Enacting Freedom

Lesson Plan

Day 1

Activity 1: Reflect and Discuss the Meaning of Freedom

In the video Defining Freedom that students watch later in class, historian Tim McCarthy points out that throughout history all people have desired to be free. The concept of freedom is at the heart of the conflicts and debates in the United States after the end of the Civil War and ending of slavery. Before watching the video, ask students to pause and reflect on what freedom means to them.

Ask students to write a short reflection in response to the following questions:

1. What does it mean to be free? What can free people do that people who are not free cannot?
2. What does freedom look like in your life? What gets in the way of your freedom?

Have students share ideas from their reflections using the Think, Pair, Share teaching strategy.

Activity 2: Read and Analyze the Emancipation Proclamation and Thirteenth Amendment

As a class, read Excerpts from the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment. This reading includes excerpts from the Emancipation Proclamation, issued on January 1, 1863, and the Thirteenth Amendment, approved by Congress in January 1865 (and ratified by the states the following December).
As the class reads the excerpts below, ask them to answer the following questions:

• What words and phrases does each use to address the status of those who were enslaved in the United States before 1863?  
• Does either document define or suggest what it means for the formerly enslaved to be free?  
• Whose responsibility is it to fully answer that question?

Activity 3: Watch a Video about the Meaning of Freedom for Newly Freedpeople

Show the video Defining Freedom. At the time stamps listed below, pause the video and ask students to discuss each of the following questions with a partner using the Think, Pair, Share teaching strategy. 

• Who helped bring about Emancipation? What did they do to bring it about? (4:47)
• What were freedpeople able to do immediately after Emancipation? (6:28)
• What aspirations did freedpeople express for the rights they should enjoy? (10:29)
• What obstacles remained in the way of achieving their aspirations? (14:46)

Debrief by discussing the questions as a class.

Day 2

Activity 1: Review the Concept of Freedom

Have students review their notes and class materials from the previous day. In pairs, have students use the identity chart format to name the characteristics of freedom based on what they learned in the previous lesson. Tell them that they will be adding to their charts later in the lesson, after they’ve investigated primary sources from freedpeople during this period.

Activity 2:Read Freedpeople’s Aspirations of Freedom

Use the Jigsaw strategy to read the four documents located in the Related Materials section below, which represent  African American voices on the meaning of freedom:

• Petition from the Colored Washerwomen

• What the Black Man Wants (excerpt of speech by Frederick Douglass)

• Savannah Freedpeople Express Their Aspirations for Freedom (the testimony of Garrison Frazier)
•  South Carolina Freedpeople Demand Education (a resolution from an 1865 convention of freedmen) (Handout 2.5)

Students will work in “expert” groups to read one of these four documents and determine the attributes of freedom discussed by the primary source’s author. Each group should focus its discussion on the following questions:

• According to the author, what can free people do that people who aren’t free cannot?
• What do people need in order to sustain and protect their freedom?
• What does the document suggest about the meaning of freedom? Do you agree or disagree with that perspective? Why?

Students will next reshuffle into “teaching” groups, in which they will share the findings of their “expert” group with their new group members. In their “teaching” groups, students can use evidence from all four documents to discuss the questions above.

Activity 3: Revisit the Characteristics of Freedom

Close the lesson by debriefing the jigsaw activity as a whole group.  

• What new ideas about freedom came up for students in the primary sources? 
• What questions did this activity raise for them that they hope will be answered as they learn more about the Reconstruction era?

In the remaining class time, or for homework, have students revisit the identity charts for freedom they created with a partner earlier in class and add any new ideas they have encountered since they originally created the chart.