Tip of the Week: Black History Month Resources 2013

To be honest, I’m a bit torn about the whole idea of Black History Month. The concept started way back in 1926 when historian Carter G. Woodson and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History announced the second week of February to be “Negro History Week.” That particular week was chosen because it marked the birthday of both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.

The hope was that the week would eventually be eliminated when black history became fundamental to American history teaching. In 1976, the federal government followed the lead of the Black United Students at Kent State and established the entire month as Black History Month. President Ford urged Americans, and especially teachers and schools, to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.”

The hope was that essential people, events, and places, routinely ignored, would be incorporated throughout the instructional year as part of social studies instruction.

But I’m torn.

History Tech Podcast: Episode Two – Lincoln the movie and historical thinking

I got the chance to watch the Lincoln movie a week or so ago. Loved it. Who would have thought? A movie about constitutional law? Interesting?

But great casting, great costuming, and great performances, especially by Daniel Day Lewis, create a great movie. My wife was concerned about the length and walked out afterwards praising the movie. Even my daughter, who is not the history geek that her dad is, said:

The movie helped me see that Lincoln is an actual person, not just some historical figure in some textbook. He played with his kids while trying to run the country. I thought that was cool.

And I learned more about the process of how laws are passed and so I plan to go to a great college and become a lawyer, supporting my father in his quest to play every golf course in the state of Hawaii.

Okay. I added that last bit. But she really did enjoy how a very important piece of American history was told in an engaging and interesting way.

But how to use the movie in the classroom?

Visualizing Emancipation

We’re deep into the third day of our Teaching American History summer session and are busy uncovering all sorts of handy resources and materials. Part of what we’ve been learning is that African Americans of the 1800s played a huge part in their own gradual emancipation.

A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education highlights and supports that sort of thinking:

Edward L. Ayers, a historian and president of the University of Richmond, calls the emancipation of slaves during the Civil War “the least-understood social transformation in American history.” A new interactive map he helped build shows that emancipation didn’t occur in one moment, he says, but was “an unfolding,” happening from the very first years of the war to the very last. And, he adds, it happened because of African Americans, not merely for them, or to them.

Titled Visualizing Emancipation, this interactive map is an ongoing project, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, that sheds light on when and where men and women became free in the Civil War South. It tells the complex story of emancipation by mapping documentary evidence of black men and women’s activities – using official military correspondence, newspapers, and wartime letters and diaries – alongside the movements of Union regiments and the shifting legal boundaries of slavery.

A very cool Web 2.0 way of helping kids see that there was way more to the Emancipation story than just Lincoln, his Proclamation, and the 13th Amendment.

Freedom Riders

• A twelve year old girl trying to help by carrying glasses of water to victims of a firebombed bus while a mob of Klu Klux Klan members surged around her.
• Alabama governor, John Patterson, railing against “outside agitators – black men and white women” who were coming to Alabama to rile up the “good people of local communities” by riding a bus together.
• College students signing their last will and testament before stepping onto a bus headed to Alabama and Mississippi, expecting to be beaten and killed.
• Bull Conner, the police commissioner of Birmingham, cutting a deal with the KKK promising 15 minutes to “burn, bomb, kill, maim, I don’t give a god-damn what you do. I will guarantee that not one soul will be arrested in the 15 minutes” after Freedom Riders got off the bus.
• A reporter not wanting to look black Freedom Riders in the eye as they entered a “Whites Only” waiting area, knowing that death for the Riders was very likely just minutes away. And later stepping between the Riders and members of a Birmingham mob in an attempt to keep that from happening.

The Freedom Rides of 1961 happened a long time ago. And for your students, the events of that summer seem absolutely ancient. But the PBS special, Freedom Riders, that aired last year as part of the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides is an incredibly powerful tool for helping your kids understand the context of the Civil Rights movement.

PBS does a wonderful job of combining oral interviews from participants, photos, news footage, newspaper coverage, and video clips to create a truly engaging and emotional documentary. The film helps put a human face on both those fighting for civil rights and those fighting to retain the entrenched culture of Jim Crow.

At an hour and 51 minutes, the video is too long for a single classroom period. And, normally, I suggest that very few movies are good enough and powerful enough to show in their entirety. While it would be possible to chunk pieces of this story out, Freedom Riders just may be the exception.

PBS has maintained the Freedom Riders site with its access to teacher materials such as a study guide, instructional materials and links to related resources at EDSITEment. You can find tons of background information on the riders, the context of the period, and a handy timeline. The video is showing on PBS throughout the month of February but you can also stream in directly off the PBS site.

Freedom Riders is a story of amazing courage and bravery. Of racism and extreme bigotry, of cruelty. Simple acts of kindness. Of turning the other cheek and turning a blind eye.

Ultimately, it is a story of America. At its best and its worst. And it’s a story that our kids need to hear.

Tip of the Week – 2012 Black History Month Resources

Updated 2/8/2013
Head over to the latest 2013 list

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It’s not that hard to find a ton of Black History Month resources. But sometimes it’s a bit difficult to find good ones. So I’ve spent some time putting together a short list of useful Black History month teaching materials.

Letters of Note: “To My Old Master” and Flight to Freedom Underground Railroad simulation.

African American History Month from the Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

pays tribute to the generations of African Americans who struggled with adversity to achieve full citizenship in American society.

The National Archives has a great Black History Month site. New resources are clearly marked and all look great!

ThinkFinity, the great metasearch tool from the Verizon Foundation, put together a series of nine lesson plans.

eHow created an interesting take of the Black History Month lesson plan idea called How to Write Lesson Plans for Black History Month.

I really like the stuff that the Smithsonian has put together. There’s a wide variety of goodies – from artists to authors to musicians. They’ve also created an incredible African American Cultural Heritage Tour with images, audio, questions and quizzes.

The History Channel’s Black History site has a ton of videos, quizzes, images and information.

The National Archives has a huge list of Black History resources. Use this together with four great sites from the Library of Congress – The African American Mosaic, African American Odyssey, Civil Rights Exhibitions and Presentations and From Slavery to Civil Rights.

PBS created a couple of really nice collections – Africans in America and African American World.

The NAACP and Verizon put together a very nice multimedia and interactive timeline of the past 100 years of African American History.

Larry Ferlazzo always has great lists of stuff and his African American list is no exception. (Be prepared to spend some time here!)

Before you jump into lesson plans, read The Do’s and Don’ts of Teaching Black History, a good guide from Teaching Tolerance.

A collection of lesson plan sites:

• National Museum of African American History and Culture
• EDSITEment
• TeacherVision
• Teach-nology
• New York Times
• Education World
• The Lesson Plans Page
• African American: Free Resources and Materials
• Scholastic
• Teacher Ideas: New York Times Learning Network

Have fun!