In this vocab activity, you’ll be given a stack of vocab words to “sneak” into a conversation with a classmate. This is probably the most difficult—and perhaps silliest—of all the vocab activities. You have to incorporate Unit 4 vocabulary as seamlessly as possible into a conversation. Although difficult, this is one of the best ways to use and apply new vocabulary—in context.

You’re going to play the word sneak game. You will be given four Unit 4 vocab words, and asked to have a casual conversation with a classmate. Your job is to use your vocab words as part of that conversation, sneaking them in wherever appropriate.

Here are the steps:

1. Get your vocab cards.
2. Partner with someone else in the class. Do not show them your cards or tell them your words.
3. Have a five-minute conversation, and see how many words you can sneak into the conversation while you’re chatting. There are two things you need to know for your conversation:
   • You have to integrate your words in a legitimate way that makes sense.
   • You may need to steer the conversation in a different direction as a way to get to use your words. One good way to do this is by asking your partner questions.
4. Be prepared to debrief your conversation with the class.

The Atlantic slave trade removed 12.5 million people from Africa and probably resulted in the death of millions more. This violence and forced migration caused long-term suffering at the individual and societal levels. Three Ghanaian scholars give us a sense of its impact on the coast, the interior, and the far north of this region.

The Unit 4 Problem asks you to consider how the transformations of the long nineteenth century changed the ways that people lived and worked. The enslavement and transport of millions of Africans to plantations in the Americas transformed societies across Africa. This video will help you understand the impacts of the slave trade on African societies by scale-switching to just one region: the Gold Coast, or roughly the modern nation-state of Ghana.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

As a reminder, open and skim the transcript, and read the questions before you watch the video.

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

Think about the following questions as you watch this video:

1. How do Ato Ashun and Trevor Getz describe society around Cape Coast prior to the Atlantic slave trade?
2. What does the physical structure of Cape Coast Castle under the British, including its dungeons, tell us about the Atlantic slave trade?
3. What, according to Ato Ashun, were some of the economic impacts of the Atlantic slaving system on the coastal region?
4. According to Akosua Perbi, how did the Atlantic slaving system affect how people lived?
5. What impacts of the Atlantic slaving system does Wilhelmina Donkoh focus on in her interview?
6. How does Ato Ashun say that the evidence of the Atlantic slave trade, in the dungeons of Cape Coast Castle, affected him personally?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. How did the Atlantic slave trade affect Ghana, in terms of all three frames used in this course? Do you think these effects were the same in other regions of Africa? Why or why not?
2. If you were a guide for tourists visiting Cape Coast Castle, what would you want them to know?

Although it had developed over hundreds of years, capitalism became the economic system that dominated the global economy during the Long Nineteenth Century. This was also the century that saw the Atlantic slave trade and plantation slavery in the Americas hit their peak, and then be abolished in country after country. How did these two systems—slavery and capitalism—coexist? Did capitalism help lead to the abolition of slavery? Or did slavery help capitalism to spread? This article presents contrasting views on these questions.

The unit problem for this unit asks you to explore how the ways people lived and worked changed over the Long Nineteenth Century. The abolition of slavery and the growth of capitalism were two of the most transformative events in the Long Nineteenth Century. Both helped to create the working class which, for better or worse, characterizes most of the world’s population today. This article explores the relationship between these changes. It will help you respond to the era question and evaluate the way in which the production and distribution frame narrative depicts rise of capitalism and its impact.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads Worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. Why does the author argue that the relationship between capitalism and slavery has meaning today?
2. Why, according to some theories cited by the author, does capitalism theoretically promote free rather than enslaved labor?
3. What evidence, from the United States, is cited to support the argument that enslaved labor was an inefficient system for the owners of businesses?
4. How does the author connect abolitionism to industrialists?
5. What evidence does the author present that the Atlantic slave trade may have helped to stimulate industrialization and capitalism?

Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following questions:

1. This article claims that slavery helped create industrial capitalism and that capitalism helped to end slavery. Do you agree with both of these claims? What evidence from the article supports these claims?
2. This article makes some surprising connections between slavery and capitalism. What are some ways that capitalism influences your daily life?

Although it took a while, the abolition (ending) of slavery in the Atlantic world, and then more widely, was a major transformation in labor. Why did it happen? Was it because capitalism made slavery inefficient and obsolete? Was it because of a shift in cultural values in European and Euro-American societies? Or was it because of the actions of enslaved people themselves?

Abolition is one of the transformations in the ways people lived and worked that you will explore in the Unit Problem. This article will help you to explore why that change happened. In doing so, it will help you to connect abolition to other transformations during the long nineteenth century. This article will also help you to tie abolition to the communities, networks, and production and distribution frame in order to help you evaluate the narratives in those frames.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads Worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. According to the article, which countries in the Atlantic abolished the slave trade early? Which countries abolished slavery early? Which countries abolished it late?
2. How might capitalism have helped end slavery? How did this connect to production and distribution during the Industrial Revolution?
3. How might changing morality helped end slavery? How did this connect to the transformations in human communities caused by the Enlightenment and changes in religious and political communities?
4. How might networks of Africans and descendants of Africans have helped end slavery?
5. Does the author argue that slavery actually ended when it became illegal?

Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following questions:

1. In Unit 2, you learned about political revolutions. In Unit 3, you learned about the Industrial Revolution. In this unit, you’re learning about networks of reformers who tried to change the world. This article presents you with political, economic, and reform arguments for why slavery ended. Based on what you’ve learned these past months, which argument seems most convincing? Which is the least convincing?

Harriet Forten Purvis (1810 – 1875) was an African-American women of mixed heritage. She was one of the organizers of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society and later an activist for women’s suffrage. Along with her sisters, her husband, and allies, she pioneered strategies that would be used by later civil rights movements. She has received little credit for her work.

How did transformations like the abolition of slavery and voting rights for women come about? Who made these reforms happen, and how were they connected? You have read some high-level articles on this subject. The biography of Harriet Forten Purvis provides evidence from an individual’s life to help you to answer these questions.

Read 1: Observe

As you read this graphic biography for the first time, review the Read 1: Observe section of your Three Close Reads for Graphic Bios Tool. Be sure to record one question in the thought bubble on the top-right. You don’t need to write anything else down. However, if you’d like to record your observations, feel free to do so on scrap paper.

Read 2: Understand

On the tool, summarize the main idea of the comic and provide two pieces of evidence that helped you understand the creator’s main idea. You can do this only in writing or you can get creative with some art. Some of the evidence you find may come in the form of text (words). But other evidence will come in the form of art (images). You should read the text looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the main idea, and key supporting details. You should also spend some time looking at the images and the way in which the page is designed. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. What was Harriet Forten Purvis’ family and community like as a child?
2. What was the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery society, and what happened when they organized a national conference in 1838?
3. How else did Purvis and her husband fight against slavery and discrimination?
4. What other reform movement did Purvis work for, and what were the results of their struggle?
5. The first letter of Purvis’ name in the title is formed by two women, one African-American, one white, holding hands. These same women are shown in the last panel, but separated. What is the artist trying to tell us?

Read 3: Connect

In this read, you should use the graphic biography as evidence to support, extend, or challenge claims made in this unit of the course. On the bottom of the tool, record what you learned about this person’s life and how it relates to what you’re learning.

1. How does this biography of Harriet Forten Purvis support, extend, or challenge what you have learned about social transformations and their limits during the long nineteenth century?

To Be Continued…

On the second page of the tool, your teacher might ask you to extend the graphic biography to a second page. This is where you can draw and write what you think might come next. Here, you can become a co-creator of this graphic biography!

In this activity, you’ll continue to develop your sourcing skills by analyzing a set of primary and secondary source excerpts related to three theories about why slavery was abolished. Assessing the point of view and intended audience of a source is essential to understanding how to evaluate the credibility of that source and the motives of its author. You will further develop your sourcing skills by working in groups to answer a prompt, incorporating elements of audience and point of view in your answer.

Claim testing, contextualization
Your claim-testing skills will be put to use as you evaluate the document based upon your intuition, logic, the authority of the source, and historical evidence. This will help you establish the and the credibility of the source by examining the point of view and intended audience.

In this activity, you’ll read primary and secondary source excerpts, complete the Sourcing Tool focusing on audience and point of view, and write a response to a prompt. This activity has you read excerpts from three sources: two primary sources and one secondary source. Primary sources are generally ones that were written in the time that you’re studying—in this case, during the period of the abolition movement. Secondary sources are ones that generally were written outside of the time period, after the historical event under study, and include an analysis or evaluation of primary source material.

First, your teacher will either hand out or have you download the Sourcing – Why Was Slavery Abolished? worksheet, which includes the excerpts you’ll be reading as well as the Sourcing Tool. Then, you’ll be assigned a number from 1 to 3. If you’re assigned the number 1, you’ll read the first excerpt, which is from Eric Williams’s Capitalism and Slavery; if you’re assigned the number 2, you’ll read the excerpt by William Lloyd Garrison; and if you’re assigned number 3, you’ll read the excerpt by Ottobah Cugoano.

As you read your assigned excerpt, think about these questions: Why was slavery abolished? Was the main reason a result of morality, economics, or empathy?

After you’ve finished reading, complete the Sourcing Tool for your assigned excerpt, focusing on the Audience and Point of View rows of the tool. Then, write a brief response (two to three sentences) summarizing your findings.

Next, you’ll form a new group, one that will include three students, each of whom has read a different excerpt. Each of your group’s members will be the “expert” on which source document you read.  You’ll take turns sharing the Source Tool summaries you each wrote for your assigned excerpts with your group members.

After each expert has shared their summary, you’ll write a paragraph, either in your small groups or on your own, that answers the questions posed earlier:

Why was slavery abolished? Was the main reason a result of morality, economics, or empathy?

Your paragraphs should make specific reference to the Audience and Point of View rows of the tool, but can include other categories as well.

Next, you’ll share your paragraph with the class and discuss how these texts supported, extended, or challenged the information you’ve learned thus far in the course, in particular the arguments laid out in the article “Why Was Slavery Abolished? Three Theories,” which you may have previously read. Finally, answer this question: How does sourcing numerous historical texts help you answer this historical problem? Be prepared to share your answer with the class.

As an extension, your teacher may ask you to answer the questions in the Why? (Importance) row of the tool on your own to turn in as an exit ticket.

Your teacher will collect your worksheets and responses to evaluate how your sourcing skills are progressing.

The abolition of slavery around the world took almost two centuries. In this article, Dr. Kym Morrison explores some of the key moments in this process. Abolition was a big deal, freeing millions from legal bondage. But in many post-abolition societies, those in power found new ways to repress and exploit the formerly enslaved. This legacy of racism and slavery continues to reverberate in our world today.

The institution of slavery on a racist model was central to the creation of the modern world. Beginning in the eighteenth century, movements for abolition brought about an end to legal slavery in many places. Did the abolition of slavery end systems of racism? This article provides you with evidence to help answer this question.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. Where was the first large-scale post-abolition society created and how did it come about?
2. When the British abolished slavery in their Caribbean colonies, to whom did the government pay compensation?
3. How did societies in the British Caribbean continue to repress formerly enslaved people?
4. After abolition in the US, how did the government treat African Americans? How was inequality enforced?
5. Why did European companies abolish slavery in their African colonies?

Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following questions:

1. How does this article support, extend, or challenge the narratives you have already studied about reform movements in the long nineteenth century?
2. Can you think of any ways in which your own society is still impacted by the history reviewed in this article? What are they?