Context Essays & Further Resources

Primary Source’s Making Freedom: African Americans in United States History, was originally published in 2004, and was composed of five teacher sourcebooks. Within each original unit there were “Further Resources” provided that would allow the educator to further enhance their understanding through additional research. In the revised curriculum, the further resources section for each unit can be found at the end of the Teacher Context section.

Each of the sourcebooks was also originally introduced by a forward and one to two context essays. The context essays, written by scholars of that time, were designed to provide background information necessary to understanding the primary sources and activities in each unit. In the revised digital curriculum, a new feature is the teacher and student contexts, which are directly aligned to each unit’s content. As a result, there is no direct correlation between the original context essays and the revised units of today. 

In the spirit of consistency, we have opted to include the original context essays, as additional “further resources” that educators may opt to review in order to deepen their context knowledge further. It is important to note however, that unless otherwise noted, these context essays are presented here in their original form published in 2004 and have not been edited since their original publication. As a result, these essays may no longer reflect the most up to date historical information and/or may not reflect the instructional, pedagogical or culturally responsive approaches and linguistic approaches of today.

Context Essays