Primary Source’s groundbreaking digital curriculum, Making Freedom provides content spanning over 400 years of African American history, with inspiring and engaging multi-dimensional lessons and teaching strategies in alignment with MA state standards.
View the curriculum at makingfreedomhistory.org!
This African American digital curriculum is based on Primary Source’s Making Freedom: African Americans in United States History (Heinemann, 2004), teacher sourcebooks designed to recount the African American experience in the United States for K-12 students. The digital curriculum project has adapted the books’ content and resources for today’s students at the middle and high school levels, and selected units are appropriate for students at the upper elementary level.
The Making Freedom books and current digital curriculum demonstrate the social agency and intellectual achievement shown throughout African American history and the inextricable relationship of African Americans to the collective history and cultural development of the United States. Making Freedom intentionally illuminates the variety of experiences of African Americans, focusing both on individual ideas and actions and on collective efforts to hold America accountable to the ideas of freedom and equality. The curriculum includes more than 50 units across four unit themes.
Curriculum Highlights Include:
- More than 50 units across four themes: Freedom & Equal Rights; Culture & Community; Economy & Society; Historical Events, Movements & Figures.
- Deep Content Knowledge: The curriculum structure provides multiple opportunities for teachers and students to build content and context knowledge.
- Teacher Friendly & Flexible Design: Allows the use of units and activities to meet timeframes and needs of each classroom. Units easily fit into conventional “scope and sequence” plans and align to frameworks and standards.
- Curated Resources & Primary Sources: Multimedia resources and primary sources are designed to increase engagement and understanding through an expansive range of voices, perspectives, and experiences.
- Focus on Social Emotional Learning & Culturally Responsive Pedagogical Approaches: Through the use of Teacher Tips and suggestions for best practices, teachers and students are supported.
View the curriculum at makingfreedomhistory.org!
More About the Making Freedom Digital Curriculum and the Sourcebooks
African American history is United States history.
The national reckoning with racial injustice sharpens our focus on the role of education in understanding the experiences, contributions, and perspectives of African Americans in U.S. history. There is a growing call for high-quality curricula about African American history supported by robust professional learning opportunities for educators to support accurate, inclusive teaching about U.S. history.
Making Freedom: African Americans in U.S. History is Primary Source’s pioneering five-volume sourcebook series that spans African American history from the 1600s to 1970, demonstrating the social agency and intellectual achievement of African Americans in the collective history and cultural development of the United States. It began and a curricular development project with the vision and synergy of a group of teacher, scholars, and Primary Source staff. Since its publication, Massachusetts teachers have utilized these sourcebooks to educate students in alignment with the literacy component of the state’s Common Core State Standards for ELA and Literacy in History/Social Studies. Today, these lessons have the potential to support teachers as they engage with contemporary concerns about history and racial justice.
Through the Making Freedom Digital Curriculum project, we are revising, updating, and disseminating these invaluable units so they will be accessible to teachers everywhere and will have an enduring impact on students.
Educators, contact Deborah Cunningham, Senior Program Director, at deborah@primarysource.org for more information about Making Freedom: African Americans in U.S. History
Contact Judith Katz, Director of Development, at judy@primarysource.org for more information about how you can support the Making Freedom Digital Curriculum project.
