Reframing American Democracy

• Explain to participants that you will share two excerpts from the essay citing trends in how we teach about enslavement and prompt them to respond, indicating whether the stated trend is reflective of trends within their own school community. (You can incorporate trends about history education from other sources as well.) 
• Instruct participants that you would like them to indicate how reflective a trend is of their school community on a scale of 0-5, with 0 being “not so reflective” and 5 being “very reflective.”. 
• Use the recommended excerpts and any additional trends you’ve identified from other relevant sources to facilitate the activity.
• Discuss participant takeaways and recording reflections on what their school community is collectively doing well and where they can improve.

• Share the essay text with participants. Read it in full or excerpt the closing paragraphs where Nikita Stewart reflects on listening to a recorded narrative from her great-grandfather who was formerly enslaved.  
• Ask participants to reflect and share the opportunities that exist to include the perspectives of enslaved and formerly enslaved people in their teaching and learning. What might the potential impact be? 

Excerpt from, "Undemocratic Democracy," by Jamelle Bouie

Not surprisingly, enslavers dominated the state’s political class. “Carolinian rice aristocrats and the cotton planters from the hinterland,” Sinha writes, “formed an intersectional ruling class, bound together by kinship, economic, political and cultural ties.” The government they built was the most undemocratic in the Union. The slave-rich districts of the coasts enjoyed nearly as much representation in the Legislature as more populous regions in the interior of the state. Statewide office was restricted to wealthy property owners. To even qualify for the governorship, you needed a large, debt-free estate. Rich enslavers were essentially the only people who could participate in the highest levels of government. To the extent that there were popular elections, they were for the lowest levels of government, because the State Legislature tended to decide most high-level offices.

Excerpt from, "Politics," by Jamelle Bouie

Not surprisingly, enslavers dominated the state’s political class. “Carolinian rice aristocrats and the cotton planters from the hinterland,” Sinha writes, “formed an intersectional ruling class, bound together by kinship, economic, political and cultural ties.” The government they built was the most undemocratic in the Union. The coastal districts, with their large numbers of enslaved people,  enjoyed nearly as much representation in the Legislature as more populous regions in the interior of the state. Statewide office was restricted to wealthy property owners. To even qualify for the governorship, you needed a large, debt-free estate. Rich enslavers were essentially the only people who could participate in the highest levels of government. To the extent that there were popular elections, they were for the lowest levels of government, because the State Legislature tended to decide most high-level offices.

Excerpt from, "Undemocratic Democracy," by Jamelle Bouie

“But immense power at home could not compensate for declining power in national politics. The growth of the free Northwest threatened Southern dominance in Congress. And the slaveholding planter class would witness the rise of an organized movement to stop the expansion of slavery and curb the power enslavers held over key institutions like the Senate and the Supreme Court.”

Excerpt from, "Politics," by Jamelle Bouie

“But immense power at home could not compensate for declining power in national politics. Despite the Three-Fifths Clause in Article I of the Constitution, which gave enslavers an almost uninterrupted hold on the presidency from 1789 to 1850, there were clear signs in the first decades of the nineteenth century that the South’s influence was coming to an end. Immigration to the North and the growth of the North’s white population in general, as well as the growth of the free Northwest, threatened Southern dominance in Congress. Major rebellions of enslaved people in Louisiana and Virginia, as well as the rise of Haiti as an independent Black nation, left the owners of enslaved people paranoid to the point of hysteria. A steady stream of escaped enslaved men and women threatened the defense of chattel slavery, as the formerly enslaved unsettled the ideological foundations of the South with their own lives and testimony. And the movement to end slavery, once a small fringe, had gained strength and numbers, as well as new arguments and new advocates. By the 1840s, political abolition had come into its own as a movement with real weight on the stage of American politics.”

• Explain to participants that you will share archival images from A New Origin Story and prompt them, after each image,  to respond, indicating their familiarity with the image through a number scale. After everyone has had a chance to share, you will let them know the origin of the image.
• Instruct participants on how you would like them to indicate:
  • 1: I recognize this image and can place it outside of The 1619 Project
  • 2: I recognize this image but cannot place it outside of The 1619 Project
  • 3: I do not recognize this image
• Use the recommended images and any other images from The 1619 Project that might be relevant to your participants to facilitate the activity. You should end with the image of Nikole Hannah-Jones’ father, Milton Hannah, from Chapter 1. 
• Discuss how the images in The 1619 Project help support our understanding of American democratic history. What is the significance of including both personal photographs, like the one of Milton Hannah, alongside the photographs that already have some place in many people’s cultural memory?

• Listen together to Kimberly Annece Henderson, the archivist who curated the photos for A New

• Listen together to Kimberly Annece Henderson, the archivist who curated the photos for A New Origin Story, speaking about the power of historical archives. (Recording from the "Power and Purpose of Historical Archives" webinar, 17:18-23:47)
• Discuss the impact of the memory work Henderson is doing both within and outside of her work with The 1619 Project. 
• Encourage participants to reflect on the people and spaces doing memory work in their community. Invite them to share ideas about how they can make more connections to that work within their school community.