Kindergarten:
History/Geography: Seven continents – Asia, Europe, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Australia
Independence Day – some people were not free: slavery in early America
Art: Henry O. Tanner (The Banjo Lesson)
Songs: Kum Ba Yah (title comes from “Come by here” in Gullah Geechee language)
Science Biography: George Washington Carver
1st Grade
History/Geography: Northern Africa and Egypt
Music: Jazz – developed in America with African and African-American roots; Louis Armstrong – great early jazz musician, others
2nd Grade
History/Geography: Slavery controversy – slavery ending around world, continued in US South; opposition to slavery; free/slave states; cause of civil war
Underground Railroad, esp. Harriet Tubman
Emancipation Proclamation
Fighting for a cause:
- Jackie Robinson and integration of American Baseball League
- Rosa Parks and bus boycott in Montgomery, AL
- Martin Luther King, Jr. – equal rights movement, “I have a dream” speech
3rd Grade
World Geography: rivers (Africa – Nile, Niger, Congo Rivers)
History: 1619 first African laborers brought to Virginia (before the Pilgrims landed, as MLK Jr pointed out), Southern colonies economy built on slave labor
Mae Jemison – science biography
4th Grade
Constitutional Convention: Divisive issue of slavery
Reformers: Abolitionists, Women’s rights, includes Sojourner Truth
History/Geography: Kush (Nubia), Aksum (now Ethiopia), Medieval Kingdoms in the Sudan, city of Timbuktu, trade in gold, iron, salt, ivory, and slaves; Mali – Sundiata Keita, Mansa Musa
Art: Art of Africa: types, areas, antelope headdresses of Mali, sculptures of the Yoruba, ivory carvings and bronze sculptures of Benin
5th Grade
History: Civil War, Abolitionists, Frederick Douglass
- Slave life and rebellions;
- Emancipation Proclamation;
- African-American troops, Massachusetts Regiment (the movie Glory was about this regiment);
- Freedmen’s Bureau, “40 acres and a mule”;
- 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution;
- Black Codes, Ku Klux Klan formation, injustices begin again in South
Literature: Narrative of Frederick Douglass, too)
Music: Spirituals – African-American genre
6th Grade
Poetry:
- Mother to Son – Langston Hughes
- Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing – James Weldon Johnson
- Sympathy – Paul Laurence Dunbar
- Woman Work – Maya Angelou
World Geography: deserts of each continent
History:
- Ida B Wells – campaign against lynching
- Booker T Washington – Tuskegee Inst, Atlanta Exposition Address
- W.E.B. DuBois – NAACP founding, The Souls of Black Folk
Art: Henry O. Tanner
Science biography: Louis Howard Latimer
7th Grade
Poetry:
- Countee Cullen – Heritage
- Langston Hughes – The Negro Speaks of Rivers; Harlem; Life is Fine
Drama: A Raisin in the Sun – Lorraine Hansberry
Music: American Musical Traditions
- Blues – evolved from African-American work songs and spirituals
- Jazz – African American origins
- Scott Joplin, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis
- Influence of Jazz on other music such as George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue
8th Grade
History: The Civil Rights Movement
- Segregation
- Post war steps toward desegregation (Jackie Robinson, Truman desegregation of armed forces, Adam Clayton Powell-Harlem congressman, integration of public schools)
- Montgomery Bus Boycott, Rosa Parks
- Federal troops open schools at Little Rock
- Murder of Medgar Evans
- Nonviolence – We Shall Overcome (Woolworth lunch counter sit-ins, Freedom riders, CORE, Black voter registration drives, Martin Luther King, Jr, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Selma to Montgomery March)
- LBJ – Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, affirmative action
- African American militancy (Malcom X, Black Power, Black Panthers, Watts and Newark riots)
- Assassination of MLK, Jr
- Social and Environmental Activism
- The End of Apartheid in South Africa
- African National Congress
- Nelson Mandela
Poetry:
- Maya Angelou I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
- Speech:
- “I have a dream” and “Letter from Birmingham Jail” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Art:
- She-Ba Romare Bearden
- Work from Builder series and Migration of Negroes series – Jacob Lawrence
