Glimpses at the Freedmen's Bureau. Issuing rations to the old and sick / from a sketch by our special artist, Jas. E. Taylor
Records of the Field Offices for the State of Mississippi, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865–1872, Office of the Assistant Commissioner Other Records, Register of Former Slaves, Volume (Unnumbered)
Sherman’s Special Field Order No. 15
The Freedmen's Bureau! An agency to keep the Negro in idleness at the expense of the white man.
StoryWorks: Beneath An Unknown Sky, StoryWorks: Beneath An Unknown Sky Curriculum, 1. The Freedmen's Bureau
Overview
The Beneath An Unknown Sky curriculum consists of six lesson plans designed for 8th through 12th grades. Each lesson plan is inspired by monologues from our play and utilizes primary source materials to add historical context to the events and characters depicted in the film. Special attention is paid to developing historical research skills by asking the students to identify, analyze, and evaluate primary sources, review secondary source material, transcribe primary source documents, design an oral history project, and complete short research projects. The topics covered in the lesson plans include but are not limited to the following: the experience of Freedmen in the Mississippi Delta, Reconstruction, the Freedmen’s Bureau, Mississippi “Black codes”, Women’s history, the Reconstruction Amendments, Voting Rights, the Mississippi Constitution of 1868, Black political office holders from Mississippi, and the Mississippi Plan. The curriculum is intended to be flexible in its approach to better meet the needs of educators. The curriculum and short films are available to educators as a free, open-source resource. Educators can use the curriculum in its entirety or can pick and choose between the lesson plans to fit the scope and time constraints of their individual classrooms.
Lesson One: Establishing The Freedmen's Bureau
LESSON ONE: The Freedmen’s Bureau
Key terms/People
Contraband of war
Refugee
Relief
Emancipation Proclamation
Thirteenth Amendment
General Tecumseh Sherman
Sherman’s March
Charles Sumner
Radical Republicans
Gen. Oliver Otis Howard
Abraham Lincoln
Andrew Johnson
Lyman Trumbull
Abandoned lands
Weized lands
War Department
Oral history
Objectives:
Students will be able to explain how the Freedmen’s Bureau came to fruition from Special Field Order 15 and the Freedmen’s Bureau Act of 1865.
Students will determine how Congress was able to pass the Freedmen’s Bureau Act of 1865.
Students will understand the role and scope of the Freedmen’s Bureau.
Using primary source material students will identify the roles that the Freedmen’s Bureau played in communities across the South.
In groups, have students research the following questions if not addressed by the timeline or in class lectures or readings. The goal here is to emphasize the precarious position of the Freedmen at the end of the Civil War and throughout Reconstruction. The population of Freedmen is estimated to be around 4 million at the end of the Civil War. The total population of the United States at this time is around 33 million.
Questions:
What law abolished slavery in the Confederate South?
What law abolished slavery in the whole of the United States of America?
How many Freedmen were living in the South at the end of the Civil War?
How did the United States plan to deal with these Freedmen?
How had the Union Army addressed the needs of formerly enslaved people during the Civil War?
What was the purpose of General Sherman’s Order 15?
What was the Freedmen’s Bureau?
Why was the Freedmen’s Bureau created?
What services were the Freedmen’s Bureau focused on providing?
Activity: How to be a Historian:
Activate students' prior knowledge by having a brief discussion about primary sources. You can introduce the sources below briefly to demonstrate different types of primary source material.
The Freedmen's Bureau! An agency to keep the Negro in idleness at the expense of the white man. ** Trigger Warning: Racist
PART 1: Why do we need primary sources?
How do we utilize primary sources in order to understand the past?
How do we evaluate primary sources?
What are some of the challenges with using primary sources?
PART 2: Comparing Primary Sources
How can you compare and contrast these documents?
What information can you find in each document?
How does opinion or personal experience vary from official governmental documents?
Extension Activity: Research
Ask students to utilize their research skills and have them try to find additional primary sources about the Freedmen’s Bureau. You can work with them before they work individually to determine some keywords and search parameters. Once the students have found their primary sources, you can have them annotate the source and present it to the class.
AUNT MITTIE: They packed us in their big covered army wagons, and took us to Little Rock. Did you ever know where the old penitentiary was? Well, right there is where the Yanks had a great big barracks. All chilluns and growed womens was put there in tents. Did you know that the fust real free school in Little Rock was opened by the govment for colored chullens? Yes ma'am, and I went to it, right from the day we got there. They took pappy and put him to work in the big commissary. We got $12.00 a month and all the grub we could eat.
Activity: Connecting to the Script
Students will read Aunt Mittie’s monologue and then will watch the filmed performance of Aunt Mittie.
While reading the monologue, students will answer the following questions:
Who is Aunt Mittie?
What was Aunt Mittie’s life experience before emancipation?
What does Aunt Mittie say about her former enslaver?
What information does Aunt Mittie provide that addresses her status as an enslaved person?
How did Aunt Mittie react to the Union army?
How did Aunt Mittie respond to emancipation and freedom at the end of the Civil War?
What services did Aunt Mittie say the Freedmen’s Bureau reported?
How does reading and viewing the performance of Aunt Mittie’s monologue make you feel?
What new insights into a Freedmen’s experience did you gain?
EXTENSION ACTIVITY
From Past to Present: Displaced Peoples
Students will identify and answer questions about a time in history when a large amount of people have been displaced from their homes- this could be due to a natural disaster, economic devastation, political upheaval, religious persecution, etc.
EX: Dust Bowl, the Great Depression, Cuban Revolution, Hurricane Katrina, etc.
What is the event?
Who were the people that were impacted?
What were the needs of these people after the inciting event?
Where did they go to seek help? (Federal government, aid organizations, etc.)
Was help available to them?
What challenges did they face in seeking assistance?
What were the attitudes of the people in their new communities towards the victims of the inciting event?
What types of laws or pieces of legislation were applied?
How do people feel about the way assistance was provided for this event?
How do you feel about this event after learning more about it?
Lesson One Script Excerpt Beneath An Unknown Sky: Aunt Mittie Monologue
**Notes to Educator: It might be most useful to employ an End of Civil War and Reconstruction Timeline to review the events critical to understanding what led to the end of the war and the plan for Reconstruction. Students will need a working understanding of the key leaders, events and legislation up to the beginning of Reconstruction.
AUNT MITTIE: It's awful hot, ain't it? Old uncle Boss tell you Ise aold slave lady? That's right. -That's right. Us old war folks never fergits the others. Anything you wants to know, honey, jest go on and ax me. I got the bestest remembrance. You can call me Aunt Mittie. Mississippi. was where I was borned, in slavery. Dr. Williams ws our owner, he was good man. He didn't work his slaves hard like some. My peppy was a kind of a manager for the Doctor. Doctor tended his business and pappy runned the plantation where we lived at. Our master died before freedom. He willed us slaves to his chilrun. You know - parceled us out, some to this child, some to that. I went to his daughter, Miss Emma. Laws-a-Mercy, how I wishes I could see her face onet more afore I dies. I heard she married rich. Unh-unh! I'd shore love to see her onct more. Old Miss was name Miss Liza. She skeered to stay by herself after her husband old master died. So I was took to be her companion. Everyday she wanted me to bresh her long hair and bathe her feet in cool water; she said I was gentle and didn't never hurt her. One day I was a standing by the window and I seen smoke - blue smoke a rising over beyond a woods. I heard cannons a- booming and axed her what was it. She say: "Run, Mittie, and hide yourself. It's the Yanks. Theys coming at last, Oh lordy!" I was all excited and told her I didn't want to hide, I wanted to see ' em. "No" she say, right firm. "Ain't I always told you Yankees has horns on their heads? They'll get you. Go on now, do like I tells you." So I runs out the roan and went down by the big gate. A high wall was there and a tree put its branches right over the top. I clim up and hid under the leaves. They was coming, all a marching. The captain opened our big gate and marched them in. A soldier seen me and said " Come on down here; I want to see you." I told him I would, if he would take off his hat and show me his horns.
The day freedom came, I was fishing with pappy. My remembrance is sure good. All a-suddent cannons commence a- booming, it seam like everywhere.- You know what that was, Miss? It was the fall of Richmond. Cannons was to roar every place when Richmond fell. Peppy jumps up, throws his pole and everything, and grabs my hand, and starts flying towards the house. " It's victory," he keep on saying. " It's freedom. Now we'es gwine be free." I didn't know what it all meant. It seam like it tuck a long timh for freed am to come. Everything jest kept on like it was. We heard that lots of slaves was getting land and some mules to set up fer theirselves; I never knowed any what got land or mules nor nothing. We all stayed right on the place till the Yankees came through. They was looking for slaves what was staying on. Now we was free and had to git off the plantation. They packed us in their big covered army wagons, and tuck us to Little Rock. Did you ever know where the old penitentiary was? Well, right there is where the Yanks had a great big barracks. All chilluns and growd womens was put there in tents. Dia you know that the fust real free school in Little Rock was opened by the govment for colored chullens? Yes ma'am, and I went to it, right from the day we got there. They took pappy and put him to work in the big commissary. We got $12.00 a month and all the grub we could eat. Unh, Unh: Didn't we live good? I sure got a good remembrance, honey. They was plenty of other refugees living in them barracks, and the govment taking keer of all of ' am. I was a purty big sized girl by then and had to go to work to help pappy. A. man name Captain Bodge, a northerner, got a plantation down the river. He wanted to raise cotton but didn't know how and had to get colored folks to help him. A lot of us from the barracks was sent to pick. We got 4.25 a hundred pounds. I never seen that money hardly long enough to git it home.I toted mine home to pappy and he give us what we had to have. That's the way it was. We picked cotton all fall and winter, and went to school after picking was over.
Beneath An Unknown Sky Film Excerpt