Ron-+SS+instructional+activity+1

Social Studies Instructional Activity 1

__Objective 5.05__

Creative Statement #3- Red Shirts rule out Black vote; Democrats back in office in 1898

For this statement, I would want students to investigate who the Red Shirts were and their ties into the NC election of 1898 and the state’s turn from progressivism back to Jim Crow segregation. After the Civil War, African-Americans were granted their freedom and supposed equality in American society, yet by the 1870s, the Deep South still held strong onto the separation of race in their ways of life. North Carolina, both politically and culturally, was more progressive in its movements toward racial balance as the Republican and Fusionist parties had control of governmental climate. This all changed in the late 1890s however, as the Red Shirts swept across the state pushing forward the old-style Democrat agenda. The groups were hostile in their actions, and ultimately, by 1904, African-American’s social status was reduced to nothing because of the Democratic party being elected back into state offices.

In this lesson, I would primarily want students to understand the above and find out specific details of Red Shirt events across the state. I would want them to know what the state climate was before the Shirt’s uprising, how the group changed things, and what was the continuing effect afterwards. I believe the content would best be learned through research, most of which I would lay out for them (i.e. where to go, what to look for, etc, instead of just telling them to “use the internet”). The students will gain knowledge by viewing primary and secondary documents on the Red Shirts, and by realizing what the overall outcome was of the group’s efforts. To determine if they have learned the content, the finished product required to present would be either 1) a creative newspaper headline and short article, 2) a short, but well-written historical narrative, or 3) a neat and annotated timeline. This would be what the student’s turn in for a grade, and for me to see their hard work on learning about the Red Shirts and their actions in NC around the turn of the 20th century.