Perspectives on Slavery

Today we'll begin by responding to the excerpts from Frederick Douglass' "Narrative..." that you read over the weekend. After sharing our reactions and questions, each member of your group will be assigned one category of Douglass' experience to explore further.
Part I:

• We'll start by considering the decisions and choices that enslaved people had to make by using this Decisions Slaves Made activity. 
• With your group discuss the options for each and choose which choice you think the person made. After clicking on the outcome, if you discover that your choice was the actual outcome, consider going back and making an alternate choice. See what the consequences to that choice may have been.
• Take notes in your notebook as you consider each scenario. What are you noticing about the choices? What seems to be guiding the decisions? How do these scenarios relate or connect to the ideas of Emerson or Thoreau?

Part II:

• Make a shared copy of this document for your group: The Slave Experience
• Next, divide the topics between your group members.
• After the topics have been divided, each group member should spend some time exploring the site. Begin by skimming the Historical Overview and then browse around the other categories. As you read, identify important elements to add to your row in the chart (notice the required link to Douglass). After spending time with each part of your topic, make a conclusion about it in the last column.  
• Finally, write a response to this question on your document: How does this information as well as the "Decisions" activity, help to describe the institution of slavery in the United States? 

Part III:

• Each person in the group will then read one document from this set of documents that provide justification for the institution of slavery in America (also in your binder):
• Pro-Slavery Arguments
• When finished reading, each person will list the main idea and key quotation from it into the Google Doc you are using today.

Also, please be sure to buy a copy of our next book - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - to have in class with you on Tuesday / Wednesday of next week.