Teaching Materials

Just for Teachers

This is an hour-long convo between CJ and literacy teachers Kyley Pulphus, Kelsey Reynolds and Cora Lee Davis. If you listen to it like a podcast, we promise it will be an incredibly exciting and actionable introduction to teaching this film. How do we use the Lost Cause as a case study to teach students about modern disinformation campaigns? How do we use literacy to push back against the #DumbDumbLaws that state legislatures are passing to censor honest history instruction? What conversations should you have about identity to best set students up for engaging with the film? This clip has GOT. IT. ALL!

Click on the image to go to the video

Consult the Documents

This a look at what the confederacy actually wrote down about “states’ rights.” For more, have students google “Declaration of Causes.” Learning the confederacy’s reasons for secession does not require guessing or wondering what was in the heart of individual poor soldiers. The Confederacy wrote their reasons down in excruciating detail. This is a chance to engage students in primary source work.

Activity: choose any of southern “Declaration of Causes” and ask students to read the entire document (they’re only a few pages) and highlight any references to “slavery” in red and any references to “rights” in blue. What do they notice? Are there sections where students disagree about what color applies? Sounds like it’s time to debate!   

Writing Slavery Out of Our Textbooks

Historian Karen Cox discusses how the United Daughters of the Confederacy used monuments and textbooks to reshape public memory of the Civil War.

Activity: show students the text of Tennessee’s law banning “divisive concepts” in the classroom (or the text of any of the other 11 states that have passed laws to censor hard history). Ask students to identify which of the “Prohibited Concepts” on page 2 most reminds of the UDC’s work. I might say “turn to the person next to you and spend the next five minutes discussing which one of these (a-n) feels weirdest or most troubling to you. Be ready to explain your answer to the group.” After partnered work time, call everyone back together and have the groups debate which prohibition is the most troubling. Is it “F. An individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or another form of psychological distress solely because of the individual’s race or sex” or is it “G: a meritocracy is inherently racist or sexist, or designed by a particular race or sex to oppress members of another race or sex”? Why do these phrases feel weird or troubling? Can you teach American history without making students feel “discomfort.” What do we think the authors of this law are afraid of?

Black Resistance and the 1811 German Coast Uprising

*Spoiler Alert* This clip gives away the end of the film. However, it’s helpful for pushing students to think about Black resistance. Some questions for discussion:

• As a class, we are going to try to name all the enslaved people we know of who fought back or escaped to freedom. Raise your hand if you have a name to share. You are not allowed to say a name that has already been mentioned.

• Why do we know so few names of enslaved people who fought back? Is it because very few enslaved people resisted? Or is it due to a problem in how we tell the story of slavery?

• Why do we think artist Dread Scott wanted to stage the reenactment of this rebellion?

• If all students learned about the 1811 German Coast Uprising, how would it change the way we tell the American Story?