The American Slave Narrative Unit focuses on the history and origins of slave narratives spanning from colonial times to the beginning of the Civil Rights movement. Our unit focuses on the use of primary source documents in the form of narratives and oral history. Throughout our unit we have days during which we will teach students using lecture. Other days will be spent with the actual words of the slaves through primary sources. These "Lab" days will be a time that students will analyze primary source documents and apply those readings to various activities. These activities include answering document-based questions, creating posters, interviewing, and creating personal narrative writings. We hope that our sequence will allow students to acquire the ability to read, evaluate, and analyze primary source material while also learning about slavery through the eyes of slaves.
While a goal of this unit is to foster students' ability to analyze primary sources, we also want students to expand their understanding of slavery as a social and political phenomenon. Too often, slavery is told from the perspective of white historians and students are not exposed to the emotions and experiences of the slaves themselves. To counter this, we have provided many documents and writings of slaves along with interview narratives taken from former slaves. We have also included documents from every era of African American history from the earliest colonial slave trades to the Civil Rights struggle of the 1960s. In addition to slave narratives, we feature the words of black abolitionists, free blacks, and Civil Rights activists. Oral tradition and narratives have been a large component of the transmission of black culture.
There is a correlation between the evolution of African Americans in the United States and their cultural narrative and oral traditions. As the status of African Americans has changed over time the African American traditions and oral histories have been transformed as well. We feel that our unit provides students with the opportunity to not only study these ideas, but to create their own histories and traditions. By exploring documents and narratives, students will be able to recognize how histories and societies change over time. On a larger scale, the students will gain skills in deciphering historical materials in general and also be able to use these skills to formulate their own opinions on other historical events throughout history. The skill of being able to critically analyze materials and also in-depth comprehension of literature are life skills that students will gain from this unit.
