A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE ON SLAVERY: Writing the History of African American Slave Women
Overview:
The accounts of African American slavery in textbooks routinely conflate the story of male and female slaves into one history. Textbooks rarely enable students to grapple with the lives and challenges of women constrained by the institution of slavery. The collections of letters and autobiographies of slave women in the nineteenth century now available on the Internet open a window onto the lives of these women, and allow teachers and students to explore this history. Using the classroom as an historical laboratory, students can use these primary sources to research, read, evaluate, and interpret the words of African American slave women. The students can be historians; they can discover the history of African American slave women and write their history.
Objectives
- Students will be able to create a model to be used to evaluate the
validity of historical evidence.
- Students will examine primary documents and use factual references
in the documents to construct a history of African American slave women.
- Students will be engaged in historical research and the critical analysis
of factual evidence.
- Students will be able to compare and contrast the accounts of slave
women with the portrayal of these women in Uncle Tom's Cabin.
1. Direct the class to the Hannah Valentine and Lethe Jackson letters on this website:
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/collections/
african-american-women.html
2. Analysis of the documents:
- Have the class read the letters. Then, as a class, begin a discussion
about a strategy for identifying information in the documents. The strategy
should focus on the formulation of questions the students might ask
in order to identify relevant information. Questions regarding the author's
birth date, birth place, family, work, and religion will help the students
begin to understand some of the experiences that these women had in
common, as well as the circumstances that accounted for differences
in their lives.
- Critiquing the documents will help to identify bias. Questions about the author's purpose, status, and regional location will help to clarify the contextual conditions that influence perceptions.
Student Exercise Two
1. Divide the class into small groups. Assign each group a document or a portion of one of the longer documents listed below:
- Letters: http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/collections/
african-american-women.html
- Historical Documents: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/index.html
(Note that not all of these documents are about slave women. Students
will need to determine which are most useful.)
- Autobiography of Annie Burton: http://docsouth.unc.edu/burton/burton.html
- Autobiography of Elizabeth, a Colored Minister: http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/eliza2/eliza2.html
3. Using the "jigsaw" approach to group work, shift the members of the groups so that each new group has a representative from each of the original groups. The task for these groups is to share information from the documents.
4. As a class, consider all the information that has been discussed in the individual groups. Identify the elements of experience that define the lives of slave women.
Record the History
Have the class, either individually or in groups, write a history of African American slave women. This might be a chapter for a history textbook or a children's history. The history can be as traditional or as creative as the class desires.
Compare the Reality and the Perception
Read a different account of slave women such as Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Chapters 5 and 20 include Stowe's perception of slave women, their lives, and the challenges they faced. The illustrations in the novel also help us to understand how Stowe, a free, white Northerner, perceived slavery and life in the South. The text and illustrations from the novel can be found here:
http://www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/uncletom/utchp.html
http://www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/uncletom/illustra/ilhp.html
http://www.online-literature.com/stowe/uncletom/20/
1. Class Discussion:
- Analysis of the document: Who was the author, what was her purpose/motivation
for writing, and what was the historical context for her book? Discuss
any other information you think is important or relevant to identifying
bias and understanding in Stowe's novel.
- How did Stowe portray slave women's lives? Identify any inconsistencies or similarities between her portrayal and the information in the narratives you read.
