4.5 - In Search of Freedom and a Call for Change

American Archaeology Uncovers the Underground Railroad

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American archaeologists uncover information about an "early underground railroad" which brought African-American slaves from the South to the North for safety and new freedom. Also includes persons who were part of this movement like Harriet Tubman, and Henry Ward Beecher, and members of churches.

American Archaeology Uncovers the Underground Railroad

Freedom Summer: The 1964 Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi

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Copies: 7

In 1964, Mississippi civil rights groups banded together to fight Jim Crow laws in a state where only 6.4 percent of eligible black voters were registered. Testing a bold new strategy, they recruited students from across the United States. That summer these young volunteers defied segregation by living with local black hosts, opening Freedom Schools to educate disenfranchised adults and their children, and canvassing door-to-door to register voters.

Author:

Susan Goldman Rubin

Lexile:

980L

Freedom Summer: The 1964 Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi

The Girl from the Tar Paper School

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Copies: 7

Before the Little Rock Nine, before Rosa Parks, before Martin Luther King Jr. and his March on Washington, there was Barbara Rose Johns, a teenager who used nonviolent civil disobedience to draw attention to her cause. In 1951, witnessing the unfair conditions in her racially segregated high school, Barbara Johns led a walkout—the first public protest of its kind demanding racial equality in the U.S.—jumpstarting the American civil rights movement.

Author:

Teri Kanefield

Lexile:

1100L

One Woman, One Vote (1995)

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How could America call itself the world's greatest democracy, but deny the right to vote to more than half its citizens? Why did so many men and women vehemently oppose giving women the vote, and how was this attitude overcome?

Grade Level:

Middle

High

Length:

01:46

Miss Susan B. Anthony Fined $100 and Costs for Illegal Voting

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Full text of article is below:

Follow the Drinking Gourd (1992)

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Based on the traditional American folksong, this compelling tale recounts the daring adventures of one family's escape from slavery via the Underground Railroad. This touching story captures all the drama of a perilous flight to freedom.

Grade Level:

Primary

Elementary

Middle

Length:

00:26

Causes of the Civil War (2003)

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This compelling program reveals how the interests of the industrial North and the agricultural South (the Cotton Belt) came to clash over critical issues such as plantation slavery, and how these issues eventually led to the secession of the southern states.

Grade Level:

Primary

Elementary

Length:

00:14

Harriet Tubman and Her Escape to Freedom (2008)

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Millions of enslaved African-American men, women and children lived in the United States less that 200 years ago. During that period of American history, many brave men and women attempted an escape to freedom. Harriet Tubman is perhaps the best known of these American heroes.

Grade Level:

Elementary

Middle

Length:

00:14

Harriet Tubman and Her Escape to Freedom

Abraham Lincoln: the Great Emancipator (2008)

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In 1861, the Civil War was a conflict that threatened to permanently divide the United States. Without President Abraham Lincoln's leadership, courage and determination to maintain the Union, our country may have ceased to exist.

Grade Level:

Elementary

Middle

Length:

00:12

Opposing Slavery: The Abolitionist Movement in America (2008)

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This program begins by exploring the development of slavery in America and the conditions under which enslaved people lived and worked.

Grade Level:

Elementary

Middle

Length:

00:13

Opposing Slavery: The Abolitionist Movement in America