Lesson Plan: The Lasting Impact of a Lynching

Subjects:

US History/African American History, Ethnic Studies

• This lesson works well in a U.S. History class that is studying the Great Migration and/or the American homefront during World War II. In an African American History class, the lesson could be used as a way to discuss the justice system and lynching in the 20th century.
• This lesson would work as a precursor or as “setting the stage” to the study of the modern civil rights movement.

Lesson Duration:

• One or two class periods

Essential Questions:

• How does migration affect the social, political and economic climate of a community?
• How do historians corroborate sources to create narratives?
• How do communities respond to racial violence?

Lesson Objectives:

Students will:

• Analyze maps and data to draw conclusions.
• Identify the challenges involved in creating historical narratives.
• Evaluate when to create memorials for historic events.

Materials:

• Retro Report film: “The Lasting Impact of a Lynching” (Transcript)
• Student Activity handout
• Newspaper article Sikeston – Sunset Addition | Newspapers.com
• Google Map of Sikeston, Missouri
• The Great Migration and Lynching | Research Guides at Ohio State University
• Mapping the Great Migration out of the South (part 2) | America’s Great Migrations Project, University of Washington
• Racial lynching map of Missouri | Equal Justice Initiative

Procedure:

1. Distribute the Student Activity handout and have students begin with the Background and Explore Activities.
2. Students may need support with how to use Google Maps. Students can shift layers to see transportation networks and political boundaries, and zoom in and out.
3. Students will view the film, “The Lasting Impact of a Lynching” (Transcript). As students watch, they will identify what the facts are surrounding the story of Cleo Wright and what is not known or conjecture. Students will identify those knowns and unknowns on their handouts.
4. Have students work in teams to compare/contrast what’s known and not known.
5. Have students share those knowns and unknowns.
6. Teachers could create a visual chart for students and confirm or question student responses.
7. Students will then shift to the Reflect questions and respond.
8. Working in teams, students will consider how stories are corroborated and what historians do to ensure narratives are complete.
9. As students work through the challenges in creating those narratives, teachers should consider where students can find sources, especially for events where there may be few witnesses.
   1. Potential sources for corroboration: Newspaper collections (digitized newspapers are available through the Library of Congress´s Chronicling America project), oral history projects, diary/journals, and materials from community historical societies and archives.
10. To create context to the area and to the time, students will analyze maps of the Great Migration. This map analysis can be found on the Student Activity handout.
11. Students may want to refer to their earlier mapping assignment so that they can see where Sikeston is located.
12. The second map offers an interactive feature and allows students to see how the population shifts each decade. The map automatically advances 10 years every few seconds. Students can scroll down the page to access the same information for the years 1920-1940.
13. Ask students to see if they can establish a relationship between the Great Migration and where Sikeston, Mo., is on the map.
    1. Due to transportation networks (highways and a train depot) it is likely that Sikeston would have seen migration through their community/area.
14. Ask students what the potential effects might be of having an increased African American population land in Sikeston or travel through the area. Students can then work individually, in groups, or with the teacher on completing the social, political and economic chart.
    1. This might also be an opportunity to bring in the first source analyzed, the newspaper article about the Sunset Addition. Have students note that the article was published in 1923 as the Great Migration was occuring.
15. Students will then look at the Reported Lynchings by County map from the Lynching in America report. This map is linked on the Student Activity handout.
16. Note: The Lynching in America site is an outgrowth of the Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror report by the Equal Justice Intiatiive. The interactive map project was a collaboration with Google.
17. Remind students to refer to their mapping activity done before the film. Students should be able to find the general region of Missouri where Sikeston is located. The interactive map breaks the state into counties. If students hover a mouse over the county, they can see the name of the county and how many reported lynching victims there were from 1877-1950.
    1. Students previously identified the county that Sikeston is in. This will allow them to locate this on the map.
       [Please note: Sikeston is located in two counties, Scott and New Madrid. Scott County has one reported lynching and New Madrid has two reported lynchings. It is not known which county reported Cleo Wright’s death.]
    2. Students will complete the questions on the Student Activity handout.
    3. Inform students that it is possible that the lynching reported for Scott County is Cleo Wright and/or that Cleo Wright is one of the two lynchings reported for New Madrid County.
    4. This is also an opportunity to discuss the challenges in gathering this data. Potential discussion questions:
       1. What challenges would researchers face as they work to determine whether lynchings occurred in a community?
       2. What sources of information would a researcher need to discover that data?
       3. What are some potential problems in finding that data?
       4. What does this mean for us as we try to understand the prevalence of lynching in our history and in our communities?
18. The final activity on the Student Activity handout has students examining fundamental questions about what communities choose to memorialize. Memorialization often comes in the form of a historical marker or plaque. (The Community Remembrance Project, from the Equal Justice Initiative.)
19. Students will create an argument as to whether a marker should be established to acknowledge/memorialize the lynching of Cleo Wright.
    1. Students could do this activity individually or in teams. Conversely classrooms could be broken into two parts with one half writing each one argument and the other half writing the counter argument.
    2. Students could discuss both arguments in teams or as a class.
    3. Finally, have students draft their thinking and decide what argument they support and why.

Extension Activity:

1. There is a great deal of data available on the Equal Justice Initiative’s Lynching in America site. Teachers could assign students to states to learn about cases of others who were lynched.
2. Retro Report’s How the New Deal Created Whites-Only Suburbs film and article addresses the growth of segregated communities in the 1930s and 1940s.
3. As part of Retro Report’s work on Citizen Nation, Civics Skills: Strategies for Analyzing Challenging Texts (Transcript) features a student discussing redlining in her community. The film highlights strategies that students can use, from a student, to assist in decoding text. The film also includes a lesson plan to support students in engaging with the skill.

About the Author:

Shari Conditt teaches Social Studies at Woodland High School in Woodland, Wash. She was named the 2024 National Civics Teacher of the Year by the Bill of Rights Institute and the 2016 Washington History Teacher of the Year by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

Standards

College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies

• D1.4.9-12. Explain how supporting questions contribute to an inquiry and how, through engaging source work, new compelling and supporting questions emerge.
• D2.Geo.2.9-12. Use maps, satellite images, photographs, and other representations to explain relationships between the locations of places and regions and their political, cultural, and economic dynamics.
• D2.Geo.7.9-12. Analyze the reciprocal nature of how historical events and the spatial diffusion of ideas, technologies, and cultural practices have influenced migration patterns and the distribution of human population.
• D2.Geo.12.9-12. Evaluate the consequences of human-made and natural catastrophes on global trade, politics, and human migration.
• 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.2.9-12. Analyze change and continuity in historical eras.
• D2.His.5.9-12. Analyze how historical contexts shaped and continue to shape people’s perspectives.
• D2.His.12.9-12. Use questions generated about multiple historical sources to pursue further inquiry and investigate additional sources.
• D2.His.16.9-12. Integrate evidence from multiple relevant historical sources and interpretations into a reasoned argument about the past.

Common Core Literacy Standards

• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.1: Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, attending to such features as the date and origin of the information.
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.2: Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of how key events or ideas develop over the course of the text.
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.8: Assess the extent to which the reasoning and evidence in a text support the author’s claims.
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.1: Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, connecting insights gained from specific details to an understanding of the text as a whole.
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.9: Integrate information from diverse sources, both primary and secondary, into a coherent understanding of an idea or event, noting discrepancies among sources.