terminology

Writing About Slavery? Teaching About Slavery?
Senior slavery scholars of color community-sourced this short guide to share with and be used by editors, presses, museums, journalists and curricular projects as well as by teachers, writers, curators, archivists, librarians and public historians.

short videos & visualizations

The Atlantic Slave Trade in Two Minutes, Slate (2:24)

The Atlantic slave trade: What too few textbooks told you, TED Ed, Anthony Hazard (5:38)

The Middle Passage | This video presents a set of infographic artifacts that unveil the impact of transatlantic transportation of enslaved people through the Middle Passage (6:04)

Slave Ship in 3D Video: View a reconstruction of the slave vessel L’Aurore, slavevoyages.org (4:46)

curricular units & lesson plans

The 1619 Project Curriculum
The 1619 Project, inaugurated with a special issue of The New York Times Magazine, challenges us to reframe U.S. history by marking the year when the first enslaved Africans arrived on Virginia soil as our nation’s foundational date. Here you will find reading guides, activities, and other resources to bring The 1619 Project into your classroom. 

African American History of Boston in a Tour and Timeline
An article written by educator Lillie Marshall with images from the Black Boston Tour, led by President and Historian of the North End Historical Society, Alex Goldfeld. Included is Alex’s 2012 Black History Timeline from the tour, which highlights significant moments in Boston’s Black history from the city’s founding in 1630 through 1870.

Black History and the History of Slavery in Maine
This lesson presents an overview of the history of the Black community in Maine and the U.S., including Black people who were enslaved in Maine, Maine’s connections to slavery and the slave trade, a look into the racism and discrimination many Black people in Maine have experienced, and highlights selected histories of Black people, demonstrating the longevity of their experiences and contributions to the community and culture in Maine.

The Case for Ending Slavery
This website features more than fifty primary sources from the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Library of Congress that reveal how slavery, and debates about slavery, contributed to the formation of the United States.

Discovering Amistad Teacher Resources
Includes places, websites, downloadable material, videos, and books on the history of the Amistad uprising (CT).

How Slavery Persisted in New England Until the 19th Century
History article which details the integral role enslavement played in the creation of New England communities and their economies. Written in the wake of Governor Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island’s acknowledgment of  the state’s slave trade involvement and plantations, the article explains how slavery evolved in New England starting with early local statutes and through the expansion of maritime trade.

Lesson Plans from Voyages: The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database has information on almost 36,000 slaving voyages that forcibly embarked over 10 million Africans for transport to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. In order to present the trans-Atlantic slave trade database to a broader audience, particularly a grade 6-12 audience, a dedicated team of teachers and curriculum developers from around the United States developed lesson plans that explore the database. Utilizing the various resources of the website, these lessons plans allow students to engage the history and legacy of the Atlantic slave trade in diverse and meaningful ways. The lessons also suggest readings for more information about the Slave Trade.

MassMoments Teacher Resources
Mass Moments resources consist of three units for high school, two for the upper elementary and middle-school level, and suggestions for third-grade classrooms, where Massachusetts history appears in the state frameworks for history and social science.

Migrations to Maine: Stories from Maine’s African Diaspora History
A 6th-8th grade module on the Maine Department of Education’s online learning platform “Moose” which includes sections on Documenting Enslavement and Anti-Slavery Efforts.

Racial Slavery in the Americas: Resistance, Freedom, and Legacies
Racial Slavery in the Americas: Resistance, Freedom, and Legacies from The Choices Program at Brown University provides the opportunity for students to consider how the past shapes the present, providing a wide-ranging overview of racial slavery in the Americas over many centuries. It provides a broad and illustrative survey of the development of the colonial systems that led to the creation of racial slavery. The focus throughout is on how enslaved people experienced and resisted these systems of oppression and how the legacies of racial slavery have shaped our world today.

Salem, Slavery, and the Sacred Cod
Uses primary and secondary sources to help students answer the question: How were maritime communities in New England, like Salem, Massachusetts, connected to slavery? Developed by Peter Doherty with support from the National Park Service and the Hard History Project.

Slavery and Maine
A collection of resources compiled by the Maine State Museum including primary sources and analysis worksheets.

Teaching Hard History, A Framework for Teaching Slavery
From Learning for Justice at the Southern Poverty Law Center, Teaching Hard History offers resources for middle and high school educators and includes a popular 6–12 framework, as well as student-facing videos and primary source texts. Educators will also find teaching tools and professional development resources. Do not miss the Teaching Hard History Podcast: American Slavery.

Teaching Hidden Histories – Essex National Heritage Area (MA)
An archive of Teaching Hidden History workshops and events, which have examined local historical examples of larger structural inequities and the fight for more access to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In advance of the virtual workshops, teachers received secondary and primary sources and scholars’ recorded presentations to prepare for our time together. At the synchronous workshops and in-person events, they interacted with scholars and pedagogy experts via a panel discussion, and worked with other teachers in small groups to explore how to integrate content and techniques into curriculum development.

Teaching Maine’s Relationship to Global Slavery with Primary Sources
A presentation compiled by Dr. Kate McMahon of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History & Culture, featuring several key primary documents.

The Transatlantic Slave Trade
2022 Equal Justice Initiative report provides a graphic overview of five centuries of the transatlantic slave trade, including chapters on New England, Boston, and New York.

podcasts

American Slavery, Teaching Hard History Podcast

How Do You Teach Slavery?
From NPR’s 1A. Slavery played a major role in America’s development, but a new study shows students don’t know much about it. One recent textbook referred to enslaved people as ‘workers’ … which suggests some schools still struggle to teach this topic. It’s hard history, but is there an easy fix? And what’s at stake if it’s not figured out?

“Maine’s Role in the Slave Trade: Research Uncovers Significant Slave Trading in New England,” Maine Public’s Maine Calling, with Dr. Kate McMahon and Dr. Meadow Dibble

Seeing White – Scene on Radio
Just what is going on with white people? Police shootings of unarmed African Americans. Acts of domestic terrorism by white supremacists. The renewed embrace of raw, undisguised white-identity politics. Unending racial inequity in schools, housing, criminal justice, and hiring. Some of this feels new, but in truth it’s an old story. Why? Where did the notion of “whiteness” come from? What does it mean? What is whiteness for? Scene on Radio host and producer John Biewen took a deep dive into these questions, along with an array of leading scholars and regular guest Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika, in this fourteen-part documentary series, released between February and August 2017.

UnCivil
Uncivil brings you stories that were left out of the official history of the Civil War, ransacks America’s past, and takes on the history you grew up with. The podcast includes untold stories about resistance, covert operations, corruption, mutiny, counterfeiting, and antebellum drones, and connect theses forgotten struggles to the political battlefield we’re living on right now. The story of the Civil War — the story of slavery, confederate monuments, racism — is the story of America.

Unforgotten: Connecticut’s Hidden History of Slavery
In this five-episode podcast from Connecticut Public, reporter/producer Diane Orson and editorial consultant and curator Frank Mitchell talk about efforts to shed light on this history and why it matters.

White Lies
On the morning of August 21, 1991, a group of Cuban detainees took over a federal prison in Talladega, Alabama, and demanded their freedom. But how did they get here? And what became of them after? In season two of NPR’s Pulitzer-finalist show, the hosts unspool a decades-long story about immigration, indefinite detention, and a secret list. It’s a story about a betrayal at the heart of our country’s ideals. In charting a course to our current moment of crisis at the border, the lies that bind us together are exposed.