W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington and Black Americans during the Progressive Era

I hesitated about the title of this post. I fear it sends the message,"time to talk about two important Black men before we get to Martin Luther King" and minimizes the importance of so many other people and issues. So please understand I don't mean that before reading on.

In my last post about the Progressive Era, I pointed out that the Progressive Era was noteworthy as the beginning of conservationism in America, and yet the environmentalists of the Progressive Era had fundamental disagreements about what conservation means.

Similarly, it was clear that Black Americans faced many difficulties during the period from 1890 through the 1910s and action needed to be taken. But while Blacks agreed that changes needed to be made to improve Black lives, they did not always agree about how that should be done. Progressives like W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington are the two most well-known black leaders of their time and their views differed dramatically, not unlike the opposing views of Gifford Pinchot and John Muir, who both considered themselves conservationists. And of course, there were Progressives who were white who supported one or the other of them, and white Progressives who supported neither. So both this post and last support the reality that the term "Progressive" is a very loose one.

Teachers often focus on W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington. And for good reason. But before I get to them, I note that the spotlight on these two tends to obscure other important Black leaders and events. George Washington Carver is one of them. While looking for something else pertaining to Black History Month, I came across this interesting article about Carver from NPR's codeswitch blog.

Langston Hughes

Also, for the record, I am writing this on the birthday of Langston Hughes, not only the best poet for teaching about civil rights, but also a fascinating character (put his autobiography, The Big Sea, on your summer reading list!). And I urge you not just to rely on his famous poem "A Dream Deferred," but on many others. The problem with this poem, like the last part of King's "I Have a Dream" speech is that they are so overused by teachers (my son has read "A Dream Deferred" 3 years in a row in English class! So unless you are teaching second grade, they have likely already read it. And check out today's Google Doodle:

I

While he really becomes famous in the 1920s, and thus, you might be better off delaying a discussion of him until you get to the 1920s, I bring him up in this post because one, today is his birthday. Two, he once worked for Carter G. Woodson, the founder of Black History Month and that is just an interesting coincidence for today. Three, he is a child of the 1910s and this must have colored his poetry. And lastly, this is a great opportunity for an interdisciplinary connection you can make with some of your fellow English teachers, and creating any sort of interdisciplinary connection takes time. Here are few links to interesting info about Hughes and his poetry are below.

• poetryfoundation.org
• reflections from Providence Journal
• poets.org

Ida B. Wells and Lynching

Another important individual to focus on during this period is Ida B. Wells Barnett, a muckraker and crusader against lynching. Read here for some background information about her. You can use her to focus a lesson about lynching. I mention lynching not without a good deal of trepidation. It occurs to me that teaching about it could possibly be the most controversial lesson you teach all year. Ironic, isn't it, that you could go on and on about all sorts of horrors during the Civil War, the Indian Wars or even the Holocaust, but there's something particularly disturbing--to me, anyway--about lynching because it is a subject that is rarely touched on in U.S. history textbooks or classes (see the chapter by Loewen I refer to below). It is an ugly part of American history that is widely ignored or hushed up. I discussed the difficulties of teaching about it in an earlier post (scroll down to: 4. How much detail to go into about the horrors of lynching and racial discrimination?) which you may want to check out if you didn't see it originally.

Resources for thinking about and teaching about lynching:

• rise of Jim Crow teaching unit - if I have not yet mentioned this resource, my apologies. This link is for the New Jersey State Library's unit on Jim Crow in their entire curriculum for African American history, designed for high school students (but definitely adaptable for middle schoolers!). A must see.
• chesnuttarchive.org - has background info and links to tables and statistics about lynching. The whole website is about Charles Chesnutt, a multiracial writer.
• teaching ideas from a Yale University teaching institute
• chart of lynching statistics
• gilderlehrman.org - teaching unit & resources
• strangefruit.org - website created as a memorial about lynching victims

NAACP and their campaign against lynching:

• NAACP.org
• U.S. House of Representatives website about NAACP and lynching

Although not recorded until 1939, Billie Holiday's rendition of "Strange Fruit" is a historically significant performance. Based on a poem of the same name (also not published until well after the Progressive Era), it describes lynching like nothing else can. Might be worth showing to students.

(Or you could try this contemporary version by Jose James, which I saw live a few weeks ago at his concert in Hyde Park, Chicago. Indescribably moving.) 

And now, one more digression before I get to Washington and DuBois.

I am currently teaching the social studies methods course this semester, and one of the key messages I am trying to send to these teachers-to-be is that there is no substitution for a solid background in your subject area. I can give them all the strategies, methods and cool ideas in the world, but unless they know some history, those things will do little for them or their students. Hopefully, they have gotten a good start in the 3+ years of college education they have already had. But 30+ credits in history (only some of which is likely in American history) is not enough to give them everything they need to do a good job of teaching.

I am learning new things all the time and am constantly amazed by all that I don't know. (For example, just last semester, when teaching 8th grade U.S. history I learned about new information we have about the Cuban Missile Crisis. As I had not taught about that in quite some time, this was new. And it significantly changes how we can understand this crisis. But more on that when we get to the Cold War).

Why this digression? I think one of the reasons we have a tough time with the period 1890-1920 (or even later) of African American history is, that unless you have taken an African American history course in college or grad school, or have read a lot on the period, it is unlikely that you know a whole lot about it. For me,  99% of my worst lessons were lessons on topics that I did not know very well.

So one suggestion I have for you, if this is one of your weak areas, are a few short articles/chapters listed below. Together, they make a good "crash course" that will help you understand and develop a few good lessons on the period.

• Eric Arnesen, "Reconsidering the 'Long Civil Rights Movement,'" 2009. Historically Speaking 10 (2): 31-34. Happily, this article is available online here.
• chapter 10 of James Loewen's Teaching What Really Happened: How to Avoid the Tyranny of Textbooks and Get Students Excited about Doing History. This chapter is about what historians refer to as "The Nadir" or low point, for African Americans. Other chapters in this book are also very useful, so if you can, you may want to buy it. But you may also be able to get your school to buy it for you or get it through your public library.
• You obviously don't have time to read all of Leon Litwack's 640 page book, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow by the time you have to teach about this topic, but happily, you can read an brief excerpt here and a longer essay (but still only 19 pages) that is either from the book or published before the book, I'm not sure. The last two pages have an interesting insight about the Washington vs. DuBois "debate."

Washington and DuBois

There are so many resources on the web about these two, that I am declining to list them. Instead, I'd suggest you just google "washington and dubois" and you will find more than you need. If you don't have time for that--one of the problems for teachers, right? It's finding the time to actually read all those resources!--then you can simply check out the stuff below.

Update 6/1/15: just found this article from NPR on better understanding the legacy of Booker T. Washington.

I adopted this from a colleague who adopted it from this DBQ used on an old AP U.S. History exam. I begin a lesson with some brief biographical info on the two men. Then I had students draw a chart in their notes so we could compare the biographies and views of the two men after reading some of their writings, noting similarities and differences.

You can find the documents here.

And here are some key questions (big questions, discussion questions, essential questions, whatever you'd like to call them) that I like to use in class along with these documents:

1. Which strategy (Washington's or DuBois's) do you think is most appropriate given the historic circumstances? Do you find one more appealing for today's circumstances? Are they the same? Different?
2. What do you have to know or consider in order to answer the above question?
3. In what ways does this difference of opinion compare to the different approaches of the Antislavery movement and the American Colonization Society? How is the question each group/person dealt with similar/different? How have the historic circumstances changed? (You can do this again when you get to Martin Luther King and Malcolm X).
4. Washington's approach seems to suggest it is better to work with the situation you are in in order to get to where you would like to be, while DuBois seems to suggest it is better to work towards the situation you would like from the start. This is probably a bit simplistic, but what do you think? And which approach do you prefer? Why? Which might be more successful? Is there a difference between the one you prefer and the one you think might be more successful? Why or why not?
5. When you think about the importance of education, which do you think is more important, a practical education which will specifically prepare you for a job? Or a liberal education (history, arts, sciences, literature, math, humanities) which prepares you in a more general way? How did you make your decision? Is one of the choices more appropriate for some people over others? Why or why not? What does this say about equality, equality of opportunity and socio-economic class in America?

Yes, that last one is a killer, isn't it? But I have had THE most interesting discussions with students about it. Give it a whirl....

Parting thoughts--

Don't forget about the Great Migration and the 1920s Harlem Renaissance. I will do a separate post on this when we get there.

And a reminder, if you're looking for more resources on African American history, check out the website from the New Jersey State Library that I mentioned above.

The Progressives and the Environment: the Beginning of the Conservation Movement

As I've already mentioned, there are LOTS of topics that could potentially be studied in a unit on Progressivism. Why pick one over another? I like to spend a couple of days on the environment--a topic less often addressed by teachers, I think--for a few reasons. First, the care of the natural environment is a central concern in our society today and one that students seem to care about a lot. Global warming, the Keystone oil pipeline, fracking and the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico are all in the news today. Two, there are not a lot of other places in the curriculum where the environment comes up. And three, the Progressive Era marks a key "turning point" in American thinking about the environment.

For starters, 1916 marks the passage of the Organic Act, which created the National Park Service (though not the first national park--that was Yellowstone in 1872). According to this law, the goal of the NPS would be:

"....to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations." 

I am hardly the first to point out the inherent contradictions of this statement: does "conserve the scenery" and keeping it "unimpaired for enjoyment of future generations" mean the NPS might have to restrict current public access and "enjoyment"?

The National Parks have been described by environmentalist and writer Wallace Stegner as, "the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst." The creation of the NPS is certainly a milestone moment in American history and worth considering. (See below for links to Ken Burns documentary on National Parks).

The essential question that comes to mind is, why now? Why in the early 20th century do Americans and their government begin talking about the environment in a way that they hadn't before? How did our views about the environment change over time?

One way to begin a lesson on this topic is to have students play around with some key words, considering what they mean, how they are different and their own views:

• environmentalism
• conservation
• preservation
• wilderness
• nature
• green (not the color, obviously)
• reclamation

Another way to begin is to use a few quotations about environmentalism and conservation. Pick a few from any of the websites below. Something from Roosevelt, Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, John Muir, Wallace Stegner, or Stewart Udall are all good choices.

• goodreads.com/quotes/tag/environment
• quotegarden.com
• brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_environmental

The DBQ I put together and used with students focuses on this question:

How and why did the government's policy toward the use of natural resources change during the Progressive Era?

 To answer the question, obviously students need to understand 3 things:

1. What were American views/govt policies on the environment before the Progressive Era?
2. What influenced the shift? i.e. why did policies change?
3. What were those new policies? i.e. how did they change

To answer these, you can go back to the "beginning"--the period of initial contact between Europeans and Native Americans. William Cronon is the historian who has probably best explained the different points of view in his book Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of New England. For a brief summary, you can look here. One of his key points is that Europeans viewed land as property, something one owns, versus the New England Indians who were more likely to eschew land ownership in favor of usufruct rights, in which people "owned" only what they use on the land (e.g. hunting and gathering).

But I usually just go back to the nineteenth century, with a simple in class activity in which students look up a few bits of information about the topics below (most textbooks will work for this, and "a few bits" is all they usually have):

• manifest destiny
• Homestead Act of 1862
• Pacific Railway Act and government subsidies
• destruction of the buffalo

Then students consider what implications this has about how the American people and the government thought about land, conservation and the environment. Middle schoolers and high schoolers can do this, though middle schoolers may need either a little prodding, or you can do one of them together. Their ability to do it depends a little bit on what your textbook says about each of these things. If you don't like what your textbook says, find a different one, or write up your own "definitions" of them.

Then it's time to examine the shift. For this part of the lesson, I use two things:

1. maps:  one that depicts the "closing" of the frontier and the extent of settlement (your textbook probably has one). Here are some links to ones you might like: docstoc.com, lib.utexas.edu, and here's a GIF one from the US Census.
2. Frederick Jackson Turner and the "Closing of the Frontier Turner" thesis. Read more here and here or here. Even though it has been discredited, it was considered important at the time. I'm not sure I would use this with middle schoolers. Too theoretical. I think the maps are enough. Here is the document and questions on Turner that I use in class.

Combining the above with the significant droughts of the 1890s, you can start to understand the shift.

And then along come Theodore Roosevelt. My last post has resources where you can find more on his love for the wilderness and experiences with nature that led him to take an interest in preserving the environment just as the time seems to ripe for Americans to take a similar view.

I like to use Roosevelt's 1907 message to Congress as a document with students to understand the evolving view of conservation (vs. the preservationist view of folks like John Muir). Here is my edited version to use with high schoolers, and here is a shorter one to use with middle schoolers or younger/less able readers in HS. Both have the link to the PBS website where I found it.

And then lastly (this would not all be on the same day, mind you), I like to use the story about the debate over damming the Hetch Hetchy valley in Yosemite to provide a water source for the city of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. It is a fascinating story and marks "the first time that competing claims of wilderness and civilization were put to the test before a national audience." (That's from my notes, but I'm sure it came from a book. Perhaps it's from the classic book on wilderness, Roderick Nash's Wilderness and the American Mind, now in its fourth edition. There's a whole chapter on Hetch Hetchy.)

The anti-dam folks, led by preservationist John Muir, made arguments that the pro-dam folks were putting commercial interests ahead of wilderness. Muir had been the driving force behind getting Yosemite turned into a national park in 1890 and had been camping with Roosevelt there in 1903. Muir was adamant about the importance of preserving the valley as it was:

"Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people's cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man."

Muir's friend and ally in the fight, Robert Underwood Johnson claimed, "this is a fight between the sordid commercialism on the one hand and the higher interests of the whole people on the other."

But the really interesting thing about the debate over Hetch Hetchy is that the proponents of the damn were not anti-wilderness. In fact, many arguments were made that putting a dam in would make the wilderness more beautiful. Read no further than the first few statements by U.S. Chief Forester Gifford Pinchot in response to California Congressman John Raker to get a sense of the argument.

You have several options for how to teach about this. You could construct an elaborate debate like this one that I found online, or use some of the many materials there to construct something simpler (and shorter). Other resources you can use to create your own debate or historical inquiry or even just a short lecture that dramatizes the events are below:

• testimony about the Hetch Hetchy debate
• hetch hetchy info from the Sierra club
• primary sources about Hetch Hetchy from National Archives
• John Muir on Hetch Hetchy
• Gifford Pinchot's testimony on Hetch Hetchy

Ken Burns has taken Wallace Stegner's statement about the national parks idea and turned it into one of his outstanding documentaries, The National Parks: America's Best Idea. For an overview of this documentary, click here and for the episode by episode synopsis, click here.

The last section of Episode 2 focuses on the debate over Hetch Hetchy. Read more here (midway on the page). Earlier in Episode 2, the three main characters of the debate are introduced: Gifford Pinchot and John Muir, as well as Theodore Roosevelt.

A few more resources:

• The Evolution of the Conservation Movement - from the Library of Congress's American Memory collection
• If you'd like to see the DBQ I created, you can email me and I will send you the link.
• Current news about Hetch Hetchy and more here.

Reconstruction, continued

Lesson Ideas, Links, Documents & Essential Questions for Reconstruction Unit

Note: this is my second post about teaching Reconstruction. See the first one here. See my most recent one here.

1. Have your students define what we mean by freedom. Whether or not you go into a lot of depth about the passage of the 13th amendment, certainly the central fact of Reconstruction is the freedom of the slaves. But freedom is a broad concept. So the question is, what did freedom mean for the newly freed slaves? What did it mean for their former masters? And how did it play out during this period? In what ways was freedom limited? Does freedom include economic opportunity? Suffrage? The ability to run for office? To live where one wants? Get an education? Go to school wherever one wants? The list could go on.... Have your students discuss this. Make lists. Make a group list. Refer to it often as you move through the unit.

2. My student teachers sometimes struggle with alternatives to lecture. While there is nothing wrong with a good lecture, it is a technique that is often overused by history teachers. There are some topics that are conducive to a brainstorm approach, in which students can figure out certain content material on their own without any sort of lecture or even a reading. The problems the nation faced after the Civil War is just one example of this. What student couldn't figure out on his or her own at least one example of a problem the nation (and you can specify North, South or both) had after the war? They all know that in wars, people die and property is destroyed. And they know that the slaves have, sort of anyway, been freed. So ask them to elaborate on that. Then you, the teacher, can add to their information.

So have students explore the scenarios below:

A. The Civil War has ended. In your groups, you have the following task. Brainstorm a list of the problems faced in the rebuilding process after the Civil War. Be specific.

1. Categorize the problems. It is up to you to decide how to categorize them, e.g. economic, structural/rebuilding, political, etc.
2. Rank the problems in order, most serious to least serious. You should rank each problem within each category. A problem in one category could be the most serious, followed by another problem in a different category. A problem in one category could be the most serious, followed by another problem in a different category.

B. You are a former slave in the South. You have four options:

1. move North
2. move West
3. move elsewhere in the South
4. stay put  

Then, in groups or as a class, discuss what option they might choose. What are the pros and cons of each option? How would their choice depend on whatever their specific circumstances are, e.g. if they were male or female, young or old, a parent, a child, on a large plantation, small farm, in the city, etc. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each of the options? How would a former slave make him or herself aware of the options? Would he or she have to be able to read?

In both scenarios above, you now have the option to fill in the gaps during a discussion. You can point out how being illiterate might have hampered a former slave's ability to move, or the impact of the Homestead Act. (The latter scenario I adapted from a lesson in an excellent book for teachers, United States History: Eyes on the Economy). It is available for purchase online, and some lessons have been reproduced online. Pointing out economic costs and benefits can be a useful way to understand this period.

3. For teaching about the Freedmen's Bureau, some of the problems the newly freed slaves had, and the efforts of the government to help solve those problems, you can use this student-ready handout in groups. And here is a more middle-school friendly version of the document. I'm not sure where I got the original version of this document, but you can find more information/documents on the Freedmen's Bureau at the sites below.

• National Archives records on Freedmen's Bureau
• The Freedmen's Bureau Online
• University of Maryland Freedmen and Southern Society Project

4. What to do about Andrew Johnson? A few miscellaneous ideas:

• Use the political cartoon above. It's a useful introduction to his problem. You can find additional political cartoons by Thomas Nast here.
• Use the three essential questions below to demonstrate the political problem of Reconstruction that led to his impeachment. Pointing out that Andrew Johnson and Congress had very different answers to each of the three are part of the explanation for impeachment.

1. Should the South be punished or pardoned?
2. Should the federal government take responsibility for the social, economic and political well-being of the slaves?
3. Who should be in charge of Reconstruction, Congress or the President? 

• You can have a trial, debate, discussion, etc. in which students take a position. I was going to include the one I have used, but looking back at it, it needs some serious revision. So, in the interest of finishing this blog post before everyone who is reading it has long since finished their Reconstruction units (if you haven't already), I have decided not to include mine.

4. Here is my version of a DBQ I have put together for classroom use. And a few suggestions about DBQs:

• There are so many ready-made DBQs out there, collected in books and online. (See for example, the high-quality DBQ Project. But I think it is really important to tailor even the best of them (including mine that I linked to above) to your students. You may need to edit some of the documents, eliminate some, add others, replace one, add different instructions, etc. 
• I always tell students the question in advance. Unless you are trying to prepare students for the AP test and want to give them practice with blind DBQs, I feel that knowing the question in advance gives students something to focus on when they study. No one writes a paper without knowing the topic in advance, so I always like to tell students essay questions and DBQ questions in advance even if I am using them as a test or final assessment. Sometimes I give them the exact wording. Sometimes I just tell them the overall topic. This is assuming you are using a DBQ as an in-class activity. It is also entirely possible to have students work on the DBQ over the course of several days or completely on their own at home, or a combination of the two.
• I usually use a combination of documents they have already seen in class and some new ones they have not. For example, I really like using this document in class which is from a chapter by Eric Foner in a collection of essays on Reconstruction. In light of Ferguson, I am finding it particularly compelling. I use it without the paragraph by Foner (but included it here so teachers have a reference). I have used it by having students make a simple t-chart in their notes, and then think about what is positive in this document (e.g. see the points that Foner makes, such as that the author feels empowered to write to the governor, author can write) and what is negative (e.g. author's writing is full of errors, the incident itself). And then you can point out whatever students didn't figure out on their own and/or quote a bit from Foner's interpretation.
• Ideally, I also like to use at least a few visuals: photos or political cartoons or drawings. A chart or graph is also nice.  And I like to use at least one or two secondary sources, too. Often, I will use a passage from their textbook. I have not included that in this DBQ, but you can easily add a passage from the textbook you use.
• Another option for this DBQ would be to include a chart of Reconstruction legislation or to allow students to bring in one that they completed in class or for homework. This rewards them for having taken notes from the textbook, if you use one, or from another source. I also have been moving further and further away from having students memorize lots of information (only to forget it). Being familiar with Reconstruction legislation and the big ideas are what I am aiming for, so including details on the DBQ helps students recall information they have learned or read about without having to memorize them in order to refer to them in their essay.
• At this point in the school year, your students may already have some experience with DBQs. Whether they do or not, I think it is always useful to give students suggestions and practice. You can even have them work on their thesis statements as an in-class activity in advance of the DBQ.

Next post: how to handle the content-overload of the period 1865-1900 (minus Reconstruction).