The Color Line
Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow.
A lesson on the countless colonial laws enacted to create division and inequality based on race. This helps students understand the origins of racism in the United States and who benefits.
Time Periods: Colonization: 1492 - 1764, 18th Century, Revolution & Constitution: 1765 - 1799
Themes: African American, Laws & Citizen Rights, Native American, Racism & Racial Identity, Slavery and Resistance
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Constitution Role Play: Whose “More Perfect Union”? and The Constitutional Convention: Who Really Won?
Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. 24 pages.
The U.S. Constitution endorsed slavery and favored the interests of the owning classes. What kind of Constitution would have resulted from founders who were representative of the entire country? That is the premise of this role play activity.
Time Periods: 18th Century, Revolution & Constitution: 1765 - 1799
Themes: African American, Democracy & Citizenship, Laws & Citizen Rights, Racism & Racial Identity, Slavery and Resistance, Social Class
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Freedom on the Move: Rediscovering the Stories of Self-Liberating People
Archive.
Digital collection and crowdsourcing project that provides access to information, through thousands of print advertisements, about freedom-seekers and their would-be enslavers in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Time Periods: 18th Century, Revolution & Constitution: 1765 - 1799, 19th Century, Early 19th Century: 1800 - 1849, Civil War Era: 1850 - 1864
Themes: African American, Labor, Laws & Citizen Rights, Racism & Racial Identity, Slavery and Resistance
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Poetry of Defiance: How the Enslaved Resisted
Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez.
Through a mixer activity, students are introduced to the various ways that enslaved people resisted the brutal exploitation of slavery. The lesson culminates in a collective class poem highlighting the defiance of the enslaved.
Time Periods: Revolution & Constitution: 1765 - 1799, 19th Century, Early 19th Century: 1800 - 1849, Civil War Era: 1850 - 1864
Themes: African American, Language Arts, Slavery and Resistance
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Reading Between the Lines: An Art Contest Helps Students Imagine the Lives of Runaway Slaves
Teaching Activity. By Thom Thacker and Michael A. Lord. 4 pages. Rethinking Schools.
An art contest is used as the basis from which students can examine primary historical documents (advertisements for runaway slaves) to gain a deeper understanding of the institution of slavery in the North.
Time Periods: Colonization: 1492 - 1764, 18th Century, Revolution & Constitution: 1765 - 1799, 19th Century, Early 19th Century: 1800 - 1849, Civil War Era: 1850 - 1864
Themes: African American, Racism & Racial Identity, Slavery and Resistance
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Reclaiming Hidden History: Students Create a Slavery Walking Tour in Manhattan
Teaching Activity. By Alan J. Singer. Rethinking Schools.
How a teacher and his students organized a tour of the hidden history of slavery in New York.
Time Periods: Colonization: 1492 - 1764, 18th Century, Revolution & Constitution: 1765 - 1799, 19th Century, Early 19th Century: 1800 - 1849, Civil War Era: 1850 - 1864
Themes: African American, Racism & Racial Identity, Slavery and Resistance
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Rethinking the U.S. Constitutional Convention: A Role Play
Teaching Activity. By Bob Peterson. 14 pages. Rethinking Schools.
A role play on the Constitutional Convention which brings to life the social forces active during and immediately following the American Revolution with focus on two key topics: suffrage and slavery. An elementary school adaptation of the Constitution Role Play by Bill Bigelow. Roles available in Spanish.
Time Periods: 18th Century, Revolution & Constitution: 1765 - 1799
Themes: Democracy & Citizenship, Laws & Citizen Rights, Native American, Slavery and Resistance, Women's History
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Half a Revolution
Teaching Activity. By Gayle Olson-Raymer. 16 pages.
Questions and teaching ideas for Chapter 5 of Voices of a People's History of the United States on the Revolutionary War as "a rich man's war and a poor man's fight," as well as the failure of early Americans to complete a full revolution.
Time Periods: 18th Century, Revolution & Constitution: 1765 - 1799
Themes: Democracy & Citizenship, Laws & Citizen Rights, Social Class
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Servitude and Rebellion
Teaching Activity. By Gayle Olsen-Raymer.
Questions and teaching ideas for Chapter 3 of Voices of a People's History of the United States on the role and dissent of indentured servants in American colonial history.
Time Periods: Colonization: 1492 - 1764, 18th Century, Revolution & Constitution: 1765 - 1799
Themes: Democracy & Citizenship, Immigration, Labor, Social Class
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Re-examining the Revolution
Background Reading. By Ray Raphael. 7 pages.
Based on his book Founding Myths, Raphael critiques the textbook portrayal of the American Revolution. The textbooks say that "a few special people forged American freedom" which "misrepresents, and even contradicts, the spirit of the American Revolution."
Time Periods: 18th Century, Revolution & Constitution: 1765 - 1799
Themes: Democracy & Citizenship, Education, Laws & Citizen Rights
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Whitewashing Our First President
Article. By Clarence Lusane. 2014.
Critical review of an upper elementary non-fiction book about George Washington and the people he kept in bondage.
Time Periods: Revolution & Constitution: 1765 - 1799
Themes: African American, Racism & Racial Identity, Slavery and Resistance
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The American Revolutionaries: A History in Their Own Words, 1750-1800
Book - Non-fiction. Edited by Milton Meltzer. 1987.
First hand accounts and primary documents on the American Revolution.
Time Periods: 18th Century, Revolution & Constitution: 1765 - 1799
Answering the Cry for Freedom: Stories of African Americans and the American Revolution
Book - Non-fiction. By Gretchen Woelfle. Illustrated by R. Gregory Christie. 2016. 238 pages.
Profiles of African American, free and enslaved, during the American Revolution for upper elementary to middle school.
Time Periods: 18th Century, Revolution & Constitution: 1765 - 1799
Themes: African American, Slavery and Resistance
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The First American Revolution: Before Lexington and Concord
Book - Non-fiction. By Ray Raphael. 2003.
The events leading up to the American Revolution.
Time Periods: 18th Century, Revolution & Constitution: 1765 - 1799
Themes: Democracy & Citizenship, Laws & Citizen Rights, Wars & Related Anti-War Movements
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Founding Myths: Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past
Book - Non-fiction. By Ray Raphael. 2014.
Myths and the reasons that they have come to replace the real stories of the Revolutionary period.
Time Periods: 18th Century, Revolution & Constitution: 1765 - 1799
Themes: Democracy & Citizenship
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A People’s History of the American Revolution: How Common People Shaped the Fight for Independence
Book - Non-fiction. By Ray Raphael. Series editor: Howard Zinn. 2002.
Using hundreds of primary sources, this book tells the more accurate, populist, complicated, and interesting story of the American Revolution.
Time Periods: 18th Century, Revolution & Constitution: 1765 - 1799
Themes: Democracy & Citizenship, Immigration, Wars & Related Anti-War Movements
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A People’s History of the United States: 1492 – Present
Books - Non-fiction. By Howard Zinn. 2005, with a new introduction by Anthony Arnove in 2015. 784 pages.
Howard Zinn's groundbreaking work on U.S. history. This book details lives and facts rarely included in textbooks—an indispensable teacher and student resource.
Time Periods: Colonization: 1492 - 1764, Revolution & Constitution: 1765 - 1799, Early 19th Century: 1800 - 1849, Civil War Era: 1850 - 1864, Reconstruction Period: 1865 - 1876, Industrial Revolution: 1877 - 1899, Turn of the Century: 1900 - 1909, World War I: 1910 - 1919, Prosperity, Depression, & World War II: 1920 - 1944, Cold War: 1945 - 1960, People’s Movement: 1961 - 1974, Post-Civil Rights Era: 1975 - 2000, 2001 - Present, All US History
Themes: African American, Reconstruction, Civil Rights Movements, Democracy & Citizenship, Economics, Education, Immigration, Imperialism, Labor, Laws & Citizen Rights, Native American, Organizing, Racism & Racial Identity, Slavery and Resistance, Social Class, US Foreign Policy, Wars & Related Anti-War Movements, Women's History
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Slave Nation: How Slavery United the Colonies & Sparked the American Revolution
Book - Non-fiction. By Alfred Blumrosen and Ruth Blumrosen. 2006.
A detailed account of the role slavery played in the Revolutionary War and the writing of the U.S. Constitution.
Time Periods: Colonization: 1492 - 1764, 18th Century, Revolution & Constitution: 1765 - 1799, 19th Century, Early 19th Century: 1800 - 1849, Industrial Revolution: 1877 - 1899
Themes: Economics, Slavery and Resistance
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Chains
Book - Fiction. By Laurie Halse Anderson. 2010. 336 pages.
Historical fiction based on the life of an enslaved teenager during the Revolutionary War.
Time Periods: Revolution & Constitution: 1765 - 1799
Themes: African American, Slavery and Resistance, Wars & Related Anti-War Movements
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Mumbet’s Declaration of Independence
Book - Non-fiction. By Gretchen Woelfle. Illustrated by Alix Delinois. 2014.
Picture book about true story of Elizabeth Freeman, a woman who challenged the legality of her enslavement.
Time Periods: Revolution & Constitution: 1765 - 1799
Themes: African American, Democracy & Citizenship, Slavery and Resistance, Women's History
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