Units November 2, 2024
What Is the Legacy of Durham's Black Wall Street?
State:
Grades:
This unit was created by Middle School Social Studies educators on the Bull City Scholars Team, part of the 2023 cohort of The 1619 Project Education Network. It is designed for facilitation across 10 45-minute class periods.
Objectives
Students will be able to…
- Make an argument based on historical evidence.
- Have a more complete understanding of the contributions of African Americans to the national economy.
Unit Overview
In this unit, aligned to social studies standards focused on industry and society, students will investigate the contributions and impact of the people who created Durham’s Black Wall Street. This inquiry celebrates the ingenuity, hard work, and determination of a people who were committed to taking charge of their own destiny as well as their impact on the U.S.’s rise as an economic superpower. This unit employs Nikole Hannah-Jones’s essay “Democracy” from The 1619 Project to promote a deeper understanding of how Black communities were a major force in the U.S.’s economic development, emphasizing that Black Americans’ contribution is not limited to the value of their forced labor, but rather includes their ingenuity, intelligence, and diligence.
This inquiry focuses on the compelling question: What is the legacy of Durham’s Black Wall Street?
To address the compelling question, this lesson is organized around three supporting questions aimed at deepening students' understanding. These questions will prepare students to construct an evidence-based argument in response to the compelling question. Each supporting question is accompanied by a performance task, and these tasks, along with the unit’s featured resources, will engage students with the themes of belonging, achievement, and success. Students will explore these themes by examining a variety of primary and secondary sources.
Supporting Questions
Supporting Question 1: Who were the entrepreneurs who built Durham’s Black Wall Street?
This question is aimed at humanizing the achievements of Durham’s Black entrepreneurs. Through reading short biographies, students will learn about the lives, habits, and vision that propelled individuals to economic success. The featured sources allow students to investigate while also ensuring that it remains accessible to the middle school reader.
Supporting Question 2: What were the major institutions of Durham’s Black Wall Street?
This supporting question builds upon the first by having students analyze how businesses, banks, hospitals, and schools built by Durham’s Black entrepreneurs impacted their community. Students’ exploration of this question will further build their understanding of Black agency and success.
Supporting Question 3: To what extent did the entrepreneurs and laborers of Durham’s Black Wall Street contribute to the Industrial Revolution?
This question requires students to consider Black Wall Street’s industrial output and its relevance to the larger U.S. economy.
Sequence
- Day 1: Staging the compelling question and background reading for supporting question 1.
- Days 2-4: Supporting question 1 research and completion of Durham’s Black Wall Street’s Entrepreneurs Performance Task.
- Days 5-6: Supporting question 2 research and completion of The Institutions of the Durham’s Black Wall Street Performance Task.
- Days 7-8: Supporting question 3 research, completion of Durham’s Industry During the Industrial Revolution Performance Task, and poem analysis.
- Days 9-10: Summative Performance Task.
Performance Task
Formative Performance Tasks
The formative performance tasks help students build content knowledge in order to adequately address the inquiry’s compelling question.
- Durham’s Black Wall Street’s Entrepreneurs Performance Task [.docx] [.pdf]
- The Institutions of the Durham’s Black Wall Street Performance Task[.pdf]
- Durham’s Industry During the Industrial Revolution Performance Task [.docx] [.pdf]
Summative Performance Task
The summative performance task requires students to synthesize their learning and create an argument based on historical evidence. The task allows students to evaluate the concept of legacy and assess the legacy of the Black entrepreneurs and laborers who created thriving communities and contributed to the U.S. industrial revolution.
Ten day unit plan for teachers, including pacing, texts and multimedia resources, rubrics for student projects, and performance tasks for the unit. Download below, or scroll down to read the complete unit plan. This unit contains some texts available exclusively in The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story and Born on the Water. Learn more about these books and how to access them here.
Facilitation Resources
Common Core Social Studies Reading Standards, Grade 7: 1, 2, 6, 7, 8
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.7.1: Cite several pieces of textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.7.2: Determine two or more central ideas in a text and analyze their development over the course of the text; provide an objective summary of the text.
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.7.6: Determine an author's point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how the author distinguishes his or her position from that of others.
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.7.7: Compare and contrast a text to an audio, video, or multimedia version of the text, analyzing each medium's portrayal of the subject (e.g., how the delivery of a speech affects the impact of the words).
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.7.8: Trace and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, assessing whether the reasoning is sound and the evidence is relevant and sufficient to support the claims.
Common Core Social Studies Writing Standards, Grade 7: 1, 4, 7, 8
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.7.1: Write arguments to support claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence.
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.7.4: Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.7.7: Conduct short research projects to answer a question, drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions for further research and investigation.
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.7.8: Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, using search terms effectively; assess the credibility and accuracy of each source; and quote or paraphrase the data and conclusions of others while avoiding plagiarism and following a standard format for citation.
Durham Public Schools’ 7th Grade Social Studies Focus Standards
- 7. B.1.2 -Explain how values and beliefs affect human rights, justice, and equality for different groups of people.
- 7. E.1.2 - Explain how national and international economic decisions reflect and affect the interdependency of societies.
- 7. E.1.4 Explain how competition for resources affects the economic relationship.
- 7. H.1.2 - Summarize the influence women, indigenous, racial, ethnic, political, and religious groups have had on historical events and current global issues.
- 7. H.1.3 - Compare individual and societal responses to globalization in various regions and societies.
Durham Public Schools’ 8th Grade Social Studies Focus Standards
- 8.E.1.1 Explain how economic growth and decline have positively and negatively impacted individuals, groups, communities, and businesses in North Carolina and the nation
- 8.E.1.2 Explain how industry and trade impact the economy and people of North Carolina and the nation
- 8.E.1.3 Distinguish the role women, indigenous groups, and racial minorities have played in contributing to the economic prosperity of North Carolina in terms of equity, equality, and mobility
- 8.H.2.1 Explain how innovation and technology have contributed to change in North Carolina and the nation
Durham Public Schools’ Inquiry Standards
- I.1.1 Construct a compelling question through a disciplinary lens individually and with peers.
- I.1.2 Construct supporting questions based upon disciplinary concepts.
- I.1.3 Analyze details, central ideas, and inferences from sources using discipline-specific strategies.
- I.1.4 Assess the credibility of primary and secondary sources using the origin, authority, structure, credibility, reliability, and context of the sources to guide the selection
Durham’s Black Wall Street’s Entrepreneurs Performance Task
Over the course of this unit, student completed multiple performance tasks aimed at bettering their understanding of the impact and legacy of those who built Durham's Black Wall Street. Through this mutli-part performance task students learned about the entrepreneurs of Black Wall Street while strengthening their research skills.
Part A: Researching Durham's Black Wall Street's Entrepreneurs
For this first part of this performance task, students conducted research on four entrepreneurs. They recorded their research findings in a graphic organizer.
Part B: Creating A Newspaper Article or Research Poster
After conducting their research, students synthesized their findings into either a newspaper article or research poster. Below are two examples of newspaper articles.
