Harriet Tubman Lesson

How does Harriet Tubman’s potential involvement in the Combahee River Raid expand what mainstream textbooks reveal about her life?

--> Return to Difficult History Project homepage

This lesson was developed by Justine Lee at the University of Maryland, Magdalena Gross at Stanford University and Alison Jovanovic at the University of Maryland.

Driving Inquiry Question: 

How does Harriet Tubman’s potential involvement in the Combahee River Raid (CRR) expand what mainstream textbooks reveal about her life? 

Content Objective:

  • Students will be able to evaluate the existing narrative of Harriet Tubman’s life, as well as her historical and societal impact.
  • Students will be able to analyze the Combahee River Raid as a means of resistance to slavery during the Civil War.
  • Students will be able to assess the role of Harriet Tubman in the Combahee River Raid

Disciplinary Thinking Objectives:

  • Students will be able to gather relevant information from varied sources in order to complete an inquiry in the form of an Opening Up the Textbook (OUT).
    Students will be able to analyze the relationship between historical sources and contemporary interpretations.
  • Students will be able to revise the dominant narrative of Harriet Tubman’s life.

Lesson Context:

Harriet Tubman is best known for leading enslaved people to freedom through the creation of the Underground Railroad. However, little is included in textbook narratives about her role in the Civil War.  It has been suggested that Harriet Tubman had a role in the Combahee River Raid (CRR) that occurred during the Civil War. In this lesson, students will examine primary and secondary documents about a raid that occurred during the Civil War and consider how this might change her legacy.

Lesson Format: Inquiry/Opening Up of a Textbook (OUT)

Developed by the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG), the OUT is an activity that is designed to help students question the “one truth” narratives of textbooks by corroborating using primary source documents. It is meant to push students to critically evaluate the textbook. The teacher chooses a short excerpt from a textbook or dominant narrative (such as a Disney movie) and juxtaposes this with sources.  Students read and compare, contrast. Typically there is a summative assessment about explaining the differences or comparing the textbook to primary source accounts.  Most often OUTs are meant to do one or two of the following: 

  1. Comparison: Comparing two textbook accounts—e.g. U.S. to non-U.S., old to new.
  2. Direct Challenge: Using primary documents to challenge textbook facts or interpretation.
  3. Narrativization: Where does a textbook begin to tell the story, where does it end?
  4. Articulating Silences: Who is left out of the textbook's narrative? Try bringing in voices of the silenced or moving issues of narrative choice to the surface.
  5. Vivification: Breathing life into a text that only mentions, or omits.
  6. Close Reading: Careful, attentive focus on word choice, including adjectives, titles, and the like.

For this lesson, we will be working #3: Narrativization, rounding out the textbook dominant picture of Harriet Tubman, not only as a heroic leader of the Underground Railroad but also as a civil war spy and strategic mastermind. 

Time: 120 minutes

Lesson Plan:

Lesson Plan;  Links to individual Handout Packets are in the Materials section. 

Common Core Standards: 

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.6
Compare the point of view of two or more authors for how they treat the same or similar topics, including which details they include and emphasize in their respective accounts.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.9
Compare and contrast treatments of the same topic in several primary and secondary sources.

C3-The College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards: Guidance for Enhancing the Rigor of K-12 Civics, Economics, Geography, and History:

D2.His.10.6-8. Detect possible limitations in the historical record based on evidence collected from different kinds of historical sources.

D2.His.12.6-8. Use questions generated about multiple historical sources to identify further areas of inquiry and additional sources.

D3.1.9-12. Gather relevant information from multiple sources representing a wide range of views while using the origin, authority, structure, context, and corroborative value of the sources to guide the selection.

D3.2.9-12. Evaluate the credibility of a source by examining how experts value the source.

D3.3.9-12. Identify evidence that draws information directly and substantively from multiple sources to detect inconsistencies in evidence in order to revise or strengthen claims. 

Materials

  • Mean of projecting
  • Highlighter and/or sticky notes for students to use when Close Reading documents
  • Computer/Tablet Access
  • Earbuds for students to listen to the podcast
  • PPT Presentation for short lecture. 
    1. Who was Harriet Tubman?
    2. What is she most known for?
    3. What was the Combahee River Raid?
    4. OUT Steps
    5. Closure
  • Harriet Tubman Handout 1.pdf
  • Harriet Tubman Handout 2.pdf
  • Harriet Tubman Handout 3.pdf : 
    • A: Two Textbook Narratives of Harriet Tubman
    • B: History Channel Overview
    • C: New York Times Article
    • D: Harper’s Weekly Etching
    • E: Historical Marker for Combahee River
    • F: Col. Montgomery Telegraph
    • G: The Commonwealth Dispatch
    • H: UnCivil Podcast 
  • Harriet Tubman Handout 4.pdf

Lesson Procedures

1. Warm-Up: Engage Students in the Topic

      (independent and whole class) Time: 8 minutes

  • On the board, pose the following question to your students to tap prior knowledge and cultivate interest: What do you know about Harriet Tubman? 
  • Pass out Handout 1: KWL Chart and Lecture Burst Notes.  Students should independently write down everything they can recall in the K(now) portion on the KWL Chart.
  • After students have a few minutes to brainstorm independently, ask for students to share out, in pairs and then whole group, recording answers on the board. Student responses can then be used to help drive the lecture. 

2. Opening Up the Textbook and Eliciting Students’ Initial Ideas About the Narrative of Harriet Tubman’s Life

      (small group and share out whole group) Time: 10-12 minutes

  • Assign students into partners or groups of three.
  • Give students the two textbook versions (Document A). Have the students read in small groups, annotating as they go.
    • Strategy Tip: Teacher could also model reading one textbook narrative out loud providing commentary as they go along (Cognitive Modeling) and give students the other to do in groups.
  • After the initial setting of the question, have students discuss their findings from the reading and use Handout 2: Organizing the Evidence OUT Graphic Organizer to record their answers.
  • If not redundant: Have groups share some ideas out in regards to what they learned from Document A in regards to the question and list the ideas on the board.

3. Pose the Focus Question 

     (whole class) Time: 5 minutes

  • Present and clarify the question that students will be discussing.
  • Students will be add to the W(hat we want to know) in the KWL Chart, noting what more they want to know to respond to the question in the form of questions (i.e., What is the Combahee River Raid?, Is there evidence that Harriet Tubman was at the Combahee River Raid?, etc.) 

4. Lecture Burst on the Combahee Raid

     (whole class) Time: 12 minutes

  • What do we know about Harriet Tubman and the Combahee River Raid?
  • Students should take notes in the Handout 1, under the lecture burst notes.
  • Summary of key points for the teacher:
    • Most areas in the south were Confederate, but there were a few Union strongholds. Port Royal was one during the Civil War. Show Map. 
    • Radical Abolitionist Colonel Montgomery was known for his wild hair and being an outside-of-the-box thinker.  
    • 2nd Regiment was a black regiment. This was revolutionary - but critical for the Union’s efforts to win the war. They needed more soldiers (Montgomery wanted black soldiers, in particular, so they decided to hatch a plan - possibly with HT and certainly with local spies) that liberated the rice plantations. Rice plantations made up most of the plantations on the river banks in those areas. 
    • Montgomery needed good intelligence - he needed a spy!  Someone nearby would be perfect, already in Port Royal. And who was a locally renowned spy? Harriet Tubman! 
    • Tubman was already free working as a nurse or a teacher, but she was also a spy for the Union against the Confederacy. She knew the land/region really well from her work as the leader of the UR (Underground Railroad).
    • Montgomery and Tubman hatched a plan: to take boats up the Combahee River, into Confederate territory, and raid 8 plantations. 
    • Outcome: 700 - 800 enslaved people were freed. They chased out enslavers and they burned down plantations (forced labor camps). 
  • At the end, the students should add any additional questions that came up as a result of the background information (in the W section of the KWL Chart).

5. Expanding on the Textbook

     (small group and whole class) Time: 75 minutes total for this section

  • Step 1-Elicit Students’ Thoughts on the Narrative (both in small groups and in whole class) Time: 15 mins
    • Give students Documents B and C.  Have the students read documents B and C independently or in their group, annotating as they go.
    • After reading the Documents B and C, students should share with their small group what they learned from the documents in regards to the inquiry question and how it compares to what they read from the textbook.  Students should record their thoughts in Handout 2: Organizing the Evidence for the OUT Graphic Organizer 
    • Come back as a whole class and have student groups share their thoughts on if the documents are reshaping the textbook narrative, noting specific references to evidence that support their thinking.
  • Step 2 -Elicit Students’ Thoughts on the Narrative (small group & whole class) Time: 10 minutes for each document minimum, 50 minutes Total
    • Repeat the process with Document D, E, F, G, and H. as time allows.
    • Teacher Tip: It may be redundant to come back whole class after each subsequent document but better to wait until the end.  A teacher may also opt to reduce the number of sources based on the needs of the class.
  • Step 3: Debrief (whole class) Time: 10 minutes
    • Engage in a final whole class discussion to share their thoughts in response the Inquiry Question: How does Harriet Tubman’s potential involvement in the Combahee River Raid (CRR) expand what mainstream textbooks reveal about her life? 
    • Ask students to provide supporting evidence from the document.
    • Questions to consider: 
      • What is the whole picture of Harriet Tubman? 
      • How does this change how we might think of her today? 
      • What do the sources tell us?  How do they corroborate one another? 
      • Which documents were most influential in the development of a new narrative?  Why?
      • What does this tell us about dominant narratives?

Closure and Assessment

(individual) Time: 10 minutes

  • As a pre-write, have the students reflect/summarize what they learned in the lesson about Harriet Tubman and the CRR in the final section of the KWL chart (What we LEARNED about Harriet Tubman and the CRR?).  ( 2mins)
  • Using the KWL chart, the sources, the note-taking tools, etc..., have the students complete the summative assessment considering the inquiry question.
    • Inquiry Question: How does Harriet Tubman’s potential involvement in the Combahee River Raid (CRR) expand what mainstream textbooks reveal about her life?
    • Prompt: You have been asked to be on the advisory committee tasked with developing a new US History Textbook.  How would you write a two-paragraph passage on Harriet Tubman’s life (considering the inquiry question above)?  Include evidence from at least two of the primary and/or second sources that you just read in your passage.

Assessments

  • Formative:
    • Opening warm-up question
    • Teacher circulates and observes student interaction with texts
    • Organizing the Evidence OUT Handout (could be collected and feedback provided prior to the writing assignment if time allows)
  • Summative:
    • End of class discussion
    • Written response to the inquiry question using evidence from the lecture and documents