African and African American Curriculum Guidebook DRAFT

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Curriculum
Guide
for the
Infusion of
African and
African-American
History and
Culture
An Initiative of the Fort Worth
Independent School District and its
Stakeholders
(last updated June 2019)
STILL. (2018)
Mr. Lonnie Williams

FWISD Instructional Coach, William James MS
Eastern Hills High School, Class of 97’
AAAH Overlay Curriculum Guidebook - DRAFT – last updated June 2019

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Vision
Preparing students for college, career and community leadership through learning about the
individual histories and cultures of people represented in the FWISD community. Going into the
future this curriculum supports:
● Leading innovative experiences that develop students understanding about history, race,
culture and identity;
● Empowering stakeholders to forge bridges between district and community about history,
race, culture and identity;
● Encouraging students to value unity in the midst of their diverse cultures and histories;
● Sparking life-long understanding about the ways history and culture can serve as a source of
individual pride, self-confidence, and respect for the dignity of people from all racial and
ethnic backgrounds;
● Empowering students to be centered in their own culture and authors of their personal
narrative;
● Creating conditions that afford students the opportunity to explore their own story with a
freedom to be their authentic selves.
Mission
This document lives to create equity within the curriculum by providing multiple historical and
cultural narratives that enhance students understanding of themselves and fostering authentic
relationships grounded in mutual understanding.

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Table of Contents
1. Acknowledgements
2. Overview
3. Overarching Understandings and Overarching Questions
4. Guiding Themes of the African and African-American History Curriculum
5. Narrative Essay (under construction)
6. K-12 Implementation – Core course infusion with depth through electives
7. Content Maps by Grade Level
a. Kinder - 12
b. Elective courses
8. African and African-American History Resource List K-12
a. Titles in campus libraries
b. Local Resources
9. Learning Experience Opportunities Beyond the Classroom (Under construction)
a. Field Trips
b. Local and Regional Resources
c. FWISD Elementary History Fair
d. State and National History Day
10. Black History Month Ideas and Resources

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Acknowledgements
With any undertaking of this scope and magnitude there is an indebtedness owed those sincere
and dedicated individuals whose support made it possible. Indeed, many people assisted in
preparing this curriculum guidebook. Their commitment, expertise, and passion in developing this
curriculum is greatly appreciated.
African and African and American History and Culture Curriculum Writing Team
Academic Consultants Social Studies Department Staff
Richard Benson, PhD. John Fernandez

Historian and Asst. Professor at Spelman College Core Curriculum & Innovation Coordinator –
Elementary and Middle School
W. Marvin Dulaney, PhD.
Historian, Associate Professor Emeritus at UT Kathleen Hall
Arlington, and Past-Director of the Center for Administrative Associate
African American Studies at UT Arlington
Mishelle Hall
Milan Sanders Core Curriculum & Innovation Coordinator -
Chosen Business Consulting LLC Middle School
Joseph Niedziela
Director of Social Studies
Xavier Pantoja
Core Curriculum & Innovation Coordinator –
High School
Ongoing leadership and support from:
The Friends of Cobb Park

FWISD Academics
FWISD Equity and Excellence
FWISD Equity Committee
FWISD School Leadership
FWISD Communications
FWISD Historic Stop Six Initiative
FWISD teachers and campus administrators

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Overview
FWISD’s mission is to “Prepare ALL students for success in college, career, and community
leadership”. Being prepared for success means a FWISD graduate should independently be able
to articulate ideas and exhibit behaviors that cultivate teamwork, critical thought, and
communication skills needed to function in a culturally diverse workforce and global community.
The overlay curriculum sets the narrative, understandings and questions to guide the infusion of
African and African-American history and culture into the core curricula across grade level and
courses beyond what is defined in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). A living
document, this curriculum remains a work in progress. It will evolve in response to future TEKS
iterations and, until then, be improved upon to best serve the FWISD learning community.
What is an ‘Overlay’ curriculum?
An overlay curriculum serves as a support and guidance document for curriculum writers,
teachers, administrators and anyone else who is interested in knowing what FWISD students are
learning about African and African-American history and culture. It does not take the place of the
core district curriculum, nor is it a separate unit of instruction. Rather, the overlay curriculum
informs what’s written into the core curriculum just as grade/level course TEKS are used. See
Figure 1 for additional information.
Figure 1
How is the curriculum organized?

The content narrative of African and African-American History and Culture (AAAHC) is organized
according to 7 Themes. The themes were developed by historian advisors W. Marvin Dulaney,
PhD and Richard Benson, PhD and refined as part of a joint collaboration between the district’s
AAAHC curriculum writing team and members of the FWISD community. The themes are intended
to systemically infuse the experience of Africans and American Americans throughout the district’s

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Social Studies curricula. The themes are:

1. The African Experience
2. Africans in the Atlantic World
3. African Americans in the Colonial and Antebellum World
4. African Americans in the Modern America
5. Struggle for Freedom, Justice and Equality
6. Contemporary African American Experience
7. Impact of African Americans on Arts, Culture, Business, Science, Technology and Health
Living up to the mission and vision of this document means that students learn to understand at
progressively deeper levels. That they’re able to transfer their understanding of AAAHC to novel
contexts while they’re in school or upon high school graduation. In support of this aim, the
curriculum’s structure is primarily influenced by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe’s Understanding
by Design framework. Understandings and questions are mapped at two-levels.
 Overarching Understandings and Overarching Essential Questions

 Theme Level Enduring Understandings and Essential Questions
What are ‘Enduring Understandings’ and ‘Essential Questions’?
An enduring understanding is a “big idea” that gets to the core of content. It’s what we want
students to remember after they have forgotten many of the details. An enduring understanding
provides the larger purpose for the learned content, having enduring value beyond the classroom.
It answers the question, “Why is this topic worth studying?” It goes beyond discreet facts and is
transferable to situations beyond the content.
An essential question is a “big idea” question that shapes the materials and activities that will guide
student thinking and inquiry into theme related content. Essential questions probe the deepest
issues confronting us, complex and baffling matters that elude simple answers, issues such as
courage, leadership, identity, relationships, justice, conflict, or prejudice. They are open-ended and
are framed to provoke and sustain student interest.
How should teachers and administrators use this curriculum guide?

Similar to learning standards, the overlay curriculum informs “the what” behind the district’s written
core curriculum. Therefore, if teachers are planning their daily instruction using the core
curriculum, then they are by consequence also “teaching the overlay/infusion curriculum”. Where
applicable, the core curriculum will include annotations that reference back to this guidebook.
In lieu of day-to-day planning, this guidebook is envisioned to better serve teachers and
administrators as a reference and learning tool throughout the year. It provides a comprehensive
account of the content, how it plays out, and curates a list of aligned resources. Administrators
and teachers can also use this guidebook to inform professional learning priorities and plan
campus-based special events.

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Overarching Components
Overarching understandings and questions organize the curriculum at a macro-level. They serve
an aspirational purpose as well as a guide for how the content themes are infused. They represent
conceptual takeaways students will have as a result of their K-12 social studies experience in
FWISD schools.
Overarching Understandings Overarching Questions
Students will understand that… Students will keep considering…
● the study of African and African-American ● Why study African and African-American
history and culture, and the heritage of others, history and culture?
can serve as a source of individual pride, self-
confidence, and respect for the dignity of people ● How can I remain authentic in my own cultural
from all racial and ethnic backgrounds; identity while I learn about cultures that are
different from my mine?
● since the dawn of civilization in Ancient Africa,
African and African-American contributions to ● How do I use my ability to critically think when
the world have been instrumental to furthering learning to understand cultures different from
my own?
human progress;
● the philosophies, principles, customs, and ● How is each of us connected to the past? How
beliefs that permeate the African and African- has history influenced who each of us is today?
American experience are rooted in Africa and
have been enormously influential in shaping ● How have the contributions of Africans and
societies of the African diaspora as a whole; African-Americans throughout history improved
the political, economic, and social development
● single narratives of history are incomplete and of humanity?
often lead to misconceptions. Challenging them
● Why has the history of African and African-
with accurate and well-substantiated claims can
American and their contributions to the world
be a powerful means of contributing to a been underrepresented in the mainstream
healthier democracy; narratives of world and U.S. history?
● the African diaspora represents a large part of ● What is the African and African-American
the human population and their activities add up experience in the world and why is it
to a large part of human history; significant?
● African history is world history; ● How will the narrative of African and African-
American history and culture change in the
● African-American history is American history; future?
● African Americans have pushed “We the

People” to live up to the founding promises of
freedom, justice and human equality.

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Thematic Elements: African and African-American History and Culture

For two centuries African Americans have sought to tell their history and to make it a part of
American history. In the face of distortions, lies, and systematic attempts to deny that they even
had a history, African Americans have constantly written their own history and illustrated how their
history is a central part of American history. Indeed, as this curriculum for the Fort Worth
Independent School District will demonstrate, the African and the African-American experience in
America not only follows the overall experience of all Americans in the United States, it has also
shaped, influenced and determined the outcomes of many important and significant events in the
history of the nation. Africans and their African-American descendants have been an integral part
of world history and our nation’s history. The themes are intended to provide students in the
FWISD an overall curriculum that infuses the experience of Africans and American Americans
throughout the district’s curricula.
Theme 1 - The African Experience

This theme addresses the experiences of Africans in the ancient and precolonial world. It
addresses identity—who were the peoples who were labeled as “Africans” in the ancient and
precolonial world? This theme addresses the origins of humanity in Africa, the roles of Africans in
the ancient world from Egypt to Kush to Ethiopia to the kingdoms of the Sudan, and their
contributions to the arts and sciences. It also examines the culture, religion, and the lifestyles of
Africans in the precolonial period.
Broad topics:
 The African Origins of Humanity
 The African Origins of Civilization
 Kingdoms and Dynasties
 African Identity
 African Culture
Enduring Understandings Essential Questions

● all humanity originated in Africa; ● How are the history of Africa and origins of
● Africans created the first complex and humanity related?
sophisticated human societies; ● Who have been the dominant shapers of
African history over time?
● African cultures adapted to harsh
environments, spread through major ● What role does Africa play in world history
migrations and established powerful and human progress?
kingdoms;
● What elements of our currents arts,
sciences, mathematics, law, religion, and
● the early civilizations and kingdoms that
philosophy can be traced to early African
flourished in Africa were globally connected
civilizations?
and made significant contributions to the
world, such as agricultural products, minerals, ● What is MA’AT and how is it a part of the
and other material goods, as well as cultural foundation of African society?
knowledge and cultural expression;
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● How has African history been shaped by

● the peoples of Egypt, or ancient Kemet, the ways early African societies captured
contributed to the world’s three great religions, and shared their past?
developed the mystery system that became
foundation for modern mathematics, chemistry ● What were the major achievements of the
and other sciences, and had the first woman West African civilizations of Ghana, Mali,
leader of a nation, Queen Hathshepsut; Nubia, Sudan, Juda and Songhai?
● How did interactions between African
● the growth of kingdoms such as Mali, Songhai civilizations and kingdoms with peoples
and Ghana, Nubia, Juda, and the Sudan were from outside the continent shape their
part of wider economic and cultural currents histories and cultures?
and thus not isolated;
● What are misconceptions people have
● the kingdoms of Mali, Songhai, and Ghana, about Africa?
Nubia, Sudan and Juda were among the
● How are African-Americans, and people of
world’s wealthy and highly educated;
the African diaspora, today connected to
● West Africans and Europeans traded with the history and rich cultures of the early
each other and considered each other equal; African people?
● Africa is continent and NOT a country;
● Africa’s identity as a place is articulated by the

cultural and ethnic diversity of its people as
well as the physical form and climate of its
land;
● the historical narrative and spiritual beliefs of
Africans and African-Americans are rooted the
early African experience.
Resources from the African and African-American History and Culture Learning Series
AAAHC Series – Theme 1 - Power Point Presentation

List of sources for further study and documents for infusion
For further reading about this theme:
o Cheikh A. Diop, The African Origins of Civilization: Myth or Reality?

o Chancellor Williams, The Destruction of Black Civilization.
o Ivan van Sertima, They Came Before Columbus.
o Margaret Musgrove and Diane Dillon, Ashanti to Zulu: African Traditions.
o Muriel Miller Branch, The Water Brought Us: The Story of the Gullah Speaking People.
o Ifeoma Onyefulu, A Is for Africa.
o Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade.
o John Reader, Africa: A Biography of the Continent.

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Theme 2 - Africans in the Atlantic World

This theme addresses how Africans became a part of the “Atlantic World”—that is, the world that
emerged when peoples from the Eastern and Western Hemispheres encountered each other.
Based on the fact that Africans were the largest group of people to migrate to the Western
Hemisphere before 1700 a.c.e. (forced migration through the slave trade), this theme addresses
the encounters between Africans and Europeans before and during the Atlantic slave trade.
Broad topics:
 African Explorers and the African Presence in the Americas before the Slave Trade
 The Trans-Saharan Slave Trade
 Mechanisms that Drove the Atlantic Slave Trade in Africa and in the Western Hemisphere
(e.g. the trade for guns, alcohol, textiles, sugar, rice, tobacco, indigo, as well as intertribal
warfare).
 The Slavery in Africa vs. Race-based Slavery
 Role of Europeans and Africans in the Slave Trade
 The Middle Passage
 Tribal National Conflict
 Slavery in North America and South America
 African prescience in the World
 African Resistance to Slavery

● evidence suggests Africans were located in the ● How did Africans live in freedom before
Western Hemisphere prior to 1492; enslavement?
● Africans were among the first to have explored ● How did Africans help settle what would
and contributed to the development of the pre- one day become the United States of
Colonial Western Hemisphere; America?
● when Africans and Europeans made contact ● How did Europeans and African
on Africa’s western coast in the mid-1400s, Americans perceive African cultures?
they met as equals and built relationships
based on trade; ● Why was the African continent used by
European colonists as a source of
● slavery is an institution of human history and enslaved labor?
has evolved over time as the result of a variety
of reasons; ● Has the institution of slavery always been
based on the perception of race?
● Africans were the subject of the largest forced
migration in human history; ● What was the experience of capture and
enslavement for those who became
● Africans were enslaved as the result of a African Americans?
variety of historical phenomena;
● Arabs, Africans and Europeans participated in
the Atlantic Slave Trade;
● while the people captured in the slave trade
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were generically referred to as “Africans” or

“Negroes,” they came from various ethnic
groups in West Africa, Southwest Africa and
East Africa such as the Ashanti, the Ibos, the
Hausas, the Fulani, the Kongolese, the Bantus
and the Matebele;
● Africans started to fight the transatlantic slave
trade as soon as it began. Their struggles were
multifaceted and covered four continents over
four centuries.

o Cheikh A. Diop, The African Origins of Civilization: Myth or Reality?
o Chancellor Williams, The Destruction of Black Civilization.
o Ivan van Sertima, They Came Before Columbus.
o Margaret Musgrove and Diane Dillon, Ashanti to Zulu: African Traditions.
o Muriel Miller Branch, The Water Brought Us: The Story of the Gullah Speaking People.
o Ifeoma Onyefulu, A Is for Africa.
o Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade.
o John Reader, Africa: A Biography of the Continent.

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Theme 3 - Africans in the Colonial and Antebellum World

This theme addresses the impact of Africans on the various areas of the Western Hemisphere. It
addresses their experiences in the various European colonies and how their labor and cultural
contributions transformed the Western Hemisphere. Chronologically, this theme addresses the
experiences of Africans (and African Americans) from the colonial period through the American
Revolution and the antebellum period.
Broad topics:
 The Development of Race-Based Slavery
 The African Presence in New Spain
 The African Presence in New France
 The African Presence in the English Colonies - origins of North American slavery, differences
of the African- American Experience in the Northern, Middle, and Southern Colonies
 The Experience of Enslaved African Americans in the Antebellum United States.
 The Significance and the Impact of Cotton
 The Experience of Free African Americans and the Origins and Development of
 African-American Institutions (churches, schools, civic and fraternal organizations)
 The Experience of African Americans in the American Revolution
 The Significance and the Impact of the Haitian Revolution
 The Maroon Experience

● enslaved and free people of African descent ● How would the New France, New Spain, and
had a profound impact on the economic, English colonies have developed without the
political, and intellectual development of New contributions made by enslaved and free
France, New Spain and the English Colonies; people of African descent?
● the experience of slavery varied depending on ● How did adult slaves prepare their children for
time, location, crop, labor performed, size of the challenges of a life of slavery?
slaveholding and gender;
● How did the decline of indentured servitude
● Bacon’s Rebellion led to the reliance on contribute to the rise of black slavery in North
enslaved black laborers across North America; America?
● African-Americans fought in the American ● Why was Bacon’s Rebellion such an important
Revolution in support of both sides; turning point in the history of slavery in North
America?
● free African-Americans organized schools,
churches and other major institutions that ● What did the fight for American Independence
sought to define their identity and to establish a mean for African-Americans?
secure foundation for their communities;
● What steps did African Americans take to
● free African-Americans, along with allies, led assert their right to freedom during the
abolition and religious based efforts to reform revolutionary period?
American society during the colonial and
Antebellum periods; ● How was autonomy exercised through
community by antebellum African Americans?
● slavery was the central cause of the sectional
● How did enslaved African Americans construct
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crisis that led to the Civil War. communities over time?
● What obstacles did slaves confront in

constructing communities?

o Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia.
o Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution.
o Sylvia R. Frey, Water from the Rock: Black Resistance during A Revolutionary Age.
o Douglas Egerton, Death or Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary America.
o John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South.
o Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves.
o Ira Berlin, Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South.
o Leslie Alexander, African or American?: Black Identity and Political Activism in New York City,
1784-1861.
o Leonard P. Curry, Free Blacks in Urban America, 1800-1850: The Shadow of the Dream.
o Charshee McIntyre, Criminalizing A Race: Free Blacks During Slavery.

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Theme 4 - African-Americans in Modern America

Chronologically, this theme addresses the experience of African Americans in the major events
from the Civil War to the mid-20th century. It addresses the significance and the importance of the
participation of African Americans in all of the major events that shaped the United States from
1861 to 1950.
Broad topics:
 African Americans, the Civil War, and Emancipation
 “Black Reconstruction”
 The Development of African-American Institutions (churches, schools, businesses) and
Communities
 The Participation of African Americans in World Wars I and II
 The Emergence of Jim Crow Segregation and Political Disfranchisement
 The Nadir of Race Relations (lynchings, race riots, and the defamation of African-American culture
and humanity)
 The Two Great Migrations

● slavery was the central cause of the American ● How did a war to save the Union lead to the
Civil War; end of slavery in the United States?
● African Americans played a prominent role in the ● Did the Emancipation Proclamation make the
war that ended slavery in the United States; 13th Amendment inevitable?
● African American participation in government ● How did free blacks respond to the outbreak of
during Reconstruction helped to democratize the Civil War?
former Confederate states;
● What was the experience of black troops and
● successes and failures of Reconstruction have civilians during the Civil War?
played a pivotal role in shaping contemporary
● How did black Americans express themselves
race relations;
politically during Reconstruction?
● the post-Reconstruction period in the South, ● What was the Freedman’s Bureau and how
which witnessed the rise of Jim Crow, marked a
effective was it?
time when American race relations are thought to
have reached their nadir, with whites pursuing a ● Why are the post-Reconstruction years
counter revolution to reassert hegemony and considered the nadir of race relations in
deny African Americans the citizenship rights that American history? How did African Americans
they had gained through the 14th and 15th respond?
Amendments;
● Should African Americans have more strongly
● African Americans developed three essential resisted the government’s decision to abandon
responses and approaches to cope with the rising the drive for equality? (Booker T. Washington’s
tide of disfranchisement, lynchings, segregation “accommodation” v. W.E.B. Du Bois’s
and racial violence during the Jim Crow Era: “agitation” approaches)
* migration from the South to the West and ● What is the ongoing importance of the black
Northern cities and emigration to countries church to black community life?
throughout the African diaspora;

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● What kinds of businesses and institutions grew

* agitation and protest through a variety of means out of the development and expansion of
including, journalistic practices, expressions of art African American communities in Modern
and literature, the Niagara Movement, the America?
National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP) and other ● What was life like for African-Americans during
organizations; and, the Great Depression?
* development and expansion of their own ● How did racial relations at home affect the
communities that fostered successful businesses military experiences of African Americans
and African-American institutions; fighting overseas?
● while all Americans coped with the overwhelming ● Why did African Americans answer the call to
challenges that the 1930s and 40s economy serve the country despite inequalities at home
presented, African Americans faced an additional and in the military?
hardship, oppressive segregation;
● What were major achievements by African-
● African Americans made significant sacrifices by Americans who served in the military?
volunteering to fight for the United States in the
Spanish-American War, World War I, World War
II and the Korean War in spite of institutional
segregation and discrimination.

o Corporal James Henry Gooding, On the Altar of Freedom: A Black Soldier’s Civil War Letters from
the Front.
o James McPherson, The Negro’s Civil War: How American Blacks Felt and Acted During the War for
the Union.
o John Hope Franklin, The Emancipation Proclamation.
o Ray Allen Billington, editor, The Journal of Charlotte Forten.
o Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Army Life in A Black Regiment.
o Leon Litwack, Been in the Storm in the So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery.
o Susie King Taylor, Reminisces of My Life in Camp with the 33rd U.S. Colored Troops.
o Rayford W. Logan, The Betrayal of the Negro: From Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson.
o George C. Rable, But There Was No Peace: The Role of Violence in the Politics of Reconstruction.
o C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow.
o Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery.
o Ida B. Wells, Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells.
o Heather Cox Richardson, The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor and Politics in the Post Civil
War North, 1865-1901.
o Nell Irvin Painter, The Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas after Reconstruction.
o Robert B. Grant, The Black Man Comes to the City: From the Great Migration to the Great
Depression, 1915 to 1930.
o August Meier, Negro Thought in America, 1880-1915: Racial Ideology in the Age of Booker T.
Washington.
o W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk.
o Richard M. Dalfiume, Desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces: Fighting on Two Fronts, 1939-1953.
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Theme 5 - Struggle for Freedom, Justice and Equality

This theme addresses the ongoing struggle by African Americans to resist slavery, segregation
and disfranchisement, and to fight for their full rights as citizens of the United States. It covers the
“African-American freedom struggle” from the colonial period to the present with a particular focus
on the 1950s through 1970s. It addresses the civil rights movement, emigration, Black Power and
Black Nationalism, Pan Africanism, and the various movements developed by African Americans in
the United States to make the United States live up to its creeds of freedom, justice and equality.
Broad topics:
 Liberty, Equality, and the US Constitution
 Resistance to Slavery
 Colonial and Antebellum Slave Rebellions (Stono, Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner)
 The Abolitionist Movement
 The Civil Rights Movement
 Supreme Court Cases from Dred Scott to Brown (the NAACP and the Courts)
 Civil Disorders
 The Black Power Movement
 The Anticolonial Movement in Africa

● the struggle for freedom, justice and equality ● Does the civil rights movement begin with Brown v.
has been America’s longest movement; Board of Education (1954) and end in the Voting
Rights Act of 1965?
● the rise of liberty and equality as values in
America had been accompanied by the rise of
● How could a people found a nation based on a
slavery;
dedication to human liberty and dignity while at the
same time develop and maintain a government
● protections for slavery and discrimination were
and system of labor that denied human liberty and
embedded in the founding documents and
dignity to so many people?
reinforced at various points in United States
history by federal government and Supreme
● Why did the Founders find it necessary to provide
Court actions;
protections for slavery in the US Constitution?
● enslaved women and men organized
● How have Supreme Court rulings impacted the
resistance to and rebelled against the efforts of
African-American struggle for freedom, justice and
their enslavers in both revolutionary and
equality?
everyday ways;
● How did a system of segregation perpetuate
● the abolition of slavery initiated a continuing racism and discrimination?
struggle by African Americans for civil rights,
political participation, economic opportunity, ● How did slave revolts, the work of black
and social equality; abolitionists, and other acts of resistance shape
the debate over slavery prior to the Civil War?
● African Americans fought wars for democracy
● In a nation where “all men are created equal,” why
abroad and then returned having to engage in
do individuals and groups force segregation on
the ongoing struggle for rights of human
others?
equality and dignity at home;
● Do changes in laws change people’s attitudes?

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● embodied by the courageous acts of ● Why did people risk their lives to participate in the
individuals working in community, African movement for freedom, justice, and equality?
Americans combatted racism and affirmed their
constitutional rights through political ● How have individuals and organizations furthered
organization, non-violent protest, and the the African American movement for freedom,
judicial process; justice and equality?
● the Black Power Movement grew out of ● How have ideas such as Black Power, Black
frustration with the slow pace of change and Nationalism and Pan Africanism influenced the
the ferocity of the backlash against civil rights movement for freedom, justice, and equality?
gains made between the 1940s and early ● How have people used strategies from the civil
1960s; rights movement, such as non-violent protest, as a
● sparked by growing unrest with economic and way to bring about change?
social disparities, civil disorders of the 1960s ● How is the struggle for rights in America related to
highlighted the need to improve living struggles for rights worldwide?
conditions in cities and coincided with the mass
movement of whites from urban centers to ● What work remains to be done in the effort to
surrounding suburbs; create a just and equitable society?
● the African American movement for civil rights

was mirrored internationally, such as with the
Anticolonial Movement in Africa;
● the civil rights movement stimulated other

movements, such as Chicano, Women,
American Indian, Labor, and LGBTQ, pushing
for freedom and human equality.

o Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White.
o Harvard Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights As A National Issue.
o Genna Rae McNeil, Groundwork: The Life of Charles Hamilton Houston
o Harvard Sitkoff, The Struggle for Black Equality, 1954 to 1992.
o Martin Luther King, Jr., Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story.
o Aldon Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement.
o Darlene Clark Hine, Black Victory: The Rise and Fall of the White Primary in Texas.
o Will Guzman, Civil Rights in the Texas Borderlands
o Kenneth Goings, The NAACP Comes of Age: The Defeat of Judge John J. Parker.
o Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America.
o Howard Zinn, SNCC: The New Abolitionists.
o Clayborne Carson, SNCC: In Struggle.
o Cleveland Sellers, The River of No Return: The Autobiography of A Black Militant and the Life and Death
of SNCC.
o Martin Luther King, Where Do We Go from Here?: Chaos or Community.

18
Theme 6 - Contemporary African American Experience

Chronologically, this theme addresses the African American experience since 1980. It examines
both the progress and the setbacks that African Americans have made to gain full citizenship and
the divisions in the African-American community over policies such as welfare, the drug war,
affirmative action, crime and racial politics.
Broad topics:
 The Impact of Reaganomics
 The Emergence of Hip Hop
 The Emergence of Afrocentricity
 The Stop the Violence Movement
 The War on Drugs
 The Emergence of African-American Conservatives
 White Backlash
 Mass Incarceration
 Black Identity in the 21st Century

 despite major advances since the civil rights ● Has racial equality and harmony been achieved at
era of 1950s and 60s, black Americans the start of the twenty-first century?
proportionately still face greater economic
and professional obstacles than white ● How much progress have African Americans made
Americans; in closing social and economic gaps since the
1960s?
 Black conservatives have proposed
alternative solutions to the struggle by African ● What is ‘Afrocentricity’ and how does it shape the
Americans for freedom, justice, and equality. way history is told?
 the Afrocentric perspective is an alternative ● What role has race played in contemporary
to the Eurocentric viewpoint that has American politics?
dominated American life and culture;
● What solutions did African-American conservatives
 much of the hip-hop culture has been
propose to end segregation and discrimination?
expressed through a constellation of
mediums which has served to inform and
inspire the public; ● How did rap music become part of international
popular culture?
 the War on Drugs and Mass Incarceration
has had disproportionate impact on the ● Why did the ‘War on Drugs’ disproportionately
African American community; impact African Americans?
 Black Lives Matter emerged from the long ● Why do white and black perceptions of police
history of police abuse and police brutality in brutality often differ?
the African-American community.
 African-American voting rights have been ● What does it mean to be African American in the
under attack since the late 19th century’s poll 21st century?
taxes, white primaries, grandfather clauses,

19
and literacy tests;
 21st century African American families still

suffer from the legacies of slavery and
segregation, and the bad policies of the U.S.
government in housing, health care, and
environmental justice.

o Henry Louis Gates, The African American Century.
o Ellis Cose, The Rage of A Privilege Class
o Eugene Robinson, Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America
o Richard Woolfe, Renegade: The Making of A President.
o Ta-nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me.

20
Theme 7 - Impact of African Americans on the Arts, Culture, Business, Science, Technology
and Health
This theme focuses on the African-American contributions to all aspects of society and culture from
“slave songs” to popular music and dance and science and technology. It addresses Dr. W. E. B.
DuBois’s observation in 1903: “Would America be America without her Negro people?”
Broad topics:
 Roots and Influence of African-American Culture
 The Impact of “Slave Culture” on antebellum American society
 The Contributions of African Americans to “American” cuisine, arts, music, literature, and popular
culture
 Inventions by African Americans
 The Harlem Renaissance
 The Contributions of African Americans to American Sports
 The Contributions of African Americans to business, science, health and technology
 The Black Arts Movement of the 1960s

● peoples of Africa who were captured and ● What are the customs, traditions, values, and
enslaved brought to the Atlantic World their food beliefs of African-American culture and what are
ways, religious practices, agricultural techniques, there were they formed?
artistic and musical traditions, and added words
to the English language such as “goober,” “tote,” ● How African was colonial and antebellum
and “banjo.” culture?
● enslaved and free people of African descent
drew upon cultural tradition and interactions with ● What are the influences of African-American
their surroundings to forge a new African- culture on broader American culture?
American culture that continues to shape society International culture?
today;
● How did social, economic, and political conditions
● through the many artists, musicians and writers, stimulate the three Renaissances of the 20th
the Harlem and Chicago Renaissances were a century?
flowering of cultural creativity and expression;
● How did rap music become a part of international
● throughout history, African Americans have used popular culture?
public platforms for the benefit of their race;
● What has been the impact of the Black Power,
● despite the barricade of slavery and then racism, Black Nationalist and Pan African movements on
black Americans have established and black artistic expression?
maintained thriving businesses;
● What role can artistic expression play in a
● contributions of African Americans to American movement for social change?
sports have often been tied to political
movements; ● When a person has a public platform, what is
their responsibility to society?
● throughout history, African American writers,
● How has a modern black culture developed as a
21
artists, musicians, filmmakers and designers form of popular expression in United States?
have played a greatly influential role in shaping
U.S. culture as wells as cultures around the ● How have African American contributions to
world; politics, academics, business, health, science,
innovation, sports and other areas impacted
● African Americans have achieved prominence in society over time?
every conceivable professional field of endeavor,
from politics, business, and sports, to health,
sciences and education.

o Cameron McWhirter, Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America.
o Nathan Huggins, Voices from the Harlem Renaissance.
o David L. Lewis, When Harlem Was In Vogue.
o Alain Locke, The New Negro.
o Tony Martin, Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and the
Universal Negro Improvement Association.

22
AFRICAN AND AFRICAN AMERICAN

HISTORY AND CULTURE
Introductory Essay
Written by
W. MARVIN DULANEY, PhD.
Fort Worth ISD

23
Introductory Essay
THEME 1 – THE AFRICAN EXPERIENCE

The African Origins of Humanity and the African Heritage of African Americans
All humanity originated in Africa. According to mitochondrial DNA studies conducted at Stanford
and Emory universities, an African woman (“African Eve)” from East Africa, who lived 140,000 to
200,000 years ago, is the mother of all human beings. Paleontologists have found fossils and
evidence in East Africa that all of the early human ancestors from the Australopithecus to
Neanderthals to homo sapiens were found in Africa. Only Neanderthals, the first group of human
ancestors who left Africa, are found in other places outside of Africa. Through migration early
human beings left Africa and populated the world.
While computer modeling has placed the earliest human beings in Africa, paleontologists and
paleoanthropologists had already discovered considerable information about human ancestors in
East Africa. The excavations of paleontologists L.S. B. and Mary Leakey in Olduvai Gorge in
Tanzania had found the earliest ancestors of modern humans. Their excavations also showed that
these early humans used tools, were hunters and gatherers, and had a basic social organization.
Africans in the Ancient World

In addition to being the birthplace of all humanity, Africa was also
the site of the first organized civilizations. The Nile River Valley, for
example, was the site of the African civilizations developed in
Nubia, Kush, and Ethiopia. These early civilizations reflect the
movement of human beings from Paleolithic to Neolithic cultures.
But it was ancient Egypt or Kemet (KMT) that was the apogee of
Africa’s contribution to western civilization in the arts and sciences.
According to Cheikh A. Diop and other scholars, the people of
Egypt, or ancient Kemet, contributed to the world’s three great
religions, developed the mystery system that became foundation for
modern mathematics, chemistry and other sciences, and had the
first woman leader of a nation, Queen Hathshepsut. The Rhind and
Moscow papyri show that the ancient Egyptians had solved the
mathematical and geometric problems that enabled them to build
the pyramids and to develop a sophisticated society based on
religion and science. Modern religious traditions in Judaism,
Christianity and Islam borrowed extensively from ancient Egyptian
texts and religious mythology. For example, the Ten
Commandments, attributed to Moses, replicate six of the forty-two
Declarations of Innocence required to enter heaven in Ancient
Kemetic cosmology. The holy trinity (God the father, God the son
Nubia and Egypt

24
and God the holy ghost)

that forms the basis of
modern Catholicism and
most Christian
denominations is based
on the original trinity in
Kemetic/Egyptian
religious mythology of
Osiris (the father), Horus
(the son) and Isis (the
mother). Queen Hathshepsut (1508-1458 b.c.e)
Students will understand

how all humanity
originated in Africa.
Students will understand
Imhotep (ca. 2700 b.c.e.) the significance of
ancient Egypt in the
creation of western
civilization. Students will understand how in
ancient history Egypt was a part of Africa and not
the “Middle East” Students will understand how
European colonialism separated Egyptian history
from Africa. Giza Necropolis is the oldest of the ancient Wonders
and the only one still in existence.
Pre-Colonial Africa
Africans built civilizations throughout the continent of Africa. But most of the Africans who were the
ancestors of African Americans came from West Africa. Prior to the slave trade and the penetration
of Africa by Arabs and Europeans, three kingdoms dominated West Africa: Ghana (300-1076
a.c.e,) Mali (ca. 700-1450 a.c.e), and Songhay (1464-1700 a.c.e). These West African kingdoms
were highly sophisticated societies that were based on trade and hierarchal social systems.
Ghana, the earliest West African kingdom was ruled by the Sossi or Sosse people and it controlled
and dominated the gold and salt trades in the West African Sudan. The Ghanians traded gold,
ivory and salt with other Africans kingdoms and Arabs for weapons, enslaved people and other
goods. The kingdom’s most important ruler was King Tenkamenin (1062-1076) who was described
by Arab travelers to Ghana as a leader who held court for his people in order to resolve disputes
and to provide them justice.
As Ghana declined, the kingdom of Mali supplanted it as the most important kingdom in West
Africa. Mali’s first leader Sundiata Keita (1217-1255) conquered Ghana in 1240 and established
the Keita dynasty which ruled Mali for over 200 years. Under his leadership Mali expanded its
borders, assumed control of the gold trade, and joined with twelve other kingdoms to form an
empire. Sundiata’s successors continued to expand Mali’s borders and some of them converted to
Islam. Most notably, Mansa Kankan Musa (1280-1337) became the first ruler of Mali to make the
25
Hajj to Mecca in 1324. On his Hajj Musa

displayed to the known world at the time that
Mali was the richest empire in West Africa.
The Mali empire was conquered by Sunni Ali
Ber in 1464 who founded the Sunni dynasty in
what became the empire of Songhay. Using
cavalry forces as well as a navy to control the
Niger River, Sunni Ali made the Songhay
empire the largest of the three empires that
ruled the West African Sudan prior to its
penetration by Muslims from Northern Africa
and Europeans on the coastal areas. Sunni Ali
ruled Songhay from 1464 to his death by
1Depiction of King Mansa Musa from 1375 A.D drowning in 1492. After a brief skirmish
between his son Sunni Baru and his nephew
Askia Muhammad Toure for control of the
empire, Askia Muhammad defeated Sunni Baru and ruled Songhay from 1493 to 1528 when he
was overthrown by his son. Under the rule of Askia Muhammad Songhay established the
University of Sankore in Timbuktu, decentralized the empire into regions, established a
standardized system of trade measures and regulations, and established an organized tax system.
He also made a Hajj to Mecca in 1517. Although he took a large entourage and gave away
300,000 gold pieces his Hajj did not cause the excitement that Mansa Musa’s had in the 14th
century. Instead, Askia Muhammad studied the political organization of the Omayyidd Caliphate
and adopted some its principles to
better govern Songhay.
Cheikh A. Diop maintains that
there was cultural unity in Africa.
That is, just as in Europe, the
cultures of Africans throughout the
continent were very similar.
Africans practiced a variety of
religions: animism, ancestral
worship, and even Islam and
Christianity. Unlike Europe,
Africans societies were based on
communalism and lineage, instead
of nation-states. African
communities used families and
clans as the basis for their
political, social and economic
organization. Indeed, their
economic organization was based
on communal production that
involved the production of staple
Pre-Colonial African Kingdoms
crops and hunting and gathering.
26
Women were important in Africa because they controlled agricultural production, while men
hunted. Africans practiced polygamy and polyandry. Many African communities were matrilineal,
which highlighted the importance of women in traditional African communities. While many African
communities are called “tribes,” such a designation is a misnomer for some of the larger “ethnic”
groups such as the Ibos. Hausas, Fulani, Mandinke, Sisse, and Yoruba. Usually, these groups can
trace their lineage and heritage back to a single progenitor.
Students will understand the unique African cultural heritage of African Americans. They will
understand African communal practices such as rites of passage, matrilineal societies, the
importance of clans, and communal “modes of production.”
Vocabulary Words to Learn

slave trade foodways traditions artifacts ethnic groups clans matrilineal mystery system
polygamy polyandry progenitor Hajj mythology
Sources for further reading:

“The Search for Early Man,” National Geographic, November 1985.
Cheikh A. Diop, The African Origins of Civilization: Myth or Reality?
Cheikh A. Diop, The Cultural Unity of Black Africa: The Domains of Patriarchy and Matriarchy in
Classical Antiquity.
Ivan van Sertima, Egypt Revisited
Chancellor Williams, The Destruction of Black Civilization.
Ivan van Sertima, They Came Before Columbus.
Margaret Musgrove and Diane Dillon, Ashanti to Zulu: African Traditions.
Muriel Miller Branch, The Water Brought Us: The Story of the Gullah Speaking People.
Ifeoma Onyefulu, A Is for Africa.
John M. Weatherwax, The African Contribution
John Reader, Africa: A Biography of the Continent.
George G. M. James, Stolen Legacy
Maulana Ron Karenga, The Book of Coming Forth by Day: The Ethics of the Declarations of
Innocence.

27
THEME 2 – AFRICANS IN THE ATLANTIC WORLD

African Explorers
Scholars have also discovered that prior to the Transatlantic slave trade Africans made voyages
across the Atlantic Ocean. Using traditional and primary historical sources, oceanography,
linguistics and terra cotta, Ivan van Sertima built on the works of scholars such as Leo Wiener and
John Weatherwax to show how Africans made voyages across the Atlantic to trade and establish
contacts with pre-colonial Native Americans. According to van Sertima, European explorers such
as Columbus and Balboa discovered an early African presence in the Western Hemisphere on the
island of Hispanola, and in present day Panama. Moreover, van Sertima documents the voyage of
Abubakari II, the king of Mali (1307-1311), who sent ships from Mali across the Atlantic Ocean in
1310. All of them but one was lost at sea. So, in 1311, Abubakari II appointed his brother Mansa
Musa as regent of Mali and set out himself to discover the land across the sea. He was never
heard from again, but his efforts prove that Africans
attempted transatlantic voyages just as Europeans did.
Weiner and van Sertima have also linked Africans with the
Western Hemisphere by comparing other common traits.
They cite mummification and other burial practices that
existed in the cultures of West Africa and Meso-America as
evidence of possible cultural and physical contact between
Africans and Native Americans. They also theorize that the
African facial features on the Olmec heads located in
Mexico, represented the influence of Africa on the Olmec
Olmec Head (1200-900 BCE) civilization that predated the Mayans and the Aztecs.
The Transatlantic Slave Trade

All African Americans are descendants of the people
captured in the transatlantic slave trade and brought
to the Americas from the 1400s to the 1870s.
Approximately 11,000,000 Africans were captured in
the slave trade and brought to the Western
Hemisphere. Human beings have enslaved each
other for various reasons since the beginning of
human history and the interaction of various cultures,
societies and civilizations. In Africa, for example,
people who were debtors, criminals and war captives
were enslaved. For centuries, some of these people
were sold to Arabs in the Trans-Saharan slave trade
that preceded the enslavement of human beings in
the Western Hemisphere. While the people captured
in the slave trade were generically referred to as
“Africans” or “Negroes,” they came from various
ethnic groups in West Africa, Southwest Africa and The Transatlantic Slave Trade
East Africa. Thus, the captives in the transatlantic
28
slave trade consisted of Ibos, Hausas, the Fulani, the Kongolese, the Bantus, the Matebele and
other groups primarily from the West and Southwest coasts of Africa.
The peoples of Africa who were captured and brought to the Americas influenced the cultural
development of every geographic area in which they were enslaved. They brought to the Americas
their foodways, religious practices, agricultural techniques, artistic and musical traditions, and
added words to the English language such as “goober,” “tote,” and “banjo.” More importantly, they
brought their labor for the gold and silver mines of Central and South America, and their
knowledge of the cultivation of staples such as sugar and rice that made the islands of the
Caribbean and the colonies of British North America profitable. As several historians have
concluded, the exploitation of African labor made European settlement in the Western Hemisphere
profitable and it spurred the development of a worldwide capitalist economy.
The transatlantic slave trade was one of the most profitable enterprises in human history. Slave
traders in the countries that participated in the trade typically made a profit of 30-300% on the
trade in human beings. As Eric Williams
has noted, the trade specifically funded
the development of capitalism in the
Atlantic World because it was not just an
enterprise carried out by individuals in
Europe, Africa, and the European
colonies in the Western Hemisphere; it
was also an international enterprise that
supported, banking, insurance,
shipbuilding, and iron works in places
such as Lisbon, Portugal, Liverpool and
Bristol, England and Newport, Rhode
Island.
The transatlantic slave trade also had
tragic and devastating human
consequences. It turned human beings
into commodities. It destroyed villages
and communities and depopulated large
areas in West and Southwest Africa. It
upset the peaceful coexistence among the
various ethnic and tribal groups in Africa.
As Walter Rodney has argued, the slave
trade began the process of underdeveloping Africa. Finally, the slave trade’s most devastated
impact was that it tied a person’s status as a human being to skin color and set in motion the
racism that justified both the slave trade and the enslavement of Africans over 500 years. In
addition, the racism spawned by the slave trade and slavery has influenced the treatment of
Africans and their descendants worldwide for the past 500 years.

29

Ivan Sertima, They Came Before Columbus
Leo Wiener, Africa and the Discovery of America
John Weatherwax, The Black Discovery of America
Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery
Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade.
Ronald Segal, Islam’s Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora
Joseph Inikori, “The Volume of the British Slave Trade, 1655-1807,” Cahiers d’Etude Africaines
Annee 128 (1992): 641-688.
Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.
THEME 3 – AFRICANS IN THE COLONIAL AND ANTEBELLUM WORLDS

African Americans in Colonial America and the Era of the American Revolution (1770-1800)
Africans were important participants in all of the European colonies established in the Western
Hemisphere. Their labor made the colonial and antebellum economic systems profitable.
After the devastation of the Native American population and the failure of the indentured servant
labor system, Africans became the chief source of labor in the Spanish and French colonies
established in the Caribbean Islands, and in Central and South America. Africans were also an
important part of all of the European colonies established on the North American mainland. In New
Spain, Africans intermixed with Native Americans and Spanish settlers to create a multiracial
society that enabled the Spanish to settle what is today the Southwestern United States and create
an economy based on enslaved labor, agriculture and mining. In New France, which was based
primarily in New Orleans, Mobile and the Mississippi River Valley, Africans also intermixed with
Native Americans and French colonists to create an economy based on the fur trade and sugar
production. In the British colonies in North America, enslaved Africans provided the labor for the
cultivation of the colonies’ chief staples: tobacco, indigo and rice.
In the British colonies, the impact of African labor varied by region. In the New England colonies
Africans worked on small farms and as laborers in colonial cities such as Boston, Philadelphia and
New York. In the Middle colonies of Maryland and Virginia, Africans worked primarily on large
tobacco plantations and were part of a gang labor system. In the southern colonies of North and
South Carolina and Georgia, Africans were the chief components in plantation systems that
produced tobacco, rice and indigo. While the Middle colonies had the largest number of enslaved
Africans, in the southern colonies Africans outnumbered whites in many areas and as a result
whites implemented the harshest and most inhumane slave codes to control them. Despite the
harsh punishments to control enslaved Africans, they still carried out revolts and insurrections such
as the 1739 Stono Rebellion just south of Charleston in South Carolina. Runaways and fugitives
from slavery in the American colonies also formed maroon communities in the uninhabited areas of
South Carolina and Florida.
30
It was also in the southern colonies that the seeds of African-American culture emerged. In the
areas of the Lowcountry of South Carolina and Georgia where African outnumbered whites, they
retained much of their African cultural heritage. They practiced polygamy and other African
traditions before they adopted the religion of Christianity. Even after their adoption of the Christian
religion, they practiced an “Africanized” version of the religion. Their religious practices reflected
the emotionalism and circle tradition practiced by Africans in West and Central Africa. The “ring
shout,” practiced by enslaved Africans in the Carolinas, was an example of how Africans melded
their African cultural heritage with Christian rituals. Similarly, Africans in the Carolinas developed
the Gullah language as a syncretic language that combined English and various African dialects.
Africans also played an important role in the American Revolution. They were a symbol of the
“enslavement” that American patriots claimed that they experienced under British colonial rule.
They were also a part of the large underclass that the American white planter and commercial elite
exploited and wanted to continue to exploit even after independence. Both the Americans and the
British appealed to enslaved Africans to support their cause. In 1775, the British Royal Governor of
Virginia Lord Dunmore issued the first appeal to enslaved Africans that he would grant them
freedom if they fought for the British Army. (See “Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation”) Approximately
500 Africans joined Lord Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment. Lord Dunmore’s appeal forced George
Washington to reverse his order prohibiting enslaved Africans from fighting for the Continental
Army formed by the American colonists. Nevertheless, more Africans became Loyalists and fought
for the British than for the Americans. Only 5,000 Africans fought with the Americans; while over
20,000 Africans fought with the British.
A number of Africans distinguished themselves in the struggle for American independence.
Ironically, the first person to die for the cause of independence was Crispus Attucks, a fugitive from
slavery from Framingham, Massachusetts. Attucks was one of the five persons killed while
attacking British soldiers on March 5, 1770 at what was called the “Boston Massacre.” Other
Africans such as Peter Salem, Salem Poor, Prince Whipple, Prince Hall and James Armstead,
fought for the American side and participated in battles such as Bunker Hill, Saratoga and Long
Island. African Americans were especially important in the “southern campaign” that the British
Army started in 1781. The strategy was to arm enslaved Africans in the South and to employ them
against their former owners in such a manner that it would terrorize the southern colonies and
cause them to pull out of the war. For a short period in 1780-1781, the strategy worked, and
1,000s of enslaved Africans ran away from plantations in the Carolinas and Georgia to join British
forces. Those who joined the British forces were listed in the “Book of Negroes” and at the end of
war, some 20,000 of them were evacuated from the American colonies to Nova Scotia and
eventually to the nation of Sierra Leone in Africa.
By 1790 and the first Census of the United States, approximately 750,000 Africans lived in the
thirteen states that made up the new nation. African Americans were approximately 19% of the
population of the United States, and all but 59,000 were enslaved. Most continued to live in the
southern states where they worked on tobacco, sugar, rice and eventually, cotton plantations.
Indeed, after some discussion of abolishing slavery at the constitutional convention in Philadelphia
in 1787, the Founding Fathers wrote a Constitution that recognized slavery and provided for its
protection. The United States Constitution addressed the enslavement of Africans in three sections.
Slavery and the U.S. Constitution

31
Article I, Section 2: Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several
States which may be included within the Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall
be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service
for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons. (Three-fifths
clause or compromise))
Article I, Section 9: The migration or Importation of such persons as any of the States now existing
shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand
eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten
dollars. (End of the slave trade clause)
Article IV, Section 2: No Person held to service or Labour in one State, under Laws thereof,
escaping into another, shall in Consequence or Regulation therein, be discharged from such
service or labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour
may be due. (Fugitive slave clause)
Although the Constitution recognized and defended the enslavement of African Americans, as a
result of the American Revolution slavery became an institution that was primarily based in the
South. By 1800 the legislatures in all of the northern states had enacted laws to emancipate and
manumit enslaved African Americans immediately or over a set period of time or when they
became adults and capable of taking care of themselves.
Some African Americans living in the Revolutionary era were able to begin to live normal lives
without the threat of enslavement. The lives of Phyllis Wheatley, the first African-American poet;
Benjamin Banneker, the African-American mathematician and scientist who built a working
wooden clock and helped to design the layout of Washington, D.C.; and Jean Pointe Baptiste
DuSable, the African-American pioneer and entrepreneur who founded the settlement that became
the city of Chicago, exemplify the achievements of African Americans in this era.

colonial period plantation economy pioneer enslaved entrepreneur unalienable rights
manumission three-fifths compromise “Book of Negroes” Gullah syncretic

Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia.
Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution.
Sylvia R. Frey, Water from the Rock: Black Resistance during A Revolutionary Age.
Douglas Egerton, Death or Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary America.

32
Slavery and Freedom in Antebellum America (1800-1860)

During the antebellum
period of American
history (from the year
1800 to the eve of the
Civil War), the enslaved
African-American
population in the United
States increased from
1,002,000 in 1800 to
approximately 4,000,000
by 1860. Slavery
became one of the most
dominant institutions in
antebellum American
society. Slavery
dominated the American
economy because cotton
produced by enslaved Concentration of Enslaved People in the U.S. in 1860
African labor was the
nation’s most important export. Indeed, cotton became “the fabric of American life” because cotton
was produced in the South, manufactured into cloth in northern textile mills, and sold in the
international market. Cotton production moved the United States from being a debtor nation to
one that had a positive balance of payments with all of its competitors in Europe. Cotton
producers, more specifically slaveholders who used enslaved Africans to produce cotton, also
dominated American politics. The Three-fifths Compromise provision in the Constitution that
allowed the southern states to count three-fifths of the enslaved population for representation in
the House of Representatives, also provided southern politicians an undue influence in American
politics from 1800 to the Civil War. As a result, most of the nation’s presidents, congressional
leaders, and ambassadors came from the South. Southern politicians and the southern interests
dominated American national policy on tariffs, internal improvements, banking regulations,
monetary policy and territorial expansion until the Civil War.
Slaveholders also shaped the policies of the nation for both enslaved and free African Americans.
These policies were shaped by a rigorous and racist defense of slavery as a “positive good” for the
nation and a white supremacist viewpoint that all people of African descent should be enslaved. To
justify the enslavement of African Americans slaveholders and the apologists for slavery developed
an elaborate defense of slavery based primarily on racism. The defenders of slavery and
proslavery politicians also used religious doctrine, history, pseudoscience, economic and political
theory to justify the oppression of African Americans and the need to keep them enslaved. All of
the southern states, and even some northern states such as Ohio, developed Slave or Black
Codes to regulate the behavior of enslaved and free African Americans. The codes regulated
everything from the type of clothes that enslaved people could wear, their mobility off the
plantations, their legal status, their access to weapons, and even some of the possessions that
they could own or sell (such as rice).

33
Free and Enslaved Population of the U.S. 1790-1860 Census
Year # Enslaved #Free Blacks Total Black % Free Blacks Total US Pop. % Black
1790 697,681 59,527 757,208 7.9% 3,929,214 9%
1800 893,602 108,435 1,002,037 10.8% 5,308,483 19%
1810 1,191,362 186,446 1,377,808 13.5% 7,239,881 19%
1820 1,538,022 233,634 1,771,656 13.2% 9,638,453 18%
1830 2,009,043 319,599 2,328,642 13.7% 12,860,702 18%
1840 2,487,355 386,293 2,873,648 13.4% 17,063,353 17%
1850 3,204,313 434,495 3,638,808 11.9% 23,191,876 16%
1860 3,953,760 488,070 4,441,830 11.0% 31,443,321 14%
1870 0 4,880,009 4,880,009 100% 38,558,371 13%
Source: http:/ /www.census.gov/population/documentation/twps0056/tab01.xls
While the Black or Slave codes attempted to constrain African-American behavior and life in
antebellum America, an emerging and growing population of free African Americans developed
institutions and fought against slavery. As noted above, in 1790, only 59,000 free African
Americans in the United States were free. By 1860, the population had risen to 488,000. In the
antebellum period of American history free African Americans organized churches (AME and
AMEZ), built schools, and started social and fraternal associations (Prince Hall Masonic Lodge and
Eastern Star). Despite restrictions on their rights that limited where they could live and work, that
denied them the right to vote, and that criminalized them and punished for crimes with re-
enslavement, they sought to build healthy families and communities. Many of them participated in
the abolitionist movement and fought for full citizenship rights even after the 1857 Dred Scott
decision that declared that they were not American citizens and had “no rights that the white man
was bound to respect.” The antebellum movement of African Americans to defend their rights and
to establish their identity as free citizens helped to establish the foundation for the modern civil
rights movement.
While free African Americans in the antebellum era sought to establish families and institutions to
sustain themselves, those who were still enslaved faced one of the harshest and unforgiving slave
systems known to humankind.
Students will understand the lives of noted African-American abolitionists such as Frederick
Douglass and Francis E. W. Harper; and the diversity of the lives of free African Americans such
as William Leidesdorff, who served as a city councilman in San Francisco, and James Beckwourth,
the pioneer “mountain man” who discovered “Beckwourth’s Pass” in the Sierra Nevada Mountains
in California. Students will also learn about the lives of African-American inventor Norbert Rillieux
and sculptor Edmonia Lewis, whose lives contradicted the predominant viewpoint that people of
African descent could only be slaves. Rillieux invented a process to refine sugar and Lewis was
34
one of America’s most important and gifted, nineteenth century sculptors.

Abolitionist movement fraternal associations sculptor “mountain man” narrative antebellum
balance of payments

John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South.
Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves.
Ira Berlin, Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South.
Leslie Alexander, African or American?: Black Identity and Political Activism in New York City,
1784-1861.
Deborah Gray White, Aren’t I A Woman: Female Slaves in the Plantation South.
Leonard P. Curry, Free Blacks in Urban America, 1800-1850: The Shadow of the Dream.
Charshee McIntyre, Criminalizing A Race: Free Blacks During Slavery.
Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History.
Edward E. Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American
Capitalism.
Ned Sublette and Constance Sublette, The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding
Industry.
THEME 4 – AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE MODERN WORLD

African Americans and the Civil War (1861-1865)
African Americans played a prominent role in the war that ended slavery in the United States.
From 1861 to 1865, African Americans served as laborers, servants, spies, and eventually, as
soldiers in the United States Army. Although President Abraham Lincoln sought to limit the war
aims of the United States to “preserving the Union” and putting down the “rebellion” of the southern
states, African Americans forced the war to become a war against slavery by running away by the
100s, then by the 1000s, and creating a situation in which President Lincoln had to act to issue the
Emancipation Proclamation. President’s Lincoln’s announcement of the Emancipation
Proclamation on January 1st, 1863 not only sought to undercut the labor force of the South by
freeing enslaved African Americans, it also enabled them to serve as soldiers in the United States
Army and seamen in the United States Navy. All United States Army units that enrolled African-

35
SECESSION OF THE SOUTHERN STATES IN 1860-1861
American soldiers were designated as “United States Colored Troops,” or U. S. C. T.

Approximately 180,000 African Americans served in the military during the Civil War. In the spring
of 1863, Harriett Tubman, a leader of the underground railroad before the war, led one of the first
military campaigns to free enslaved African Americans along the Combahee River in South
Carolina. Her joint effort with the United States Army freed over 750 enslaved African Americans.
The Civil War was a watershed in American history. Not only did African Americans free
themselves from bondage and helped to end the nation’s slave economy, they also began to
create independent lives for themselves. They searched for family members who had been sold
during slavery. They legalized their marriages, and attempted to take their women and children out
of the fields.
Students will understand that slavery was the main cause of the Civil War. Students will also
understand the major issues of the war such as the emancipation of African Americans from
slavery, the role of African-American soldiers, and the development of African-American
educational institutions during and after the period of Reconstruction such as Fisk, Howard,
Morehouse and Spelman.

Underground railroad emancipation Freedmen’s Bureau U. S. C. T.

Corporal James Henry Gooding, On the Altar of Freedom: A Black Soldier’s Civil War Letters from
the Front.
James McPherson, The Negro’s Civil War: How American Blacks Felt and Acted During the War

36
for the Union.

John Hope Franklin, The Emancipation Proclamation.
Ray Allen Billington, editor, The Journal of Charlotte Forten.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Army Life in A Black Regiment.
Leon Litwack, Been in the Storm in the So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery.
Susie King Taylor, Reminisces of My Life in Camp with the 33 rd U.S. Colored Troops.
Black Reconstruction (1866-1877)

During the period after the war, called “Reconstruction” (1863-1877), the United States Congress
passed the 13th Amendment to end slavery. Congress also created the Freedmen’s Bureau which
established some of the first schools for African Americans throughout the southern states. During
Reconstruction, African Americans were elected to political offices in every southern state and
twenty-two served in the United States Congress. Reconstruction was one of the most progressive
periods in American history. In addition to the passage of the 13th Amendment, Congress passed
the 14th and 15th Amendments, two civil rights bills and other legislation to address the status of
African Americans in the postbellum United States.
In 1910, historian and social and political activist W. E. B. DuBois wrote that the participation of
African Americans in the state and local governments of the South helped to make Reconstruction
a period in American history in which democracy advanced and many economic and social
achievements were made. He listed three specific achievements of African-American participation
in the governments in the South: 1. the establishment of universal manhood suffrage; 2. the
creation of the South’s first public school systems; and 3. the passage of new social legislation to
protect the rights of labor and to prevent discrimination against citizens on the basis of race, skin
color or previous condition of servitude. DuBois also wrote that of these three important
achievements the one that had the most impact was the creation of public school systems and
higher education institutions in the South. In 1860, 95% of African Americans enslaved in the
South were illiterate. But through the efforts of African-American legislators such as Robert Smalls
in South Carolina and Henry Moore in Texas, who were responsible for proposing the resolutions
and legislative acts to create the public school system in their respective states, the illiteracy rate
was reduced to 70% by 1880. Then, with the support of religious and philanthropic organizations
from the North and the maintenance of many of the schools established by the Freedmen’s Bureau
after the war, the illiteracy rate among African Americans was reduced to 30% by 1910.
The achievements of African-American legislators during Reconstruction went beyond education.
In Mississippi, for example, the African-American population exceeded the white population and
gave them an electoral majority in the state. With their white Republican allies in 1870 they were
able to elect a liberal and progressive legislature that consisted of thirty African Americans and
seventy-seven whites in the House of Representatives and five African Americans and twenty-
eight whites in the Senate. They controlled the state government until 1874. During that four-year
period, they rewrote the state constitution and it lasted for seventy-two years. They passed a
number of significant reforms for the state: including a biracial public school system; a centralized

37
state judicial system; a state hospital; and a civil rights bill that guaranteed equal access for African
Americans to places of public entertainment. They also renovated many of the state’s public
buildings. Overall, they tried to change race relations in the state of Mississippi and to make it a
more open community for everyone.
But these efforts by the Mississippi state legislature were short-lived. Even though the state sent
three very prominent and progressive African Americans to the United States Congress who
represented the state with dignity, the very presence of African-American Senators Hiram Rhodes
Revels and Blanche K. Bruce and Congressman John Roy Lynch was an affront to the majority of
the state’s white citizens. To overthrow Republican rule, and more specifically “Negro rule,”
Mississippi Democrats began a campaign of terror in 1875 to end Reconstruction in the state and
to “redeem” it from the Republicans. Led by a terrorist group called the “Knights of the White
Camelia,” Democrats assassinated black and white Republican office holders, stuffed ballot boxes,
used economic intimidation, and literally stopped Republicans from voting in the election of 1875.
White Democrats regained control of the state legislature and proceeded to end Reconstruction.
During the presidential election of 1876, the extralegal and violent actions carried out in Mississippi
were repeated in the three southern states that still had Republican-controlled state governments:
South Carolina, Louisiana and Florida. Despite the violence and political turmoil during the
election, and unlike Mississippi in 1875, neither party could declare a clear victory. Two sets of the
presidential election returns were submitted by the three states to Congress. Both the Democrats
and the Republicans claimed that their presidential candidate had won the electoral votes for the
three states. After appointing a bipartisan commission consisting of five Democrats and six
Republicans, one of whom refused to vote to determine whether Republican Rutherford B. Hayes
or Democrat Samuel J. Tilden had won the election, the two parties decided on a compromise—
the infamous Compromise of 1877. The Democrats conceded the election to the Republicans and
allowed Hayes become president. For this concession, Hayes agreed to take three actions: 1.
appoint a Democrat to his cabinet; 2. support economic development in the South; and 3. remove
the remaining federal troops from the southern states that protected black and white Republican
voters.
The Republicans agreed to the Compromise of 1877 and conceded electoral politics in the South
to the Democrats. After Hayes was inaugurated as pres1dent, he removed the remaining federal
troops from the southern states and effectively ended Reconstruction.
African Americans and the Emergence of Segregation and Jim Crow (1877-1919)
With the end of Reconstruction and the Compromise of 1877, the removal of federal troops from
the South allowed white Democrats and former Confederates to regain power over all of the state
governments in the South. A violent counter revolution began that denied African Americans the
citizenship rights that they had gained through the 14 th and 15th Amendments. With the tacit
approval of white northerners and the federal government, white southerners carried out a
campaign of terror to disfranchise African Americans, to deny them equal opportunity in all aspects
of life and to make them literally, second class citizens. In a series of United States Supreme Court
decisions that culminated with the Plessy v Ferguson decision in 1896, the southern states
implemented racist, “separate but equal” laws that segregated African Americans from whites in all
aspects of life. The southern states also revised their state constitutions to create an apartheid
38
system that effectively segregated and disfranchised African Americans from the cradle to the
grave in housing, employment, public facilities, education, and in all areas of public life. In addition,
all of the southern states used their criminal justice systems to arrest and incarcerate African
Americans on questionable charges and then to hire them out to plantation owners and private
companies in a convict lease system that made money for the states. The sharecropping and
tenant farming systems also tied African Americans to farms and landowners in the South with
virtually no relief. A brutal peonage system emerged in the South to replace plantation slavery.
The implementation of segregation and Jim Crow laws in the late nineteenth century was
accompanied by a campaign of violence and terror. Any African American who challenged the
racial status quo in the South and virtually anywhere in the country was subjected to mob violence
and police brutality. Between 1880 and 1950, over 4,000 African Americans were lynched primarily
in the South, but also in northern states such as Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Race riots, which
consisted of violent and bloody pogroms, were carried out against the African-American
communities, North and South, when whites felt the need to punish all African Americans for the
criminal act of one member of the community, or when African Americans challenged whites for
jobs, neighborhoods, or political power. Whites carried out race riots in cities as diverse Chicago,
Atlanta, Springfield, Ohio, Wilmington, North Carolina, and Greenwood, Oklahoma.
Whites also attacked the culture and identity of African Americans by promoting lurid and
demeaning stereotypes about them. In books, newspaper articles, magazines, advertisements,
and in popular music and art, African Americans were portrayed as “coons,” “darkies,” “tragic
mulattoes,” and as other stereotypical figures. Historians, anthropologists, theologians and
sociologists maintained that people of African descent had no history, no souls and had never
created a civilization of any kind. Books such as The Negro Is a Beast by Charles Carroll and The
Klansman by Thomas Dixon (which was made into the film “The Birth of A Nation” by D. W. Griffith
in 1915) portrayed African Americans as irredeemable brutes and as persons who would destroy
western civilization if they were allowed free rein to integrate with white Americans. All of these
images, caricatures and stereotypes justified segregation, discrimination and the violent actions by
whites against African Americans.

39
Students will learn about this period in African-American history by examining the lives of Booker
T. Washington and Ida B. Wells, two African Americans who took two different approaches to the
disfranchisement, lynchings, race riots, and general terrorism that African Americans faced in this
period. While Booker T. Washington founded Tuskegee Institute in Alabama and encouraged
African Americans to “accommodate”
white racism and white supremacy,
Ida Wells fought against segregation,
white racism, and led the nation’s first
antilynching campaign. This part of the
curriculum will also cover the role of
the buffalo soldiers in the pacification
of the American West and the
outstanding careers of poet and writer
Paul Laurence Dunbar and inventors
Elijah McCoy (the “real McCoy) and
Jan Matzeliger. The outstanding
achievements of both men challenged
the late nineteenth century notion that
African Americans were intellectually
inferior and not capable of assimilating
into American society.

Jim crow segregation pacification disfranchisement terrorism assimilation stereotypes
apartheid

Rayford W. Logan, The Betrayal of the Negro: From Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson.
George C. Rable, But There Was No Peace: The Role of Violence in the Politics of Reconstruction.
C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow.
Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery.
Ida B. Wells, Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells.
Douglas Egerton, The Wars of Reconstruction
Heather Cox Richardson, The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor and Politics in the Post Civil
War North, 1865-1901.
Douglas Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the
Civil War to World War II

40
The African-American Response to White Racism and Segregation: Accommodation,

Migration, Agitation and Community Development
In face of the rising tide of disfranchisement, lynchings, segregation and racial violence, African
Americans developed three essential responses and approaches to address them:
 migration from the South to the West and Northern cities;

 agitation and protest through the Niagara Movement, the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and other organizations; and
 the development of their own communities that fostered businesses and other African-
American institutions.
Starting as early as 1879, African Americans migrated first to the urban areas of the South, then to
the West, and finally to northern cities such as Chicago, Philadelphia, New York City and Detroit.
The first major African-American migration occurred in 1879 when 20,000 African Americans,
called the “Exodusters,” migrated west to Oklahoma and Kansas. They founded all-black towns
such as Boley, Oklahoma, Nicodemus, Kansas, and Kendleton, Texas. Subsequently, more
African Americans moved west to found towns such as Allensworth, California, named for Colonel
Allen Allensworth of the 10th Calvary of the “buffalo soldiers.” The biggest migration of African
Americans occurred during World War I when approximately 1,000,000 African Americans left the
South because of the racial violence, lack of opportunity, and the negative economic impact of the
boll weevil to settle in northern cities such as Detroit, Chicago and New York City. They were also
encouraged by the Chicago Defender newspaper, founded in 1905 by Robert S. Abbott, to migrate
to find better-paying jobs in the stockyards of Chicago, the auto factories of Detroit, and the
defense industries in other northern American cities during World War I.
This first migration began the gradual urbanization of African Americans. It also led to the creation
of distinct African-American communities such as Chicago’s Southside; East Cleveland, Ohio; the
Hill District in Pittsburgh; the American Addition in Columbus, Ohio; and eventually, Harlem in New
York City. Concurrently, African-American businesses developed to serve the specific needs of
African-American migrants that segregation denied them. African Americans also developed
business districts in cities such as Durham, North Carolina and the Greenwood section of Tulsa,
Oklahoma. These districts provided a variety of services such as grocery stores, funeral services,
dry cleaning, accident and life insurance, and barber and beauty shops Two African Americans
started banks: Maggie Lena Walker, the first African-American bank president, organized the
Consolidated Bank and Trust Company in Richmond and Jesse Binga founded Binga State Bank
in Chicago.

41
While African Americans migrated to northern and western cities during World War I in search of
better opportunities for jobs and living conditions, they did not find many opportunities in the
American military. When the United States entered the war it was forced to expand its military in
order to increase the troop strength needed to assist its allies. From 1866 to 1917, African
Americans were allowed to serve in only four segregated, army regiments, the 24 th and 25th
Infantry regiments and the 9 th and 10th Calvary regiments. These were the historic, highly
acclaimed “Buffalo Soldier” regiments. When the United States military drafted African Americans
to serve in World War I, four new, segregated units were created—the 368th , 369th, 371st and 372nd
Army units. All of the units were assigned white officers. When they were deployed to Europe to
fight, they usually fought with soldiers from the French and British armies. African American
soldiers fought with valor and served their country well. The 369 th (called the “Harlem Hellfighters”)
and three individual African Americans, Lieutenant Colonel Otis Duncan, Sergeant Henry Johnson,
and Private Needham Roberts earned the French Croix de Guerre, France’s highest military honor
for their distinguished service.
The French recognition of the valor of African-American soldiers reflected the French decision to
treat them as equals and fairly based on their performance. This treatment caused concern among
the American military command because it did not consider African Americans to be equal to or as
good as white soldiers and treated them accordingly by assigning them to labor details and to
other duties that disrespected them as soldiers. In fact, in May 1919 W. E. B. DuBois published a
“Secret Memo” from United States State Department urging French army officials not to treat

42
African-American soldiers as equals because it would disturb race relations in the United States if
they returned with ideas that they were equal to whites. The memo also encouraged the French
government not to allow the soldiers to have too much contact and familiarity with French
citizens—especially French women.
The fears of the United States government officials were justified when the war ended. African
American and white soldiers fought each other in the streets of French cities when black and white
regiments encountered each other in social gatherings. The frequency of such racial clashes
forced the United State military to withdraw all African-American army regiments from France
earlier than the rest of the AEF and to send them home. But not before dispatching Robert R.
Moton, the principal Tuskegee Institute, to speak to the soldiers that when they returned home,
they would have to continue to accept segregation and second class citizenship. But the soldiers
who had fought “to save the world for democracy” in France and Germany did not accept Moton’s
pleas. They adopted the stance of “we return fighting” and they no longer accepted the idea that
African Americans had to accept a position of inferiority in American society. The “Red Summer of
1919” was the result and there were racial disturbances and riots in thirty American cities. At least
thirteen African-American veterans were among the seventy-seven people who were lynched by
whites in 1919.
Students will learn about this period in several ways. They will learn about the nascent civil rights
movement through the lives of Ida B. Wells, W. E. B. DuBois, and James Weldon Johnson, who
were some of the founders and early leaders of the Niagara Movement (1905) and the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). They will learn about how the
NAACP began efforts to win citizenship rights for African Americans through courts cases such as
Guinn v. U.S. (1915) and Buchanan v. Warley (1917), and by urging the United States Congress to
pass the Dyer Antilynching bill. They will examine the emergence of African-American artists and
musicians in this period such as Henry O. Tanner, Scott Joplin, and James P. Johnson. They will
also learn about the contributions of African-American athletes and pioneers, such as cyclist Major
Taylor, jockey Isaac Murphy, boxer Jack Johnson, scientist Lewis Latimer (who developed the
filament for the light bulb), and Matthew Henson, who discovered the North Pole. All of these
individuals made major contributions to American society in spite of the racism and discrimination
that they faced during this period of American history.

Migration ragtime NAACP lynchings “Exodusters” filament

Nell Irvin Painter, The Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas after Reconstruction.
Robert B. Grant, The Black Man Comes to the City: From the Great Migration to the Great
Depression, 1915 to 1930.
August Meier, Negro Thought in America, 1880-1915: Racial Ideology in the Age of Booker T.
Washington.

43
W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk.

Marvin E. Fletcher, The Black Soldier and Officer in the United States Army, 1891-1917
Mary White Ovington, “How the National Association for Colored People Began,” The Crisis
(1914).
African Americans and the Harlem Renaissance (1920-1930)
In the 1920s African Americans organized their largest
mass movement in American history and made a
significant contribution to American cultural arts. In 1916,
Marcus Garvey migrated from Jamaica to the United
States. He organized the first chapter of the Universal
Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in Harlem, New
York in 1917 and by 1922 scholars estimate that its
membership ranged from 1.5 to 5 million African
Americans, the largest movement among African
Americans in American history. Garvey’s UNIA advocated
race pride, Black Nationalism, Pan-Africanism and black
self-help. It developed numerous African-American
businesses, a newspaper, an order of African-American
nurses called the “Black Cross,” and a steamship line.
Although Garvey was arrested in 1924 for mail fraud, his
philosophy and advocacy of race pride and African-
American self-help (called Garveyism) had a tremendous
impact on African Americans. A race conscious movement Fire!, edited by Wallace Thurman in 1926.
Cover art by Aaron Douglas
emerged among younger African Americans called the
“New Negro Movement.” Taking its tone and content from Garveyism, the “New Negro Movement”
sought to exalt race pride among African Americans and to link urban African-American culture to
its rural roots in the South as well as its African roots.
The “New Negro Movement” had its greatest impact on the African-American culture of the 1920s
and stimulated an artistic movement called the “Harlem Renaissance.” Young, African-American
writers and artists such as Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Aaron Douglas, and
Zora Neale Hurston infused their works—novels, poetry, essays and paintings--with the elements
of the African and African-American cultural tradition. African-American singers and musicians
such as Jelly Roll Morton, Ma Rainey, Eubie Blake, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Bessie
Smith made the blues and jazz the most popular genres of American music.
A group of African American intellectuals and leaders called “The Six” (James Weldon Johnson,
Walter White, Charles Johnson, Jesse Fauset, Alain Locke and Casper Holstein) encouraged and
supported the younger African-American artists in order to promote the concept of “art for
integration.” They believed that whites would see the unique “American” art produced by African-
American writers and artists and become more accepting of African Americans as full citizens.
Their efforts obviously failed. In the 1920s, whites relished, enjoyed, and were entertained by
African-American artists and entertainers, but they still did not want them to live next door to them.
Students will learn about the major participants of the Harlem Renaissance cited above. They will
44
view images and listen to the audio and video recordings which will help them understand how
African Americans emerged as the leaders in the development of the major genres of American
music such as jazz, blues, gospel and modern rhythm and blues.

Garveyism jazz blues “New Negro Movement” UNIA “Pan-Africanism” race conscious
Renaissance “art for integration”
For further reading:

Cameron McWhirter, Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America.
Nathan Huggins, Voices from the Harlem Renaissance.
David L. Lewis, When Harlem Was In Vogue.
Alain Locke, The New Negro.
Tony Martin, Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and the
Universal Negro Improvement Association.
Langston Hughes, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” The Nation, 1926.
African Americans in the Inter-War Years (1930-1940)

The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s declined as a result of the stock market crash of 1929 that
led to the Great Depression. During the Great Depression millions of Americans were out of work
and lost their farms as well as their homes. The depression had an even more devastating effect
on African Americans and private relief agencies and churches often refused to provide them
assistance. President Herbert Hoover failed to address the problems caused by the Depression.
As a result, in 1932 Americans elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) as president and he
promised a “New Deal” and a new approach to solve the negative effects of the Great Depression.
FDR develop a host of public relief programs, public works projects, and training programs to put
Americans back to work and to address the economic problems created by the Great Depression.
He also created his “Black Cabinet.” The cabinet consisted of Mary McLeod Bethune, Eugene
Kinckle Jones, Robert Vann, and other African Americans who worked to ensure that the needs of
African Americans were addressed by FDR’s New Deal programs. FDR also became the first
president to address race relations in the country. Although he did not take a strong stand in
support of civil rights for African Americans, he made it known that he wanted African Americans to
be treated fairly by the relief and public works programs of the New Deal. Nevertheless, in spite of
his efforts, southern congressmen were able to impose racist restrictions on New Deal programs
such as Social Security, the minimum wage law, the Agricultural Adjustment Act and Section 7a of
the National Recovery Act that excluded African Americans from benefiting from them.
President Roosevelt’s wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, took a stronger stand on race relations than her
45
husband. She not only spoke out against racism and discrimination against African Americans, she
also made it possible for soloist Marian Anderson to hold a concert at the Lincoln Memorial in
Washington, D.C., after Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), a group of women who
traced their heritage to men and women who fought in the American Revolution, had denied her
access to singing in Constitution Hall. Mrs. Roosevelt resigned from the DAR in protest.
While the nation was in the throes of the Great Depression in the 1930s, Charles Hamilton
Houston, Thurgood Marshall, and the NAACP developed a strategy to challenge the segregated
schools for African Americans in the South and to improve them. The three-pronged strategy that
Houston and Marshall implemented in the South sought buses for African-American children who
had to travel long distances to their county schools, the equalization of salaries for African-
American teachers in the South, and access to and the integration of graduate professional
schools for African-American students in the South. Houston, and later Marshall, won a series of
graduate and professional cases in Maryland, Oklahoma, Missouri and Texas that established the
precedent for the victory in Brown in 1954.
Students will also learn about writers and musicians of the “Chicago Renaissance” such as
Richard Wright, Margaret Walker, Charlie Parker and Count Basie who began their prolific careers
during this interwar period.

Great Depression “New Deal” “Black Cabinet” Social Security NYA

Harvard Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights As A National Issue
Kenneth Goings, The NAACP Comes of Age: The Defeat of Judge John J. Parker.
Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White.
Darlene Clark Hine, Black Victory.
African Americans, World War Two and the Great Migration (1941-1950)
After the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 by Japan, the United States entered World
War Two against Japan, Germany and Italy. During the war African-American civil rights leaders
and organizations adopted the strategy of “fighting on two fronts:” fighting against the enemies of
democracy and freedom abroad, as well as the enemies of democracy and freedom on the “home
front,” particularly in the American South. Although initially the ongoing racial segregation and
discrimination in American society prevented African Americans from obtaining jobs in the defense
industries and serving on an equal basis in the military, the overwhelming demand for workers to
support the American war effort forced the United States government to end segregation and
discrimination in the defense industries and to provide African Americans new opportunities in the

46
military.
World War II was also a watershed
for African-American economic
development. Just as during World
War I, African Americans left the
South in record numbers and
moved to northern and western
cities wo work in the jobs in the
defense industries. This second
“Great Migration” further
established the political power of
African Americans in northern cities
such as Chicago, New York,
Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia,
and Los Angeles. An additional
economic impact was as one woman claimed in the Pittsburgh Courier, “It was Hitler who got us
out of white folks’ kitchens.” African-American women moved from being predominantly employed
in domestic service work (80% in 1940!) to jobs in the defense industries as well in other non-
service areas.
Students will learn about this period in African American history by studying the lives of several
African Americans who played major roles in desegregating the defense industries and the military.
They will learn about A. Philip Randolph, who planned the first “march on Washington” in 1941 in
order to protest racial discrimination in the defense industries and the military, and Thurgood
Marshall, who filed legal cases to ban segregation in the defense industries and to protect the
rights of African Americans in the military. They will also learn about General Benjamin O. Davis,
Sr. and General Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. During World War Two, General Davis, Sr. became the
nation’s first African-American Brigadier General, while his son, Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., became
one of the commanding officers of the Ninety-ninth Pursuit Squadron or the Tuskegee Airmen.

Desegregation defense industries legal cases “home front” democracy Smith v. Allwright

Harvard Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights As A National Issue.
Richard M. Dalfiume, Desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces: Fighting on Two Fronts, 1939-
1953.

47
THEME 5 – THE STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM, JUSTICE AND EQUALITY

The Struggle for Civil Rights: Phase One--From the Courts to the Direct Action Movement
(1945-1960)
Following World War Two, African Americans were determined not to lose the momentum that they
had gained during the war. The NAACP continued to pursue legal cases and law suits to
undermine the legal basis of segregation. Continuing the strategy outlined by Charles Hamilton
Houston, Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP won a series of legal precedents that led to the
overturning of school segregation in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas.
The Brown case not only made racial segregation illegal in the nation’s public schools, it also gave
African Americans the impetus to challenge segregation in public transportation, public facilities,
and in all aspects of American society. To challenge segregation African Americans and their white
allies used a variety of direct action tactics, including boycotts, marches, freedom rides, and
demonstrations. These actions by African Americans in the postwar period of American history
moved the struggle for civil rights from the courts to the streets of American society.
This unit will teach students the importance of the civil rights movement by illustrating several
facets of the movement as well as the lives of some of its leaders and victims. Students will learn
about Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, Constance Baker Motley and the other
NAACP lawyers who won the cases that led to the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954.
Students will learn about the lynching of Emmett Till and how his mother Mamie Till Mobley
decided to open his casket in order to show the world what whites in Mississippi had done to her
son. This unit will cover the stories of Rosa Parks, the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the
emergence of Martin Luther King and SCLC, as well as the courage of Daisy Bates and the Little
Rock Nine.

Advocates precedents SCLC impetus boycott parallel white primary poll tax

Genna Rae McNeil, Groundwork: The Life of Charles Hamilton Houston
Harvard Sitkoff, The Struggle for Black Equality, 1954 to 1992.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story.
Aldon Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement.
Darlene Clark Hine, Black Victory: The Rise and Fall of the White Primary in Texas.
Will Guzman, Civil Rights in the Texas Borderlands.

48
The Struggle for Civil Rights – Second Phase: The Road to Black Power (1960-1975)
While the first phase of the civil rights

movement focused primarily on legal
cases, school desegregation and direct Dallas Express, April 8, 1944
action tactics to integrate public
accommodations, the second phase
became a struggle for power, Black
Power. The second phase of the civil
rights movement also involved young
African Americans and whites. These
young people started the sit-in
movement, participated in the freedom
rides, and formed their own
organization, the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee. Partnering
with older civil rights organizations such
as the NAACP, SCLC and the
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE),
SNCC also started voting registration
campaigns throughout the South in
order to empower African Americans to
vote, run for elective office, and to take
control of the government entities that
affected their lives. SNCC chairman and
organizer Stokely Carmichael defined
this phase of the civil rights movement
as “Black Power,” a concept first
advanced by New York Congressman
Adam Clayton Powell in the early 1960s.
Thanks to the heightened political
awareness developed among African
Americans during the civil rights
movement, they were able to elect their
first African-American mayors in Gary,
Indiana, Detroit, Atlanta, Newark,
Washington, D.C. and Cleveland, Ohio
in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Students will learn about the civil rights movement in the following areas: they will learn about the
four students in Greensboro, North Carolina—Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, David Richmond
and Ezell Blair, Jr,--who started the sit-in movement at a Woolworth lunch counter on December 1,
1960; Stokely Carmichael and SNCC; the assassination of Medgar Evers in Mississippi; the role of
Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam in the civil rights movement; the emergence of Angela Davis as
a supporter of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense and advocate for prisoners’ rights; the
protest of Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Olympics; and the leadership of Dr. Martin
Luther King in the civil rights movement from 1955 to his assassination in 1968.

49
2Impact of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (Registered African American voters in 1960 and 1965)

Nonviolence Black Power direct action tactics SNCC CORE sit-ins freedom rides
Civil Rights act of 1964 Voting Rights Act of 1965

Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America.
Howard Zinn, SNCC: The New Abolitionists.
Clayborne Carson, SNCC: In Struggle.
Cleveland Sellers, The River of No Return: The Autobiography of A Black Militant and the Life and
Death of SNCC.
Martin Luther King, Where Do We Go from Here?: Chaos or Community.

50
The Black Arts Movement

In the 1950s and the 1960s the African-American freedom or civil rights movement served as the
catalyst for the second African-American Cultural Renaissance of the twentieth century. The
second Renaissance is often called the “Black Arts Movement” and it is linked closely with the
“Black Power Movement” because it was not only artistic and cultural, it was also very political. The
civil rights movement was not only the catalyst for the second Renaissance, it also provided the
historical background for the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s. Like the Harlem Renaissance of
the 1920s, the Black Arts Movement exalted pride in blackness and perhaps the key phrase or
slogan of the era was that “Black was Beautiful.”
Like the first Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement was most important because of how it made
African Americans feel about themselves, their culture, and their African heritage. During the
second Renaissance, African clothing such as dashikis and African-oriented hairstyles such as the
“afro” became popular because African Americans were seeking to reclaim their heritage and to
identify with their “Africanness.” Many African Americans began to call themselves “black” or
“blacks” in a conscious attempt to reverse the negative connotations and stereotypes that the
English language has associated with the word “black.”
Just as in the first Renaissance, there was also a
significant development in African-American culture.
Writers such as Leroi Jones, Nikki Giovanni, Sonia
Sanchez, and Don L. Lee captured the Black Arts
Movement in literature. Musicians such as John
Coltrane, Miles Davis, Pharoah Sanders, and
Thelonious Monk captured the essence of Black
Power and Black Nationalism in free form jazz
music. Even rhythm and blues music—especially
the music of Motown, The Sound of Philadelphia
(TSOP), and the Memphis Sound reflected the
liberated style of the Black Arts Movement. In
addition, many schools, colleges and universities,
were pressured by black students and parents to
teach Black History as well as other courses about
A portrait of Nikki Giovanni, a participant in the Black Arts the African-American experience.
Movement
Most importantly, unlike the Harlem Renaissance of
the 1920s, the Black Arts Movement coalesced with
the political activism of African Americans in the 1960s--the Black Power Movement. An important
objective of the civil rights movement was to empower African Americans and to enable them to
exercise the political rights that other Americans took for granted. Political self-determination was
an important part of the second Renaissance. Thus, African Americans elected their first mayors in
Cleveland, Gary, Atlanta, Newark, Detroit, and Birmingham. The call for “Black Power” motivated
African Americans to participate in the American political process in unprecedented numbers for
the first time and to begin to enjoy the benefits of American democracy like other Americans for the
first time in American history.

51

“Africanness” Motown dashikis Black Power Movement self determination
For Further Reading:

Larry Neal, “The Black Arts Movement,” Drama Review, Summer 1968.
Johari Kunjufu, An African Frame of Reference
Larry Neal and Amiri Baraka, Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing.
Frank Kofksy, Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music.
William L. Van DeBurg, New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture,
1965-1975.
THEME 6 – THE CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN-AMERICAN EXPERIENCE

African Americans in Contemporary America: Race, Politics, and Progress
(1980s to the Present)
Thanks to the civil rights movement African Americans have achieved much progress in the last
quarter of the twentieth century. They elected African-American mayors in every major American
city from New York City to Los Angeles and San Francisco, California. In addition to winning
elective offices in every level of government, they made unprecedented progress in jobs, housing,
business, entertainment, and sports. African Americans such as Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan,
and Kanye West have become household names and the success of many African Americans in
business, entertainment, and sports have belied the statistics that show that some African
Americans still lag behind in wealth, poverty levels, and health care. The unprecedented success
of many African Americans in their chosen fields and the racial barriers and discrimination that
others continue to face have become a new American paradox. The most obvious paradox is that
Americans of all colors can elect an African American as president for two terms, President Barack
Obama, and still have him face the discrimination, disrespect, and racism that African Americans
have faced throughout their history in America. Addressed as part of the contemporary African
American experience is the development and impact of “hip hop” culture, the emergence of the
Afrocentric movement, as well as how the war on drugs led to the mass incarceration of African-
American and other men of color.
Students can learn about the contemporary paradox faced by African Americans and the nation at
large through the many African-American success stories: Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, Mayor
David Dinkins (New York City), Barbara Jordan (U.S. Congress), U.S. Secretaries of State Colin
Powell and Condeleeza Rice, astronaut Mae Jemison, Carol Mosely Braun (first African-American
female U. S. Senator). It will also provide students examples of the problems that African
Americans continue to face by using examples such as the cases of Rodney King, Trayvon Martin
and Sandra Bland.

52

unprecedented paradox contemporary progress police brutality

Henry Louis Gates, The African American Century.
Ellis Cose, The Rage of A Privilege Class
Eugene Robinson, Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America
Richard Woolfe, Renegade: The Making of A President.
Ta-nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me.
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.
THE IMPACT OF AFRICAN AMERICANS ON THE ARTS, CULTURE, BUSINESS, SCIENCE,

TECHNOLOGY AND HEALTH
African Americans have contributed virtually to every field and endeavor in American society.
African-American inventors, scientists, and innovators. for example, have contributed inventions
such as the blood plasma bag (Charles Drew), shoe lasting machine (Jan Matzeliger), light bulb
filament (Lewis Latimer), cellular car phone (Henry T. Sampson), lubricating cup for locomotive
engines (Elijah McCoy), air conditioning unit (Fredrick M. Jones), ice cream (Augustus Jackson),
straightening comb (Madame C J Walker), telephone transmitter (Granville T. Woods), traffic light
(Garrett Morgan), spark plug (Edmond Berger), door knob (O. Dorsey), potato chip (Hiram S.
Thomas) and a plethora of other everyday conveniences that are too numerous to develop a
complete list.
In 1903, when W. E. B. DuBois wrote in The Souls of Black Folk, “would America be America
without her Negro people?,” he was not referring to the list of inventions and innovations cited
above. He was referring broadly to the numerous contributions that African Americans had made
to the economic development of the United States through their forced labor during slavery and
their poetic and vernacular contributions to American culture. He ended his book with a very
specific cultural contribution that African Americans had made: the “Sorrow Songs.” According to
DuBois the spirit, sorrow and the depth of feeling that African Americans had put into their religious
songs had shaped American music and folklore. Due to the influence of the slave experience on
these songs, they were called “slave songs” and they had an influence on every genre of American
music from ragtime and blues to jazz and rhythm and pop. Indeed, it is very easy to see the African
and African-American on American music, pop culture and the entertainment.
It is not as well known, however, how Africans and African Americans have influenced and
contributed to other aspects of American society such as medicine and science. The legacy of
medical science from ancient Egypt, for example, shaped the symbolism for medical science (the
snake) as well as provided evidence of the possibility of modern surgical techniques. An example
of the medical science passed from Africans to the world was the case of Onesimus, an enslaved
53
African owned by Cotton Mather. When a smallpox epidemic occurred in Boston in 1721,
Onesimus explained how in his homeland medicine men would inject a small amount of the
disease into a person in order to make him or her immune from it. Mather investigated Onesimus
claim, tried it and it worked to stem the small pox outbreak in Boston.
Other examples: Dr, Daniel Hale Williams performed the first open heart surgery in the United
States at Provident hospital in Chicago in 1893. During World War II, Dr. Charles Drew developed
a method for preserving blood plasma that saved many lives during and after the war. In 1987, Dr.
Ben Carson performed a successful surgery to separate craniopagus twins.
vernacular “slave songs” blues jazz entrepreneur
For further reading

Portia P. James, The Real McCoy: African American Invention and Innovation, 1619-1930.
Dale Rosengarten, Theodore Rosengarten and Enid Shildkrout, editors, Grassroots: African
Origins of an American Art.
Middleton Harris, The Black Book.
Mack and Hoffius, Landscape of Slavery: The Plantation in American Art.
Michael Woodard, Black Entrepreneurs in America: Stories of Struggle and Success.
Ivory Toldson and Alfred Pasteur, Roots of Soul: The Psychology of Black Expressiveness.
Mellonee V. Burnim and Portia K. Maultsby, African American Music: An Introduction.
Allen, Ware and Garrison, editors, Slave Songs of the United States: The Classic 1867 Anthology.
African and African American History Films
1. Africa: A Voyage of Discovery (8 episodes)

2. Black History: Lost, Stolen or Strayed
3. Free Your Mind: Return to Source, African Origins
4. Africa: Different But Equal
5. The Middle Passage
6. Africans in America
54
7. Slavery and the Making of America

8. Egalite and Liberte: Toussaint L’Ouverture
9. Underground Railroad: The William Still Story
10. Birth of a Nation
11. Profiles in Courage: Frederick Douglass
12. Solomon Northup’s Odyssey
13. Twelve Years a Slave
14. Charlotte Forten’s Mission
15. Slavery by Another Name
16. Crusade for Justice: Ida B. Wells
17. Booker T. Washington
18. DuBois of Great Barrington
19. From These Roots
20. The Negro Soldiers
21. Toms, Coons, Mammies and Black Bucks
22. Jackie Robinson
23. Eyes on the Prize: Parts I and II
24. Malcolm X: Make It Plain
25. Freedom Summer
26. 13
Maps and Charts

55

56
Focus by Grade Level and Course
Grades K-3 learning experiences develop students’ understanding of themselves and the world.
Specific to AAAHC, the primary focus is on the students learning the foundational beliefs, customs,
and traditions of African and African-Americans, the geography of the African continent, as well as
the contributions and achievements of African and African-Americans to science, mathematics,
technology, the arts, literature and justice since ancient times.
Grades 4-5 further grows students’ understanding of the African experience while having them
apply it to an introductory exploration of Texas history and United States history. Connections
between the early African experience and the experience of African-Americans in Texas and the
United States are explored. Of particular emphasis in Grades 4 and 5 are the contributions and
achievements of African-Americans to science, mathematics, technology, the arts, literature and
justice.
Grades 6-8 focus in on a deeper exploration of Africa’s geography, history and culture. World
regions of the African diaspora, including the Americas, are also studied to understand the global
connections of the African and African American experiences. The contributions and achievements
of African and African-Americans to science, mathematics, technology, the arts, literature and
justice - globally (Grade 6); in Texas (Grade 7); and the United States to 1877 (Grade 8) are
emphasized. Students will learn how historical narratives form and why multiple perspectives, and
counter-narratives, are necessary to uncover an accurate story about the past.
Grades 9-12 all AAAHC themes are addressed through the disciplinary lens’ of geography, world
history, United States history from 1877 to present, economics and government. In addition,
students further develop their understanding about the origins of and motivations behind dominant
narratives. A focus of learning experiences at high school prepares students to transfer their
understanding in ways that connect the history and culture of African and African-Americans with
the Contemporary African-American experience and, more broadly, the human experience.
Elective Courses focus on the exploration of content in greater depth and complexity.
CULTURAL STUDIES (Grades 6 – 8)

Provides an opportunity for students to discuss and explore major concepts and issues in
multicultural education. Examines the meaning of culture, and the various ways in which variables
such as race, class, and gender influence a society's beliefs, attitudes, and ways of life.
SPECIAL TOPICS IN SOCIAL STUDIES: AFRICAN AND AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORICAL

PERSPECTIVES AND CONTRIBUTIONS T (High School)
This course gives students an opportunity to explore African and African-American history from
ancient times to the present. During this study, students develop an understanding of the causes,
character, and consequences of the African American experience as well as the way individual
contributions shape the political, economic, and cultural landscape in the local community, the
United States, and the World.

57
Elementary School
Levels: K-3 and 4-5
African and African-

American History &
Culture
Overlay Curriculum
STILL. (2018)
Mr. Lonnie Williams

Instructional Coach, Wedgewood 6th Grade

58
Elementary School (Grades K – 3) - African and African

American History Content Map (under construction)
Overview
Learning experiences in the earliest grade level serve developing students’ understanding of
themselves and the world. Specific to AAAHC, the primary focus is on the students learning the
foundational beliefs, customs, and traditions of African and African-Americans, the geography of
the African continent, as well as the contributions and achievements of African and African-
Americans human progress since ancient times.
Themes:
3. African-Americans in the Colonial and Antebellum World
4. African-Americans in Modern America
6. Contemporary African-American Experience
7. The Impact of African Americans on the Arts, Culture, Business, Science, Technology and
Health
Embedded Learning Experiences and Resource Connections

Theme(s) LE Title LE Description Location within
FWISD SS CF
1 Customs and Students will learn about different cultures in the Kindergarten
Traditions of United States by comparing family customs and
People Around the traditions. Students will recognize that African-
World Americans celebrate Kwanzaa to celebrate their
heritage and culture.
5 MLK: “I Have A Students learn about the important contributions of Kindergarten

Dream” MLK by reading “A Boy Named Martin” by Laura
Townshend, listening to segments of MLK’s “I
Have a Dream” speech, and completing an I Have
a Dream writing assignment.
1 Jambo – Students are introduced to Swahili, one of the Grade 1/Unit 1

Salutations and major language groups in Africa in this learning
Community experience. Students learn about the origins of
salutations and language and how there is unity in
the ways people from different communities greet
one another.
1 What is MA’AT? Students learn the foundations and beliefs of Grade 1/Unit 2
MA’AT and how it promotes values that
emphasize nature and society working together in
harmony and the ways it plays out in everyday life.

59
1 How BIG is Africa? Students explore the differences between Grade1/Unit 3

continents, countries, and states, and to size is not
a key determinant of whether a place is a state,
country, or continent.
Source:
http://www.bu.edu/africa/outreach/curriculum/curri
culum-guide/
1, 3, 5, 7 Everybody Cooks Students explore how food can be a source of Grade 1/Unit 4
Rice unity for people from different cultural groups.
They learn that rice is a common staple in African
and African-American culinary traditions and
compare it with how rice is used in the culinary
practices of many cultures around the world.
1 Egyptian Symbols This lesson introduces students to the writing, art, Grade 1/Unit 4?
and Figures: and religious beliefs of ancient Egypt through Or Unit 5?
Hieroglyphs hieroglyphs, one of the oldest writing systems in
the world, and through tomb paintings.
Hieroglyphs consist of pictures of familiar objects
that represent sounds. They were used in ancient
Egypt from about 3100 BCE to 400 CE.
1 One Country, One Students learn how culture is all around us in this Grade 1/Unit 5
Family, Many learning experience. They explore cultures from
Cultures around the world and cultures and identify
traditions, like the idea of family and celebrations,
all cultures share. Included the learning
experience, is learning about African and African-
American families and the celebration of Kwanza.
4, 5, 7 Parade of Good Students will compare the lives and activities of Grade 1/Unit 1
Citizens historical figures that characterize three ideals and
principles of a good citizenship – honor, honesty,
and courage. Examples include: Jane Addams,
W.E.B. DuBois, Helen Keller, Martin Luther King
Jr., Caesar Chavez and Harriet Tubman.
5 Rosa Parks: Students will understand the heroic actions that Grade 1/Unit 6
American Hero Rosa Parks took to demand her rights under the
United States system of laws. They will also learn
how laws in the United States are made.
7 EHF Ideas - Students explore the careers of prominent African Grade 1/Unit 3
Research Africans Americans in science, mathematics, and
and African- technology.
Americans in
Science, Math, and Source:
Technology http://sciencenetlinks.com/lessons/african-
americans-in-science/
7 African and As they explore the concept of time, students learn Grade 1/Unit 5
African-American about various African-American inventors and their
60
Inventors in Our contributions to science, math, technology and on

Lifetime society.
1 “Jambo” – Students further explore the African language of Grade 2/Unit 1

Salutations and Swahili in this learning experience. Students learn
Country there is unity in the ways people from different
countries greet one another.
1 “Lift Every Voice Students learn about James Weldon Johnson’s Grade 2/Unit 1
and Sing” as a “Lift Every Voice and Sing” as an example of an
National Symbol American national symbol.
1 Egyptian Symbols Students create a pictorial alphabet using the Grade 2/Unit 2
and Figures: Scroll symbols of the Egyptian hieroglyphic alphabet.
Paintings Then, students identify and represent in their own
drawings figures from the Book of the Dead, a
funereal text written on papyrus and carved on the
walls of tombs to help guide the deceased through
the afterlife.
1 Africa is NOT a Students learn to recognize that it is hard to Grade 2/Unit 3

Country! generalize about Africa, because its diversity is
great, and each of its 53 countries is unique.
Source:
http://www.bu.edu/africa/outreach/curriculum/curri
culum-guide/
1, 2 Rice and the Students explore rice and how it connects people Grade 2/Unit 3
African Origins of around the world. The learning experience helps
Its Cultivation in the students discover the history and science behind
Americas rice production including the expertise Africans
brought with them to cultivate it in the Americas.
2 African Explorers Students learn about how early Africans explored Grade 2/Unit 5
the world, traded and settle with indigenous
peoples.
4, 5, 7 American Stories- Students learn about W.E.B. DuBois and George Grade 2/Unit 5
DuBois and Washington Carver and the ways their
Carver- African- accomplishments shaped the and United States
Americans Who and the World.
Shaped the
Community, State
and Nation
4, 5, 7 Frederick Douglass Students explore Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Grade 2/Unit 5
and Ida B. Wells: Wells as heroes who significantly influenced the
history of the United States.
American Heroes
and African-
61
Americans in technology.
Science, Math, and
Technology Source:
http://sciencenetlinks.com/lessons/african-
1 MA’AT: Harmony in Students learn that people all over the world come Grade 3/Unit 1
Community together to form communities. In this learning
experience, students explore model African
communities and the ways the principles of MA’AT
are a guide to civic engagement and reinforce
community values.
1 Egypt’s Pyramids: Students play the role archaeologists as they Grade 3/Unit 9
Monuments with a explore the wondrous structures built by the great
Message dynasties of ancient Egypt. In their exploration,
students consider what pyramids say about the
ancient Egyptians contributions to the world.
1 African Art, Culture Students will be able to identify Africa on a map of Grade 3/
& Symmetry the world, as well as identify geographical features
of Africa. Students will also be able to identify
characteristics of African artwork, including
symmetrical patterns.
4, 7 Symbols of In this lesson students will be introduced to the Grade 3/under
Freedom Constitution of the United States of America. development
Students will be introduced historical significance
of the document and discuss the document as a
symbol of freedom for some, while being viewed
as a document that did not protect the civil liberties
for African Americans during the documents
conception. Students will also have an opportunity
to discuss the significance of key terms such as:
symbols, equity, freedom and citizenship.
2, 3, 4 Africans as a In grade 2, students learned about how early Grade 3/Unit 3
Community of Africans explored and settled in different areas of
Nation Builders the Atlantic World. The focus of this learning
experience has students exploring how, through
trade and various areas of expertise, early
Africans contributed building civilizations and
nations around the world.
4, 7 “I, Too” by In this lesson students will become introduced to Grade 3/Unit 9
Langston Hughes the poem, “I Too Sing America” by Langston
Hughes. Students will both listen to and read the
poem for content analysis. Students will have an
opportunity to discuss the significant meanings of
liberty, citizenship and patriotism for African
Americans in the historical context of the early
twentieth century.
4, 7 African-American In this lesson students will become introduced to Grade 3/Unit 6

the historical figures, Ms. Annie Malone and

62
Cultural Innovators Madame CJ Walker, two cultural, business and

scientific innovators of the early twentieth century
America. Students will be introduced to the two
African American women as innovators of African
American culture. Students will also have an
opportunity to discuss the significance of the
concepts: innovation, creativity, legacy and
culture.
5 African-Americans Students are introduced to the historical Grade 3/Unit 5

Taking Actions for significance and content of the 13th, 14th, and
Our Rights 15th amendments and how they became
watershed historical moment for the United States
aim to fully extend the practices and principles to
African Americans after the Civil War.
and African- technology.
Americans in
Science, Math, and Source:
Technology http://sciencenetlinks.com/lessons/african-
Recommended Resources
Grade Theme Title & Author
3-5 1 Africa Is Not a Country by Margie Burns Knight & Anne Sibley O’Brien
3-5 1 Ashanti to Zulu by Margaret W Musgrove
K-3 1 Beatrice’s Goat by Paige McBrier
K-3 1 Jambo Means Hello: Swahili Alphabet Book by Muriel Feelings
K-3 1 Mama Panya’s Pancakes by Mary & Rich Chamberlin
K-3 1 Moja Means One: Swahili Counting Book by Muriel Feelings
K-3 1 We All Went on Safari: English & Swahili Edition by Laurie Crebs
3-7 2 A Voice of Her Own: The Story of Phyllis Wheatley, Slave Poet by Katheryn Laskey
3-5 2 Amistad: The Story of a Slave Ship by Patricia McKissack
2-4 2 Crispus Attucks: A Hero of the American Revolution by Charlotte Taylor
1-4 2 Phyllis Sings Out Freedom: The Story of George Washington and Phyllis Wheatley by
Ann Malaspina
2-3 3 All Different Now: Juneteenth, the First Day of Freedom by Angela Johnson & E.B.
Lewis
3-6 3 Eijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis
4 3 Freedom in Congo Square by Carole Boston Weatherford
4-6 3 Freedom Over Me: Eleven Slaves, Their Lives and Dreams Brought to Life by Ashley
Bryan
2-5 3 Henry’s Freedom Box by Ellen Levine
1-4 3 Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom by Carole Boston
Weatherford
1-4 3 The Patchwork Path: A Quilt Map to Freedom by Bettye Stroud

63
K-8 3 The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales by Virginia Hamilton & Leo Dillon
K-3 1 Beatrice’s Goat by Paige McBrier
K-3 1 Jambo Means Hello: Swahili Alphabet Book by Muriel Feelings
K-3 1 Mama Panya’s Pancakes by Mary & Rich Chamberlin
K-3 1 Moja Means One: Swahili Counting Book by Muriel Feelings

64
Elementary School (Grades 4 – 5) - African and African

American History Content Map (under construction)
Overview
At grades 4 and 5 students will further grow their understanding of the African experience and
apply it to an introductory exploration of Texas history and United States history. Connections
between the early African experience and the experience of African-Americans in Texas and the
United States are explored. Of particular emphasis in Grades 4 and 5 are the contributions
achievements of African-Americans to the contributions and achievements of African and African-
Americans to science, mathematics, technology, the arts, and justice.
Themes:
Health
Embedded Learning Experience and Resource Connections

FWISD SS CF
3, 7 Esteban and the In this learning experience students will be introduced to the Grade 4/Texas
Colonization of historical figure of Esteban and his significance to the History/Unit
Texas founding of Texas. This lesson most importantly introduces 5/Under
the early African presence in the Americas. Esteban’s development
journey as an African who was enslaved by the Spanish
represents the early cross-migratory and cross-cultural
infusions that contribute to the earlies identities of Texas.
This learning experience also gives students an opportunity
to trace the journey of Esteban between two continents, and
at minimum three ethnic identities (African, Arab, and
Spanish) in his personal, ethnic, cultural and geographic
development as the earliest understandings of the United
States are beginning to unfold.
3 African- Students will investigate the contributions of African Grade 4/Texas

American Americans to the Texas Revolution. History/Unit 6
Contributions to
Revolution and
the Republic of
Texas
3, 5 Texas and the In this learning experience students will be introduced to the Grade 4/Texas
Underground concepts of freedom and resistance in the context of the History/Under
65
Railroad American slave society. This lesson will provide students development
with the concepts of an “Underground Railroad” versus that
of a literal “railroad” and why the former was necessary for
African Americans who sought freedom. Students will also
learn that the Underground Railroad was one of many forms
of resistance that enslaved Africans practiced to achieve
freedom. This lesson will also provide students with an
opportunity to trace the clandestine migrations of African-
Americans to various Northern regions that include:
Oklahoma, California, and the country of Canada. This
lesson will primarily focus on the state of Texas.
4 Juneteenth In this learning experience students will be introduced to a Grade 4/Texas

Texas-centric African American history that reflects the History/Unit 3
celebration of freedom from the institution of American
slavery. Students will learn about the after-effect of the
American Civil War and how enslaved Africans across the
country were affected by the Northern-Union victory of the
war. This learning experience highlights the processes and
efforts for African-Americans to gain their freedom and what
makes the state of Texas unique in this historical moment.
The significance of this lesson will be the show of African
Americans gaining freedom in Texas in comparison to the
rest of the nation. Also, this lesson provides students with
local examples of African American commemorations for the
celebration of Juneteenth and why the significance has
endured to the present day.
4, 6, 7 Texas’ Black Students learn about the historical Black Cowboys of Texas Grade 4/Texas
Cowboys during this learning experience. This lesson will allow History/Under
students to learn of the range cattle work in Texas that development
enslaved African Americans engaged in versus the
plantation work enslaved African Americans were subjected
to in other states. This section will give students an
opportunity to learn of the cultural influences that Black
Cowboys have contributed the general cultural and
understandings of cowboys in general. Students will learn of
the relationships between the enslaved Africans and specific
farm labor necessary to create the identity of a cowboy. This
lesson provides a number of examples of Black Cowboys to
include Nat Love and Bill Cody and why telling their
narratives are vital in presenting the early history of Texas
and the contributions made by African Americans in that
development.
4 African- Students will describe the challenges African-Americans Grade 4/Texas

Americans, faced during Reconstruction. Students will research the role History/Unit 8
Reconstruction, of the Buffalo soldiers on the Texas Frontier.
and Buffalo
Soldiers on the
Texas Frontier
4, 7 African- Students will examine how African Americans contributed to Grade 4/Texas
Americans World War I and 1920s society at home while faced with History/Unit 10
Contributions to prejudice and racism. Students will also research the
66
Texas and the contributions of African American Texans to World War II.
United States in Included are the study of Scott Joplin, Julius Lorenzo Cobb
the 1920s Bledsoe, and Bessie Coleman.
4 African- Students will explore the contributions of African Americans Grade 4/Texas
American in local, state, and national government positions. Included History/Unit 10
Texans in Local, is the study of historical figures such as Barbara Jordan and
State, and Wallace Jefferson and contemporary leaders.
National
Government
4, 6 African- In this lesson students will be informed of a significant local Grade 4/Texas
Americans in African American history in Ft.Worth, TX. This section History/Under
Fort Worth, TX explicates the development of local African American development
community in the context of Texas political, economic and
social progressions. This lesson will inform students of how
the local community developments initiated by African
Americans were unique to Texas (railroad lines, purchase of
acreage, etc) while having comparable aspects to
community development which African Americans shared in
other parts of the country. This lesson will give students a
local practical example that teachers & students can
investigate through basic primary resources, local interviews
of current & former residents and also gaining information
from local libraries which have captured the local history of
the Stop Six Fort Worth, Texas community.
5 Hard Times At Students will investigate how the Civil Rights Act of 1964 Grade 4/Texas
Home and affected the lives of African Americans. History/Unit 10
Abroad
6 The Importance In this lesson students will be informed of the photo Grade 4/Texas
of Story Telling journal/magazine Sepia, a forerunner to such contemporary History/Under
and the Sepia media outlets such as: Ebony Magazine, Jet Magazine, development
Photo Journal - Black Enterprise, Essence Magazine and Vibe Magazine.
Fort Worth, This lesson will inform students of the importance of
Texas providing information to their community from their own
cultural, political, economic perspectives. This lesson
(potential in class exercise) provides students with
opportunities to both create their own stories and compare
potential examples of stories told about them from other
students claiming to know them. This lesson also gives
teachers and students an opportunity to engage in
questions around storytelling and the power to tell your own
story/truth.
7 EHF Ideas - Students explore the careers of prominent African Grade 4/Texas
Research Americans in science, mathematics, and technology. History/Unit 4
Africans and
African- Source: http://sciencenetlinks.com/lessons/african-
Americans in americans-in-science/
Science, Math,
and Technology
1, 2 MAAFA In this lesson students will be introduced to the concept, Grade 5/US
67
“MAAFA” in relation to the global and regional significance History/Under

of slavery. Students will have an opportunity to view the development
MAAFA as a pre-European (pre-Columbus) African
continental phenomenon rather than a historical occurrence
that begins with any European invasion. Students will be
introduced to the historical and geographic relationships of
slavery that began in Africa and over time, matriculated to
the Western hemisphere.
3 African- Students will research colonial slavery including the daily life Grade 5/US
American Life in of enslaved Africans including ways they resisted slavery. History/Unit 3
the Colonies
3 Bacon’s In this lesson students will be introduced to the concept(s) of Grade 5/US
Rebellion slavery from a variety of historical, cultural and continental History/Under
perspectives. Students will have an opportunity to engage development
the concepts of: enslavement, slavery, indentured servitude,
and race based practices of slavery versus practices based
on warfare and regional practices of the African continent.
Students will be introduced to how indentured servitude
practices in America were altered based on the historical
moment of Bacon’s Rebellion. Students will also compare
and contrast the practices of indentured servitude from the
African continent to America both pre and post Bacon’s
Rebellion as a benchmark for the changes and progression
of slavery in America.
3, 4, 5 Marronage In this lesson students will be introduced to the term Grade 5/US
“Maroon” and the concept of “Maroonage” to learn about an History/Under
early form of diversity and resistance to human injustice. development
Students will learn about slavery insurrections and the
constant struggle of enslaved Africans to manumit
themselves from the bondage of slavery. Students will learn
about the cooperative relationships that were developed by
Africans, First Nation Tribes and Indigenous persons to
forge alliances, living communities and spaces of refuge.
Students will become familiarized with the survival
mechanisms and tactics developed by the formerly enslaved
Africans that became essential in their survival along with
Native Americans who also resisted the persecution of
slavery and colonial genocide.
3 African- Students will investigate the contributions and actions of Grade 5/US
Americans and African Americans during the American Revolution. History/Unit 4
the American
Revolution
3, 4 Contributions of Students will summarize the contributions of African Grade 5/US

African- Americans in the design of the nation’s capital in History/Unit 6
Americans to a Washington, D.C. Students will also identify and describe
Young Nation how African Americans abolitionists and women fought to
end slavery.
3, 4, 5 Black Education In this lesson students will be introduced to the earliest Grade 5/US
in America forms of Black education in America. Students will learn History/Under
about “clandestine schools” and the motivations behind development
68
literacy for African Americans. Students will learn about

Black codes, anti-literacy legislation for enslaved Africans
and the role of literacy (reading, writing, & counting) for
African Americans before and after the Civil War. Students
will learn about the relationship between education and
freedom for the newly freed Africans. This section will
provide information on the different types of schools that
African Americans both founded and participated in
(Sabbath Schools, Native Schools, Freedmen's Bureau
Schools) The learning experience will provide significant
information on how newly freed African Americans built
schools, funded their schools, and became the primary
model for the establishment of public education in America.
4 The Rise of In this lesson students will be introduced to the concepts of Grade 5/US
Black the Black community through some early examples of early History/Under
Communities towns, African-American migration out of the South and the development
After the Civil beginnings of Black participation in the Industrial Revolution
War as a motivating factor for waves migrating “Exodusters”.
Students will learn about the various African American
enterprises developed by Black people after the Civil War.
Students will become familiarized with how Black people
gained financially for a brief historical moment and the
factors that contributed to the social, economic and political
decline of these independent Black towns which were
established after the Civil War.
4 Leaders in the Students will research the effects of Jim Crow laws and the Grade 5/US
Fight for Justice Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) ruling on the civil rights of African History/Unit 12
Americans. Students will investigate African Americans
leaders and their fight for societal changes.
4 Jazz Age and Students will explore how the African American culture Grade 5/US
the Harlem flourished during the Jazz Age and the Harlem History/Unit 13
Renaissance Renaissance.
Students will summarize the reasons for the Great Migration
and the experiences of African Americans that moved North.
4 African- Students will examine how African Americans contributed to Grade 5/US
Americans World War II while faced with prejudice and racism. History/Unit 14
Fighting in
World War II
5 Acts of Courage Students will identify the policy decisions that affected Grade 5/US
African American civil rights and explain the reasons that History/Unit 16
individuals took risks to participate in civil rights protests.
Leaders of the 1950s and 60s civil rights movement are
explored while investigating such events as the
desegregation of schools, athletics, the military, public
transportation and public places.
6 Americans Students will explore the significance of the election of Grade 5/US
Today and the President Barack Obama. History/Unit 17
Election of
Barack Obama

69
7 EHF Ideas - Students explore the careers of prominent African Grade 5/US
Research Americans in science, mathematics, and technology. History/Unit 7
Africans and
African- Source: http://sciencenetlinks.com/lessons/african-
Americans in americans-in-science/
Science, Math,
and Technology
Grade Theme Title & Author
4 & up 1 "Africa's Great Civilizations with Henry Louis Gates Jr" PBS Documenatary
5-9 1 Facing the Lion: Growing Up Maasai on the African Savanna by Joseph Lemasolai
5 1 Lekuton &Library
Heritage Herman Viola
of the African Peoples West Africa Series, Rosen Publishing Group
5 & up 1 Journey of the Songhai People by Calvin Robinson et al
5 1 "Lost Kingdoms of Africa" BBC Documentary
5 & up 1 "Rise of the Black Pharaohs" PBS Documentary
4 & up 1 "Wonders of the African World with Henry Louis Gates Jr." PBS Documentary
5 2 “Africans in America” PBS Documentary Teacher’s Guide
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/home.html - video
3-7 2 A Voice of Her Own: The Story of Phyllis Wheatley, Slave Poet by Katheryn Laskey
3-5 2 Amistad: The Story of a Slave Ship by Patricia McKissack
2-4 2 Crispus Attucks: A Hero of the American Revolution by Charlotte Taylor
5 2 Crispus Attucks: Hero of the Boston Massacre by Anne Beier
5 2 "Egalite for All: Toussaint Louverture and the Hatian Revolution" PBS Documentary
5 2 Olaudah Equiano: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p276.html
1-4 2 Phyllis Sings Out Freedom: The Story of George Washington and Phyllis Wheatley
5 2 by Ann Wheatley:
Phyllis MalaspinaYoung Revolutionary Poet by Katherine Kilby Boreland
5 & up 2 The Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America by Ivan Van
5 2 Sertima
The Middle Passage by Tom Feelings
5-8 3 America's Black Founders: Revolutionary Heroes and Early Leaders by Nancy I.
3-6 3 Sanders
Eijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis
4 3 Freedom in Congo Square by Carole Boston Weatherford
4-6 3 Freedom Over Me: Eleven Slaves, Their Lives and Dreams Brought to Life by
2-5 3 Henry’s Freedom Box by Ellen Levine
Ashley Bryan
1-4 3 Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom by Carole Boston
4 & up 3 Weatherford
"The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross" PBS Documentary
1-4 3 The Patchwork Path: A Quilt Map to Freedom by Bettye Stroud
K-8 3 The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales by Virginia Hamilton & Leo Dillon
4 & up 1 "Africa's Great Civilizations with Henry Louis Gates Jr" PBS Documenatary

70
5-9 1 Facing the Lion: Growing Up Maasai on the African Savanna by Joseph Lemasolai
5 1 Lekuton &Library
Heritage Herman Viola
of the African Peoples West Africa Series, Rosen Publishing Group
5 & up 1 Journey of the Songhai People by Calvin Robinson et al
5 1 "Lost Kingdoms of Africa" BBC Documentary
5 & up 1 "Rise of the Black Pharaohs" PBS Documentary

71
Middle School
Levels: 6 - 8

American History &
Culture
Overlay Curriculum
STILL. (2018)
Mr. Lonnie Williams

FWISD Instructional Coach, William James MS

72
Middle School (Grades 6 – 8) - African and African American History

Content Map (under construction)
Overview
Student learning involves a deeper exploration of Africa’s geography, history and culture. World
regions of the African diaspora, including the Americas, are also studied to understand the global
connections of the African and African American experiences. The contributions and achievements
of African and African-Americans to science, mathematics, technology, the arts, literature and
justice globally (Grade 6); in Texas (Grade 7); and the United States (Grade 8) are emphasized.
Students will learn with increasing depth and complexity how historical narratives form and why
multiple perspectives, and counter-narratives, are necessary to uncover an accurate story about
the past.
Themes:
Health

FWISD SS CF
1 Great Students identify important kings and queens and Grade 6/World
Pharaohs & discuss their major contributions; compare and contrast Cultures/
Queens of the major duties and roles of the ancient and present Under development
Egypt day tribal chiefs; understand and appreciate the long,
rich history of cultures and societies.
1 African Students analyze the languages of Africa by exploring Grade 6/ World

Languages their differences and similarities through the use of Cultures/
vocabulary, pronunciations, location, history, and map. Under development
1 Kingdoms of Students will learn about the kingdoms of West Africa Grade 6/ World
Western Africa (Ghana, Mali, and Songhay) by creating ‘artifacts’ from Cultures/
the kingdoms and making inferences about the finished Under development
products.
1 Ancient Africa Students will examine the development of early Grade 6/World
civilizations and trade routes in Africa. Cultures/Under
development
1 Bantu Students will examine the migration of Bantu peoples Grade 6/World
Migrations across the continent of Africa. Cultures
1 Africa's Students will examine the borders and cultures on the Grade 6/World

73
Borders and continent of Africa. Cultures

Cultures
1 African Music Students will examine the contribution and influence of Grade 6/World
Goes Global African cultures to music across the globe. Cultures
1 Exploring Students will examine the various traditional cultures of Grade 6/World
Traditional Africa. Cultures
Cultures
1, 2, 3 Africa Before Students will learn ways in which the spatial Grade 6/World
Colonization organization of a society changes over time the Cultures
environmental consequences of people changing the
physical environment in various world locations; use
mental maps to organize information about people,
places, and environments; identify cause and effect
relationships in text.
1,2, 3, 4 The African Students will examine the origins of the African Diaspora Grade 6/World
Diaspora and its impact on regions of contact today. Cultures
2 Olmecs: The students will analyze evidence to support or refute Grade 6

MesoAmerican the hypothesis that people from Africa migrated to Meso
Civilization America around 1200 B.C
2 Exploration of Students will examine the African Explorer, Estevanico Grade 7/Texas
Texas and the African presence in Texas and the Americas History/Unit 2
prior to the European Slave Trade.
3 Seeds of Students will evaluate the reasons U.S. immigrants Grade 7/ Texas
Rebellion in brought their slaves to Mexican Texas, and how History/Unit 4
Mexican Texas conflicting beliefs about slavery led immigrants to rebel
against Mexico’s anti-slavery laws.
3 The Texas Students will investigate the perspectives and actions of Grade 7/Texas
Revolution African Americans during the Texas Revolution. History/Unit 5
3 Republic to Students will examine the growth of slavery in the Grade 7/Texas
Statehood Republic of Texas, and why U.S. abolitionists opposed History /Unit 6
Texas statehood. Students will also evaluate how war
and slavery changed the geographic borders of Texas
when it became the 28th state.
3 Pre-Civil War Students will explore the relationship between the Grade 7/Texas
to Civil War demand for cotton and the expansion of slavery in History. Unit 7
Texas. Students will also examine how the fight over
slavery from 1850 to 1860 led to Texas’ secession from
the Union.
4 Emancipation Students will investigate the reasons for the delay in Grade 7/Texas
and freeing slaves in Texas once the Civil War ended. History/Unit 8
Reconstruction Students will also research the political, economic, and
social effects of Reconstruction on Texas freedmen.
4 The Texas Students will research the role and actions of the Buffalo Grade 7/Texas
74
Frontier soldiers as Texans began to populate the Texas Frontier History/Unit 10

and the inclusion of cowboys of color in the Texas cattle
drives.
4 Progressive Students will examine the participation of African Grade 7/Texas

Changes in Americans in the Populist Party and Progressive History/Unit 12
Texas reforms in Texas. Students will also investigate why
African Americans were willing to fight in WWI, while
facing discrimination at home.
4 Depression Students will explore the effects of the Great Depression Grade 7/Texas
and War: 1929- and Dust Bowl on African American families in Texas. History/Unit 13
1950 Students will also research the contributions of African
American Texans in World War II while challenging
racial attitudes and segregation.
4 Growth and Students will investigate the contributions of African Grade 7/Texas
Change: Americans that led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act History/Unit 14
1950s-1969 of 1964 and the other
legislative milestones.
3 Development Students will explore life in Africa before slavery, the Grade 8/US History
of the 13 arrival of the first enslaved Africans in North America, to 1877/Unit 1
Original and economics of colonial slavery.
Colonies
3 The Students will investigate the contributions and actions Grade 8/US History
Revolutionary of African Americans during the American Revolution. to 1877/Unit 2
Era
3 Constitutional Students will evaluate the 3/5 Compromise and the Grade 8/US History
Convention of government power it gave Southerners to expand to 1877/Unit 4
1787 slavery.
3 The Students will explore the historical context and meaning Grade 8/US History
Constitution of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. to 1877/Unit 5
3 Washington to Students will examine how the Haitian Revolution Grade 8/US History
Monroe influenced France to sell their Louisiana Territory to the to 1877/Unit 6
U.S.
3 The Industrial Students will investigate the relationship between the Grade 8/US History
Revolution cotton gin, Northern textile factories, and the expansion to 1877/Unit 8
of slavery.
4 Reform Students will research Abolitionist leaders and their Grade 8/US History
Movements actions including free African Americans working for the to 1877/Unit 10
freedom of Southern slaves.
4 Pre-Civil War Students will examine the sectional conflicts and Grade 8/US History
Events compromises that arose from 1850 to 1860 leading to to 1877/Unit 11
the secession of the South.
4 The Civil War Students will investigate the perspectives and actions of Grade 8/US History
African Americans during the Civil War. to 1877/Unit 12
75
4 Reconstruction Students will evaluate the political, economic, and social Grade 8/US History
effects of Reconstruction on freedmen. to 1877/Unit 13
Achieve 3000 Lessons Related to African and African-American History and Culture
Grade Level Theme Title & Description

Connections Connections
8 3 American Revolution: Never Forgotten
To ensure that his memory is not forgotten, the hometown of a
former slave is honoring him with a historical marker.
7, 8 3 Early Republic: Where History Still Lives

A historian has been sleeping in slave cabins to attract attention to
the need to preserve them.
7, 8 7 A Man of Courage
Richard Theodore Greener was an African-American man who was
a university professor in the South shortly after the Civil War.
7, 8 3, 4 Civil War and Reconstruction: A War Hero Remembered

Some historians say that a man named William Tillman was the first
African-American hero of the Civil War.
7, 8 3, 5 Turner's Rebellion
In 1831, American slave Nat Turner led a rebellion that instilled fear
throughout the South.
7, 8 3, 5 Remembering Dred Scott

In the landmark 1857 Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court ruled
that slaves were not eligible for U.S. citizenship.
8 4, 5 Civil War and Reconstruction: Two Groups, Rights for All

Before the NAACP, there was the Niagara Movement, a group that
protested racial injustice.
6, 7, 8 7 Uncovering History
A group is attempting to locate the final resting places of significant
African Americans among the unmarked graves of a historical
cemetery.
6 1 Ancient Middle East: What's Under the Sand

Scientists excavating an ancient burial site in Egypt have made two
new discoveries, and they believe there's more to come.

76
High School
Levels: 9 - 12

American History &
Culture
Overlay Curriculum
STILL. (2018)
Mr. Lonnie Williams

Instructional Coach, William James MS

77
High School – African and African American History

Content Map (under construction)
Overview
All AAAHC themes are addressed through the disciplinary lens’ of geography, world history,
United States history from 1877 to present, economics and government. In addition, students
further develop their understanding about the origins of and motivations behind dominant
narratives. A focus of learning experiences at high school prepares students to transfer their
understanding in ways that connect the history and culture of African and African-Americans with
the Contemporary African-American experience and, more broadly, the human experience.
Themes:
Health

FWISD SS CF
7 Women in Students will learn about the role of women in traditional Grade 9/World
Traditional African village life; understand the contextual nature of Geography/
African artwork within traditional African village life; become Under development
Societies familiar with women writers of postcolonial Africa;
examine how the traditions of village life influence
postcolonial arts and culture.
1 Nubia: Land of Students will learn the cultural, religious, political, and Grade 9/World
the Bow technological development of Nubian civilization; assess Geography/
the cultural, commercial, and political links between Under development
Egypt and Nubia.
1, 5 Why do people Students will examine how political, economic, social, Grade 9/World
migrate? and environmental push and pull factors and physical Geography/
geography affect the routes and flows of human Unit 1
migration? Students will research examples of forced
migration examples such as the European Slave Trade
and Hurricane Katrina.
1 North Africa and During this learning experience students will differentiate World Geography/
Sub-Saharan the characteristics that distinctively define North Africa Unit 5
from Africa South of the Sahara by creating a thematic
78
Africa map. Students will research how North Africa’s

geography facilitated the spread of Islam. The key
difference centers on the dominance of the Sahara
Desert in the north and its cultural connectedness to
Southwest Asia. The focus question of this learning
experience is - What physical and human features
constitute North Africa as a region distinct from Africa
South of the Sahara?
1 Regional Students will define sub-Saharan Africa as formal region World Geography/
Geography – during this learning experience. As part of the learning, Unit 6
What makes students will review the concepts of types of regions -
sub-Saharan formal, functional and perceptual – as well as identify
Africa a region? geographic characteristics that differentiate sub-Saharan
Africa from the north. Students will make predictions and
develop understanding of how geography influenced
culture and perceptions of the African Experience.
1 Human Students will evaluate the relationships between past World Geography/
Geography - events and current conditions in the region by analyzing Unit 6
Analyzing the various sources of information and completing a graphic
Impact of organizer that explains how the European colonization of
Africa’s Past on Africa’s has contributed to its present political, economic,
its Present social and cultural conditions.
Conditions
1 Physical Students will explore how physical processes shape World Geography/
Geography - Africa’s Great Rift Valley and make predictions for how Unit 6
Eastern Africa’s the land will look in the future. The natural wonder of the
Great Rift Great Rift Valley stretches from Syria to Mozambique.
Valley: Physical The deep valley was formed out of a system of fractures
processes in the Earth's surface, volcanic eruptions, and
shaping its earthquakes the Great Rift Valley. In East Africa the
origins and its Great Rift Valley is formed by volcanic mountains and
future deep lakes. Students will analyze how the effects of the
Great Rift Valley impact the Africa Experience through
the preservation of fossil, access to fresh water, and
human response to climate and elevation.
1, 6 Human Genocide is defined as the deliberate and systematic World Geography/

Geography - destruction of, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, Unit 6
Modern religious, or national group. Students will plan, organize,
Genocide in and complete a group research project that involves
Africa South of asking geographic questions; acquiring, organizing, and
the Sahara analyzing geographic information; answering geographic
questions; and communicating results. As part of their
inquiry students will explore the causes and effects of the
Rwandan genocide of 1994 and trace events to
European colonialism of Africa.
1, 6 Africa’s rapid Students will explain how Africa’s rapid rate of World Geography/
urbanization and urbanization has caused changes in settlement patterns Unit 6

79
it challenges in Africa, describe the human and physical features that

influence the size and distribution of cities and identify
reasons for why Africa’s processes of urbanization
present unique challenges by analyzing multiple sources
of information as part of this learning experience. The
focus question of this learning experience is - Why are
cities in Africa South of the Sahara growing so rapidly,
and what are the demographic and economic challenges
in meeting the region’s needs from high rates of
urbanization?
1, 7 N. Africa, SW North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa are widely World Geography/
and Central Asia considered two distinct regions as a result due to their Unit 6
at a differing physical geography as well as their cultural and
“Crossroads” demographic make-up. This learning experience places
North Africa in a region with SW Asia (the Middle East)
and Central Asia with an emphasis on its shared physical
characteristics. Often referred to as the “crossroads” the
region joins Europe, Asia and Africa. Each sub-region
shares a mostly arid climate; a lack of sufficient
freshwater. Students will learn how the region shares
many cultural and political characteristics.
1, 7 Solving Desertification in North Africa’s Sahel region affects World Geography/

Desertification in economic/farming activities, has caused famine Unit 6
the Sahel outbreaks and influenced migration patterns. Using
several geographic sources, this learning experience
explores the multiple causes and effects of desertification
including the role of human activity and ways people in
the region have modify the environment in response to
the region’s challenges.
2 Maroon Students will research and understand the culture, World Geography/
Population in customs, and languages of the Maroons in Suriname, Under development
the Caribbean Puerto Rico, and Jamaica, and analyze historical records
tracing development of a Western civilization.
2, 3, 4, 5 Human This learning experience builds on previous learning from World Geography/
Geography – the unit to compare and contrast the cultural identities of Unit 2
Applying the the United States and Canada. Given their colonial roots
African- and long history of immigration, the United States and
American Canada share a rich identity of cultural diversity. Each
Experience country, however, has approached the task unifying
Through An these cultures differently. The United States has longed
Exploration of viewed itself as a “melting pot” while Canada sees itself
Identity and as creating “cultural mosaic”. Students will evaluate if
Diversity in the the melting pot metaphor reflects the African American
US and Canada experience. Students’ exploration of these ideas aligns
with the study of the historical treatment of immigrant
groups – assimilation - in the grade 11 US History
standards.

80
5 The Nation of Students will understand the political and economic World Geography/
Haiti status of Haiti within the Caribbean Basin region; identify Under development
the impact of the Haitian Revolution on Haiti’s political,
economic and cultural development; identify the push-
and-pull factors that influence Haitian migration and
immigration patterns; compare and contrast economic
and social indicators for five Caribbean countries and the
United States.
6 Como This learning experience identifies the physical and World Geography/
Neighborhood: geographic features that create borders and the types of Unit 1
Exploring regions geographers use to better understand the earth’s
Boundaries and spatial relationships. Students will then apply their
Regions understanding of the concepts to an area of Fort Worth,
including using Census data to analyze predominantly
African American Neighborhoods in Fort Worth, and
make predictions of condition leading to the
concentration.
1 Geographic Students analyze early River Valley civilizations, World History/

Influences on especially the influence of geography on the Unit 1
Early Civilization development of those civilizations. The five civilizations
include Egypt.
1 Comparing Students will work in groups to research and report on World History/
Early early civilizations, including the African civilization of Unit 1
Civilizations Egypt. Students will compare cultures and analyze the
characteristics of civilizations.
1 The Historical Students will use a graphic organizer to research and World History/
Origins of the compare major world religions. Students will also Unit 2
World’s Major examine early Egyptian religions that predate Judaism,
Religions Islam, and Christianity. After researching, students will
evaluate how each religion compares and contrast with
each other.
1 Rise and Students will examine the impact of Islam on Europe, World History/
Spread of Islam Asia and Africa during the 7th through 14th centuries, at Unit 5
approximately the same time that Christianity was
exerting its influence in on most of Europe. Students will
also learn of the development of the Islamic Caliphates
and the important ideas in math, science and technology
that originated in Muslim culture during the time of the
Caliphates.
1 Medieval Africa Students will examine the importance of the African trade World History/
– Ghana, Mali routes, along with the role that these trade routes played Unit 5
and Songhai in spreading ideas, including the Islamic religion and
Muslim influence in Africa. Students will also learn of the
geography and culture of African Society and of the great
Medieval Kingdoms, such as Ghana, Mali and Songhai.

81
1 The Ottoman, In this lesson, students will identify major causes and World History/
Safavid, and describe the major effects of the rise of the Ottoman Unit 6
Mogul Empires Empire and the continued expansion of the Muslim
World.
2 Impact of Students will analyze the European slave trade by World History/
Exploration viewing videos about the Middle Passage, discussing Unit 6
concepts and reflecting through a writing prompt.
2 The European Students will learn about the European Slave Trade World History/
Slave Trade through the use of graphic organizers such as a KWL Unit 8
chart, video clips such as Crash Course: European Slave
Trade and Amistad and small and large group
discussion.
5 Independence Students learn about apartheid, Nelson Mandela and World History/
Movements in African independence movements, using PPT's, primary Unit 12
the Late 20th and secondary sources and short video clips.
Century
5 Life During the Students complete a mini-dbq on political resistance, World History/
Cold War and including Nelson Mandela and complete written response Unit 12
Resistance to to quotes by Martin Luther King Jr.
Political
Oppression
2 The African Students will analyze maps, videos and primary and World History/
Continent and secondary sources to research and discover the reach Unit 10
the Reach of and the impact of European Imperialism on Africa.
Imperialism
4 The Failure of Students will analyze a set primary source documents US History/
Reconstruction that relate to Reconstruction’s failure to protect the rights Unit 1
of newly freed slaves as part of a mini DBQ entitled, The
Failure of Reconstruction. Documents in the DBQ
include the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments in addition
to a political cartoon and letter. Students will use the
approach document analysis in the preview to examine
each document carefully and answer the question or
questions that follow.
4 Western This learning experience provides an overview of the US History/

Settlement in settlement of the American West in the late 1800s. Unit 1
Post-Civil War Along with identifying the diverse range of people who
America: Who settled the region and the challenges they faced, an
and why analysis of the political, economic, and geographic
factors that contributed to the larger migration and
settlement patterns associated with the era of westward
expansion is emphasized. Students will also trace how
overt racism towards African American farmers led to the
founding of all black towns. This learning experience
focuses around answers to the questions: What factors
contributed to the settlement of the American West in

82
late 1800s? Who settled the American West in the late

1800s and what challenges did they face?
4, 5 Jim Crow Laws Students analyze documents and photographs from the US History/
and the Early Library of Congress related to Jim Crow Laws. Students Unit 2
Civil Rights will compare quotes from early Civil Rights leaders
Movement W.E.B. Dubois, Booker T. Washington and Ida B. Wells.
Students will write a letter to the editor of a 19th century
newspaper responding to Jim Crow Laws.
4, 5 Social Reform in In this lesson, students will learn about efforts to promote US History/
the Progressive both social and moral welfare. These efforts, fueled by Unit 3
Era and the passionate reform groups and journalists known as
Role of the muckrakers, brought about change in the food and drug
NAACP industry, land conservation and alcohol consumption.
Students will examine the history of the NAACP and its
role in trying to improve race relations.
4, 7 Intro to the Overview of the 1920's, including rise of nativism and US History/
Roaring racism, in particular the KKK. Students read text and Unit 5
Twenties complete graphic organizer related to these and other
issues.
4, 5 Race Relations Among the issues explored are race relations and US History/
and Other Eugenics. Students view a video on Post-War Unit 5
Social Issues of Intolerance and research a website on Eugenics, while
the 1920's filling out a task sheet that includes these issues, among
others.
4, 7 The Harlem Examination of The Harlem Renaissance through US History/

Renaissance analysis of short videos, music clips, primary source Unit 5
and the African- readings, use of graphic organizers, window pane
American activity, discussion. Topics include birth of jazz, African
Experience in American literature and art, African American politics, the
the 1920’s New Negro Movement, and key individuals such as
Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. Dubois. A map analysis and
discussion of the Great Migration is also included.
4 The Double ‘V’ For this lesson students will learn about the role and US History/
Campaign struggle of democratic practice in America and around Under development
the world. This lesson will inform students about the
factors that led to African Americans participating in
World War II and the fight against the fascism Nazi
Germany while simultaneously combatting the injustices
of racial, economic and political discrimination in the
United States. The determined resistance to all forms of
tyranny and oppression for African Americans became
known as the Double Victory campaign or “Double V”.
Thus, what gains did African Americans achieve in their
quest for Double V? Students will learn about identifying
about multiple forms of discrimination, both domestically
and transnationally.

83
4, 7 African- Examination and analysis of unsung heroes of WW II, US History/

American including African American soldiers and the Tuskegee Unit 7
Heroes of World Airmen. Vernon Baker, first African-American soldier to
War II be awarded the Medal of Honor is also highlighted.
4, 5 African- Analysis and discussion of African-American experience US History/

American in Post-War America includes an examination of poverty Unit 8
Experience in and the struggle for equality during the Post-War
Post-World War economic boom.
II America
4, 5, 7 An Overview of A comprehensive overview of major events and people US History/

the Civil Rights of the 1950s and 60s civil rights movement. Students Unit 10
Movement use a graphic organizer and jigsaw reading activity to
analyze primary and secondary source documents and
short video clips. Topics include Little Rock Nine, Rosa
Parks, Bus Boycotts, Freedom Riders.
5 Civil Rights and Analysis of landmark Supreme Court cases related to the US History/
the Courts advancement of Civil Rights. Students will read source Unit 10
documents and use graphic organizer and discussion to
aid in the analysis. Process activity will be the creation of
a timeline describing the key Civil Rights cases and their
impact on justice and equality.
5 Integration “with While the landmark 1954 ruling on Brown v. Board of US History/
all deliberate Education declared the segregation of schools Unit 10
speed”, Brown II unconstitutional, schools did not integrate overnight. The
and the Struggle courts ordered schools to integrate only “with all
to Disrupt the deliberate speed”. This learning experience examines
Status Quo reactions by some to push-back on the Brown v. Board
ruling in attempt to maintain the status quo. Students
explore biographies and school integration timelines
spanning several decades in order to better understand
the barriers that existed and the strategies employed to
fulfill Brown’s mandate.
5, 7 Martin Luther The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is widely US History/
King Jr. regarded to be one of the most important figures in the Unit 10
history of the Civil Rights movement in America. In this
learning experience, students will examine his legacy
primarily through his two seminal works, the “Letter from
Birmingham Jail” and the “I Have a Dream” speech.
Activities include anticipation guide, jigsaw readings and
a virtual tour of the MLK Memorial.
5, 7 Malcolm X Malcolm X’s approach to the struggle for equal rights US History/
differed from Dr. King’s message of non-violence, but Unit 10
many consider his contributions to be just as important.
In this learning experience, students will examine and
compare the points of view of these great leaders.
Activities will include viewing and discussing short video
clips on Malcolm X and the Black Power movement and
84
an analysis of his important speech "Message to

Grassroots."
5 Legislative and This learning experience explores presidential actions US History/

Executive and congressional votes taken during the Civil Rights Unit 10
Action: The Movement. Specifically, students will compare the Civil
Civil Rights Acts Rights acts of 1957 and 1964 and the Voting Rights Act
and the Voting of 1965 and explain how each addressed rights.
Rights Act Considered in the learning experience is the role of
individual activism in triggering political actions and how
the political process can influence the ultimate potency,
or lack thereof, of the enacted legislation. Thus,
additional legislation is pursued to strengthen gaps from
earlier laws. The central question is – When signed into
law by LBJ, the Civil Rights Act of 1965 was believed to
represent the final hurdle of the struggle for equal rights
under the constitution. Is belief still true today?
6 Post World War Students will examine the housing issues, economics, US History/
II America and and racism that fueled African Americans from the south Unit 8
the Second moving to the north during the 2nd Great Migration.
Great Migration
6, 7 Art and Culture The 1950’s saw an explosion of popular culture. In this US History/
in the 50’s learning experience, students will investigate the impact Unit 8
of such cultural phenomena as television, films, radio,
Beat poetry and Rock and Roll on the lives of Americans,
especially teenagers. Influence of RB and Jazz on
popular music
Achieve 3000 Lessons Related to African and African-American History and Culture
Grade Level Theme Title & Description

Connections Connections
9 – 12 4, 5 W.E.B. Du Bois: The Life of a Leader
W.E.B. Du Bois was a pioneer in the 20th-century civil rights
movement.
11 4, 5, 7 Goodbye to an American Hero

Herbert Eugene Carter made history as one of the first African-
American pilots ever to serve in the U.S. military.
9 - 10 2 A Terrible Price
In this lesson, students read about the European slave trade.
They’ll learn about trading Africans for goods and a slave's
experience on a slave ship and also read an excerpt of an essay
by Thomas Clarkson.
11 4, 5, 6 An American Hero
Jefferson Thomas was one of nine African-American students
85
who attended an all-white high school in the 1950s. Thomas died

in September 2010.
11 5, 6 March: The Story Comes To Life

Congressman John Lewis is writing three graphic novels about his
participation in the civil rights movement. The first book was
released in August 2013.
11 4, 5 What if School Were the Largest Building in Town?

A century ago, 300 African Americans worked together to
establish the town of Allensworth, California, a community that
thrived for many years. Recognizing that education would be the
key to their success, Allensworth residents placed great
importance on learning.
9 - 12 4, 5, 7 Hidden No More
The movie Hidden Figures tells the story of women whose work
was essential to the U.S. space program years ago.
11 4, 7 A Quarter for the Duke

Jazz musician Duke Ellington is featured on a new quarter that
also honors Washington, D.C
11 5 She Did What Was Right

Irene Morgan Kirkaldy was a civil rights pioneer who stood up for
herself by refusing to give up her bus seat.
5, 6 Fifty Years Later

Leaders gathered at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library
to mark the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act.
5, 6 Remembering the Past, 80 Years Later

In 2010, a museum opened in Alabama to remember the trial of
the Scottsboro Boys.
7 Remembering Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou, a beloved and celebrated poet and author, has
died.
9 -10 1 Ancient Middle East: What's Under the Sand

Scientists excavating an ancient burial site in Egypt have made
two new discoveries, and they believe there's more to come.
11 4, 5 Civil War and Reconstruction: Two Groups, Rights for All
Before the NAACP, there was the Niagara Movement, a group
that protested racial injustice.

86
African and African-American History and Culture Resources

The below list is a sampling of resources that are available at no cost to FWISD educators.
Contact Library Media Services or the Social Studies Department with questions about access or
recommendations for resources beyond what’s listed below or referenced in the curriculum overlay
document.
Sample List of Books Available in FWISD Libraries
Author Title
Alex Haley The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As told to Alex Haley
Booker T. Washington Up From Slavery
Dr. Carter G. Woodson The Miseducation of The Negro
Dr. Cheik Anta Diop The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality
John Henrik Clarke Cheikh Anta Diop And the New Light on African History
Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu Black Economics

Dr. Molefi Kete Asante The Egyptian Philosophers: Ancient African Voices From Imhotep to Akhenaten
Frederick Douglass Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
George G. M. James Stolen Legacy: Greek Philosophy is Stolen Egyptian Philosophy

Marcus Garvey Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey
Sojourner Truth Narrative of Sojourner Truth

W. E. B. Du Bois The Souls of Black Folk
Selection of Websites Dedicated to African and African American History and Culture
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/ Africans in America
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african/i The AFRICAN-AMERICAN MOSAIC

ntro.html
A Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History &
Culture
http://www.pbs.org/thisfarbyfaith/ This Far by Faith: African American spiritual journeys
http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/selecte African and African-American in Science and Technology from Library of
d-internet/africanamericans.html Congress
http://african-americaninventors.org/ African and African-American Inventors
http://blackinventor.com/ The Black Inventor Online Museum

http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/co Computer Scientists of the African Diaspora
mputer-science/index.html

87
http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/in Mathematicians of the African Diaspora

dex.html
http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/ph Physicians of the African Diaspora

ysics/index.html
http://www.blackengineer.com/ Black Engineer Magazine from the US Black Engineer Association
https://www.nsbp.org/ National Black Physicists Association

http://www.nypl.org/locations/schom NYPL: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
burg
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/a The Story of Africa
frica/features/storyofafrica/index.sht
ml
http://blackhistorypages.com/ The Black History Pages link directory is an online catalog of the best
black history websites on the Internet that have been categorized to
make it easier to find sites that interest you. Visitors can search, browse,
rate and review hundreds of websites.
http://www.archives.gov/research/ali National Archives

c/reference/black-history.html
http://www.blackpast.org/ A very complete data base for African American History and culture to be
used for research.
http://guides.lib.washington.edu/con A research guide to primary and secondary sources for African American
tent.php?pid=78827&sid=583725 history.
http://www.aaregistry.org/ African American Registry® (the Registry) is the most comprehensive

on-line storehouse in the world of African American heritage.
http://www.blackinventor.com/ Welcome to the Black Inventor Online Museum ™, a look at the great
and often unrecognized leaders in the field of invention and innovation
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/black Black Voices

-voices/
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/libr Black publications

aryarchives/aanp/freedom/
http://www.blackcollegian.com/ Since launching THE BLACK COLLEGIAN Magazine in 1970, we have

been proudly instrumental in connecting thousands of employers to
hundreds of thousands of African-American college students seeking
entry-level job opportunities. Along the way, we have helped air the vital
educational and social issues of our day,
http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classro Library of Congress Jim Crow Collection

88
ommaterials/primarysourcesets/civil
-rights/
http://www.smithsonianeducation.or African American History Month resources

g/heritage_month/bhm/index.html
http://www.asalh.org/ Founding of African American History Month
http://www.tolerance.org/article/hist The History Behind African American History Month
ory-behind-black-history-month
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/fron The Two Nations of Black America
tline/shows/race/
http://www.creativefolk.com/blackhi African American Heritage information
story/blackhistory.html
http://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/9931 Songs of the Civil Rights Movement
5652/songs-of-the-civil-rights-
movement
http://exhibitions.nypl.org/africanaag The New York Public Library: Africana Age
e/index2.html
Website includes print and multimedia resources related to Africa and
the African diaspora in the twentieth century, including the colonization of
Africa, Pan-Africanism, African resistance to colonial rule, and African
decolonization.
http://brown.edu/Research/AAAH/ Animated Atlas of African History
This interactive web atlas chronicles the course of colonization and
decolonization, and post-colonial developments in Africa between 1879
and 2002. Economic and demographic changes are also covered.
http://www.blackpast.org/ Shares the experiences of African-Americans by region.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physi NOVA – Video – “Forgotten Genius” – the story of Percy Julian one of
cs/forgotten-genius.html the great African-American Scientists of the 20th Century
https://www.npr.org/series/4823817/ The History of Hip-Hop Series from National Public Radio

the-history-of-hip-hop
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ug01/hug The Black Arts Movement (BAM) began in the mid-1960s to provide a
hes/blackart.html new vision of African Americans. This site provides images galleries a
theoretical essay, timeline, and links to other online art sources.

89
Working List of
African and African-American American History and Culture Titles
for Elementary Grades (PreK-5)
Compiled using the following sources:
1. African and African-American Resource list from Chicago Public Schools
2. Scholastic - http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/how-choose-best-multicultural-
books
3. 50 Multicultural Books Every Student Should Read. List originally compiled by the
Cooperative Children's Book Center, School of Education, University of Wisconsin-
Madison -http://www.nea.org/grants/50-multicultural-books.html
Elementary (Grades PreK – 3)
 I Dream of Trains, by Johnson, Angela

 The Moon Over Star, by Aston, Dianna Hutts
 Let It Shine, by Bryan, Ashley
 Before John Was a Jazz Giant, by Weatherford, Carole Boston
 I’ve Seen the Promised Land: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., by Myers, Walter
Dean
 Papa’s Mark, by Lavert, Gwendolyn
 In the Land of Words: New and Selected Poems, by Gilchrist, Jan Spivey
 Almost to Freedom, by Nelson, Vaunda Micheaux
 Thunder Rose, by Nolen, Jerdine
 Visiting Langston, by Collier, Bryan
 Freedom River, by Rappaport, Doreen
 In Daddy’s Arms I am Tall: African Americans Celebrating Fathers, by Schroeder, Alan
 Ashley Bryan’s ABC of African American Poetry, by Bryan, Ashley
 Minty: A Story of Young Harriet Tubman, by Schroeder, Alan
 Running the Road to ABC, by Lauture, Denize
 Neeny Coming, Neeny Going, by English, Karen
 Little Eight John, by Wahl, Jan
 All Night, all Day: A Child’s First Book of African American Spirituals, by Bryan, Ashley
 When I Am Old With You, by Johnson, Angela
 The Patchwork Quilt, by Flournoy, Valerie
 Bright Eyes, Brown Skin, by Hudson, Cheryl & Ford, Bernette
 Something Beautiful, by Wyeth, Sharon
 The Quilt, by Jonas, Ann
 Bill Pickett: Rodeo-Ridin Cowboy, by Pinkney, Andrea & Pinkney, Brian
 Drylongso, by Hamilton, Virginia
 I Am Rosa Parks, by Parks, Rosa Parks & Haskins, James
 Martin’s Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., by Rappaport, Doreen
 Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt, by Hopkinson, Deborah
 The Dream Keeper and Other Poems, by Hughes, Langston & Pinkney, Brian
 The Palm of My Heart: Poetry by African American Children, by Christie, Gregorie
 The Invisible Hunters: A Legend from the Miskito Indians of Nicaragua, by Rohmer, Harriet
et al
 Africa Dream, by Greenfield, Eloise
 Mary McLeod Bethune, by Greenfield, Eloise
 Ray Charles, by Mathis, Sharon Bell
90
 Jazzy Miz Mozetta, by Roberts, Brenda C.

 Family Plays Music, by Cox, Judy
 The Moon Ring, by DuBurke, Randy
 Freedom Summer, by Wiles, Deb
 The Piano Man, by Chocolate, Debbie
 Porch Lies: Tales of Slicksters, Tricksters, and Other Wily Characters, by McKissack,
Patricia C. illustrated by Carrilho, Andre
 Beautiful Blackbird, by Bryan, Ashley
 Before There Was Mozart: The Story of Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de Saint-George, by
Cline-Ransome, Lesa
 Moses, by Weatherford, Carole
 My Brother Martin, by Farris, Christine King
 We are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball, by Nelson, Kadir
 Rosa, by Giovanni, Nickki
 Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad in the Sky, by Ringgold, Faith
 Bad News for Outlaws: The Remarkable Life of Bass Reeves - Deputy U.S. Marshal, by
Nelson, Vaunda Micheaux
 My People, by Hughes, Langston
 Molly Bannaky, by Soentpiet, Chris K. and McGill, Alice
 Dear Benjamin Banneker, by Pinkney, Andrea Davis and Pinkney, Brian
 Nelson Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, by van Wyk, Chris and Bouma, Paddy
 Wilma Unlimited: How Wilma Rudolph Became the World's Fastest Woman, by Krull,
Kathleen and Diaz, David
 What Color Is My World?: The Lost History of African-American Inventors, by Abdul-
Jabbar, Kareem, Obstfeld, Raymond, and Boos, Ben
 Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down, by Pinkney, Andrea Davis and
Pinkney, Brian
 The Bus Ride That Changed History: The Story of Rosa Parks, by Edwards, Pamela
Duncan
 Freedom on the Menu: The Greensboro Sit-Ins by Weatherford, Carol Boston
 A Sweet Smell of Roses by Johnson, Angela
 Jackie’s Gift by Sharon Robinson
 The Hallelujah Flight by Phil Bildner
 If a Bus Could Talk: The Story of Rosa Parks by Faith Ringgold
 The ABCs of Black History: A Children’s Guide by Craig Thompson
 Martin’s Big Words by Doreen Rapport
 Just Like Josh Gibson by Angela Johnson
 Michelle by Deborah Hopkinson
 Climbing Lincoln’s Steps: The African American Journey by Suzanne Slade
Elementary (Grades 4 - 5)
 Romare Bearden: Collage of Memories, by Greenberg, Jan

 Against All Odds: Artist Dean Mitchell's Story, by James, Betty R.
 Talkin' About Bessie: The Story of Aviator Elizabeth Coleman, by Grimes, Nikki
 Only Passing Through: The Story of Sojouner Truth, by Rockwell, Anne
 I Have Heard of a Land, by Thomas, Joyce Carol
 Duke Ellington: The Piano Prince and His Orchestra, by Pinkney, Andrea Davis
 The Hunterman and the Crocodile, by Diakitè, Baba Waguè
 The Singing Man, by Medearis, by Shelf, Angela
91
 Meet Danitra Brown, by Grimes, Nikki

 Soul Looks Back in Wonder, by Fogelman, Phyllis
 The Origin of Life on Earth: An African Creation Myth, by Anderson, David A.
 Night on the Neighborhood Street, by Greenfield, Eloise
 The Road to Memphis, by Taylor, Mildred
 Aida, by Price, Leontyne
 Nathaniel Talking, by Greenfield, Eloise
 Mirandy and Brother Wind, by McKissack, Patricia
 Under the Sunday Tree, by Greenfield, Eloise
 Storm in the Night, by Stolz, Mary
 Maritcha, by Bolden, Tonya
 Ellington Was Not a Street, by Shange, Ntozake & Nelson, Kadir
 The Bat Boy and His Violin, by Curtis, Gavin
 The Great Migration: An American Story, by Lawrence, Jacob
 Harlem, by Myers, Walter Dean
 Circle of Gold, by Boyd, Candy Dawson
 A Little Love, by Hamilton, Virginia
 The Strange New Feeling, by Lester, Julius
 Rainbow Jordan, by Childress, Alice
 Skates of Uncle Richard, by Fenner, Carol
 Something on My Mind, by Grimes, Nikki
 Brothers in Hope: The Story of the Lost Boys of Sudan, by Christie, R. Gregory
 Fly High!: The Story of Bessie Coleman, by Borden, Louise & Kroeger, Mary Kay
 Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans, by Nelson, Kadir
 Michelle, by Hopkinson, Deborah
 Portraits of African-American Heroes, by Bolden, Tonya and Pitcairn, Ansel
 Through My Eyes, by Bridges, Ruby
 The Kidnapped Prince: The Life of Olaudah Equiano, by Cameron, Ann
 Buxton: A Black Utopia in the Heartland, by Schwieder, Dorothy, Hraba, Joseph, and
Schwieder, Elmer

92
Working List of
African and African-American American History and Culture Titles
for Secondary Grades (6-12)
Compiled using the following sources:
1. African and African-American Resource list from Chicago Public Schools
Middle School (Grades 6-8)
● The Legend of Buddy Bush, by Moses, Sheila P.

● Days of Tears: A Novel in Dialogue, by Lester, Julius
● Maritcha: A Nineteenth-Century American Girl, by Bolden, Tonya
● Dark Sons, by Grimes, Nikki
● The Road to Paris, by Grimes, Nikki
● Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story, by Ben Carson
● Days of Jubilee: The End of Slavery in the United States, by McKissack, Patricia C. and
Frederick L.
● Locomotion, by Woodson, Jacqueline
● The Battle of Jericho, by Draper, Sharon
● The Red Rose Box, by Woods, Brenda
● The Land, by Taylor, Mildred
● Miracle's Boys, by Woodson, Jacqueline
● Let It Shine! Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters, by Francie, Andrea Davis Pinkney,
English, Karen
● Black Hands, White Sails: The Story of African American Whalers, by McKissack, Patricia C.
& Frederick L.
● Now is Your Time: The African American Struggle for Freedom, by Myers, Walter Dean
● The Words of Martin Luther King, Jr., by Coretta Scott King
● Forged by Fire, by Draper, Sharon M.
● Breaking Ground, Breaking Silence: The Story of New York's African Burial Ground, by
Hansen, Joyce and McGowan, Gary
● I See the Rhythm, by Igus, Toyomi
● The Other Side: Shorter Poems, by Johnson, Angela
● Toning the Sweep, by Johnson, Angela
● Rebels Against Slavery: American Slave Revolts, by McKissack, Patricia C. and Frederick L.
● Soujourner Truth: Ain't I a Woman?, by McKissack, Patricia C. and Frederick L.
● Justin and the Best Biscuits in the World, by Walter, Mildred Pitts
● Let the Circle Be Unbroken, by Taylor, Mildred D.
● Childtimes: A Three-Generation Memoir, by Greenfield, Eloise and Little, Lessie Jones
● Andrew Young: Young Man With a Mission, by Haskins, James
● The Way a Door Closes, by Smith, Hope Anita
● The Skin I'm In, by Flake, Sharon
● Another Way to Dance, by Southgate, Martha
● Elijah of Buxton, by Curtis, Christopher Paul
● Twelve Rounds to Glory: The Story of Muhammad Ali, by Smith Jr., Charles R.
● Keeping the Night Watch, by Smith, Hope Anita
● Maizon at Blue Hill, by Woodson, Jacqueline
● My People, by Hughes, Langston, illustrated by Charles R. Smith, Jr.
● 1001 Things People Should Know about African American History, by Steward, Jeffrey C.

93
● To Be a Slave, by Lester, Julius

● Chains, by Anderson, Laurie Halse
● A Friendship for Today, by McKissack, Patricia C.
● Never Forgotten, by McKissack, Patricia
● Nightjohn, by Paulsen, Gary
● Freedom Walkers: The Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, by Freedman, Russell
● The Watsons Go to Birmingham, by Curtis, Christopher Paul
● Numbering all the Bones, by Rinaldi, Ann
● Powerful Words, by Hudson, Wade
High School (Grades 9-12)
● Copper Sun, by Draper, Sharon

● The Magnificent Twelve: Florida's Black Junior Colleges, by Smith, Ph.D., Walter L.
● Fortune's Bones: The Manumission Requiem, by Nelson, Marilyn
● Carver: A Life in Poems, by Nelson, Marilyn
● Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary, by Myers, Walter Dean
● Mississippi Challenge, by Walter, Mildred Pitts
● Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Freedom Movement, by Patters, Lillie
● We Beat the Street: How a Friendship Led to Success, by Davis, Sampson, Jenkins,
George, Hunt, Rameck and Draper, Sharon
● Fallen Angels, by Myers, Walter Dean
● Anthony Burns: The Defeat and Triumph of a Fugitive Slave, by Hamilton, Virginia
● Trouble's Child, by Walter, Mildred Pitts
● The Magical Adventures of Pretty Pearl, by Hamilton, Virginia
● Lena Horne, by Haskins, James
● The Middle Passage: White Ships Black Cargo, by Feelings, Tom
● This Life, by Poitier, Sidney
● Don't Explain: A Song of Billie Holiday, by De Veaux, Alexis
● The Young Landlords, by Myers, Walter Dean
● James Van Der Zee: The Picture Takin' Man, by Haskins, James
● Let the Lion Eat Straw, by Southerland, Ellease
● Cornrows, by Yarborough, Camille
● Benjamin Banneker, by Patterson, Lillie
● Barbara Jordan, by Haskins, James
● Darkness Before Dawn, by Draper, Sharon
● Coretta Scott King, by Patterson, Lillie
● I Have a Dream, by King, Martin Luther, Jr.
● Portia: The Life of Portia Washington Pittman, the Daughter of Booker T. Washington, by
Stewart, Ruth Ann
● The Legend of Africana, by Robinson, Dorothy
● I Never Had It Made: the Autobiography of Jackie Robinson, as told, by Duckett, Alfred
● My Chill Wind, by McDonald, Janet
● Lou in the Limelight, by Hunter, Kristin
● Movin' Up, by Gordy, Berry
● Marvin and Tige, by Glass, Frankcina
● Black Troubador: Langston Hughes, by Rollins, Charlemae
● Martin Luther King, Jr.: Man of Peace, by Patterson, Lillie
● Monster, by Myers, Walter Dean
● The First Part Last, by Johnson, Angela
94
● Just Another Hero, by Draper, Sharon M.

● Remember: The Journey to School Integration, by Morrison, Toni
● Becoming Billie Holiday, by Weatherford, Carole Boston
● A Wreath For Emmett Till, by Nelson, Marilyn
● The Freedom Business, by Nelson, Marilyn
● Street Love, by Myers, Walter Dean
● Harlem Hustle, by McDonald, Janet
● The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing - Traitor to the Nation, by Anderson, M. T.
● Mare's War, by Davis, Tanita S.
● The Negro Speaks of Rivers, by Hughes, Langston and Lewis, E. B.
● Giants: The Parallel lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, by Stauffer, John
● Autobiography of My Dead Brother, by Myers, Walter Dean
● The Pact: Three Young Men Make a Promise and Fulfill a Dream, by Davis, Sampson,
Jenkins, George, Hunt, Rameck, with Page, Lisa Frazier
● Black, Blue, and Gray: African Americans in the Civil War, Haskins, Jim
● Black Boy, Wright, Richard
● A Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry, Lorraine
● Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston, Zora Neale
● Mining for Freedom: Black History Meets the California Gold Rush, Roberts, Sylvia Alden

95
Learning Experience Opportunities Beyond the Classroom (Under construction)
Field Trip Ideas

African American Museum of Dallas - http://www.aamdallas.org/index.html
The African American Museum was founded in 1974 as a part of the Special Collections at Bishop
College, a historically black college that closed in 1988. The Museum has operated independently
since 1979. The African American Museum is the only one of its kind in the Southwestern Region
devoted to the preservation and display of African American artistic, cultural and historical
materials. It has one of the largest African American Folk Art collections in the US.
Lenora Rolla Heritage Museum of Fort Worth - https://www.blackhistoricalmuseum.info/
The Tarrant County Black Historical and Genealogical Society is excited to share the rich culture
of Tarrant County with a variety of exhibits and resources available to the public. We welcome all
who are interested in learning about our extensive historical archives, collections, and heritage
services. Our museum is located in an established historical district in the heart of Fort Worth, TX.
We look forward to your visit!
National Multicultural Heritage Museum of Fort Worth
The primary objective of the National Multicultural Western Heritage Museum and Hall of Fame is
to offer the visitor a true and complete historical perspective of the people and activities that built
the unique culture of the American West. The work of artists who documented the people and
events of the time through journals, photographs and other historical items are part of this new
collection. These long overlooked materials tell perhaps for the first time the complete story. The
National Multicultural Western Heritage Museum was founded February 1, 2001 by Fort Worth,
Texas, husband and wife team Jim and Gloria Austin to acknowledge the contributions of
individuals of Hispanic, Native, European, Asian and African decent to the settlement of the
Western American Frontier.
National Museum of African American History and Culture (Washington DC) -
https://nmaahc.si.edu/
The National Museum of African American History and Culture is the only national museum
devoted exclusively to the documentation of African American life, history, and culture. It was
established by Act of Congress in 2003, following decades of efforts to promote and highlight the
contributions of African Americans. To date, the Museum has collected more than 36,000 artifacts
and nearly 100,000 individuals have become members. The Museum opened to the public on
September 24, 2016, as the 19th and newest museum of the Smithsonian Institution.
Local and Regional Resources

The Dock Bookshop - https://www.thedockbookshop.com/
More than a bookstore, The Dock Bookshop is a force for good in the community, regularly hosting
author talks, poetry & spoken word, children storytime, panel discussions, community meetings,
film screenings & more. Our mission is to inspire, inform, entertain and edu-tain our customers
96
through books and book-related events in a relaxing and spacious environment.
Center for African American Studies at University of Texas at Arlington - http://www.uta.edu/caas/

An essential component of the Center for African American Studies is to establish an active and
interactive public mission and community outreach program designed to keep it engaged with
African American communities- locally, nationally, and abroad.
Baba Kwasi - https://www.babakwasi.com/
Baba Kwasi is the co-founder of the Ayubu Kamau Kings and Queens African Drum and Dance
School, founded in 1996 A unique interactive presentation that conveys the importance of African
art forms (and art in general) and the role it plays in education, lessons from history, social and
economic relations and ethnic identity. Baba Kwasi is the co-founder of the Ayubu Kamau Kings
and Queens, a performing arts and youth empowerment organization focused in the education and
preservation of African centered performing arts, world history, the Diaspora of African culture and
its contributions to the world.
Fort Worth Capoiera - http://ftwcapoeira.com/
Learn about the history of Africans and their descendants in Brazil and the Americas, especially
through the lens of Capoeira, a Martial Art. Presentations involve working together to create some
percussive rhythms on traditional instruments while learning a few movements of capoeira to look
at non-verbal ways of thinking about communication.
FWISD, State, and National History Day

Topic List from the National Museum of African American History and Culture
Explore potential project topics about African American history inspired by the objects and stories
found in the NMAAHC galleries and the histories of African Americans.

97
Black History Month

General Black History Month Program Ideas
(Suggested by Dr Safisha Hill).
Since this is a project for the class members, and it may not be known which students will enroll in
the course…it is essential for at least 3 Black History Month Advisors be on hand to assist and
guide.
Listed below are 10 activities that can be implemented at low or no cost other than time and
energy
Black Author Book Display in Library – Students can select various books already in the library,
written by black authors and help set up display. If there are none or few books, it is suggested that
students/faculty/staff VOLUNTEER to bring a book from home, OR purchase books for display at
Dock Book Shop, an African American owned bookstore in Ft Worth and the largest in the state of
Texas
Include Black History Facts in the daily announcements. Have each student do an
announcement (if there are less than 20 students, invite faculty, staff and administrators to
participate. If there are more, allow two students to do one announcement…sharing in the reading
of the information
African American Read-In – Student, faculty, staff and administrators can do a selection of a
short reading, poem, even song by an African American author. This can be a 45minute to an hour
long program. I can be held during the regular school day, during lunchtime, or in the evening after
school.
OR
Fifteen minutes can be set aside during a school day…or in an English class…or even better…in
EACH CLASS…where students must read from a book written by an African American (in fact,
teacher can distribute certain passages) from such speeches given by /poems written by Paul
Lawrence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Nikki Giovanni, Malcolm X, Sonya Sanchez, Maya Angelou,
Marcus Garvey, etc.
Also, short articles can be presented. This not only promotes reading, but it promotes reading from
African American authors and may actually spark a desire to READ more.
Black History Month hall /door, and classroom decorations. Students can decorate the halls
with Black History Month signs which they will make. The theme will be available soon and they
can use the theme. Perhaps posters will be accessible (I donated about 50 posters to Dunbar to
use for Black History Month display)
National Negro Anthem Project. Learn all three verses to The National Negro Anthem “Lift Ev’ry
Voice”. While students may not need to sing the song…they should know all the words. A project
can be assigned in class where students must study the words in this song, be able to “recite” the
words as well as write a reflection on what they believe each verse means

98
Black History Month Fashion Show- There are a number of young black clothing designers in
the DFW area. The students can host a fashion show and participate as models, wearing the
clothes of the local designers (or inviting them to come and model their own clothes) Students,
faculty, staff and administrators can also model traditional African styled clothing
Black History Month Presentations – Students can partner with UTA students who are African
American Studies Minors, and invite them to come and do a couple of presentations on various
topics related to Black Studies. Additionally, students can do their own presentations as well as
include community based presenters who would like to VOLUNTEER to participate. (Topics should
be of INTEREST to students)
Black History Month School Choir Concert – This would involve inviting members of the school
choir to do a short concert composing of songs popularized by African Americans (gospel, negro
spirituals, R & B
Black History Kwanzaa in February- Traditionally, the African American cultural holiday of
Kwanzaa is celebrated Dec 26-Jan 1. This program can either be done over a span of 7 days or all
in one day simply to introduce the principals of Kwanzaa and demonstrate how Kwanzaa is
celebrated.(including African drummers and dancers)…Students can prepare for and conduct the
entire program
Black History Month Program – This program perhaps should be held in the MIDDLE of the
month rather than at the end. Since prayers might not be allowed, it can begin in the African
tradition of a libation. It should include the singing of the National Negro Anthem, a selection from
the choir, an art form selection (dance, song, poetry) and a speaker. Students can do the
speaking or invite someone else to do so.

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1

Mr. Lonnie Williams

AAAH Overlay Curriculum Guidebook - DRAFT – last updated June 2019

AAAH Overlay Curriculum Guidebook - DRAFT – last updated June 2019

AAAH Overlay Curriculum Guidebook - DRAFT – last updated June 2019

Academic Consultants Social Studies Department Staff

Richard Benson, PhD. John Fernandez

Ongoing leadership and support from:

The Friends of Cobb Park

AAAH Overlay Curriculum Guidebook - DRAFT – last updated June 2019

How is the curriculum organized?

AAAH Overlay Curriculum Guidebook - DRAFT – last updated June 2019

Social Studies curricula. The themes are:

 Overarching Understandings and Overarching Essential Questions

What are ‘Enduring Understandings’ and ‘Essential Questions’?

How should teachers and administrators use this curriculum guide?

AAAH Overlay Curriculum Guidebook - DRAFT – last updated June 2019

Overarching Understandings Overarching Questions

Students will understand that… Students will keep considering…

● African Americans have pushed “We the

AAAH Overlay Curriculum Guidebook - DRAFT – last updated June 2019

Thematic Elements: African and African-American History and Culture

Theme 1 - The African Experience

Enduring Understandings Essential Questions

● How has African history been shaped by

● Africa is continent and NOT a country;

● Africa’s identity as a place is articulated by the

AAAHC Series – Theme 1 - Power Point Presentation

For further reading about this theme:

o Cheikh A. Diop, The African Origins of Civilization: Myth or Reality?

AAAH Overlay Curriculum Guidebook - DRAFT – last updated June 2019

Theme 2 - Africans in the Atlantic World

Enduring Understandings Essential Questions

were generically referred to as “Africans” or

For further reading about this theme:

AAAH Overlay Curriculum Guidebook - DRAFT – last updated June 2019

Theme 3 - Africans in the Colonial and Antebellum World

Enduring Understandings Essential Questions

crisis that led to the Civil War. communities over time?

● What obstacles did slaves confront in

For further reading about this theme:

AAAH Overlay Curriculum Guidebook - DRAFT – last updated June 2019

Theme 4 - African-Americans in Modern America

Enduring Understandings Essential Questions

AAAH Overlay Curriculum Guidebook - DRAFT – last updated June 2019

● What kinds of businesses and institutions grew

For further reading about this theme:

Theme 5 - Struggle for Freedom, Justice and Equality

Enduring Understandings Essential Questions

AAAH Overlay Curriculum Guidebook - DRAFT – last updated June 2019

● the African American movement for civil rights

● the civil rights movement stimulated other

For further reading about this theme:

AAAH Overlay Curriculum Guidebook - DRAFT – last updated June 2019

Theme 6 - Contemporary African American Experience

Enduring Understandings Essential Questions

AAAH Overlay Curriculum Guidebook - DRAFT – last updated June 2019

and literacy tests;

 21st century African American families still

For further reading about this theme:

AAAH Overlay Curriculum Guidebook - DRAFT – last updated June 2019

Enduring Understandings Essential Questions

For further reading about this theme:

AAAH Overlay Curriculum Guidebook - DRAFT – last updated June 2019