We have internally discussed doing a FedEx day during professional development days at Harlem Academy but so far have not conducted one. It got me to thinking, what would this look like in my eighth grade classroom? Today we’ll find out! My students will have two class periods – FedEx two day shipping, if you will – to research and produce a product that demonstrates their deep understanding of an event or idea from American History of their choosing. With minimal guidelines and scaffolding, this is an opportunity for students to not only research something they are passionate about but also to think creatively about how they can present their work to the class.

Some of the topics my Junior Historians have chosen to research include: the correlation between the birth of hip-hop in the Bronx and the Harlem Renaissance, the life and work of Congressman John Lewis, the influence the American Revolution had on L’Overture and the Haitian Revolution, the story of Central American immigrants to the United States, H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds, and much more.

After the jump, you can see the directions given to the students. Be sure to check back in April to see my observations about the results and the experience.

Reflection:
In my seventh grade United States History course we take an entire trimester to investigate slavery in the 19th century. We examine the conditions of chattel slavery, the works of abolitionists, the era of failed compromises, the Civil War, and the Reconstruction Era utilizing only primary source materials. In creating my abolitionism anthology, I intend to create a supplementary workbook for my students to guide them in researching and discussing the evolution of abolitionist writings. In particular, I wish my collection to track the varied justifications and arguments presented by 19th century writers to push the issue of abolitionism to the forefront in the 19th century.

The collection will culminate with excerpts from the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln’s second inaugural address, and the text of the thirteenth amendment. Students will then discuss and debate the essential question of whether or not Lincoln deserves the moniker, the Great Emancipator. Students will also identify the argument or justification from the anthology that they feel best exemplifies the abolitionist spirit – in that it is the most persuasive.

Reflection:
In my 7th grade history class, students investigate the struggle of abolition as a process. From chattel slavery, to the North West Ordinance, the importation  ban, the failed compromises, etc, until we arrive at the Reconstruction Era amendments (we pick up the civil rights struggle in the 8th grade). The two texts that best fit into this conversation and illustrate the constant push for abolition and the curious situation of free-blacks in America at the time, are James Forten’s Letters and the anonymous ballad, The African Slave.

The first person account of Itaniko’s capture, attempted escape/suicide, role in talking down a rebellion, and mancipation directly to the aversion to and surprise at the actions of these “Christian” men: “You boast of your Freedom … your mild Constitution.” Thus dispelling the philanthropic argument of Christianizing and improving the enslaved African’s lot in life. The eloquence and emotion of the ballad clearly captures well the sufferings of the Africans captured and transported into slavery.

The second piece, Forten’s Letters, is a curious continuation of the struggles of Africans in the Americas. Though the slave trade now abolished, Forten speaks of the injustices and inconsistencies in the application of the words of the Constitution. Harkening to the Constitution, Forten says “… declaring ‘all men’ free, they did not particularize white and black, because … [they weren’t supposed to] question whether we were men or not.” Forten here not only exposes the hypocrisies in the document, but illustrates that mere emancipation is not enough to elevate the enslaved peoples to the true status of citizen, or even man. Seeing Pennsylvania as one of the last bastions of liberty for free black men, he laments that the newly proposed bill would render them slaves again – in the stripping of their liberties, movements, and property. 

These two documents interacting will help my students to see the slow progression towards achieving the ideals in the Constitution through emancipation. That once removed from the bonds of chattel slavery, the free African was no more free in some respects than his enslaved brethren. The long, unsteady march towards full equality would be, as with many things, two steps forward and one step back for many more years to come.

This past fall I participated in Amazing Grace: How Writers Helped End Slavery, a masters level course offered by the Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History. The course, led by Columbia Professor, and GLI President,  James Basker, examined the role of abolitionist writers in the 19th century struggle to end that "peculiar institution." The final project was to compile our own abolitionist writing anthology that could be used in the classroom. 

I wanted to share the work I generated during this course as perhaps the primary sources I chose could prove useful in your own classrooms. In this blog "mini-series" (Amazing Grace) I will share with you my reflections, my anthology introductions, and the sources themselves. Most, if not all, of the sources I reference can be found in James Basker's book American Antislavery Writings: Colonial Beginnings to Emancipation.

Reflection:

One of the major themes and discussion questions that runs throughout my 7th grade American History class is: How have we become a more perfect union? Taken from the Constitution and used as a mission statement for our nation, my students measure the successes and failures of our democratic experiment. The hardest part of introducing this theme to a group of predominantly African American teenagers is the inherent and obvious hypocrisies that existed in the colonial and revolutionary eras. To this end, I found the Patrick Henry letter, Letter to John Alsop, from January 13th, 1773, to be an incredibly unique and insightful document for inclusion in my classroom.

Henry is refreshingly candid and open in this letter, not just outlining his practical beliefs on slavery but also clearly and freely admitting to failing to put his ideas into practice. His blunt reflection will be particularly accessible to my middle school students in that they too can relate to believing in one ideal but finding it hard to put that into practice – whether for “general inconvenience” or peer pressure.

What I found to be the most significant thing about Henry’s letter was the perspective. He, who was a vocal patriot, could speak of the virtues of liberty and independence but at the same time felt incapable – or perhaps more to the point, unwilling – to extend those ideals to the enslaved Africans. Could he not see clear analogy of the founders and slaves and the king and the colonists? How the king’s tyranny in taxes was in fact less a transgression than the colonists’ tyranny over the body and souls of enslaved peoples? This letter helps to frame two important discussion questions that I engage my students in at this time of study: 1. Did framers consider or debate the extension of rights to more than just white males, and 2. Is there to be sympathy to the king and parliament in the taxation debate?
 
This letter clearly lets my junior historians in on the thought process of how slavery fits into the Enlightened/Revolutionary Era, while also perhaps providing some insight and perspective on how King George might have viewed the colonists.

 This past week I was asked to collaborate on a seminar through the Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History. Partnered with Tim Bailey, Director of Education at GLI, we led pedagogical sessions for twelve middle and high school public school teachers from Omaha, Nebraska. Our focus was on incorporating the use of primary sources in the classroom in discussion of our nation’s immigrant history. In addition to a tour of GLI’s massive collection of over 60,000 historical artifacts, the group went on an immigration themed walking tour of China town, Little Italy, and the Lower East side that concluded with a visit to the Tenement Museum. On the last day of the seminar we traveled to Ellis Island and Liberty Island.

We arrived on Ellis Island just before 10AM and were greeted by site volunteers, Tony and Andy. They took us into the great hall and up to the mezzanine for a presentation of the island’s history – from private land to immigration gateway to national park. In operation from 1892 to 1954, Ellis Island’s immigration station was the nation’s busiest port of entry. Some three to five thousand immigrants (perhaps as many as twelve million total) were processed at this site. Standing in the Great Hall registry room, the cacophony of foreign language tourists harkens back to a very different time and gave you a small sense of what it must have been like.

At the conclusion of their presentation, the volunteers lead our group beyond the reaches of most visitors – the long abandoned buildings on the south side of the island.

We exited the main Ellis Island building and walked along the ferry slip, past the Do Not Enter signs and along the original ferry landing point that was heavily damaged by floodwaters during Hurricane Sandy. The original ferry, left in the slip since 1954, had long been weathered and sunk at its mooring. In 2009, the hull and anchor were dredged from the waterway in a project to sure up the sea wall.

We entered through an unmarked door and were quickly inside a brick hallway at a fork – one way leading to the hospital laundry room and the other to the contagious disease ward. These enclosed pathways wind their way around the entire abandoned building complex, ensuring that immigrants and staff could travel from building to building without ever emerging into open air.

We stopped in the hospital laundry room containing steam powered industrial washing machines and a drier. Down another hallway and through a set of rusting doors, we arrived in an outdoor courtyard at the center of the hospital facility. 

Standing in the courtyard of the abandoned hospital complex gives you an uneasy feeling. Even in its peak operation years, 1902 to 1930, this must have been a harrowing experience for immigrants that had journeyed weeks in the steerage holds of ships for a chance at the American dream. As many as one in five immigrants were selected for special scrutiny and many of those would have ended up here – where I stood. Immigration agents and doctors were on the lookout for contagious diseases – trachoma and favus chief among them – or other debilitating conditions that would cause these immigrants to become “charges of the state” and therefore unworthy of admission.

Many of these buildings are in desperate shape. The grass is littered with bricks and metal from the structures. The old psychiatric ward’s rusty caged-in porch offers an eerie backdrop to the scenes of overgrown grass and newly applied art installations.