identity for themselves, reject the inferior images fastened upon them, and still maintain the strength to keep "from being torn asunder." Using the primary sources presented here, look for answers that bring your ideas together in ways that reflect the richness of the African-American experience.

Objectives	Students will: Recognize how African-Americans survived in an environment in which they were considered inferior; Identify ways in which African-Americans sustained for themselves a vibrant culture; Appreciate how personal identity requires coming to terms with external pressures; and Recognize how common, shared experiences shape a people's identity.
Time Required	3 to 5 class periods to study the project's primary sources; additional time depending on which warm-up and follow-up lesson activities are chosen
Recommended Grade Level	11-12
Curriculum Fit	National Standards for United States History Era 6: The Development of the Industrial United States (1870-1900) Standard 2B: The student understands "scientific racism," race relations, and the struggle for equal rights.
Standards	McREL 4th Edition Standards & Benchmarks Historical Understanding Standard 2. Understands the historical perspective Language Arts Standard 4. Gathers and uses information for research purposes Standard 7. Uses reading skills and strategies to understand and interpret a variety of informational texts Standard 9. Uses viewing skills and strategies to understand and interpret visual media US History Standard 29. Understands the struggle for racial and gender equality and for the extension of civil liberties.
Resources Used	American Memory Collections African-American Perspectives, 1818-1907 Jackie Robinson and Baseball Highlights, 1860s-1960s Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920 Inventing Entertainment: The Edison Companies American Life Histories, 1936-1940 Taking the Long View, 1851-1991 An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera Music for the Nation, 1870-1885 Other Web Sites 19th Century California Sheet Music, University of California, Berkeley Historic American Sheet Music, Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University African-American Experience in Ohio, 1850-1920, Ohio Historical Society History Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web, City University of New York and George Mason University Books Du Bois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches. Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co., 1903. Litwack, Leon F. Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow. New York: Knopf, 1998.
Key Questions	In what ways did African-Americans identify themselves during this era? In what ways did others identify African-Americans during this era? Is there evidence for the assertion that African-Americans possessed a dual identity? How much progress did African-Americans make in the journey from slavery to equality? How do different types of historical documents provide different insights about African-Americans? What kind of information about African-Americans is lacking in the primary sources that comprise this project?

Procedure

The lesson is divided into three parts:

Unit One: Warm-Up Activities

A variety of instructional options. Choose the activities you would most like to pursue.

Unit Two: Touring the Web Site

This section is the heart of the unit. View and analyze primary sources from different topics of the African-American experience in the Gilded Age.

The primary sources are organized around the topics of Family, Work, Play, Faith, Education, Race, and Violence. There is no magic in creating these seven topics - dividing up a people's experiences in this manner is the work of historians more than it is the people who lived those experiences.

Students keep a response journal which is important for the follow-up activities. You may want to select specific primary sources beforehand for student responses.

Unit Three: Follow-Up Activities

A variety of instructional options. Choose the activities you would most like to pursue.

Toolkit

This toolkit contains a variety of tutorials designed to assist teachers in searching American Memory collections and interpreting the past with primary sources.

Student Page

Pages directed at students that complement teacher pages.

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Last updated 10/01/2002