Project proposal for Fall 2023 Introduction to Public History Seminar.
Key Question:
How does the life of Fannie Barrier Williams contribute to the understanding and conceptualization of Reconstruction history in America?
Abstract:
This project’s main goal is to bring Fannie Barrier William’s life and legacy into the classroom in order to further enrich learning and understanding of the story of United States history using her experiences as a guide to further deepen learning. This project takes the form of an eleventh grade United States history lesson, but all materials can be repurposed into an interactive activity for museums and exhibits on Reconstruction and Fannie Barrier Williams. This project combines the writings of Fannie Barrier Williams, the historical context at the time, and several excerpts from secondary resources and images in order to provide a broad perspective on the life of Fannie Barrier Williams and how she contributed to society during and after Reconstruction.
Narrative:
This project has been created in the form of a lesson plan, due to my experience and future career as a public educator in a public secondary school. The main goal f this project is to further educate an eleventh-grade class on Reconstruction, utilizing the life and activism of Fannie Barrier Williams in order to provide a comprehensive understanding of the period through the eyes of a prevalent activist. This lesson will look at both the historical context of Reconstruction, and how the nation developed after the civil war, before focusing on Fannie Barrier Williams as a specific example of activism and reform during this period of change in United States history. The main focus of this lesson is to answer the question, how does the life of Fannie Barrier Williams contribute to the understanding and conceptualization of Reconstruction history in America? This question adequately portrays the main goal of this lesson, in that Fannie Barrier Williams will be used to take an in depth look at the Reconstruction period of America, and students will utilize her writings in order to establish further conceptual knowledge and understanding regarding the complexities of Reconstruction. This lesson will be divided into two days, with day one focusing on historical context, and day two focusing on Fannie Barrier Williams specifically. The lesson will utilize several key sources about the time period, along with primary sources in order to establish content understanding. Students will also utilize several interactive activities to gain knowledge and understand the given sources, before showcasing their knowledge in the form of a historical head activity. This lesson is not only useful for teaching students in a classroom environment but can be transferred to other environments as well. This lesson is versatile and can be incorporated into a museum exhibit, a family fun activity, and many other interactive lessons in order to further the spread of public history and understanding of both Fannie Barrier Williams life and activism, along with the Reconstruction era.
This lesson will be divided into two, possibly three days, and is best suited for eleventh grade United States History due to the complexities that will be involved in exploring sources and images in order to gain understanding. This lesson will be based on New York State Social Studies Standard 11.4a, which focuses on Reconstruction, while also accounting for liberties and the undermining of liberties regarding the black population of the United States at this time. The lesson will have two learning targets/objectives. The first learning target is that students will be able to describe the historical context surrounding Reconstruction through the creation of an informational poster. The second learning target will be that students will be able to analyze the life and activism of Fannie Barrier Williams through the creation of a historical head. The first part of the lesson will be focused on the creation of context surrounding the time period. Students will be introduced to Reconstruction as a whole; being given the definitions of key terms they will encounter throughout the lesson. Students will then complete a basic notes worksheet utilizing a PowerPoint in order to bridge the gap from the previous lessons on the civil war and add additional introductory insight into the class. Next, the educator will assign the students into groups of four, and the students will each select a job for group participation, the taskmaster, poster architect, researcher, and organizer. These groups will then be tasked with the creation of a poster regarding a specific aspect of Reconstruction era America, and become experts on this specific portion of study, before creating a poster to share with the class. Students will be assigned an area of focus from the following: politics, economics, social structure. There will be a group focusing on each of these subjects for the Northern states, and a group for each topic focusing on the Southern states. The students will utilize databases to gain information to utilize in their project and develop an informational poster to explain to their fellow classmates what they discovered about this topic. Students will then participate in a gallery walk, exploring each groups poster and the topics presented, before filling out a graphic organizer about each topic in order to record information about the topics. After providing students with the time required to complete the gallery walk and the graphic organizer, students will then return to their seats to debrief from the activity. The educator will proceed to ask students several check for understanding questions, before providing students with an exit ticket, asking students to record three things they learned, two things they want to learn more about, and one question they still have about Reconstruction. This concludes the first part of the lesson.
The second portion of the lesson will focus on Fannie Barrier Williams as an activist during Reconstruction specifically. Students will revisit the topics learned in the last portion of the lesson in order to review and study the context. After this, students will return to their groups and begin researching Fannie Barrier Williams. Students will analyze several excerpts of Williams’ essays, while also examining several primary and secondary sources about Williams, including images. Students will be focused on gaining information regarding Fannie Barrier Williams during her time as an educator in the south, and also her time as an activist in Chicago post Reconstruction. Students will record this information on a separate piece of paper and begin the creation of a historical head activity worksheet. A historical head is a worksheet with the outline of a human head, where students will divide the head into sections in order to record relevant and important information about a historical person. This is a fun, creative way to store information that is highly engaging for the students. Students will then share their historical heads with their group partners, before being debriefed by the teacher. After completing the historical head, students will record notes to further expand upon activism and reform movements at this time in American history, drawing on what they learned about Fannie Barrier Williams in order to better understand the reform movements and people behind these movements. Students will then conclude this lesson by completing another exit ticket, detailing three things they learned about Fannie Barrier Williams, two things they would like to learn more about regarding Fannie Barrier Williams and the reform movements of the time, and finally one question they still have about Fannie Barrier Williams, or one question they would like to ask Fannie Barrier Williams if they could interview her. This concludes the lesson plan.
This lesson plan is not only useful for students in the classroom, it can also be utilized in a plethora of other learning environments in the realm of public history. For example, the excerpts of Fannie Barrier Williams can be incorporated into a museum exhibit for a local history museum or a museum section on Reconstruction and activism. The poster activity can be used as an interactive activity for students exploring the museum on a field trip, or other interested parties visiting the museum. The historical head activity can be used as a fun, educational, interactive learning experience drawing on various activities and creativity in order to provide a fun experience for both children and families visiting the museum as well. These activities are extremely versatile and can be adapted into many different forms, providing an excellent learning experience for the public wherever they are used.
Finally, now that the overall vision of the project has been described, it is time to go over the logistics of the project and lesson plan. This lesson plan requires the use of several different materials and a plethora of information in order to complete successfully. Students will need access to JSTOR to obtain some secondary documents, a copy of the Mary Jo Deegan book on Fannie Barrier Williams, a copy of print sources available, access to at least three different databases to explore and find other information, along with the cost of construction paper, markers, printing paper, ink, pencils, and scanning of online documents into paper copies. Not counting the databases, the overall budget for this lesson plan would be around $800-$1000, counting required books and materials. The databases would need to be negotiated with the school district the lesson is being used in, in order to gain access to information, likely costing several hundred more dollars. Considering the time scale of four months allotted for the project, this should be a reasonable time scale to complete the needed meetings and make the purchases required to collect the materials needed. In order to complete this lesson, the idea must first be drafted, and sample materials made. At this point, a group of social studies teachers would be consulted in order to critique and revise the lesson plan. After several rounds of drafting and critiquing, the lesson plan will be developed into a final product. At this point meetings with the administration would be required to gain access to required materials to complete the lesson. After this has been completed, then materials can be collected and prepared, before the lesson is brought to the students. Additionally, the lesson can be fielded to a select group of students for a test run, to revise and change any struggles before being used in a general classroom environment. Finally, there are several issues and concerns regarding this lesson plan project, mostly stemming from variables. First is the average understanding of the students. The complexity of this lesson makes it so the students would have to be reasonably skilled in order to succeed, however, this can be met by changing the plan to a more simplistic approach. Second, outside opinion from the public regarding the lesson is a factor. Public perception of what teachers are teaching is important to keep in mind as it can have an effect on what is taught in the classroom. Third, the need for a variety of sources and the requirement to pay for the sources is a problem. This lesson requires board of education approval in order to purchase several databases. However, this can be circumvented through free sources as well if need be. Overall, this lesson is one way to spread the knowledge of public history to other groups and bring public history into the classroom, while also providing the opportunity to tell the story of Fannie Barrier Williams.
Digital Assets:
The image above is the Frederick Douglass Center located in Chicago, Illinois. This building was the center that was prevalent in activism during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and a popular place for the black population at the time. Many activists would frequent the center, and several groups would utilize the center as well. Fannie Barrier Williams had a central role in this center, utilizing it as a base for activism and groups founded by her in order to expand her views and activism to other people.
Bibliography:
Daly, John Patrick. The War After the War: A New History of Reconstruction. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2022.
Fairclough, Adam. “‘Being in the Field of Education and Also Being a Negro…Seems…Tragic’: Black Teachers in the Jim Crow South.” The Journal of American History 87, no. 1 (2000): 65–91. https://doi.org/10.2307/2567916.
Jackson, Philip. “Black Charity in Progressive Era Chicago.” Social Service Review 52, no. 3 (1978): 400–417. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30015643.
Schlereth, Thomas j. “America 1871-1919: A View of Chicago.” American Studies 17, no. 2 (1976): 87–100. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40641220.
Tyack, David, and Robert Lowe. “The Constitutional Moment: Reconstruction and Black Education in the South.” American Journal of Education 94, no. 2 (1986): 236–56. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1084950.
Williams, Fannie Barrier. The New Woman of Color: The Collected Writings of Fannie Barrier Williams, 1893–1918. ed. Mary Jo Deegan. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2002.
