202 Lesson Plan for Martin Delany’s The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of The Colored People of The United States (Group Anthology Contribution 2020)

Materials

• Text (Delany’s Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of The Colored People of The United States)
• Website Links (Padlet)/ Teams Documents

Procedure:

Opening Move:

Ask the class to reflect on the text, what they thought of it overall, as well as how text this shaped their view of American Literature.

Main Lesson:

Students will be provided with three Padlet links (Padlet is an online notice board. Creates a common space for students to work virtually Padlet.com) Each Padlet corresponds to one of the overall themes of the text. The themes are Religion, Citizenship, and Nationalism. Students will be put into three groups. Each group will work through each theme page, answering the corresponding questions and providing textual quotes. Once completed, the students will vote on which answer works best for its corresponding theme. There will be three answers for each theme since there are three groups.

After the groups provide answers and quotations for all three themes, the class will return to discuss the results.

At this time the answer that received the most votes will share and the class will discuss. This will be done for all three themes.

(This lesson was created with a virtual learning environment but can also be used in a normal classroom setting. Rather than use links and have the students fill out the Padlet pages, the instructor can simply split the class into three groups and provide them with the themes. Rather than vote, each group may pick one person to share their best answer to the theme chosen by the instructor. Group One gives might answer with respect to Nationalism, Group Two with respect to Religion, etc.)

Questions to Include for Themes:

Religion- What is the importance of religion in Delany’s writing? How does he feel it affects the elevation of “colored people”? Provide a quote from the text to support. See Chapter 4, starting with “The colored races are highly…”

Citizenship- What is the importance of citizenship in Delany’s writing? What is the importance of politics? Provide a quote from the text to support. See Chapters 5 and 7.

Nationalism- What is the importance of nationalism in Delany’s writing? Does Delany think America or Africa is more important to the identity of “the colored race”? Provide a quote from the text to support. See Chapter 6 and Appendix.

Timing:

1 hour and 40-minute Class Period

• 15 min work on the opening move
• 10 minutes discussion
• 45 minutes breakout rooms
• 30 minutes share