Songs of the South

Ezell Blair, Jr., David Richmond, Franklin McCain and Joseph McNeil changed history. Their sit-in at the lunch counter of the Woolworths in Greensboro, North Carolina on February 1, 1960 became a model for the nonviolent protests that...

Bring the sounds of the deep South vocal blues to the classroom with a Smithsonian Folkways lesson. In preparation, scholars listen to and count the 12 bar blues patterns in several works and identify the I, II, IV, and V chords as well...

How do nineteenth-century texts by African American and Native American writers contribute to the country's ideals of freedom and individuality? Learners explore the topic by watching and discussing a video, reading biographies, writing...

Discuss South African apartheid, the anti-apartheid movement, and the literature and music it inspired. Slides contain images and facts about life in South Africa during apartheid, social uprisings such as Soweto, and the various...

Pupils analyze a variety of primary source materials related to lynching (news articles, letters written to or written by prominent Americans, pamphlets, broadsides, etc.) in order to assess the effectiveness of the anti-lynching...

“Nobody knows de trouble I’ve had/Nobody knows but Jesus/Nobody know de trouble I’ve had/Glory hallelu!” What do slave songs reveal about the role of religion in the lives of slaves? Class members read “An Introduction to the Church in...

The firsthand accounts of what it was like to be an enslaved person in the mid-1800s riveted a nation and the issue ultimately led to civil war. Using excerpts from Frederick Douglass's autobiography, budding historians examine what it...

Learners read New York Times articles, letters, and listen to songs written from a soldier's perspective during the Civil War in order to understand who was fighting in the Union Army. This is a great lesson, complete with weblinks,...

Students listen to and discuss the purpose of protest music. They analyze an editorial cartoon related to Jim Crow and read questions from the literacy tests given to African-Americans. They work together to write a song about the...

Students discuss Stephen Foster's depiction of slavery. Using the internet, they discover what the life of a slave was really like in the antebellum South. As a class, they discuss contemporary arguments for and against slavery.