Week 6 — Equal on Paper: Reading Slavery, Emancipation, and Jim Crow on the Timeline — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Introduction to Ethnic Studies Free sample edition

Traditional alternative (no AI), unpublished. In the course this is a separate assignment that ships unpublished beside the adaptive assignment: same objective, no AI. An instructor who prefers it publishes it and unpublishes or deletes the adaptive one, as the note at its top says.

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Assignment 6 of the term — place this week's laws and rulings on the timeline, read one family's account beside the record, and explain it to someone who has it wrong.

This week you met slavery from the 1619 arrival in Virginia, Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), the Emancipation Proclamation (1863), the Reconstruction amendments, Jim Crow and Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), and the Great Migration. In this assignment you work four short problems on the timeline, interpret each one, and explain this week's ideas to someone who has them wrong. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Community History Workshop practice the same ideas from other angles. It builds on Week 2's racialization and institutional discrimination, and on Week 3's line between immigrant peoples and peoples who became part of the country by force.

The task

The law-and-case timeline is the course's list of dated laws and events, each year taken from the issuing body's own page. The course's running archive is an illustrative, unnamed public library's collection built for this course; its excerpts are identified by role and decade and are not real people's words. Its E2 excerpt comes from a woman whose family moved north in the Great Migration in the 1940s, interviewed in the 1990s. The family left in 1943; her father went first, to work in a shipyard; on the train they sat in the car set aside for Black passengers until they were out of the South; in the new city there were neighborhoods where the bank would not lend to them; and her mother said it was "different, not finished."

A younger sibling shows you study notes that say, "In 1863 the Emancipation Proclamation freed everyone, and segregation was only a Southern custom." Your job is to answer the way an ethnic studies reader would, starting from a few plain dates on the timeline.

Work these four problems, showing your arithmetic:

On the law-and-case timeline, the first enslaved Africans reached the English colony of Virginia in 1619, and the 13th Amendment was ratified in 1865. How many years passed from the arrival to abolition?
On the law-and-case timeline, Dred Scott v. Sandford came in 1857 and the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868. How many years passed from denial of citizenship to citizenship by birth?
On the law-and-case timeline, the Emancipation Proclamation took effect in 1863 and the 13th Amendment was ratified in 1865. How many years apart are the proclamation and the amendment?
On the law-and-case timeline, Plessy v. Ferguson came in 1896, and the archive's E2 excerpt says the family left the South in 1943. How many years after the ruling did the family ride in the car set aside for Black passengers?

Beside each count, add one brief interpretation:

Problem 1: describe slavery in the course's words, using the term "enslaved people", and explain racialization: a legal status, enslaved or free, citizen or not, being given a racial meaning.
Problem 2: state what Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) held, including that it reached free Black people, and explain that the 14th Amendment's citizenship and equal protection clauses speak of all persons, so every later group uses them.
Problem 3: say what the Emancipation Proclamation did and did not do, naming the loyal border states and the Union-held parts of the Confederacy it left untouched, and explain that it was an executive proclamation, not a law or an amendment.
Problem 4: explain that Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) upheld a state law, so segregation written into law is institutional discrimination, and place the archive's E2 excerpt (illustrative) inside the Great Migration with one thing the excerpt leaves out.

Explain it to a non-expert

Your sibling's notes read the proclamation for more than it did and call segregation only a custom. Write a 3–5 sentence message that explains where the proclamation applied and where it did not, that the 13th Amendment (1865) ended slavery everywhere, and that Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) upheld segregation as state law. Write "enslaved people" in your own voice. Name one limit, such as that E2 is an illustrative account whose dates are checked against the record. Explain any technical term in everyday words. More than one good message is possible.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a friend who says a city's new bike lanes reach every street because the mayor's announcement said "bike lanes for all." Model message: "The announcement was real and it mattered, but the map shows the lanes run on three avenues, not every street. A headline can promise more than the plan delivers, so it helps to check where a rule actually applies. One fair caveat: the map I saw was from last spring, so newer lanes may have been added since."

Use that pattern for your sibling, with your own wording and evidence.

Your reflection. After you check your draft, write two or three sentences on one of these, your choice: (a) which source, the dated record or the E2 account, changed your thinking more, and why; or (b) which word or phrase in your first draft you replaced, and what the new wording gets right.

Deliverables

Submit a single report containing:

the four counts, each with the dates and the arithmetic shown, and the brief interpretation the task names for that problem;
your message to your sibling, explaining where the proclamation applied, the 13th Amendment, and segregation as law, with one limit;
your reflection, on the option you chose; and
a one-line restatement of the dates you used, so your counts can be checked.

Keep it to roughly one page. Clear and correct beats long.

Choose how you show it. Present your report as written text, or as a recorded audio or video explanation of about three minutes with a transcript, or as a labelled timeline sketch with a short explanation. Every form is graded by the same scoring criteria. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.

How you'll be graded

The full analytic rubric is attached to this assignment in Canvas.

Academic integrity and AI use

This version is designed to be completed without AI: do the counts, the interpretations, and the writing yourself, without a chatbot or other AI tool. You may use a calculator or a spreadsheet for the arithmetic. Describe E2 only as the course describes it, name people only by role, write "enslaved people" in your own voice, and do not borrow a quotation or a detail about any real person from another source without citing it. Submitting AI-generated work as your own, or copying another student's work, is an integrity violation under the course policy.

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