Units August 15, 2023
Black Migration to Hawaiʻi, Part of the Great Migration?
State:
Grades:
This unit was created by the Papahana team as part of the 2022 cohort of The 1619 Project Education Network. It is designed for facilitation across approximately ten weeks.
Objectives
Students will be able to:
1) Describe the history of Black Americans in Hawaii from the first arrivals to today, including push and pull factors that led Black Americans to migrate to Hawaii, and impacts that Black Americans have had on Hawaii’s history.
2) Explain why African Americans were not included in the sugar plantation labor groups during the heyday of sugar plantations in Hawai’i.
3) Synthesize new understanding using documents to respond to the inquiry (comparison skill) questions for the unit as part of a socratic seminar
Unit Overview
This unit explores factors that contributed to African Americans migrating north, west, and to Hawaii throughout U.S. history. The unit compares factors influencing migration to Hawaiʻi and to the other parts of the United States.
Students explore push and pull factors that motivated migration using primary source documents, materials from The 1619 Project, and current articles. Throughout the unit, students will also analyze documents to make their own claims in response to the inquiry questions.
At the conclusion of the unit they will apply their analyses to a socratic seminar exploring the following questions:
- To what extent did Black migration to Hawaiʻi mirror African American migration within the continental United States?
- To what extent does Black migration to Hawaiʻi reflect your lives and experiences?
Performance Task:
Students will read and analyze resources provided by the teacher in order to answer the following inquiry questions:
- To what extent did African American migration to Hawaiʻi mirror African American migration within the continental United States?
- To what extent does African American migration to Hawaiʻi reflect your lives and experiences?
Students will engage with these questions during socratic seminar discussions, using reading guides/questions to support students who need some scaffolding before the socratic class meetings, and through their written responses. Socratic Seminar and DBQ reading question handout [.pdf][.docx]
Students will also respond to a document-based question (DBQ) using the analysis they prepare for the socratic seminar.
Assessment/Evaluation
Formative Assessment:
Class discussion in a format of a whole class seminar related to the guiding questions in the document.
Socratic seminar guide [.pdf] [.docx] and rubric to guide students [.pdf] [.docx]
Summative:
The performance task in relation to the prompt will be evaluated using a rubric that is based on this sample of AP US History rubric. The summative assessment includes a socratic seminar and written responses to a document-based question (DBQ).
Six lessons, with one optional lesson, implemented over two weeks, including pacing, texts and multimedia resources. Download below, or scroll down to review key resources included in the unit plan.
Unit Resources
| Resources from The 1619 Project | “Chained Migration” by Tiya Miles: A short essay about the enslaved Black people that were relocated by their enslavers as white settlers displaced Native American people and moved into the American West in search of more land. “Sugar” by Khalil Gibran Muhammad: This resource explains sugar slavery in the United States and in Hawaiʻi. |
| All Resources | “Strikers, Scabs, and Sugar Mongers: How Immigrant Labor Struggle Shaped the Hawai`i We Know Today” by Natasha Varmer for DENSHO: This article describes Hawaiian sugar plantation labor history. This mirrors the southern sugar plantation labor realities (as described in “Sugar” by Khalil Gibran Muhammad and can be a comparative piece for classroom discussions. (Of note is the absence of African American labor coming to Hawaiʻi.) “Buffalo Soldiers” information page from the National Park Service: This resource explains the time between 1915 and 1917 when six companies of the 25th Infantry were present in what is now Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park. In that time, they assisted in investigations of a lava lake at Halemaʻumaʻu, were among the first soldiers to visit Kīlauea Military Camp, and constructed the precursor to the extant modern day Mauna Loa Trail. “First African American Settler in Hawaiʻi” by Ramie Kuahuia for The Molokai Dispatch: This resource is an edited version of a paper Ramie Kuahuia, a ninth grader, wrote for English class at Aka`ula School. It was submitted for print by her teacher in observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in 2016. “Place of Freedom: Black History in 19th Century Hawaiʻi” information page from the National Park Service: This resource explains the time the Black community in Hawaiʻi has influenced some of Hawaii's most vital institutions-- from founding schools to advising Hawaiian Royalty. The earliest Black settlers arrived in Hawaiʻi well before the missionaries in 1821. Excerpt from Blacks in Hawaiʻi: A Demographic and Historical Perspective by Eleanor C. Nordyke. The Hawaiian Journal of History, vol. 22 (1988) Additional Resources: “Hawaiʻi Added More Than 94,000 people Since 2010” from the U.S. Census Bureau: This resource compares to the nation overall and to neighboring counties and states. Through interactive state and county maps for the 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, each page provides a snapshot of change from 2010 to 2020 on five topics. “Hawaiʻi: 150 Years of Japanese Migration and Histories of Dream Islands” from The National Museum of Japanese History: This resource describes the first opportunities for Japanese people to emigrate to Hawaiʻi and their impact on Hawaiʻi over time. "The Long-Lasting Legacy of the Great Migration" by Isabel Wilkerson for Smithsonian Magazine: This resource provides a summary overview of history and cultural impacts of african americans on the culture of America as a whole during the great migration to today. |
Hawaii Public Schools Social Studies Standards:
SS.US.1.16.1 Analyze reasons groups migrated to and within the United States
Optional Content Standard SS.US.6.17.3 Analyze the cultural contributions of modernism, the Harlem Renaissance, and the New Woman can be addressed by using a pair of articles that bring to light Japanese migration to Hawaii and how it affected culture in Hawaiʻi and african american migration from the south to the northern cities affected culture across America.
*This standard is also part of the additional resources and lesson plans (if time allows). The comparison of cultural contributions of african americans to american culture and of Japanese immigrants and their lasting cultural legacies in Hawaiʻi.
Students apply their analysis of the resources from this unit to a socratic seminar and a written document-based question (DBQ) exploring the following essential questions:
- To what extent did African American migration to Hawaiʻi mirror African American migration within the continental United States?
- To what extent does African American migration to Hawaiʻi reflect your lives and experiences?
The following is an excerpt from a DBQ from one high school student in Pahala, HI who engaged with this unit in spring 2023:
When my father was 19, he came to UH Hilo to gain an education he couldn’t achieve in Samoa. He came for something that was not previously available to him, and he came to improve his life and his opportunities. In this lens, he had the same broad drive that Black migrants had when they came to Hawai’i- the possibility of having more or better than where they came from. Yet my father didn’t drastically change in terms of identity. Samoa and Hawai’i, like any island in Polynesia, share many similarities, whether that be language, food, ideals, and overall, culture. And beyond that, other Samoans and Polynesians had similarly come to Hawai’i. He wasn’t ostracized, he could still eat pisupo, and so on. These circumstances are in opposition to the circumstances of someone like Anthony “Alani” Allen. Anthony Allen, one of the first Black settlers in Hawai’i, arrived around 1800 by himself at a time when there were virtually no other people of his culture. He married a native Hawaiian woman and helped build the foundation and community of Waikiki. He became a well-respected man by everyone, especially by locals. He was often called “Alani” and he was essentially an honorary Hawaiian. One might say he took on that identity.
student from Pahala, hi who engaged with this unit in spring 2023
The following examples capture reflections from other students in Pahala, HI who engaged with the unit in spring 2023:
African Americans were deliberately excluded from proposed lists of immigrant groups sought by the kingdom to provide contract labor. African Americans where excluded from these lists because of the Civil War and racial tension.
student from Pahala, hi who engaged with this unit in spring 2023
The Great Migration was the relocation of more than 6 million Black Americans from the rural South to the cities of the North, Midwest and West from about 1916 to 1970. Driven from their homes by unsatisfactory economic opportunities and harsh segregationist laws, many Black Americans headed north, where they took advantage of the need for industrial workers that arose during the First World War. During the Great Migration, Black people began to build a new place for themselves in public life, actively confronting racial prejudice as well as economic, political and social challenges to create a
Black urban culture that would exert enormous influence in the decades to come.
student from Pahala, hi who engaged with this unit in spring 2023