TOPIC 7.6 World War 1: Home front

Jim Crow Moves North: Group DBQ & color coded sample essays

KC-7.2.II.C In the Great Migration…African Americans escaping…the South moved to the North and West, where they found new opportunities but still encountered discrimination.

Objective: Students will identify injustices that African American migrants experienced in northern cities.

This Key Concept in an AntiracisT classroom:

Why are our state standards so focused on southern segregation and so silent about the same practices in the North? Racial discrimination is not solely a southern phenomenon. It is impossible to understand our modern country without recognizing the disappointments and injustice faced by participants of the Great Migration. This DBQ identifies the discrimination Black migrants faced in northern cities, including housing, education, and workplace discrimination. This lesson also introduces students to Black heroes of American lit: Toni Morrison, Richard Wright, and Langston Hughes.

Notes

The group DBQ is an excellent way for students to get DBQ practice and it helps you give them quick feedback because you will only have 3 or 4 DBQs to grade per class (I score this DBQ and show them the result but just give everyone participation points in the grade book). My students find the color coded DBQ examples to be very helpful. I started this practice the first time I was invited to the AP reading and since then, my students writing has really improved.

As a follow up to this lesson, I highly suggest investigating when your state officially ended legal segregation of public spaces. I have my students read this great short summary of the Michigan Supreme Court case Bolden v. Grand Rapids Operating Company. This case ended legal segregation in Michigan in 1927.* In my city of Grand Rapids, we have a prominent statue of Rosa Parks downtown but only a small plaque on the side of a bank for Dr. Emmett Bolden (the man who fought Michigan’s segregation laws and won). Every year I ask my students if anyone knows who Emmett Bolden is. So far, in 13 years, no students knows who that is, yet all of my students know about Rosa Parks. This is a great discussion starter. Why don’t we remember the antiracist heroes in the North? Is is because our curriculum is blind to northern racist policies?

The DBQ includes two examples from Michigan. If you live in a different northern region, I highly suggest adding some local history to this lesson.