Teaching Hard History: A Framework for Teaching American Slavery

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Teaching Hard History: A Framework for Teaching American Slavery

In each key concept video, a scholar or historian explores one of the ten central ideas that serve as the foundation for this series. These videos offer ways for students to better understand the nation’s development around slavery, slavery's impact on the lives of enslaved people, and the countless ways that enslaved people influenced the culture and history of what is now the United States.

Slide shows Key Concept 1. Slavery, which Europeans practiced before they invaded the Americas, was important to all colonial powers and existed in all North American colonies.

Slide shows Key Concept 2. Slavery and the slave trade were central to the development and growth of the colonial economies and what is now the United States.

Slide shows Key Concept 3. Protections for slavery were embedded in the founding documents; enslavers dominated the federal government, Supreme Court, and Senate from 1787 through 1860.

Slide shows Key Concept 4. Slavery was an institution of power, designed to create profit for enslavers and break the will of the enslaved and was a relentless quest for profit abetted by racism.

Slide shows Key Concept 5. Enslaved people resisted the efforts of their enslavers to reduce them to commodities in both revolutionary and everyday ways.

Slide shows Key Concept 6. The experience of slavery varied depending on time, location, crop, labor performed, size of slaveholding and gender.

Still image from: Teaching Hard History: A Framework for Teaching American Slavery (Concept 7)

Still image from: Teaching Hard History: A Framework for Teaching American Slavery (Concept 8)

Still image from: Teaching Hard History: A Framework for Teaching American Slavery (Concept 9)

Still image from: Teaching Hard History: A Framework for Teaching American Slavery (Concept 10)