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Toolbox Library, primary resources thematically organized with notes and discussion questionsOnline Seminars, professional development seminars for history and literature teachersThe Making of African American Identity: Volume I, 1500-1865
The Making of African American Identity: Volume I, 1500-1865
Theme: FreedomTheme: EnslavementTheme: CommunityTheme: IdentityTheme: Emancipation


The Making of African American Identity: Volume I, 1500-1865The Making of African American Identity: Volume I, 1500-1865The Making of African American Identity: Volume I, 1500-1865


PRIMARY RESOURCES
thematically organized with notes and discussion questions.

Made possible by a grant from the Wachovia Foundation
Made possible by a grant from the Wachovia Foundation.












THEMES

Framing Questions
  •  How did Africans live in freedom before enslavement?
  •  How did Europeans and African Americans perceive African cultures?
  •  What was the experience of capture and enslavement for those who became African Americans?


Framing Questions
  •  How did enslavement in America affect Africans and their descendants?
  •  How did enslaved peoples maintain selfhood in the slave-master relationship?
  •  What aspects of slavery did freed men and women emphasize when relating their experiences?
  •  How did a person respond to being the slave of another?
  •  What impact did slavery have on white people?


Framing Questions
  •  How did enslaved African Americans construct communities over time? What were their principal characteristics?
  •  What obstacles did slaves confront in constructing communities?
  •  How did white Americans respond to the collective behavior of African Americans?
  •  How was autonomy exercised through community by antebellum African Americans?


Framing Question
  •  How did African Americans construct identity in antebellum America?
  •  How did enslaved and free blacks differ in their exercise of power and self-determination?
  •  How did African Americans define themselves as members of groups?


Framing Questions
  •  How did enslaved African Americans envision and pursue freedom?
  •  How did free African Americans participate in anti-slavery campaigns and in individual slaves' efforts to be free?
  •  How did these efforts set the stage for African Americans as a free people after the Civil War?





Left image: Illustration (detail) in T. Clarkson, Letters on the slave-trade . . . , 1791, p. 36, plate 2, detail.
Right image: Drawing of Robert Smalls, Harper's Weekly, 14 June 1862, detail.
Courtesy of Jerome S. Handler, Michael L. Tuite Jr., and the University of Virginia Library, in online collection The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record.



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