George Washington and some of his slaves on his plantation.
 
 

             A Slave "Broomstick" Wedding
 
 

                          A slave auction, Richmond, VA
 
 

       Husking Corn                                                                                          Branding a Woman
 
 
 

INTRODUCTION:

What does the word empathy (m pa thee) mean?

Well, it's a lot like sympathy . . . except that, while they both mean that you're thinking hard about what another person must be feeling, with sympathy you sort of feel sorry for the other person.  In a way, while you understand what they are going through, you also pity them.
With empathy there is only understanding; you can feel and imagine what it must have be like to be living the other person's life.  There isn't pity; there is identification and fellow feeling.

Empathy for another person's life is actually a pretty difficult thing to do.  There's so much you just don't know.
For instance, ... do you think that your teacher can really understand what it's like to be you, to be a student in your class, a person your age growing up today?

If it's thats hard--or even impossible--for your teacher, who is in the room with you everyday, to know what your life is really like, then imagine how much harder it must be to try to understand--really understand!-- what it was like to be a slave 150 years ago!
Take another look at the pictures above.

Can you imagine yourself as a person enslaved in those scenes?
 
 
 

AS A STUDENT, YOUR TASK FOR THIS WEB PROBLEM ON SLAVERY will be . . .
 

...  to create a fictional and historically accurate narrative, diary or story of a slave or slaves.

Sometimes a story can be more "real" than what actually happened.  Sometimes it takes a story to give you a feeling sense of what actually happened--especially when we are talking aobut something like the lives of human beings who were forced into slavery.
 

YOUR JOB WILL BE to write a composite, historically accurate account of the life of someone enslaved.
That means that you can make up anything you want about your character . . . BUT
that the things that you make up about your character have to have happened regularly to slaves who were alive during the period before the Civil War (1861 - 1865).  For example, if you know that slaves on cotton plantation woke up with the sun and often had corn meal for breakfast, then you can say that the fictional character you make up woke up with the sun and had corn meal for breakfast.

In other words, first you will need to learn something about slavery in the South before the Civil War.

That's the only way you can create a fictional and historically accurate narrative, diary or story.
 

The time frame for your account is from about 1775 through the end of the Civil War, 1865.

Here are some more pictures to look at and to think about with empathy.
 

                                              A Black Nurse for White Children
 
 
 
 
 

PROCESS ....  or, HOW YOU WILL DO THIS.

You can work by yourself if you want, or with a partner, or in a group of three students.
If you work with a partner or in a group, you will create one diary for the group.

When choosing other students to work with, don't think only about who your friends are.
Think also about other people's work habits, and who has the skills that will help you do a better job.
 

You'll find all the information that you need in the following place:

1) Frederick Douglass' Narrative

2) the slave narratives found at http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/black_voices/black_voices.cfm and at http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/slavery
  You can just click on either of these sites' addresses and be taken directly to those collections of actual slave narratives.
3) The pictures on this web page are all from http://gropius.lib.virginia.edu/Slavery

4) slave narratives in books in the classroom.
(You will need your teacher's permission to use any other materials.)

Be sure to write down the source for all the information about slave life that you discover.
That way you won't have any trouble creating footnotes to show where you found your information.

After you have collected all the information that you need about the everyday lives of slaves before the Civil War, you have some decisions to make.

For example, Will your person be a man or a woman?
                       an adult or a child?
                       live on a big plantation?
                       a small farm?
                       work in the field, or as a domestic in a house?
                       work at a skilled craft in a city?
                       be married with a family, or married and separated from family, or never married?

Once you've answered questions like these--or any others that you think of while doing research--you can begin to write a draft of your fictional, composite and historically accurate narrative.  (And remember to cite the sources for all your statements and conclusions.  That is how you will show that they are historically accurate--that they could easily have happened to a slave living before the Civil War.)
 
 
 

          Barbers

                                                                                A Family Photograph
 
 

           Picking Cotton on a Plantation
 
 

CHECK POINT:

Show a draft of your fictional, historically accurate composite account to your teacher.
Then, take your teacher's suggestions and revise what you've written.

That's it!  You're done.  You've created history!
 
 
 

RUBRIC, OR, HOW TO GET A GOOD GRADE:
 

  An "A" narrative, diary or story

1.   will be word processed, and no more than three pages
2.   will be historically accurate
3.   will have footnotes or endnotes to citations that show the sources for your information and conclusions
4.   will be sufficiently complex so that it accurately reflects the complexity of the lives of people who were enslaved
5.   will be complete enough so that it does not leave out major categories, or topics, that we have discussed in class
6.   WILL NOT INCLUDE DIALECT OF ANY KIND  (Dialect is difficult to do well; it is too easy for the attempt at dialect to sound like making fun of people.)
 
 
 

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
 TEACHER INFORMATION FOR PLANNING:  Introduction to this project could be a discussion about whether a teacher can understand the life of a ninth grader.  And, why?  or why not?
If not, then how can we possibly hope to understand the life of someone enslaved 150 or 200 years ago? Once the slave narrative project is completed it can be followed by the creation of the core content worksheet; a quiz based on that worksheet; and a fishbowl discussion about the three worst things about being a slave.
 
 

 HERE'S AN OPTIONAL ACTIVITY:

Along with your fictional but historically accurate account you are to turn in a Daily Log of the specific work that you do each day.
Please include enough detail so that your teacher can see what you did (for example, went to source http://vi.uh.edu and read Olaudah Equiano’s account of his capture, rather than, “read stuff from the internet”).
Your Daily Log does not have to be word processed, but it does need to be neat and legible.
 
 
 

Your historically accurate account is worth  35 points.
Your individual Daily Log is worth  15  points.

The historically accurate fictional account is to be handed in on  ___________ .

This site was created by David Kobrin.  You can contact me at  davidkobrin@earthlink.net