Lesson Plan: Online Resources and Primary Document Analysis
Lesson Plan: Online Resources and Primary Document Analysis
Creator: Christina Lawrence
Undergraduate Introduction to American History:
Topic: The Jim Crow South and Desegregation
Learning Objectives:
- Teach students about segregation and racial inequalities preceding the Civil Rights movement.
- Introduce students to online sources for historical research.
- Teach students how to differentiate between primary and secondary sources.
- Teach students how to analyze primary documents.
Homework:
- Have students familiarize themselves with the Plessy case which upheld segregation. (http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?doc=52&page=transcript)
- Have students look at this ContentDM collection (http://cdm16313.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15140coll4/id/7924) of Orleans Parish School Board meeting minutes, directing them towards meetings from : April 16, 1951; June 25, 1951; October 12, 1951; November 12, 1951; November 19, 1951; November 26, 1951; June 13, 1952; and April 13, 1953.
- Have them listen to several of the oral narratives about living under Jim Crow. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_narratives.html
- Have them read this transcript Brown v. The Board of Education (http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=87&page=transcript) and explore ourdocuments.gov.
Exercise:
- Open up discussion by asking students about any initial impressions about the homework assignment and gauge their level of familiarity with recognizing and analyzing primary documents.
- Hand out a Primary Document Analysis Worksheet such as this one: http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/worksheets/document.html
- Introduce the students to this Omeka site and discuss the way that these documents were analyzed. Point out the parts of the exhibit which are primary and secondary.
- Depending on the class’s familiarity with primary document analysis, have students either work independently or in groups to analyze one of their primary documents from the homework.
- Have students present their analyses and facilitate a discussion about the Jim Crow South and the various ways in which it was experienced, fought and remembered.
Further Reading/Resources:
- OPSB History: DeVore, Donald E. and Joseph Logsdon. Crescent City Schools: Public Education in New Orleans 1841 – 1991. Lafayette, Louisiana: Center for Louisiana Studies, 2011.
- Education and Labor: Parr, Leslie Gale. A Will of Her Own: Sarah Towles Reed and the Pursuit of Democracy in Southern Public Education. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2010.
- Brown v. The Board of Education: Patterson, James T. Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy. Oxford University Press; New York, 2001.
- Ruby Bridges and Integration in New Orleans: http://www.rubybridges.com/
- Plessy v. Ferguson: Thomas, Brook. Plessy v. Ferguson: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford, 1997.