Unit Overview:
Color Me Dark, a Scholastic Dear America Series book, has been adapted into a dramatic production by the Kennedy Center. The following three lessons compliment and enhance the book and the production. These lessons can also be taught individually without viewing the production or reading the book.
In the early 1900s, many rural African-Americans in the U.S. South began migrating to the great urban cities of the North in the hope of finding better lives—better jobs, schools, and health care—and of leaving behind the ills and physical dangers of racism and segregation they faced in the South. The first of three migratory waves that collectively came to be known as "The Great Migration" began in 1919. This transition from a rural life in the South to an urban life in the North brought new opportunities, but also new problems, as well as some of the problems the migrants were trying to leave behind in the South. This five-lesson curriculum unit will provide learning activities to help students understand the experiences of these African-American people and their families during The Great Migration—as well as help them learn the history of this period and relate it to their present-day lives.
Lesson Overviews:
Through images, students study the political and economic reasons for the African-American migration to Northern cities.
This lesson explores the origins of the poem and song "Lift Every Voice and Sing."
This lesson focuses on The Brownie's Book, a magazine published by the NAACP from 1920-1921.
Students design a flyer for an organization they belong to or would like to join.
