Approximately ninety-six Africans held captive on the British slave ship Little George revolted against the ship’s captain and crew, eventually taking control of the entire ship.
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Teaching Guide. By Alan J. Singer. 2008. 178 pages.
Narrative description of slavery in the north and strategies for engaging young people as historians on the topic.
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A group of African Americans presented a petition for freedom to the Massachusetts Council and the House of Representatives.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. Rethinking Schools. 16 pages.
In this lesson, students explore many of the real challenges faced by abolitionists with a focus on the American Anti-Slavery Society.
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Born on this day in Massachusetts, Charles Sumner was outspoken against slavery, for full recognition of Haiti, against the U.S.-Mexico War, for true reconstruction with land distribution, against school segregation, and much more.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. 17 pages.
A role play allows students to examine issues of race and class when exploring both the accomplishments and limitations of the Seneca Falls Convention.
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Freedom’s Journal was the first African American owned and operated newspaper in the United States.
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Film clip. Voices of a People's History.
Frederick Douglass' speech "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro" (1852) is read by Danny Glover.
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Article. Background reading for teachers. By Bill Bigelow. 4 pages.
A review of Freedom's Unfinished Revolution, a collection of primary documents for high school on the Civil War and Reconstruction.
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Minister, journalist, newspaper editor, and abolitionist Elijah Parish Lovejoy was murdered by a pro-slavery mob.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Selene Castrovilla. Illustrated by E. B. Lewis. 2022. 40 pages.
A Civil War story about a man who seizes his freedom from slavery and teams up with a Union general to save a Union fort from the Confederates.
Teaching Activity by Selene Castrovilla (Illustrated by E. B. Lewis)
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A Boston judge stopped the extradition of George Latimer, who had escaped enslavement in Virginia, and allowed him to raise funds for his own manumission.
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Teaching Guide. Presented by Ra Vision Media & Know Your Rights Camp. 2022. 85 pages.
In conjunction with the Netflix series of the same name, this teaching guide provides students with resources and activities to understand and address systemic and institutional racism.
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Abolitionists freed a man captured under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 in Syracuse, New York.
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With escalating escapes of the formerly enslaved, the Virginia General Assembly responded to lobbying from slaveholders and human traffickers by making it harder for enslaved African Americans to escape on ships and by increasing penalties for anyone helping such freedom-seekers.
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Digital collection. Documents that help explain how Black people traversed the bloody ground from slavery to freedom between the beginning of the Civil War in 1861 and the beginning of Reconstruction in 1867.
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The Union Army occupied the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina, freeing approximately 10,000 people who had been enslaved, starting what became known as the Port Royal Experiment.
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Digital collection. Collections as data and machine learning project examining Jim Crow and racially-based legislation signed into law in North Carolina between Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement.
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Tunis Campbell, who assisted in the Port Royal Experiment to assist freed people during Reconstruction, was an abolitionist, state senator, and justice of the peace.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Lerone Bennett Jr. 2016 (originally published in 1962). 736 pages.
A detailed history and analysis of African American history in the United States.
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Congress overrode President Andrew Johnson’s veto and passed the first of four statutes known as the Reconstruction Acts, which outlined the process of readmission to the Union.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Clarence Lusane. 2010. 544 pages.
The untold story of African Americans in the White House from the 18th century to the present, including the presidents who held people in bondage.
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Profiles. Zinn Education Project. 2014.
Brief biographies of 25 Black abolitionists.
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A meeting was held in New York of abolitionists to address the injustice of continued slavery in Cuba.
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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.
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