Content Objectives
I currently teach in a building with over 1400 students. Having spent the last year virtual, many students are craving being taught in person. Demographically, my building is 46% Latinx students and 54% African American students. My classroom, however, doesn’t quiet reflect those numbers as we have a program for students who are new to the country. Those students attend classes with other peers who are also new to the country in a sheltered learning style called Newcomer Academy. The Newcomer Academy lasts for one full school year and then the students are gradually released into more general education classes. Those classes are a little less sheltered than the Newcomer Academy classes to ensure that language goals are met by the students who are learning English. I am a teacher in the Newcomer Academy and 80% of my students are LIEP students (Language Instructional Education Program) 20% of my students are African American.
With that being explained, many of my students don’t see themselves in the history that is taught based on our standards. American History, in Virginia, is very focused on colonizers and their impact. When discussing the Great Migration, there is no discussion of how that looked out west with the influx of Mexican immigrants coming to the United States for jobs. Immigration is hyper-focused on those coming from South and Eastern Europe and less from Latin American countries. When the Gold Rush is taught, there is mention of Chinese immigrants coming to the United States, but it isn’t until the following year that discrimination is discussed towards Chinese and Irish immigrants in tandem with African Americans.
Being a student of Virginia standards, I also have struggled to see myself in history. There are 6 women who are discussed in seventh grade history and one of them is a poster, Rosie the Riveter. There are even less women who are discussed in the sixth-grade curriculum which covers pre-history to 1865, with 4 women discussed. Thankfully, I was taught by many amazing women who would always include women in history and their impact.
The passages that have been chosen will look at topics that most students can relate to unfair treatment, moving, being new, sadness/ depression and many others. The passages also directly connect to the three major voices that are often the most unheard: Immigrants & Indigenous groups, African Americans and ultimately women. Although many of the passages are from lower-level books, they address very heavy topics that many students might connect to. There are a few books that will be included in the resources section that can be substituted for teachers who are using this at a higher level of history. This unit will also mainly focus on the time following the Civil War as my curriculum to be taught is from 1865 to the present.
I want this unit to be as engaging as possible and to bring a voice to those who typically haven’t had one. Every year, students come to history class and proclaim a distaste for the content. I feel like that is their belief because they don’t see themselves within the content. The goal of this unit is to show students that people who looked like them impacted American history. There’s also a lack of women in history who are represented in the curriculum I teach, so to remedy that, many of the passages picked will focus on women. At the beginning of the year, seventh grade history starts with Reconstruction and Post-Civil War America, with the focus being on the major legislation of the time: the amendments. When the students are learning about that topic, there are very few novels that address it as the content is very cut and dry. There will be one or two excerpts from Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You used to remind students of the impact of the Civil War as well as explaining the immediate impact of that war on formerly enslaved African Americans. The reading of these passages will be used to explain to students how this unit will function with other topics.
Immigrants & Indigenous Groups
As the other topics unfold along our nation’s timeline, this unit will intertwine excerpts with it. For instance, when discussing the impact of the Trail of Tears on Native Americans and discussing the Battles of Little Big Horn and Wounded Knee, more content knowledge will be presented to the students to fully understand how these events brought about by Americans disregarded the Native’s way of life using excerpts from Braiding Sweetgrass1 to bring a face to the content. This novel is written with a heavy science base, however, Krimmerer is able to add in the oral history from the tribes that she has grown up around as well as the tribes she has come into contact with.
In Braiding Sweetgrass, Krimmerer introduces the everyday reader to the brain and science of Indigenous oral history aligned with botany. Her stories include origin stories as well as basic lessons that played out with her children. The stories are critical to the heritage of the Indigenous Americans, and as stated in one chapter, if it hadn’t been for her taking a class to preserve the language,2 there would be less than ten who could speak it. She does an amazing job making the oral history applicable to all who are reading the book and explains the stories with real life examples. These origin stories and lessons are applicable to all humans and should be shared.
America often boasts itself as a land of immigrants and having open arms to those who want to come to America for a better life. Although those sentiments might not always be true, there was a time in American history where immigration was a little less volatile. For instance, around the same time that African Americans were leaving the south looking for more opportunities in the North and West, Mexicans were leaving Mexico in search of job opportunities or for literal safety. In the book, Esperanza Rising,3 we are shown one example of a family structure that is struggling with post revolution Mexico on top of the collapse of the economy. The United States looks like the best option to make a better life and so the family moves
Pam Muñoz Ryan paints the picture of a riches to rags story using Esperanza, a young girl growing up in Mexico. Her family dynamics change early in the story and herself and her mother are forced to make a drastic decision: stay on the family farm and be forced into a not so safe situation or go to the United States. Esperanza’s story is told during the end of the Great Migration and Great Depression. It chronicles her exodus from Mexico to the United States and the search her mother goes on to find a job. The novel also discusses the living arrangements that Mexican immigrants, or any immigrant from Latin America are forced to endure. They basically moved into work camps and were able to earn a small living working the land4 and harvesting the crops of various plants throughout the year, later called internment camps during World War II. Ultimately Esperanza learns how to value the things that she works hard for and is able to appreciate those things that are given to her.
Work camps are seen again about fifteen years later when they are used with the Japanese Americans who are seen as a threat following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. These internment camps were meant to mimic the cities and neighborhoods that the Japanese Americans were already inhabiting. These camps are anything but positive. There are issues with lack of food, lack of water, supplies for upkeep but the people who are living there, they make the best of a poor situation. In her book, Traci Chee discusses the highs and the lows of living in the internment camps and how one could ultimately get out.5
Japanese Internment camps often are not written about in a positive light. There have been many Asian hate crimes in the past year due to the circumstances however, this is not the first time in history that Asian Americans have had to endure this type of treatment. In We Are Not Free, Traci Chee writes about a group of friends who are transplanted from San Francisco to multiple internment camps within California and the nearby states. She discusses the perspective from both the young men who are of draft age as well as the young women who are living in the internment camps. A few young men can leave the internment camps because they enroll in the military and state their love of country. Two of the other friends find people who will sponsor them in some of the major cities on the east coast and they are able to proclaim their love of country and then move from the internment camps. There is still a third group of Japanese Americans who renounce the United States and state that they want to go home to Japan. This group is treated the poorest of them all. The novel then follows the experiences of the young men who are of fighting age as they are sent off to fight in Italy and France.6
These are just a few examples of how immigrants were treated throughout American history. In a few novels we are able to hear more from the perspective of an immigrant who is going through life changes as well as dealing with a world that isn’t always accepting of interracial friendships at any level. Specifically, Sandra Cisneros writes The House on Mango Street about a young girl who has immigrated to the United States and is struggling to discover how she is going to fit in. She discusses how friends are moving away because the neighborhood is described as going bad by her parents. Esperanza is the main character in this novel as well and she discusses her dislike for her name. In many foreign language classes, students are expected to pick a name that is related to the country they are learning the language of. In one passage, Esperanza explains how she wants to change her name so badly and how she wants it to sound normal.7 Many students can relate to that discussion because they then will go by a nickname that they feel more readily represents them.
The book is written as a stream of consciousness that follows a child through her teenage years. She deals with bullying at school, not appreciating her name and navigating the ever-changing aspects of female friends. Esperanza discusses wanting to have a house of her own one day, one that is better than the house that her father has gotten for her family. She also discusses her first crush and her first experience with the opposite sex. This book truly highlights the intricacies of the middle school and high school years. All of which students are able to connect to on a deep level.
Immigration doesn’t just stop at those from Europe, Asia or Central America. Following the attacks on 9/11 immigrants from the Middle East became targets for xenophobia. That terrorist attack changed the way the United States functioned. As more and more laws were put into place to control the terrorist situation, there are unwelcome behaviors that are ravaging American neighborhoods. A fear spreads, similar to the Red Scare, and millions of people are impacted by the lack of understanding as well as the lack of acceptance that becomes very prominent. Varsha Bajaj writes about life in America following those attacks. She discusses the impact on everyday people and how families must learn from each other in order to grow.
In this novel, Count Me In,8 Varsha Bajaj discusses what it is like to be targeted for being a different race. It is written from the perspective of a young woman who is seemingly a wallflower in her grade level with a grandfather from India. There is a race driven attack on her and her grandfather while walking home after a tutoring session with her neighbor. The grandfather discusses the impact that the attack on September 11 had on him for being brown skin and not white. There were accusations about his desire to be in the United States.9 The story ends with the community coming together to support the girl’s family. This book discusses immigration in a more present day setting but is relatable to immigration in the early 1900s.
African Americans
African Americans have been held in a lower caste throughout all of America history. Starting with the forced migration and travel across the Atlantic Ocean to enslavement and finally limited freedoms earned through the various Civil Rights Acts that have been passed since the Reconstruction Era. Although students will learn about the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War Amendments, they usually struggle with how those things play out in today’s world. There have been many assassinations of African American men and women broadcast on the news recently. One of the most famous, and not as recent, is the murder of Emmitt Till. By using the book Ghost Boys,10 students will be able to read about a young man similar in age who becomes a ghost and has a story that runs parallel to that of Emmitt Till. Ideally this conversation will bleed into a discussion around the Black Lives Matter movement, that was also all over the news last summer. The excerpts from Ghost Boys are written in a way that students are able to relate and then comprehend what exactly happened to both the main character, Jerome, and Emmitt Till.
Ghost Boys follows the story of Jerome, a seventh grader who has few friends and is often bullied. He is befriended by a young boy named Carlos from San Antonio. Jerome is shot in the back by a police officer when he is seen playing with a toy gun in the park. When Jerome crosses to the other side, he meets a ghost boy and a still living young girl. He learns that the young girl is related to the officer who shot him, and they strike up a friendship. The ghost boy slowly reveals parts and pieces of his past until he tells his story. Emmitt Till had been helping Jerome process his death the entire time.11 The story of Emmitt Till is mirrored heavily throughout the novel which covers the court case and family grief and processing of a loss. Fortunately, in our lifetime, the woman who accused Emmitt has recently recanted her story. With this breakthrough students will be able to read her statements and find closure for Emmitt.
Within the story of Emmitt Till, there are aggressive displays of treatment towards African Americans that most novels, that are written for children, are glossed over. There is a discussion of being shot with a bullet and seeing blood on a pair of Air Jordan’s, a discussion of a racially driven beating as well as lynchings. Although lynchings are not completely common in today’s society, there are even more disturbing things shown in the news to show police brutality. When discussing this book, please ensure that you are capable to discuss the information included as well as the level of comprehension your students possess. It is more often than not that they have experienced a not so nice thing said their way from a person of a different race. This discussion should evolve into a conversation that is a safe space for all that are involved.
Emmitt is born towards the end of the Jim Crow hold on the South and in pockets across the United States. Another man who had his life cut short at the hands of those of the opposite race is Malcom X. Malcom X was survived by his wife, Dr. Betty Shabazz. Betty had her own struggles as a young girl growing up in Detroit at the height of Jim Crow.12 The impact that her upbringing had on her life greatly played into her relationship and support of Malcom X’s work during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.
Betty before X is the story of Dr. Betty Shabazz before she even knew of Malcom Little, Malcom X. Betty’s life is tumultuous, and she ends up living with her aunt in Georgia. While living in Georgia, she unfortunately sees the results of a lynching and shortly thereafter, her aunt passes away. Following these traumatic events, Betty goes to live with her mother in Detroit. Although Michigan is a northern state, Betty quickly learns that there are similar sentiments towards African Americans all over the country. Most of her story takes place post World War II. There is a heavy emphasis on the discussion of church and family. There are also some passages that are hard to read, and they discuss difficult topics related to Jim Crow Laws and Betty’s life, especially her relationship with her mother. This novel does a great job to humanize the riots in Detroit, police brutality and interactions between African Americans and whites.13 There is also a section located in the back of the book that provides more historically accurate information about Detroit during the time period and could be used while setting up for the book or discussion following.
Police brutality is something that has impacted American history since 1619. The origins of the police can be traced back to the overseer of the plantation. This overseer mentality sometimes causes police officers to overstep and become vigilantes, almost as if they have forgotten their role to protect and serve the public. In many novels that were read in the creation of this unit, the issue of police brutality repeated itself often. The story was the same every time – shoot first, ask questions later.14 Although Kezi is not directly shot by a police officer, the story written by Maritza and Maika Moulite show how young girls are fetishized and treated in a completely different manner compared to African American boys who often only know of the coldness of the bullet rather than the tightness of handtied rope handcuffs.
In the novel, One of the Good Ones: Shouldn’t Being Human Be Enough? a teenage girl is chronicling her life and class project as a Youtuber. She was influential with her followers and was heavily invested the history of the African American struggle throughout the United States and was planning to tour the United States based on the Greenbook from 1941. That was until a protest went awry and life unfolded dramatically different. Running parallel, we have another young girl who has finally left the foster care system and has successfully moved to California to pursue her dreams in acting. When they both arrive at a county jail and a fire breaks out, only one survives, the one who has a face the world knows. This book discusses the issues that surround African American women being pushed aside in acts of violence and police brutality. It also discusses Jim Crow America along with the Civil Rights Movement following the Greenbook that most African Americans were in possession of during those times.15
All of the topics mentioned are very heavy topics. They might not be easily accessible by students who either don’t have enough background knowledge to support the allusions mentioned or students who have experienced trauma themselves may shut down. That is the last thing that you want to have happen in the classroom. If that is the case, it might be beneficial for students to read overviews of the issues and events that African Americans have been experiencing since introduction to the colonizers. Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi put together a novel that chronicles the evolution from Africans to African Americans.
In the novel Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You, by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi, the lives of African Americans from before interactions with Europeans to present day are discussed.16 The authors explain how racist ideas came about, how colonizers manipulated Africans and ultimately how enslavement impacted Africans. This book chronicles through history and has multiple passages that can be used at the middle and high school level. There are, however, some passages that might not be appropriate at both levels and that would be at the teacher’s discretion. There are great excerpts for the major topics that are discussed in American history, post-Civil War including: Jim Crow, Reconstruction, World War I & World War II, Civil Rights Era, and a minor discussion on its impact today. Although the book does not explicitly discuss life for immigrants who are coming to America freely or the direct impact on women, for the most part, the novel provides excellent background information to get the students engaged.
Women
All too often in American history are women missing from the story. Yes, sometimes we learn about Dolly Madison, because she saved the only painting of George Washington. Yes, we always learn about Harriet Tubman, who we definitely should learn about. But there are loads of women who go unsung, who don’t have a voice when it comes to American History. For instance, it wasn’t until I was on the newspaper staff in high school that I learned about Ida B. Wells, and it wasn’t until I did further research on her recently, that I discovered her anti-lynching campaign. Sacajawea and Pocahontas are both taught but, what do we actually know of these two women who were much younger than described in history books or in movies.
There are women who fall into the immigrant column or the indigenous or African American column who have never had their story told. The purpose of this unit is to pull those biographies and to allow students to explore those silenced women. With the books that have been chosen, there are women related to their timeline, or the author herself, that have impacted American History or our lack of knowledge and should be learned about. Ida B. Wells, Fannie Lou Hammer, Robin Wall Krimmerer, Yuri Kochiyama and Felicitas Mendez are just a few women who have been overlooked in history and countless others.
Robin Wall Krimmerer brings a voice to the indigenous people who are often overlooked throughout American History. She is not only a member of the Potawatomi Nation but is also a celebrated author and professor of science. Krimmerer uses her experiences as a mother to intertwine the stories of her ancestors and situations with her daughters to bring current day relevance as well as a voice to the matriarch.17 In Braiding Sweetgrass, she uses Skywoman and the origin story of the Potawatomi people to introduce her love of science and botany. She truly gives Skywoman a voice and a life, through writing, that will live further than the current oral history. For reference, Skywoman would be comparable to Gaia in Ancient Greek mythology.
Felicitas Mendez was a Puerto Rican immigrant who fought to end the de jure segregation of California during the American Civil Rights Movement. Following World War II in1946, schools in California were heavily segregated including Hispanic students. California claimed that there was a language barrier that kept the schools from being integrated. Felicitas was able to take the stand and speak in such a way that California ruled in her favor. Unfortunately, the school district did not agree and took the court case higher. This court case was crucial in not only Felicitas’ life but in the career trajectory of both Thurgood Marshall and Earl Warren. Had the Mendez family not fought for the desegregation of the schools in Orange County, California, the landmark court decision of Brown v. Board of Education would have been that much harder to have pass.18
Linda Chavez-Thompson is a second generation Mexican American. Her primary focus was finding equality for Latin Americans in labor unions. Her career started in 1967 where she was working with a local labor union in Lubbock, Texas. After achieving for those union workers, she was able to climb and hold various positions with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees in San Antonio, eventually becoming the vice president from 1988 to 1996. Along with that prestige came other opportunities to be the first person of color to hold certain positions. For instance, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, the largest union in the United States, elected Linda to executive vice president twice, first at the 1995 convention and then again in 2005.19
Ida B. Wells was born into slavery in 1862 in Mississippi. Political activism ran through her veins as following the Civil War, her parents worked diligently throughout the Reconstruction Era in the political realm. While growing up, Ida learned quickly to speak for what she felt was right. In doing so, she was expelled from college for a heated discussion with the Rust College president. This fire in her soul allowed her to aggressively attack issues that pertained specifically to her as well as extending to others. The Wells family faced a tremendous loss when yellow fever took both of her parents. Following that Ida’s life took a turn, and she became the soul provider for her younger siblings, with that change, she became a teacher. However, unable to hold her tongue, she continued to fight for equality, especially in 1884 when she filed a lawsuit against the train car company in Memphis, Tennessee for unfair treatment. Although she was victorious in this battle, she fell short at the federal level. For the greater part of the next decade, she turned her attention towards lynching after having seen her friend lynched. She had several articles printed in the newspaper which ultimately pushed her to move to Chicago in response to the nonstop violence she and her family were experiencing. Ida B. Wells was not always so easily accepted by other groups who were fighting for equality at the same time. The women’s suffrage groups struggled to accept her into the group because she was confrontational with white women who were also working for suffrage and even worse towards those who were against suffrage in general. Towards the end of her life, she turned her focus to urban reform specifically for Chicago before passing away in 1931.20
Fannie Lou Hamer was born to sharecroppers in 1917 in the state of Mississippi. Having grown up in poverty, she left school at 12 and went directly to work. She married Perry Hamer and the couple worked on a plantation until 1962. As the only worker who could read and write, she was the timekeeper for the plantation. Unfortunately, Fannie Lou Hamer was taken advantage of by a white doctor. A hysterectomy was given when Fannie Lou had consented to the removal of a tumor in her uterus. Historically, African Americans were repeatedly taken advantage of by white doctors in attempts to sterilize the population. Hamer’s surgery had earned the nickname of a “Mississippi appendectomy” which left her unable to have children. Having experienced this supposed appendectomy, Hamer started to get involved with civil rights issues that addressed other unfair treatments. She worked with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee to register African Americans to vote, which promptly got her fired from her timekeeper position. Hamer worked relentlessly to get African American women registered to vote and lived with perpetual issues from a beating she took after being arrested for reregistering women to vote. Fannie Lou Hamer continued to work for voting rights and in 1964 she co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to call out the Democratic party for blocking African Americans from participating in voting. She gave a speech, that was broadcast but only after Lyndon Baynes Johnson’s speech, that described how hard it was to be an African American in the south and the racial prejudices that were experienced. It resonated across the nation. Fannie Lou Hamer changed the lives of many African Americans who were struggling and living in the south. From her sharecropping roots she founded the Freedom Farm Cooperative to ensure that African Americans had access to farmland to support themselves. At the age of 59, Fannie Lou Hamer passed away due to breast cancer.21
Yuri Kochiyama was a civil rights activist who was inspired to speak up for those who were discriminated against based on her own experience of living in an internment camp. Born in San Pedro, California in 1921, Yuri and her family lived in a predominately white neighborhood. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, her father was removed by the FBI thinking that he was a potential threat because of his friendship with the Japanese Ambassador and photographs of Pearl Harbor found in the house. Shortly after his release, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt passed Executive Order 9066 which forcibly removed Japanese Americans from their homes and forced them to live in internment camps. She lived in the camp at Jerome, Alabama where she met her husband. Following the release from internment camps, the couple moved to New York and Yuri joined the Congress of Racial Equality. When she met Maclom X they had an inseparable bond and Yuri completely understood Malcom’s ideals. With her husband, she fought for reparations for the Japanese who were forced to relocate into internment camps. Once Japanese Americans received their reparations, she continued to fight for reparations for African Americans. Yuri extended her fight for equality to include Muslims, Middle Easterners, and South Asians who were facing bigotry throughout the United States following the attack on September 11, 2001. At the age of 93 in 2014, she passed away.22
The women mentioned above are excellent starting points for students. As you are looking at the demographics of your students, you can pick and choose other women who align with your population. Because my students are mostly African American and Hispanic, I would ensure to make time for multiple examples of women who have voices who have gone unheard that look like my students. I would also make sure to pay attention to engagement throughout the lesson. If the students are participating and asking many questions for a specific group of people, look into some of the other women listed, they are a great starting point. Also, if you are aware of a woman who changed your community and have the ability to include those women in your unit, do it. Students should be able to recognize those who have made direct impacts on their lives. It is all too often that schools are emphasizing the impact that men have had on American History when there are women and immigrants who have left greater marks on history that have been silenced.
Women In History
When the teacher is researching the women who align best with the unit of content being taught as well as the reading, many of the women listed in my research were found on Wikipedia more readily than they were on student accessible sites. I would suggest that in preparing for this part of the unit, the teacher does their own research and creates a list of student friendly resources to direct their students. For instance, if a teacher wanted to use Shirley Chisolm with their content, there is a great YouTube video that could be used rather than a strict reading. Students should practice pulling research information from multiple sources.
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