1a. How many farms and slaves did Colonel Lloyd own?
2a. What clothing did adults and young children receive each year?
3a. According to some northerners, why did the slaves sing?
4a. What were different aspects of the lives of slave children like?
5a. Justify the comparison Douglass makes between the slaves sent for supplies on allowance-day and politicians, and the comparison between a slave and a castaway.
1b. How did Colonel Lloyd coordinate the management of his many farms?
2b. Why were young children treated less generously than adults when it came to clothing allotments?
3b. What was Douglass's assessment of slaves' singing?
4b. What effect would you expect the separation of children from their mothers to have on family relationships? Why would this effect be desirable to the slaveholder?
5b. In what ways is the music we now call the blues similar to the singing of the slaves sent for supplies on allowance-day?
Stereotype. Review the definition for stereotype in the Handbook of Literary Terms. What stereotype about slaves does Douglass reject in his description of the slaves' singing? What is his nonstereotypical interpretation of this behavior? How does his analogy with "a man cast away upon a desolate island" reinforce his interpretation?
Tone. Review the definition for tone in the Handbook of Literary Terms. Copy and complete a graphic organizer like the one below to understand Douglass's tone of sorrow and sympathy for the plight of slaves. Add successive circles for each example of the identified tone that you find.
1. Write a letter of complaint to a northern abolitionist, detailing your mistreatment as a slave on one of Colonel Lloyd's farms.
2. Imagine that, as a slave on the Wye Town farm, you were selected to run errands to the Great House Farm. Write a journal entry expressing your enthusiam and excitement about going to the Great House Farm.
3. Write song lyrics for the slaves of Colonel Lloyd's farm, using Douglass's analogy with a "man cast away upon a desolate island" to describe a slave's feelings.
Appositives. Read the Language Arts Survey 3.77, "Appositives." Then revise these sentences, adding to each a word or phrase in apposition to the italicized word(s). Use the information provided in parentheses following each sentence to write your appositives.
1. Frederick Douglass worked to free slaves by speaking, writing, and serving as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. (Douglass was a famous autobiographer, speaker, and newspaper publisher.)
2. Harriet Tubman chose another route. (Tubman was known as the Moses of her people.)
3. After escaping from a Maryland plantation in 1849, Tubman worked with the Underground Railroad. (The Underground Railroad was a series of safe houses between slave states and free states.)
4. Acting as a conductor, Tubman was responsible for liberating about three hundred people from slavery. (A conductor was a guide.)
5. After the war, both Tubman and Douglass strongly supported the civil rights struggle and the women's suffrage movement. (The women's suffrage movement was an attempt to secure voting rights for women.)
Researching an Abolitionist. With a partner, research a person involved in abolitionism, such as Lyman Beecher, James G. Birney, John Brown, Lydia Maria Child, Charles G. Finney, William Lloyd Garrison, Angelina Grimké, Julia Ward Howe, Benjamin Lundy, Wendell Phillips, John B. Russwurm, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Arthur Tappan, Lewis Tappan, Nathaniel Taylor, Theodore D. Weld, or John Greenleaf Whittier. With your partner, present an interview between one of these people and an interviewer. The interviewer should ask specific questions about the abolitionist's beliefs and involvement in abolitionist activities based on his or her reading. The interviewee should give detailed answers based on the same research.
Researching Abolishionists:
Sources used:
Screenplay. Write a fictionalized screenplay for the selection from Douglass's autobiography. Decide on a central character to focus on, determine close-up and long camera shots, and write dialogue. In your screenplay, be sure to establish the setting, develop sympathetic characterization so that your audience will care about the slave that you portray, and delineate a conflict with another character.
