Objectives
My goal for this curriculum unit is to focus on the power of education and to drive home the idea that being educated about the rights and freedoms we have as citizens is vital to sustaining the civil rights for which our predecessors have fought. In accordance with Virginia Standards of Learning, students will focus on facts pertaining to Virginia during the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Progressive Era. This unit will investigate how, throughout history, African Americans have faced countless struggles to gain the civil liberties that they have today.
The Virginia Studies curriculum begins with the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Students will explore the journey of the colonists, their struggles in the new world, and the American Revolution. This is important background information for students before they begin this unit.
The unit will begin with a look at civil liberties and civil rights and what they are. With this knowledge, students will be able to look into how African Americans gained civil liberties as a result of the Civil War and through Reconstruction and then how these liberties and rights were taken away after Reconstruction. Students will read the historical fiction text Mississippi Bridge by Mildred D. Taylor, gaining insight on segregation, discrimination, and what life was like in Mississippi in the 1930s.
This unit coincides with several Virginia Standards of Learning. Virginia Studies (VS. 1 a-i) skills such as comparing and contrasting, making connections between past and present, and interpreting ideas and events from different historical perspectives will be used throughout the unit. The unit will cover the issues that divided the North and South and led to the war, including the economies of the North and South and the difference of opinion about whether new states created from the western territories would become slave or free (VS. 7a). Students will also learn about Virginia's role in the war (VS. 7b). Students will demonstrate knowledge of the reconstruction of Virginia following the Civil War by identifying the effects of Reconstruction on life in Virginia including how the Freedmen's Bureau assisted former slaves (VS. 8a). Finally we will identify the effects of segregation and "Jim Crow" on life in Virginia, including poll taxes and literacy tests (VS. 8b).
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