| Minnesota Historical Society

Historical Context

Africans and African Americans were enslaved by mostly white people for more than two hundred years in the American colonies and United States. By the early 18th century, enslaved status was tied directly to skin color, and it was a lifetime condition. Some states began to outlaw slavery at the end of the 18th century, but it wasn't until the end of the Civil War and the passage of the 13th amendment that slavery was illegal across the country. Throughout the centuries of slavery, enslaved Africans and African Americans resisted in small and big ways, and free blacks were active leaders in the abolitionist movement.

Culturally Relevant Pedagogy Considerations

Something CRP master teacher Andrea Bell-Myers points out in Culturally Relevant Pedagogy with Primary Sources Video: Tenet 1 is that African American history does not start with slavery. There is a history before enslavement, in Africa, and throughout, African Americans are active historical agents rather than passive victims of circumstance. Reflect on what you expect students to get out of their examination of this set. How do you expect them to feel? Among those feelings, which feelings are those you want them to feel and which are those that you are uncomfortable with? How can you prepare both yourself and your students to have powerful conversations about the trauma of slavery and its impact on the United States in a way that provides students efficacy?

Classroom Ready Resources

Resisting Slavery and the Status Quo (High School)

Locations

In the metro

In Greater Minnesota

Themes & Topics

Learn how we use the power of history to transform lives

Historical Context

Culturally Relevant Pedagogy Considerations

Classroom Ready Resources

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Eliza and Lizzie, children of Dred Scott

Portrait of Phillis Wheatley and title page of Wheatley, Poems on Various Subjects

Union with freemen — no union with slaveholders

Harriet Tubman, full-length portrait

Underground railroad map of the United States, ca.1838-1860

George Washington Papers, List of Taxed Lands, Slaves, other Possessions

Receipt for sale of Jane, age 18

Escaped slave Gordon, also known as “whipped Peter”

The parting — buy us, too