Contents

Introduction

Map exercise: antebellum African-America

• Map 1: African-American Population , 1850
• Map 2: African Americans in America, 1850
• Map 3: Free African-Americans, 1850
• Map 4: Black newspapers
• Map 5: All-black colleges
• Map 6: Race riots
• Map 7: Fugitive slave rescues

Data analysis: African Americans on the eve of the Civil War

• Table 1: White and Black Population, 1860
• Table 2: African-American Population by Region, 1860
• Table 3: Percent of Free Population Claiming to Hold Some Property, 1860
• Table 4: Average Property Claimed by White and Free Black People, 1860

Image analysis: northern prejudice

• Image 1: "How you find yourself?"
• Image 2: "The Results of Abolitionism!"
• Image 3: Grand Bobalition or ‘great annibersary fussible.'

Document analysis: black leaders speak

• A Free Woman of Color Lectures on Prejudice and Morality, 1832
• An African-American Bishop Recalls Conflicts over Styles of Worship (1888)
• Address of the Colored National Convention to the People of the United States, 1853
• A Black Nationalist Manifesto, 1854
• A Call for Morality over Money, 1859

Extension: group exercise

PDF of entire lesson plan (203K)

PowerPoint of map and image slides (6509K)

Cite as: Patrick Rael, Black Activism in the Antebellum North: A Lesson Plan (Brunswick, ME: Bowdoin College, 2005).

(c) 2005 Patrick Rael, Associate Professor of History, Bowdoin College