Lesson Plan - A Voice for Freedom

Build Background Knowledge

Before reading the article, have students take the five-question Prereading Quiz at junior.scholastic.com. The interactive quiz is self-scoring and will give an explanation after students answer each question. Then prepare students to take two-column notes as they watch the video “America’s Civil War.” Have them set up a narrower column on the left to record key dates, names, and concepts and a wider column on the right for details about each item. Play the video and then discuss which details are most important.

Preview Vocabulary

Use the online Skill Builder Words to Know to preteach the domain-specific terms advocate, Confederacy, Congress, contraband, legacy, literate, memoir, regiment, segregated, siege, territory, and Union. Have students refer to the Skill Builder as they read.

Read the Article

Read the article aloud or have students read it independently or in pairs. As students read, direct them to underline, highlight, or jot down the central idea of each section.

Answer Close-Reading Questions

Have students write their responses, or use the Close-Reading Questions to guide a discussion.

• How was Susie King Taylor feeling in the opening scene of the article? Why? (Analyzing People and Events)
Susie was feeling anxious about hundreds of Union Army troops who had left their camp days before and hadn’t yet returned. She was worried that some of them would be killed or injured, which turned out to be true on that day in July 1864. In addition, the article also notes that “Susie felt proud to be part of the effort” to support the Union Army by washing uniforms, teaching soldiers how to read and write, and volunteering as a nurse.

• Summarize the section “Born Into Slavery.” (Summarizing)
Susie was born in August 1848 and spent the first years of her life enslaved on a plantation in Georgia called Grest Farm. Susie’s grandmother Dolly was allowed to live independently in Savannah, and her enslavers allowed Susie to move in with Dolly when she turned 7. Although enslaved children weren’t allowed to go to school, Susie’s grandmother sent her to a secret school that a free Black woman ran in her home. Susie couldn’t let anyone find out she was going to school or she would face steep fines and possible public whippings. She became one of the only 5 percent of Black people in Georgia who could read and write but lived in fear of being arrested, sold, or sent back to the plantation.

• How did Susie escape slavery? What happened to her next? (Key Details)
After Dolly was arrested and Susie was sent back to the plantation in 1862, Union troops started a siege on nearby Fort Pulaski. Close enough to hear the cannons, Susie faced a tough choice to stay and hope to be freed after the war or to escape and risk whippings or worse if she was caught. Susie decided to flee with her uncle and several cousins. They traveled 25 miles east to the coast where Union soldiers took them in. A boat took Susie and her family members to St. Simons Island, where the Union Army treated Susie and about 600 other formerly enslaved people as contraband. An officer gave Susie books to start a school for 40 children and their parents.

• How does the map “A Nation at War” support the article? (Text Features)
The map supports the article by showing which states were in the Union and the Confederacy. It also shows that the 11 states that withdrew allowed slavery, as did five border states that remained in the Union—Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware. The map also shows the locations of the plantation where Susie lived, the city of Savannah where Dolly and Susie lived, Fort Pulaski that was sieged by Union forces, St. Simons Island where Susie taught other formerly enslaved people, and Morris Island where she volunteered at a Union Army camp.

• What evidence supports the idea that “Susie believed in the power of literacy”? (Text Evidence)
Susie took significant risks to become literate herself by attending a secret school in Savannah. Then she helped many others learn to read and write on St. Simons Island, where she taught 40 children every day and their parents at night. According to historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Susie knew that literacy would help people achieve more freedom and success after the war. After Susie’s unit stopped battling, she started a school in Savannah. Susie also showed that she believed in the power of literacy by writing a memoir to preserve memories of the Civil War.

• What was the effect of the Emancipation Proclamation? (Cause and Effect)
When U.S. President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, it formally freed the 3.5 million enslaved people in Confederate states. This meant that Susie and the other escapees on St. Simons Island were no longer “contraband.” It also allowed Black men to officially join the Union Army, and about 179,000 did.

• How did Susie continue to contribute to her legacy after the war? (Central Ideas)
After Susie remarried in 1879, she spent her time advocating for veterans of the war. She also wrote what is thought to be the only Civil War memoir about Army life written by a Black woman. Susie continued to hope that life would improve for Black Americans until she died in 1912.

Analyze a Primary Source

Guide students to complete the Your Turn activity on page 14.
• What parts of the war stand out to Susie? What words best sum up her feelings?
Susie says that each scene of the war—from roll-call to “lights out”—would forever remain in her memory. The anxious nights seem to particularly stand out to Susie because she would worry about what would happen and whether anyone would be captured. Some words that sum up how she was feeling include fearful, anxious, worried, determined, and focused.

Create a Timeline

Use the Skill Builder Create a Timeline to have students select and organize key dates in Susie King Taylor’s life and in Civil War history. You might use string or yarn to make a version across your classroom.

Assess Comprehension

Assign the 10-question Know the News quiz, available in PDF and interactive forms. You can also use Quiz Wizard to assess comprehension of this article and three others from the issue.