Narratives of Citizenship and Race since Emancipation

Introduction

As the bell rings to dismiss my students to go home, I often wonder what types of family structures are awaiting them as they enter their homes. Are their home lives similar to mine? Are they in a single-parent household or do they live with extended family? As each bell rings to signify the ending of the day, I notice that more and more questions lurk in my mind about my students' families. There are moments when students ask me about the members of my family. I often say how I am a "daddy's girl" and how my parents adopted my little cousin. They definitely understand the concept of extended families as low-income or even middle class families, regardless of color, tend to have strong kinship bonds with family. ¹ My students discuss with me how their cousins, aunts, or uncles live with them off and on throughout their lives. In past years, "about a third of all black households included other adults," which substantiates my students' family situations? ² The idea of family and who their immediate family members are seem to change constantly for my learners, but nonetheless, they are a family. However, a constant that exists in some of my students' homes is a strong matriarchy. My students reveal that their mothers and/or grandmothers are the head of their households. Sometimes students will voluntarily tell me that their fathers are absent, incarcerated, or deceased. As a history teacher listening to my students' narratives about their family structure, I immediately think about the origin and structure of the black family in America.

In an effort to learn more about black families in America, I will be using a variety of examples that show what different families look like. I will also highlight the resiliency of the black family throughout American history. Some focus and activities will be geared towards the models of the "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" and "Good Times" in order to analyze different dynamics of those black families. Some of my learners have seen these television shows, but I am almost sure that they were not watching with a critical eye. Key concepts that will help guide their discovery and my curriculum unit will be male/female dynamics, parent/children dynamics, the role of education, and the idea of economic status.