Lesson Plan #: CC-0062
Lesson l: Slavery and the Underground Railroad.


Objectives: The student will be able to:

1. describe slavery as practiced on plantations in the South prior to the Civil War.

2. explain the goals and methods of the abolitionist movement.

3. describe the work of the Underground Railroad.

Description of lesson/activities:

1. Slavery has been introduced as a topic in earlier units of the CROSSROADS curriculum. To emphasize the horrors of slave life, the teacher should choose and read to the class segments from To Be a Slave , by Julius Lester. This collection of primary sources is a powerful description of slavery; the teacher should give students an opportunity to react to these descriptions in some oral, written, or art format.

2. Students should know that people called abolitionists wanted slavery to end immediately, and worked in different ways to bring this about. This lesson focuses on one group of abolitionists, those who ran the Underground Railroad, but others such as Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison could also be studied by the class.

3. There are many good resources for students on this topic. Among the most accessible for research and discussion is If You Travelled on the Underground Railroad , by Ellen Levine. Although primary students have already been introduced to Harriet Tubman in the CROSSROADS primary grade lessons, the following books are also very useful: Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad , by Dan Elish; Freedom Train: The Story of Harriet Tubman , by Dorothy Sterling.

4. Students should be asked to view the Underground Railroad from the following points of view: an abolitionist; a slave; a plantation owner. Students may role play these three views or write out skits or debates on this topic.