Overview
Without doubt, the history of American popular music is the history of Black experience in the United States. From the banjo (one of America’s earliest popular instruments) to Hip Hop, popular music has been continually informed by the cultural resilience, ingenuity, and genius of the African American community in the face of enormous injustice.
The lesson collection below highlights the intersections of music and black experience in America, from slavery to the Civil War to abolition to Reconstruction and sharecropping to the Great Migration to Southern integration. The collection also focuses on the various social movements initiated by the Black community, from Civil Rights to Black Power to Black Lives Matter. In addition, a pair of lessons explore the establishment of the Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. national holiday – both the legislative process and Stevie Wonder’s long-lasting musical contribution to the successful public campaign. Finally, several lessons focus on prominent African American writers and artists such as Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Gordon Parks.
Lessons
lesson:
Music of the Civil Rights Movement
How did music advance the goals and inform the tactics of the Civil Rights Movement?
lesson:
The Black Origins of Punk
How did the bands X-Ray Spex, Bad Brains, and Death define Punk on their own terms?
lesson:
Identifying and Resisting Jim Crow with Words and Songs
How have works of literature and music by Black Americans shared an empowering theme of identifying and resisting Jim Crow?
lesson:
How a Bill Becomes a Law: Legislating the Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday
How does a bill become a law in the United States of America?
Student Edition:
Afrofuturism and Flying Africans
lesson:
How Dr. King’s Birthday Became A National Holiday
How did Dr. King’s Birthday become a national holiday?
lesson:
Writing Personal Narratives and The Harlem Renaissance
How do Langston Hughes, Gladys Bentley, and Louis Armstrong effectively write personal narratives about living during the Harlem Renaissance?
Student Edition:
Funk Upon A Time: The Beginnings of Funk
lesson:
Blues, Poetry, and the Harlem Renaissance
How does Langston Hughes’ Blues-inspired poetry exemplify the ideals of the Harlem Renaissance?
lesson:
The Juke Joint: Where Oral Literature Comes Alive
What role do Blues lyrics and juke joints play in Black American literature and life?
lesson:
Swing Down: Afrofuturism & Flight in the Black Imagination
What is Afrofuturism and what are some of the cultural traditions and historical events that inspired and reinforced it?
Student Edition:
Who Is Mavis Staples?
Student Edition:
“Y’all Better Quiet Down”: Black and Latinx LGBTQ+ Pioneers
lesson:
“Glory” and the Continuing Civil Rights Movement
How does Common and John Legend's “Glory” signal Civil Rights movements of the past and the present?
Student Edition:
Lost Friends
lesson:
“Alright” and the History of Black Protest Songs
How have Black artists throughout the 20th century used music to speak about racial injustice in America?
lesson:
#BlackLivesMatter: Music in a Movement
How have musicians responded to the Black Lives Matter movement?
lesson:
DAMN.: The Art and Importance of Storytelling
How do Kendrick Lamar’s album DAMN. and the work of photojournalist Gordon Parks tell stories that bring attention to social issues?
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Celebrating Community with Art and Poetry (Elementary School Version)
What different types of communities exist, and how do the people in our communities impact us?
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Celebrating Community with Art and Poetry (High School Version)
What different types of communities exist, and how do the people in our communities impact us?
lesson:
Debating the Apollo 11 Moon Landing
What was NASA’s Apollo program and why was it controversial?
lesson:
The Crossroads as a Literary Symbol
How have writers, storytellers, and musicians explored the crossroads as a symbol in their work?
lesson:
The Blues and the Great Migration
How did the Great Migration spread Southern culture, helping to give the Blues a central place in American popular music?
lesson:
Muddy Waters, the New Kid in Town
How did Muddy Waters’ music change after he moved to Chicago, and what does that say about the relationship between place and self-expression?
lesson:
The Science and Civics of the Flint Water Crisis (Elementary/Middle School School Version)
What is the Flint water crisis, and why did it occur?
lesson:
The Reclamation of the American Cowboy
How has the image and history of the American cowboy been reclaimed in the 21st Century?
lesson:
Almost Emancipated: Reconstruction
What is the significance of Reconstruction and what does it reveal about the freedom that the post-Civil War constitutional amendments secured for African Americans?
lesson:
Almost Emancipated: The Civil War and the Port Royal Experiment
How does the Union occupation of Port Royal highlight the complex issues behind the Civil War?
Student Edition:
Who is Lizzo?
lesson:
The Banjo, Slavery, and the Abolition Debate
What is the relationship between the banjo and slavery, and how did music making by enslaved people influence the abolition debate during the 18th and early 19th century?
lesson:
The Rise of Black Pride
How did Social Soul reflect a new vision of African-American identity in the late 1960s and early 1970s?
lesson:
Producing the Sounds of a Changing South
How did the recordings Sam Phillips produced at Sun Records, including Elvis Presley’s early work, reflect trends of urbanization and integration in the 1950s American South?
lesson:
ChocQuibTown: Embracing Cultural Identity through Colombian Rap
How can the music of ChocQuibTown, from the Pacific Coast of Colombia, help students express and celebrate their cultural identity through Rap?