Individual Lesson View
Drawing the Color Line:
How was the Idea of Race Constructed?
From: A People's History of the United States, History is a Weapon, and Zinn Education Project
Colonial elites created laws to keep poor white indentured servants, blacks, and Indians apart. Read about it in
Chapter 2: "Drawing the Color Line" from A People's History of the United States. This chapter from Howard Zinn's book is made available for free online by History is a Weapon.
The Color Line activity
at Zinn Education Project goes with this chapter.
Using a list of questions (see last page of download), students first predict laws that would keep these parties apart. Then they check their answers by reading the chapter mentioned in the previous paragraph.
Grade Level: (HS), (College)
Remote Ready: With Modifications
Time: 1 Class Period if reading is done for homework
Length of Reading: Chapter
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Grade Level: (HS), (College)
- We put these in parentheses because there is no specified age group for the activity.
- However, we think it would be excellent for high school (HS), and college students
Remote Ready: With Modifications
- Links to the reading assignments can easily be emailed or posted for students.
- It’s much easier for small groups or pairs to coordinate a phone call or video conference meeting than for the entire class to sync their schedules. Have these small groups post answers, a synopsis, or a video of their discussion to your LMS.
- Paraphrase questions into your LMS so you can grade student’s written answers online rather than in an email or on a worksheet. Or if a graphic organizer is amazingly well done, you could have your students take a picture of their completed work and email it to you.
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This activity contains secondary sources
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This activity calls for working in pairs, a group, and/or having a class discussion
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