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.
Constitution Role Play: Whose “More Perfect Union”? and The Constitutional Convention: Who Really Won?
Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. 23 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 more representative of the entire country—including enslaved people, workers, and farmers? That is the premise of this role play activity.
The Draft Riot Mystery
Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow.
Students are invited to solve a mystery, using historical clues, about the real story of the Draft Riots.
The Election of 1860 Role Play
Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow.
Role play based on the election of 1860 allows students to explore the political debates of the time and the real reasons for the Civil War.
Frederick Douglass Fights for Freedom
Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow.
A lesson to introduce students to the numerous and varied ways African Americans resisted their enslavement, using the autobiographical Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.
‘If There Is No Struggle…’: Teaching a People’s History of the Abolition Movement
Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. 16 pages.
In this role play, students become members of the American Anti-Slavery Society, facing many of the real challenges to ending slavery.
Presidents and Slaves: Helping Students Find the Truth
Teaching Activity. By Bob Peterson. 7 pages.
How a 5th grade teacher and his students conducted research to answer the question: “Which presidents owned people?” Available in Spanish.
Promoting Social Imagination Through Interior Monologues
Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Linda Christensen. 3 pages.
Empathy, or “social imagination,” allows students to connect to “the other” with whom, on the surface, they may appear to have little in common.
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.
An art contest is used as the basis from which students can examine primary historical documents (advertisements for runaway slaves) to gain a deeper understanding of the institution of slavery in the North.
Reclaiming Hidden History: Students Create a Slavery Walking Tour in Manhattan
Teaching Activity. By Alan J. Singer.
How a teacher and his students organized a tour of the hidden history of slavery in New York.
Reconstructing Race: A Teacher Introduces His Students to the Slippery Concept of Race
Teaching Activity. By Nathanial W. Smith.
A teacher describes a series of lessons he teaches to help his students understand race as a social construct.
Rethinking the U.S. Constitutional Convention: A Role Play
Teaching Activity. By Bob Peterson. 14 pages.
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.
U.S. Mexico War: “We Take Nothing by Conquest, Thank God”
Teaching Activity. Lesson by Bill Bigelow and student reading by Howard Zinn. 21 pages.
Interactive activity introduces students to the history and often untold story of the U.S.-Mexico War. Roles available in Spanish.
A War to Free the Slaves?
Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow.
Students examine excerpts from Lincoln’s first inaugural address, the rarely mentioned original Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution that Lincoln promised to support, and the Emancipation Proclamation to explore some of the myths about the Civil War.
When the Impossible Suddenly Became Possible: A Reconstruction Mixer
Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez and Nqobile Mthethwa. 25 pages.
A mixer role play that explores the connections between different social movements during Reconstruction.
Who Freed the Slaves?
Student Handout. By Bill Bigelow.
This timeline can be used as a resource for lessons on the Civil War, President Lincoln, the 54th Regiment, and the end of slavery.
Reconstructing the South: A Role Play
Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. 17 pages.
This role play engages students in thinking about what freedpeople needed in order to achieve—and sustain—real freedom following the Civil War. It’s followed by a chapter from the book Freedom’s Unfinished Revolution on what would happen to the land in the South after slavery ended.
The First Slaves
Teaching Activity. By Gayle Olson-Raymer.
Questions and teaching ideas for Chapter 2 of Voices of a People’s History of the United States on early American slavery, resistance, and rebellion.
New York and Slavery: Time to Teach the Truth
Teaching Guide. By Alan J. Singer. 2008.
Narrative description of slavery in the north and strategies for engaging young people as historians on the topic.
Slavery and Defiance
Teaching Activity. By Gayle Olson-Raymer.
Questions and teaching ideas for Chapter 9 of Voices of a People’s History of the United States on black and white resistance to slavery before the Civil War.