Lesson Plan: Jim Crow America – Racial Discrimination Beyond the South

Subject:

United States History

Grade Level:

8-12

Lesson Duration:

• 8-10th grade: 180 minutes

• 11-12th grade: 90 minutes

Essential Question:

• How were Black people affected by racial discrimination outside the South prior to the Black Civil Rights Movement?

Lesson Objective:

• Students will be able to identify the forms of racial discrimination outside the Southern United States – including housing segregation during the Great Depression and inequitable implementation of the G.I. Bill following World War II – to understand the societal problems the civil rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s were trying to overcome.

Materials:

• Hook Source: San Jose HOLC “Redlining” Map (Mapping Inequality)
• Retro Report video “Whites-Only Suburbs: How the New Deal Shut Out Black Homebuyers” (Transcript)
• How a New Deal Housing Program Enforced Segregation | History.com
• How the G.I. Bill’s Promise Was Denied to a Million Black WWII Veterans | History.com
• Primary Sources: Jigsaw Activity Document | Various Sources
• Teacher-Guided Student Activity: Google Slide Deck

Instructional Strategies:

• See, Think, Wonder Protocol | Facing History & Ourselves
• Structured Academic Partner Conversations | UC Berkeley, UC Berkeley History-Social Science Project
• Evidence-Based Argumentative Writing

Procedure:

1. The teacher will share slide #1 (of the Teacher-Guided Student Activity: Google Slick Deck) projected on a screen for the entire class to see. (Students will have their own individual activities up on their computer screens so as to zoom in and view it more closely. If students do not have computers, the materials will need to be printed out.)
2. Students will fill out the “See, Think, Wonder” chart on slide #2 in chunks that the teacher will guuse to introduce the main lesson topic. The teacher will ask students questions in the order they are listed and provide time for students to complete each part before moving on. (3-5 minutes of pause time for students to work per column on slide #2):
   1. “What images, colors, or text do you see in this source? Write down at least five.”
   2. “What do you think is the purpose of this source? Write one sentence.”
   3. “What do you wonder about when it comes to how this source was created or used? Write one question.”
3. The teacher will collect student answers (either calling on students to share out or by walking around and reading what students are adding to their own activity) and write them on the class whiteboard before moving on to the next question. (The teacher may consider using Pear Deck for this activity.)

Set-Up/Transition:

4. On slide #3 and #4, students will complete two review activities. The first activity has students dropping historical events and time periods into a timeline. The second activity requests that students “brain dump” their prior knowledge relevant to this lesson in the chart to remind themselves of information they gained earlier in the school year (excluding World War II), which will all serve as a historical context for today’s lesson.
   1. Timeline events (in order): Civil War, Reconstruction, World War I, Great Depression, World War II
   2. Review “brain dump” questions:
   3. What was life like for Black people once the Reconstruction Era ended?
   4. What was life like for all Americans during the Great Depression of the 1930s?
   5. What historical information do you know about World War II?
5. The teacher will then play an introductory video that will set up the rest of the lesson and provide students with a visual understanding of the larger lesson objective. On slide #5, students will type their answers to the video questions as the entire class watches the Retro Report video together.
   1. What did one homebuyer find when she purchased a house during the 2020s in the majority-white community of Ladera, Calif.?
   2. How did New Deal policies change the housing market during the 1930s?
   3. What is redlining? How did it affect people of color from the 1930s to today?
   4. What was life like in the mid-1900s in East Palo Alto, where people of color were being directed?
   5. Why does the issue of housing discrimination matter today?
6. Once the video ends, the teacher may allow some time for students to review the transcript if needed. The teacher will review the answers aloud with the class and reinforce key points, like the concept of redlining, and will grant pause time for lingering questions. Remind students that the objective is to understand why a huge nationwide movement would develop in the middle of the 20th century: What were Black people experiencing at the hands of the federal government, beyond Jim Crow segregation pervasive in the South? What did racial segregation look like in so-called progressive places like California?

Guided Practice Focusing on Historical Thinking Skills & History Content:

7. On slide #6 and #7, pairs of students will be reading one of two secondary sources. The teacher will assign Reading #1 to partner A and Reading #2 to partner B. The teacher will read through each set of questions that the partners will complete based on their reading assignments. Provide anywhere from 15 to 40 minutes for each student to read the assigned text and answer questions in bullet-point format. (Differentiation needs will depend on the age group and reading levels of students.)
   1. Partner A questions for Reading #1:
      1. Federal Housing Administration: Who created it? What was its purpose? What rules were in its manual? What resulted from those rules?
      2. Housing Deeds: Deeds are legal documents that name the owner of a property and state how that property can be used. What requirements were included in all F.H.A. housing deeds?
      3. Highways: How did some developers strategically use highways? What was the goal?
      4. Redlining: What is its definition? Who implemented this practice, and for what reasons? What were the results?
   2. Partner B questions for Reading #2:
      1. Congressman John Rankin: What political and personal beliefs did he have about Black people? What are two actions he took in his government role, and how did they affect Black veterans?
      2. Institutional Barriers: How were Veteran Affairs benefits distributed? What are three challenges Black veterans faced in gaining access to benefits granted to all U.S. men who fought in WWII?
      3. Housing and Education: What are four examples of ways Black veterans were excluded from federal benefits intended to make housing and college cheaper for World War II veterans?
      4. Racial Wealth Gap: What effect did the implementation of the GI Bill have on the racial wealth gap and why is this an important statistic to consider?
8. Once each student in the partnership has had time to answer individual questions, they will meet with their partner and swap their work. The teacher will remind students that they are to read the questions and explain to their partner verbally before their partner sees the text visually, so there is background being given with the bullet-point notes they are receiving from (and giving to) their partner.
9. On slide #8, students will collaborate in filling out the Venn diagram that compares experiences of Black people during the Great Depression to experiences of Black people during and immediately following World War II. This is students’ time to make connections and process what they learned from their respective readings. Students should converse with each other and add at least three details to each of the three parts.
   1. The teacher is using this activity as an opportunity to formatively assess their students’ knowledge and should be reading each partnership’s Venn diagram to affirm their work or address any misunderstandings students may have on the topic.

Independent Practice Focusing on Historical Thinking Skills and History Content:

10. On slide #9, students are analyzing one primary source. The goal is to figure out how that primary source highlights at least one new understanding about the experiences of Black people in the early to mid-1900s: What did racial segregation look like? What are some personal experiences? How did Black people respond to the way they were treated?
11. The teacher will number off each student from 1 to 5 and assign one of five primary sources. All will answer the same questions:
    1. Who (or what) created this primary source?
    2. When was this source created?
    3. What are important visuals, images, colors, or text that you see in this source? Write at least three.
    4. In one sentence, summarize what this primary source can teach historians about life for Black people in the early to mid-1900s.
12. After students have had time to analyze their sources and complete the questions on their own, they will turn to their partner from the previous activity and verbally describe their primary source. After both have shared, each partner will type the partner’s response to the last question and add it to slide number 9 in order to capture another nugget of insight into the lesson’s topic.

Closure/Exit Ticket: Assessing the Historical Thinking Skills and History Content:

13. The teacher will guide students through the final slide, which serves as a summation of each student’s ability to identify key content information and will showcase the ability to demonstrate the use of comparison as a historical thinking skill.
14. Exit ticket questions for the teacher to read aloud (Estimate of 10-20 minutes of pause time individually:
    1. Looking ahead to the civil rights movement that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, what about U.S. society were activists trying to change? Who was responsible for creating the government and society that existed during the 1930s and 1940s?
    2. To what extent did Black Americans benefit from New Deal policies that were intended to help all Americans during the Great Depression? Once federal policies were put in place to support male veterans returning from WWII, how much did Black men benefit? Do these two time periods share more differences or more similarities? Provide at least two examples from each time period to support your claim below.

Modifications for Diverse Learners (e.g. ELLs, Advanced Learners, IEPs, middle school):

• The teacher should note that all activities are to be explained by, and implemented with, the active support of the teacher. The teacher should be walking around the classroom as a support to all learners.
• The teacher might consider having each student read both Reading #1 and Reading #2 (or shortened passages) to better support students who struggle to read secondary sources and identify main ideas. In this case, the teacher should read each passage aloud, read each question aloud, and provide pause time for students to work on answering the question while the teacher walks around individually helping students who may need extra guidance.
• As students watch the Retro Report video (located on slide 5), it is highly encouraged that the teacher records answers to the questions on a public whiteboard for all to see as the class watches the video.
• If students need more support with identifying key information in secondary sources, the teacher can highlight key parts of Reading #1 and Reading #2 by copying and pasting the text on Google Docs and giving those links to the class instead of the direct download from History.com.
• Advanced learners can be given Reading #2 as it is longer in length than Reading #1.
• The teacher can provide a sentence frame for the exit ticket response if students are needing more support with their argumentative writing skill.

About the Author:

Lauren Piraro teaches United States History and AP U.S. History in northern California and was the 2021 winner of the California Council for the Social Studies Rookie Teacher of the Year award.

Standards

C-3 Framework Standards for Social Studies:

• D2.Civ.14.9-12. Analyze historical, contemporary, and emerging means of changing societies, promoting the common good, and protecting rights.
• D2.Civ.5.9-12. Evaluate citizens’ and institutions’ effectiveness in addressing social and political problems at the local, state, tribal, national, and/or international level.
• D2.Civ.8.9-12. Evaluate social and political systems in different contexts, times, and places, that promote civic virtues and enact democratic principles.
• D2.His.1.9-12. Evaluate how historical events and developments were shaped by unique circumstances of time and place as well as broader historical contexts.
• D2.His.16.9-12. Integrate evidence from multiple relevant historical sources and interpretations into a reasoned argument about the past.
• D2.His.2.9-12. Analyze change and continuity in historical eras.

AP U.S. History

• Topic 7.10: Explain how the Great Depression and the New Deal impacted American political, social, and economic life over time.
  KC-7.1.III.A: Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal attempted to end the Great Depression by using government power to provide relief to the poor, stimulate recovery, and reform the American economy.
  KC-7.1.III.C: Although the New Deal did not end the Depression, it left a legacy of reforms and regulatory agencies and fostered a long-term political realignment in which many ethnic groups, African Americans, and working class communities identified with the Democratic Party.
• Topic 7.13: Explain the causes and effects of the victory of the United States and its allies over the Axis powers.
  KC-7.3.III.C.ii: Military service provided opportunities for women and minorities to improve their socioeconomic positions for the war’s duration, while also leading to debates over racial segregation.

AP Human Geography

• Unit 6: Cities & Urban Land-Use