Lesson Plan 2- Slavery in America- Runaway Slave/ Character Profiles
Topic: Slavery in America Date: Day 2
Grade Level: 11th grade Estimated Time for Lesson: 60 minutes
Standards/Benchmarks Being Met: Council Bluffs Public School List of Standards and Benchmarks
Standard 1: All students will utilize historical thinking, problem solving, and research skills to maximize their understanding of civics, history, geography and economics.
a. Data Gathering Skills
Analyze and explain key events by which the United States became a world power.
Analyze key ideas and events such those resulting in social change.
Identify main ideas and differing perspectives by conducting historical research from primary sources such as political cartoons, autobiographies, diaries, letters, photographs, newspapers and government documents.
c. Decision-Making Skills
Students will be able to engage in hypothetical scenarios and/or solutions to historical events.
Standard 2: Students understand how factors such as group membership, culture, learning, genetics, and physical development interact to influence the identity, behavior and development of individuals and institutions.
c. Interactions Among Learning, Genetics and Physical Development
d. Conflict, Cooperation and Interdependence
Understand how rapid increase in population and industrial growth in urban areas influenced the environment.
Standard 6: All students will study and analyze life and events in United States and Iowa History in terms of enduring concepts, patterns and relationships in order to better understand the present and future.
a. Family and Community Life
c. Exploration and Colonization (1585-1762)
d. Revolution and the New Nation (1754-1820)
e. Expansion and Reform (1801-1861)
f. Civil War and Reconstruction 1850-1877)
Standard 7: All students will study and analyze life and events in the history of the world in terms of enduring concepts, patterns and relationships in order to better understand the present and future.
f. Age of Revolutions 1750-1914
Objectives:
Learning Objectives:
Cognitive:
The student will assemble into groups based on their character profiles.
The student will discuss their exploration of a life as a slave
The examine their character profiles and life.
Psychomotor:
The student will determine how to group their character profiles.
The student will discuss how their characters would react to the situations they are faced with.
The student will illustrate what life was like for a slave
Affective:
The student will cooperate with their partners to fill out “life as slave” worksheet
The student will develop a journal article entry examining the life of their character
The student will complete a handout with a partner.
Materials:
“It depends on your point-of-view” strips of paper
paper pencils
Life as a slave handout
Life as a slave information
Rubric
(5 min.) Anticipatory Set:
The teacher will write on one end of the board “SLAVE” and on the other end of the board “SLAVE OWNER” teacher will ask students to choose a side.
After students have assessable into groups the teacher will explain that in history it’s not always easy to pick and chose what you want to do.
Considering that everyone chose slave owner, teacher will split down the class, and regroup them.
Procedures/Instruction:
(15 min.)Input/Modeling:
Students will receive “It depends on your point-of-view” strips of paper from the teacher. Students will draw out of a box or hat to receive their character profile. Students will keep their identities hidden from the rest of their peers. Based on their character profiles, students will be asked to form two different groups. After students get into two groups (slaves vs. whites) the students will be asked regroup into three groups. (free slaves, runaway slaves, owners,
The teacher will explain that in history, it’s not always cut and dry or black and white)
The teacher will project on the projector or overhead the Runaway slave notice.
Teacher will have guided questions
· What is this notice about?
· What year was it published?
· Why do you think this slave ran away?
· What type of life do you think this slave had?
Monitoring to Check for Understanding
(15 min.) Guided/Monitored Practice:
- Students will be asked to examine slave life. Students will be given the packet of information regarding slave life and then given the assigned worksheet.
- Students will work with partners to complete the life as a slave handout. Students will be paired and given a small section to complete. When students complete their portion, the students will go around and give their answers so other student may fill in the portion.
(15min.) Independent Practice:
Based on their “it depends on your point-of-view” paper strips, students will journal as if they were the character. Students will have a variety of profiles and must be in character in their entry. Attached: rubric
The teacher will ask students to volunteer what they journal over. This will introduce the student to a wide variety of different people and titles that are involved in.
Assessment/Evaluation:
Read aloud of assignment
Questioning for comprehension
Journal rubric
Technology Integration:
Projector
Adaptations for Diverse Learners:
- Students will work in mixed ability groups
- Student will be graded using different rubrics for different levels of learning.
Websites Used:
Lesson Plan Adapted from: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/teachers/lesson1.html
Text Information taken from: http://library.thinkquest.org/03oct/00394/life.htm
http://www.benjaminschool.com/lower/hagy1/slave_life.htm
Character Profiles
“IT DEPENDS ON YOUR POINT-OF-VIEW”
You are a Phillis Wheatley, a 14 year old slave captured and brought to Ameica when you were 8 years old. You were purchase by John Wheatley. You are being taught to read by one of his daughters.
You are John Wheatley, owner of Phillis Wheatley a slave child. When Phillis starts writing poetry, you gather Boston’s most respectable men to examine, because no such slave could ever write such a poem.
You are the Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States of America. You are not an abolitionist, though you believe that slavery goes against the constitution.
You are Sojourner Truth, born a slave in upper New York. You have been bought and sold three times over before the age of 17. Your son youngest son has just been sold to a plantation owner and you fear you will never see him again.
You are Nat Turner, a slave on a plantation in Virginia. You believe that it is your duty to god to lead your people out of slavery. One night you see an eclipse and believe that it is time.
YOU are Titus, and you are preparing to run away from your master. You are often whipped for trivial offenses.
YOU are a slave on John Corlies' farm in Monmouth County, New Jersey. One of your close friends, Titus, has recently run away.
YOU are a slave in New Jersey in 1774. Because you tried to run away, your owner has put an iron collar with four-foot long poles attached to it around your neck.
YOU are John Corlies, a slave-owner in Monmouth County, New Jersey. Your slave Titus has recently run away.
YOU are the editor of a Monmouth County, New Jersey newspaper. John Corlies came to you today and put an ad for his runaway slave Titus in your newspaper.
YOU are a Quaker slave-owner in New Jersey in 1774. Many of your neighbors have been setting their slaves free.
YOU are a slave in Mississippi in 1854. You have recently run away, and you are spending the night alone in a swamp.
YOU are a slave in 1859. You ran away from your owner, and you have made it to Rochester, New York. You are waiting for a boat to take your across Lake Ontario to Canada.
YOU are a Quaker who runs an Underground Railroad safe house. You have three runaway slaves hiding in your cellar, and you know that a group of slave catchers is searching houses in your neighborhood.
YOU are a runaway slave, hiding in the home of a Quaker on the Underground Railroad. You know that a group of slave catchers is searching houses in the area.
You are Moses Roper, a mulatto, a hard slave to sell. You are finally thrown into a cotton plantation. You tried to escape many times, but are caught and severely beaten. This last time that you tried to escape, you got 200 lashed. You would have died were it not for your master’s wife pleading to keep you alive.
You are a pregnant slave about to have your first child. Although you are pregnant, you are still required to work 18 hour days until the baby is born. You are terrified that once your baby is born, it will be sold.
You are a slave capturer in Africa. You set traps, and hunt down slaves out in the wilderness. You do trade among village leaders and try to find the healthiest slaves possible.
You are an overseer on a large plantation. You are under pressure form the master to maximize profits. You must bully the slaves into working harder. This means using forms of punishment, cart whips, shackles, etc.
Information Packet
Life as a Slave
Clothing
Every year, slaves usually received two linen shirts, two pairs of trousers , one jacket, one pair of socks, one pair of shoes, an overcoat, and a wool hat.
Slaves also had a yearly clothing allowance. Douglass, for example, received "two coarse linen shirts, one pair of linen trousers, like the shirts, one jacket, one pair of trousers for winter, made of coarse negro cloth, one pair of stockings, and one pair of shoes". In his autobiography, Josiah Henson reported that in the winter slaves were given an " overcoat, a wool-hat once in two or three years, for the males, and a pair of coarse shoes".
House slaves usually lived better than those who worked in the fields. They usually had better food and were sometimes given the family's cast-off clothing.
Food
Slaves usually received cornmeal salt herrings, and eight pounds of pork or fish each month for food.
Slaves usually received a monthly allowance of corn meal and salt-herrings. Frederick Douglass received one bushel of corn meal a month plus eight pounds of pork or fish. Some plantation owners gave their slaves a small piece of land, a truck-patch, where they could grow vegetables.
Housing
Slaves houses were usually wooden shacks with dirt floors, but sometimes houses were made of boards nailed up with cracks stuffed with rags. The beds were collected pieces of straw or grass, and old rags, and only one blanket for a covering. A single room could have up to a dozen people-men, women, and children.
The accommodation provided for slaves usually consisted of wooden shacks with dirt floors. According to Jacob Stroyer they were built to house two families: "Some had partitions, while others had none. When there were no partitions each family would fit up its own part as it could; sometimes they got old boards and nailed them up, stuffing the cracks with rags; when they could not get boards they hung up old clothes."
Another slave, Josiah Henson wrote that "Wooden floors were an unknown luxury. In a single room were huddled, like cattle, ten or a dozen persons, men, women, and children. We had neither bedsteads, nor furniture of any description. Our beds were collections of straw and old rags, thrown down in the corners and boxed in with boards; a single blanket the only covering."
Childhood
When a slave was only 12 months old his/her mother could be sold far away. When a slave was four, they sometimes worked as a babysitter. When a slave was around the age of five, they would run errands and carry water to the field slaves. Around the age of eight, children would be expected to work on the plantation.
Families
Over 32% of marriages were canceled by masters as a result of slaves being sold away from the family home. A slave husband could be parted from his wife, and children from their mothers.
Plantation owners in America had complete freedom to buy and sell slaves. State laws gave slave marriages no legal protection and in these transactions husbands could be separated from their wives and children from their mothers. In his autobiography, Frederick Douglass claimed that in the part of Maryland where he was born: "to part children from their mothers at a very early age. Frequently, before the child has reached its twelfth month, its mother is taken from it, and hired out on some farm a considerable distance off."
The owner of Harriet Jacobs used the threat of selling her children as a means of controlling her behaviour. In her book, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Jacobs described how one mother, who had just witnessed seven of her children being sold at a slave-market: "She begged the trader to tell her where he intended to take them; this he refused to do. How could he, when he knew he would sell them, one by one, wherever he could command the highest price? I met that mother in the street, and her wild, haggard face lives to-day in my mind. She wrung her hands in anguish, and exclaimed, 'Gone! All gone! Why don't God kill me?' I had no words wherewith to comfort her."
A study of slave records by the Freedmen's Bureau of 2,888 slave marriages in Mississippi (1,225), Tennessee (1,123) and Louisiana (540), revealled that over 32 per cent of marriages were dissolved by masters as a result of slaves being sold away from the family home.
Punishments
Slaves could be killed for murder, burglary, arson, and assault upon a white person. Plantation owners believed that this severe discipline would make the slaves too scared to rebel.
In South Carolina one slave owner would put nails in a barrel sticking out on the inside of the barrel, then put the slave in and roll him/her down a very long and steep hill. Another punishment slave owners used was to whip their slaves. Other slave owners in Virginia smoked their slaves. This involved whipping them and putting them in a tobacco smokehouse.
Some other punishments were getting beaten with a chair, broom, tongs, shovel, shears, knife handles, the heavy end of a woman’s shoe, and an oak club.
Religion
On of the main reasons masters didn’t want their slaves to become Christians involved the Bible. This was one reason why most plantation owners did what they could to stop their slaves from learning to read. In the South, black people were not usually allowed to attend church services. Black people in the North were more likely to attend church services. Drums, which were used in traditional religious ceremonies, where banned because overseers worried that they would be used to send messages.
Except for the Society of Friends, all religious groups in America supported slavery. In the South black people were not usually allowed to attend church services. Those churches that did accept them would segregate them from white worshipers.
One of the main reasons why masters did not want their slaves to become Christians involved the Bible. They feared that slaves might interpret the teachings of Jesus Christ as being in favour of equality. This was one of the main reasons why most plantation owners did what they could to stop their slaves from learning to read. Slaves were also forbidden from continuing with African religious rituals. Drums were also banned as overseers worried that they would be used to send messages. They were particularly concerned that they would be used to signal a slave uprising.
Black people in the North were much more likely to attend church services. In 1794 Richard Allen founded the first church for black people in Philadelphia. Two years later Peter Williams, a wealthy tobacco merchant who felt unwelcome in the local Methodist Church, established a similar church in New York.
In 1816 a group of churchmen led by Richard Allen formed the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Allen became the church's first bishop.
Slave Overseers
In 1860 it was calculated that about 88 per cent of America's slave-owners owned twenty slaves or less. However, large landowners would usually own well over 100 slaves and relied heavily on overseers to run their plantations. These overseers were under considerable pressure from the plantation owners to maximize profits. They did this by bullying the slaves into increasing productivity. The punishments used against slaves judged to be under-performing included the use of the cart-whip. Not surprisingly the mortality-rate amongst the slaves was high. Studies have shown that over a four-year period, up to 30 per cent of the slave population in America died.
Slaves were in the fields from sunrise to sunset and at harvest time they did an eighteen hour day. Women worked the same hours as the men and pregnant women were expected to continue until their child was born. Only a month's rest was allowed for recovery from child-bearing. The women then carried the child on their backs while they worked in the fields. Around the age of five, slave children would also be expected to work on the plantation.
The law provided slaves with virtually no protection from their masters. On large plantations this power was delegated to overseers. These men were under considerable pressure from the plantation owners to maximize profits. They did this by bullying the slaves into increasing productivity. The punishments used against slaves judged to be under-performing included the use of the whip. Sometimes slave-owners resorted to mutilating and branding their slaves.
Education
Imagine that you’re a slave in Colonial America who was found to be one of the quick learners, and you’re trying to be stopped from learning how to read and write. Your master doesn’t want you to know about how people are arguing over the expansion of slavery and that some whites think that Africans should be free. Also, your master doesn’t want you and the others to know about free slaves up north. Still, you and your allies secretly read and write under lamp at night or in the woods during the day. You read anything you can get your hands on including books and newspapers.
Some masters’ wives and/or daughters educate many slave children at night in shadowy rooms and read by firelight. They block up the keyholes and make the room look dark to keep it secret. Some of the masters don’t like this, but others think everyone should have an education. The children of freed slaves sneak to secret schools in churches while risking their lives, too. They do this to get an education to be able to get a job. One of these schools was just discovered and had to move to a large boat. In disguise, it makes its way up and down the rivers helping slaves, who have escaped, to go north and picks up black children to educate them. Although the whites tried to stop you from learning, you were greatly educated.
Field Work
A regular working day in the fields for a slave was from sunrise to sunset. From a slaves point of view it was when you could see the big yellow thing until you couldn’t see it. Slaves were treated so badly it was almost as if they were farm animals, or old machinery.
One of the main crops that slaves had to pick by hand was cotton. It was extremely difficult to do this, because there were always thorns in it. It was mostly the men who did the cotton-picking while the women helped tend to the oxen by feeding, washing, and putting those stubborn creatures in their stables.
Slaves were very non-valuable people, and had very hard lives. We Are lucky that we live in the 20th century, and not back when those poor people suffered so intensely!
House Slaves
Join me while I show you what house slaves were like in colonial America. House slaves were trained to do their work from childhood. They would be away from the other slaves. They would sleep on a pallet besides the masters' bedroom. The house slave was taught to believe that being a house slave was the best thing that could become of him or her. All older housemaids wore a key ring. On it, were all the keys to the pantry , the , smokehouse , the cooling cellar, and other food storage’s. Every house slave would walk in a way so that the keys would jingle to show how, proud, important and trusted the slave was. Close to the kitchen was a large wooden building called the kitchen quarter in which the house servants ate. They also did the washing in the family and the unpleasant work such as scaling fish, cleaning and putting up pork, etc. Being a house slave was easier than being a field slave, but they had to work longer hours.
House slaves usually lived better than field slaves. They usually had better food and were sometimes given the family's cast-off clothing. However, not all slave-owners took this view, Harriet Jacobs reports that her mistress "would station herself in the kitchen, and wait till it was dished, and then spit in all the kettles and pans" to make sure that the slaves did not eat what was left over.
Their living accommodation was also better than those of other slaves. In some cases the slaves were treated like the slave-owners children. When this happened close bonds of affection and friendship usually developed. Even though it was illegal, some house slaves were educated by the women in the family. Trusted house slaves who had provided good service over a long period of time were sometimes promised their freedom when their master's died. However, there are many cases where this promise was not kept.
Slave Marriages
Most slave-owners encouraged their slaves to marry. It was believed that married men was less likely to be rebellious or to run away. Some masters favoured marriage for religious reasons and it was in the interests of plantation owners for women to have children. Child-bearing started around the age of thirteen, and by twenty the women slaves would be expected to have four or five children. To encourage childbearing some plantation owners promised women slaves their freedom after they had produced fifteen children. Several slaves recorded in their autobiographies that they were reluctant to marry women from the same plantation.
As John Anderson explained: "I did not want to marry a girl belonging to my own place, because I knew I could not bear to see her ill-treated." Moses Grandy agreed he wrote: "no colored man wishes to live at the house where his wife lives, for he has to endure the continual misery of seeing her flogged and abused without daring to say a word in her defence." As Henry Bibb pointed out: "If my wife must be exposed to the insults and licentious passions of wicked slave-drivers and overseers. Heaven forbid that I should be compelled to witness the sight."
A study of slave records by the Freedmen's Bureau of 2,888 slave marriages in Mississippi (1,225), Tennessee (1,123) and Louisiana (540), revealed that over 32 per cent of marriages were dissolved by masters as a result of slaves being sold away from the family home.
The death-rate amongst slaves was high. To replace their losses, plantation owners encouraged the slaves to have children. Child-bearing started around the age of thirteen, and by twenty the women slaves would be expected to have four or five children. To encourage child-bearing some population owners promised women slaves their freedom after they had produced fifteen children.
Young women were often advertised for sale as "good breeding stock". To encourage child-bearing some population owners promised women slaves their freedom after they had produced fifteen children. One slave trader from Virginia boasted that his successful breeding policies enabled him to sell 6,000 slave children a year.
Plantation System
In the 17th century Europeans began to establish settlements in the Americas. The division of the land into smaller units under private ownership became known as the plantation system. Starting in Virginia the system spread to the New England colonies. Crops grown on these plantations such as tobacco, rice, sugar cane and cotton were labour intensive. Slaves were in the fields from sunrise to sunset and at harvest time they did an eighteen hour day. Women worked the same hours as the men and pregnant women were expected to continue until their child was born.
European immigrants had gone to America to own their own land and were reluctant to work for others. Convicts were sent over from Britain but there had not been enough to satisfy the tremendous demand for labour. Planters therefore began to purchase slaves. At first these came from the West Indies but by the late 18th century they came directly from Africa and busy slave-markets were established in Philadelphia, Richmond, Charleston and New Orleans.
The death-rate amongst slaves was high. To replace their losses, plantation owners encouraged the slaves to have children. Child-bearing started around the age of thirteen, and by twenty the women slaves would be expected to have four or five children. To encourage child-bearing some population owners promised women slaves their freedom after they had produced fifteen children.
Slave Markets
In the 17th century Europeans began to establish settlements in the Americas. Crops grown on these plantations such as tobacco, rice, sugar cane and cotton were labour intensive. European immigrants had gone to America to own their own land and were reluctant to work for others. Convicts were sent over from Britain but there had not been enough to satisfy the tremendous demand for labour. Planters therefore began to purchase slaves.
At first these came from the West Indies but by the late 18th century they came directly from Africa and busy slave-markets were established in Philadelphia, Richmond, Charleston and New Orleans.
Capturing Slaves
The process of capturing Africans and enslaving them was very complicated. Some of the groups that took enslaved Africans from the coast of Africa were the Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish, and British. In the beginning of the slave trade, people would try to capture natives from their African kingdoms. After they attempted the first method, they found it to be very difficult and realized it was easier to buy slaves from African kings. The kingdoms in Africa had slaves, as captives of war. Slavery in Africa was not as harsh and cruel as the slavery, which existed in European countries and America. During this period of slavery, slaves would sometimes have better lives than the lives of the peasants in the kingdom.
Olaudah Equiano, who was a slave in Africa and taken to England to become a slave, described his experiences as very different. He described European slavery as some of the cruelest things he had ever witnessed, compared to African slavery. To capture the Africans, the Europeans would provoke wars between African kingdoms. After these wars there would be a lot more slaves on the market to be sold to the Europeans, by Africans, because African slaves were prisoners of war. The enslaved Africans were forcibly moved into horrible ships and transported to Europe to be sold on the market as slaves. This was the very complicated and despicable process of capturing Africans.
Between 1540 and 1850 there were at least 15 million Africans that were taken to the Americas. Slave merchants tried to put as many slaves as they possibly could on their ship to maximize their profits. In 1788 there was a discovery that one slave-ship was built to carry a maximum of 451 people. The House of Commons committees were the people who discovered the one slave-ship. It was called The Brookes. Even though the ship was made to carry 451 people, there were always over 600 slaves that were taken from Africa to become slaves in the Americas.
During the African slave trade, at the end of the 14th century, the Europeans took people from Africa without the Africans permission. The Africans that the Europeans took were used as servants for the rich. The Europeans thought that when they were taking the slaves they were giving them the chance to become Christians. The major support came from the Christian Church, and the Spanish and the Portuguese sea captains took their servants along while exploring the Americas.
Work sheet
Life as a Slave
Name:____________________________________ Date:_____________________
Directions: Fill out your assigned section that’s paired with the packet of information titled “Life as a Slave.” If you finish early, start on the other portions. When everyone has finished, fill in the rest while your peers read theirs aloud.
| Slaves | Men- Women- Children- Pregnant Women- |
| Masters Mistresses | |
| Slave Overseers | |
| Auctioning of Slaves | |
| Clothing, food, housing | Clothing Food Housing |
| Punishments | |
| Religion | |
| Education | |
| Field Work | |
| House Slaves | |
| Plantation System | |
| Slave Markets | |
| Capturing Slaves | |
| Slave Marriages and Child-bearing | |
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