Rites of Passage

It Takes a Village to Raise a Child

Our weekly academic instructors are members of our staff, along with Stamford Public Schools' administrators & teachers.  We begin each class with learning and reciting key poems while focusing on becoming our "brother's and sister's keepers".

 

Week 1: African Kingdoms (300BC-1594)

Focus:  How African history/heritage impacted world history. 

  • Students will become aware of the personalities and accomplishments of African Kings and Queens.  
  • Create PowerPoint presentations.
  • The present-day nations represented by the personality on a map of Africa.
  • The natural and economic resources of this geographic area.
  • Accomplishments of these personalities that had an impact on world history.

Week 2: The Atlantic Slave Trade

Focus: Exploitation and Economics. Causes/effects of slave trade on participant countries/continents.

  • Differences in prior forms of servitude and the Atlantic Slave Trade
  • Connection between Europe (i.e. Portugal, Spain, Britain, the Dutch) and North Africa
  • Geographic locations (i.e. Goree Island, St. James Island, Eleminia & Cape Coast Castles)

Week 3: The Atlantic Slave Trade continued 

Focus: Exploitation and Economics. Causes/effects of slave trade on participant countries/continents.

  • Economic/social rationales for and methodology of the slave trade; use of Africans/attempted use of Native Americans.
  • Effect of triangle trade system on economy and social life in Europe, Africa, and the Americas -Middle Passage (Maafa)

Weeks 4: Lives of Enslaved People in North America, South America & the Carribean (1600s-1800s)

Focus: Dehumanization process, justifications for slavery.

  • Use of language and the creation of racial identity.  Psychology of dislocation and de-centering,
  • Blacks' attempts at cultural preservation: oral tradition and resistance through artistry, skills.
  • Legal definitions, prohibitions and ramifications of servitude.

Week 5: Lives of Enslaved People in North America, South America & the Carribean (1600s-1800s) continued

Focus: Dehumanization process, justifications for slavery.

  • Use of language and the creation of racial identity.  Psychology of dislocation and de-centering,
  • Blacks' attempts at cultural preservation: oral tradition and resistance through artistry, skills.
  • Legal definitions, prohibitions and ramifications of servitude.

Week 6: Development of Plantation Structure (1600s-1800s)

Focus: Economic/social value of slave labor.

  • Narratives of enslaved Africans (i.e. Equiano, Henson, Truth, Jacobs).
  • Creation/perpetuation of social distinctions (among whites, between whites and free/enslaved Blacks, between free/enslaved Blacks, among enslaved Blacks).
  • Economic reliance on slave labor.
  • Religious, housing, and family structures among enslaved people.

Week 7: Contesting Slavery (1400s-1800s)

Focus: Abolitionists, moralists & political hopefuls.

  • African resistance (as ethnic groups and individuals) to slave trade (i.e. Fante, the Congo, the Angolans, Sengbe Pieh, the Creole, Prosser, Vesey)
  • Abolitionists in the Americas and the American Colonization Society.

Week 8: War Ideals (Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Civil War)  

Focus: Political, economic, legal & physical struggles.

  • Early writings (Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Three-Fifths Compromise, Plessy v. Ferguson) exclusions/definitions of status of Blacks.
  • Efforts of free/enslaved Blacks in three wars.
  • Social/economic conditions of free Blacks in the United States.
  • Fugitive slave laws' effect on the perpetuation of slavery across the United States.
  • Compromise of 1850, Dred Scott decision, Missouri Compromise, Emancipation Proclamation, Amendments 13-15.

Week 9: War Ideals (Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Civil War) continued

Focus: Reconstruction; political, economic, legal, physical struggles

  • Black Wall Street.
  • Turn of the century economics (Marcus Garvey).
  • Development of the N.A.A.C.P.
  • The Talented Tenth - W. E. B. Du Bois.
  • Development of the Ku Klux Klan (Lynching and Murders).
  • Pizza & Movie: Mississippi Burning and Birth of a Nation (PBS Special)

Week 10: Contributions of African-Americans

Focus: Court decisions and leaders - Civil Rights.

  • Introduction of Black codes/sharecropping and the effect on social progress.
  • Civil rights legislation throughout the 20th century and the struggle to achieve agreement between law and practice.

Week 11: Contributions of Africans-Americans continued

  • Renaissance – Birth of Harlem
  • Politics
  • Athletics
  • Arts/entertainment
  • Science
  • Prose/poetry
  • Invention

Week 12: Education (1800s-1900s) 

Focus: Establishing equality.

  • Court decisions, Civil Rights Movement/Marches and the Leaders (i.e. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Plessy vs Ferguson, etc).
  • Establishment of schools and other Black civic organizations (i.e. militancy vs nonviolence, perceptions of Black studies, assimilation vs separately equal, affirmative action, etc).
  • Role of community organizations in education (i.e. development of fraternities and sororities).
  • Role of Black political and social institutions.

Week 13: Final Exam Review & Reflection

Week 14: Final Exam