Week 6 — Readings & Resources

Introduction to Ethnic Studies Free sample edition

Your primary reading is Chapter 6 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 11 items (5 readings and 6 videos). Allow 54–68 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (19–23 min total)

① Where slavery in Virginia began

Chapter 6, Section “Begin with 1619: slavery in the English colonies” · Session 1, Segment 1, “Slavery from 1619” · Remember: the first enslaved Africans reached Virginia in 1619, taken captive from the kingdom of Ndongo, and slavery ran 246 years in law.

Virginia's First Africans — Encyclopedia Virginia — a reference entry, written at a grade 8 reading level, on the Africans who arrived at Point Comfort in August 1619 aboard the English ship White Lion and were traded for food; read the opening summary and the sections on the arrival and on origins, which trace the captives to the Ndongo peoples of West Central Africa. Notice that it quotes a colonist's letter in the period's wording. (reading, 8–12 min)
Many Rivers to Cross: The First Africans in Virginia — WHRO Public Media — a short public-media segment filmed at Old Point Comfort that tells how English privateers took captive Africans from a Portuguese ship and traded them in Virginia; listen for its point that laws were written over time to hold people of African descent in servitude for life, which is the racialization the chapter asks you to watch for. The video gives its own count of the captives, so read any figure with its source. (video, 3 min) (captions: automatic)

② Citizenship, emancipation, and the amendments

Chapter 6, Section “Read the Reconstruction amendments: the 13th, 14th, and 15th” · Session 1, Segment 2, “Citizenship and the amendments” · Remember: Dred Scott denied citizenship by race in 1857, the proclamation reached only the seceded states, and the 14th Amendment speaks of all persons.

The Dred Scott Decision: Crash Course Black American History #16 — CrashCourse — an animated episode that follows Dred Scott's freedom suits from a St. Louis court to the Supreme Court and quotes the Chief Justice's opinion that Black people, free or enslaved, could not be citizens; the opinion's words are the Court's, read as evidence of what the Court held. This builds on Week 3's line between immigrant peoples and colonized or incorporated peoples: listen for its closing point that the case's idea of citizenship pushed later immigrants to argue in court that they counted as white. (video, 12 min) (captions: creator)
Emancipation Proclamation and General Order No. 3 — US National Archives — a reference archivist shows the signed proclamation and explains that it applied only to the Confederate states in rebellion, that it opened the Union Army and Navy to Black soldiers and sailors, and why a later Union Army order in Texas gained its meaning through the Juneteenth celebration. (video, 2 min) (captions: creator)
Our Amendments - The Equality Amendments: 13, 14, & 15 — statebaroftexas — a whiteboard conversation from a bar association's law-related education series that reads the three amendments together, quotes the 14th Amendment's citizenship clause, and explains the equal protection clause and the enforcement section at the end of each amendment; notice that it says the 14th Amendment answered the Dred Scott case. When it says Brown v. Board of Education ended school segregation, it reads that ruling for more than it did, as Week 7 explains. (video, 5 min) (captions: automatic)
Landmark Legislation: Fourteenth Amendment — U.S. Senate Historical Office — a one-screen history from the Senate's own historians of the amendment's passage and ratification, its grant of citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, its equal protection guarantee, and the power it gave Congress to enforce it. Use it while completing the Week-6 module overview. (reading, 2–4 min)

③ Jim Crow, the vote, and the separate but equal rule

Chapter 6, Section “Name Jim Crow and read the Plessy ruling of 1896” · Session 2, Segment 3, “Jim Crow and the Plessy case” · Remember: Plessy upheld state-required separation as law, and literacy tests blocked Black voters without naming race.

Jim Crow Laws and Racial Segregation in America — GPB Education — historians and an educator from a public broadcaster's civil rights series explain why emancipation reached Georgia slowly, how Homer Plessy's railway case reached the Supreme Court, and how poll taxes, the white primary, and literacy tests were used to disenfranchise Black voters; the speakers sometimes use the older word for enslaved people. (video, 7 min) (captions: creator)
Landmark Legislation: Fifteenth Amendment — U.S. Senate Historical Office — a short page on the amendment's ratification and the opening it left: states could set voter qualifications that applied to all races on paper, and many former Confederate states used poll taxes and literacy tests to block Black voters. (reading, 2–4 min)

④ Leaving the Jim Crow South

Chapter 6, Section “Follow the Great Migration and read E2” · Session 2, Segment 4, “The Great Migration and E2” · Remember: about six million Black people left the South from roughly the 1910s to the 1970s, and the new cities had their own barriers.

Migrations: From Exodusters to Great Migrations — Black History in Two Minutes or so — a short documentary episode that traces Black migration from the Exodusters who went to Kansas in 1879 through the first Great Migration during World War I and the second during World War II, with historians explaining the jobs, neighborhoods, and culture the migrants built. (video, 4 min) (captions: automatic)
The Great Migration (1910-1970) — National Archives — the National Archives' overview of the migration's two phases, the cities migrants moved to, and the housing discrimination many met when they arrived; read the opening paragraphs and skip the list of record links at the bottom. (reading, 3–5 min)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) — National Archives — the National Archives' document page for the 1896 decision; read the background essay on the Louisiana railway law and the ruling, and skip the full transcript unless you want the opinion's own words. (reading, 6–10 min)

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell your instructor and use the reference above in the meantime.

Provenance: Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com