Lesson Plan Frederick Douglass: What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? 7, 8, 9, 10 Click to download this five-lesson unit :
Spotlight on: Primary Source The Middle Passage, 1749 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ Historians estimate that approximately 472,000 Africans were kidnapped and brought to the North American mainland between 1619 and 1860. Of these, nearly 18 percent died during the transatlantic voyage from Africa to the New World....
Spotlight on: Primary Source The Fort Pillow Massacre, 1864 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ "Among the stories of the stormy days of the Republic, few will longer be remembered than the heroic defense and almost utter annihilation of the garrison of Fort Pillow." —Mack J. Leaming, April 1893 On April 12, 1864, fifteen...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Nat Turner’s Rebellion, 1831 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ In the early hours of August 22, 1831, a slave named Nat Turner led more than fifty followers in a bloody revolt in Southampton, Virginia, killing nearly 60 white people, mostly women and children. The local authorities stopped the...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Lord Dunmore's Proclamation, 1775 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ In April 1775, John Murray, the Earl of Dunmore and Virginia’s royal governor, threatened to free slaves and reduce the capital, Williamsburg, to ashes if the colonists rebelled against British authority. In the months that followed,...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Slave Patrol Contract, 1856 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ In the 1800s, particularly after Nat Turner’s rebellion in 1831, the legislatures of slave states passed increasingly strict laws governing the activities of enslaved and free African Americans and the interactions between whites and...