Compelling Question: What did freed people want after claiming their freedom?

Supporting Questions

• What conditions did newly freed people face in the South immediately after the Civil War?

• What did freed people prioritize after emancipation?

• What obstacles challenged the hopes of freed people?
  

Objective: Students will be able to…

• Interrogate primary sources from freed people to understand their purpose and point of view.

• Corroborate historical materials to develop a claim about the wants of freed people after emancipation.

Source Squad Inquiry Map

Slide Deck

Source Squad Goals

Source Material

1. Activating Activity

   1. Display Slide 3 to students and ask students to respond to the following prompts:

      1. Who was Thomas Nast?

      2. Based on the illustration, what is Nast’s perspective of the emancipation of enslaved people?

      3. What are some strengths and limitations of this source to better understand  how freed people perceived emancipation?

   2. Utilize a Think, Pair, Share to debrief the prompts. 

   3. Ask students for the strengths and limitations of using this source to understand what freed people wanted after emancipation. The teacher should emphasize that Nast was not a newly freed person, and thus lacked that perspective. The teacher should ask students why the perspectives of freed people would be crucial to answering said question.

2. Building Content Knowledge

   1. Slides 6-11: Use these slides to help construct a chronology for emancipation within the Civil War. Emphasize to students that emancipation was not inevitable, and that it took the agency of enslaved people, Union officers, abolitionists, and politicians such as Abraham Lincoln.

3. Source Squads

   1. Break students up into their Source Squads. Distribute Role Cards and Squad Goals to each group.

   2. Introduce your students to their Squad Goals, let students pick from a list of Squad Goals (see this lesson’s supporting questions), or have students create their own Squad Goals. If you are giving students their goals, the three recommended goals are as follows:

      1. What conditions did newly freed people face in the South immediately after the Civil War?

      2. What did freed people prioritize after emancipation?

      3. What obstacles challenged the hopes of freed people?

   3. If students are picking from a list of goals or creating their own: As a formative check, ask Squads to call you over to check their Goals. Provide feedback if needed to bring students close to some of the lesson’s supporting questions, while also allowing some flexibility for Squads to have their own unique lenses for the inquiry.

   4. Once students have their Squad Goals approved, they should begin analyzing the documents one at a time using their Role Cards. Remind students to check in with you as a formative check after each document.

4. Debrief

   1. At the conclusion of the Source Squads process, ask students to reflect on the following prompts independently digitally or on paper:

      1. What is one thing you or your group did well during the Source Squads process?

      2. What is one thing you or your group would do differently next time?

   2. Give Source Squads time to share their responses with each other. If time allows, ask students to share their reflections and shout out peers who went above and beyond.

   3. Use these discussion prompts to guide a whole-group conversation with your class:

      1. What conditions did newly freed people face in the South immediately after the Civil War?

      2. What did freed people prioritize after emancipation?

      3. What obstacles challenged the hopes of freed people?

Source Material

• Harper, Frances Ellen Watkins. "Learning to Read." In African-American Poetry of the Nineteenth Century: An Anthology, compiled by Joan R. Sherman. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1992.

• Anderson, Jourdan. Letter to P.H. Anderson, "Letter from a Freedman to His Old Master," August 7, 1865. In The Freedman's Book, compiled by Lydia Maria Child, 265-67. Boston, MA: Ticknor and Fields, 1865. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/38479/38479-h/38479-h.htm.

• The State of Georgia, 41st, 2d Sess. 1986-88 (1870) (statement of Hiram Revels). https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/pdf/RevelsGeorgia.pdf.

• Bram, Henry, Ishmael Moultrie, and Yates Sampson. Letter to The Commissioner of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Land, October 20, 1865. https://shec.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/2621.

Bibliography and Suggested Readings

• Foner, Eric. A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863-1877. New York, NY: Harper  & Row, 1990.

• Gates, Henry Louis. Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow. New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2019.

• Reconstruction: America after the Civil War. PBS, 2019.

• White, Jonathan W. A House Built by Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2022.