Equality for All

Lesson Plan

Day 1 

Activity 1: Reflect on the Concept of Equality

Ask students to respond to the following prompt in their journals: 

• What is equality? How do you know if you are an equal member of a group or nation?

Activity 2: Read a Primary Source from Sioux Chief Sitting Bull

Tell students that over the course of the next two days, they will be considering the perspectives of a variety of groups across the continental United States who demanded that the principles of justice, freedom, and equality apply to them. Begin by passing out They Fence Their Neighbors Away, a speech from Sioux chief Sitting Bull. 

Read the source aloud to the class, and have students annotate the text using the following key:

• Write an exclamation mark (!) in the margin alongside information that surprises you.
• Write a question mark (?) in the margin alongside passages in which the author assumes you know or understand something that you don’t.
• Write a “C” in the margin alongside information that challenges your thinking.

When students have finished reading and annotating, ask them to go back to the text and underline one word or phrase that resonates with them or that they would like to discuss with a classmate. In a Think, Pair, Share, have students share with a partner the phrase they selected, and discuss why it resonated with them. Then discuss the following questions as a class:

• According to Sitting Bull, what is the Sioux philosophy toward land ownership and the proper treatment of animal and human neighbors? How does this philosophy differ from that of white Americans? 
• What does this source illustrate about how some American Indian nations responded to American expansion and colonialism during the Reconstruction era?

Activity 3: Explore Primary Sources about the Status of Various Groups during Reconstruction

For the remainder of class, students will be using the Jigsaw teaching strategy to examine primary sources related to the status of different groups of Americans. 

To help students acquire some knowledge about the status of all of these groups, use the Jigsaw strategy with the documents in this lesson. Each group will receive one of the following documents:

• Platform of the Workingmen’s Party of California
• Chinese Immigrants Write to President Grant
• Is It a Crime for Women to Vote?

This strategy asks a group of students to become “experts” on a specific document Each “expert” group should discuss its assigned document and record the following pieces of information: 

• The name of the group of Americans represented in the document
• The extent to which that group enjoyed equality and freedom in the United States
• The rights or opportunities that, if enjoyed by the members of that group, would show that they are equal members of society

Let students work up until the last ten minutes of class, but let them know that they will have additional time in the following class period.

Activity 4: Complete a Head, Heart, Conscience Reflection 

Give students the opportunity to reflect on what they have learned in this lesson using the Head, Heart, Conscience strategy, which is designed to help students apply intellectual rigor, emotional engagement, and ethical reflection to their object of study. 

Ask students to respond to the following prompts on binder paper as an exit card: 

• Head: What new information did you learn in this lesson?
• Heart: What emotions does this lesson raise for you? Are there particular images or quotes from the reading that stand out to you? 
• Conscience: What questions about fairness, equity, or justice does this lesson raise for you? 

Ask students to submit their exit cards at the end of class.

Day 2 

Activity 1: Acknowledge Exit Tickets

Open the class by acknowledging students’ exit tickets from the previous day. You might want to point out patterns in students’ emotional responses, questions, or in the material that stood out to them.

Activity 2: Complete the Jigsaw Activity by Transitioning into Teaching Groups

Complete the activity students started on the previous day by asking students to leave their “expert” groups and form “teaching” groups. (Note that you might need to give students additional time to complete their assigned reading before switching into “teaching” groups.) Teaching groups should be 3–5 students and be composed of one or two members from each expert group. Experts should take turns presenting the following information that they recorded on the previous day:

• The name of the group of Americans represented in the document
• The extent to which that group enjoyed equality and freedom in the United States
• The rights or opportunities that, if enjoyed by the members of that group, would show that they are equal members of society

Students should take notes while each expert presents.

Activity 3: Revisit the Question of Reconstruction’s Impact on the Health of Democracy

Finally, regroup as a class and ask students to revisit their newspaper headlines from Lesson 7, which captured how the Radical Reconstruction laws and amendments affected the health of democracy in the United States.

Give students a few moments to expand or revise their thinking on this topic in their journals. Then lead a class discussion on the following question, asking students to cite material from this lesson as the basis for their arguments: 

• Based on what you have learned so far, how did the expansion of citizenship and voting rights during Reconstruction affect the health of democracy in the United States?