The Great Migration: A Letter Home

Students write a letter as if they are a black person moving from the South to the North during the period known as “The Great Migration.” Students research the conditions in the South that pushed black Americans from their homes and the situations in the North that pulled them from their homes.

Standards
Social Studies
Grade 10

History, Benchmark F
The United States in the 20th Century
9. Analyze the major political, economic and social developments of the 1920s including:

c. African-American migration from the South and the North.

Language Arts
Grade 10

Writing Process, Benchmark A
Prewriting
1. Generate writing ideas through discussions with others and from printed material, and keep a list of writing ideas.

Objectives

• Students will research the Great Migration by using materials given to them by the teacher.

• Students will take notes from these materials.

• Students will construct a letter to explain why they left the South to come to the North during this period of time.

Time Needed
This project can be done using two classroom periods. The students should have one class period for reading and taking notes, and the other period for writing the letter.

Procedure

1. Give students the following information to read:
   a. “The Great Migration” http://www.inmotionaame.org/print.cfm?migration=8&bhcp=1
   b. “Seven Letters From the Great Migration” http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5332/
   c. “We Thought State Street Would Be Heaven Itself: Black Migrants Speak Out” http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5337

2. Students should take notes over the material that they are reading.

3. Review how to write a “friendly letter.”

4. Using the notes that they have taken, students are to construct a letter dated sometime during the 1920s.

5. Students are to take on the persona of black person who has moved from the South to the North during this time period.

6. The letter should be written to a loved one back home explaining why they moved to Chicago during this period in time.
   

Resources

The Great Migration

• The Great Migration http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/reference/articles/great_migration.html

• Chicago: Destination for the Great Migration http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african/afam011.html

• The Great Migration: Story in Paintings by Jacob Lawrence http://www.columbia.edu/itc/history/odonnell/w1010/edit/migration/migration.html

• North by South: The African American Great Migration http://northbysouth.kenyon.edu

• People and Events: The Northern Migration of Sharecroppers in 1920s http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/flood/peopleevents/e_sharecroppers.html

Evaluation
Letter Rubric for The Great Migration: A Letter Home

Note
For those teachers who are required to use letter grades, they can easily convert the scores or an average of the total score to a letter grade.

• 1 = D, 2 = C, 3 = B and 4 =A
• Anything below a “1” obviously constitutes the grade “F”
• If you need number grades, use 1 = 74, 2 = 83, 3 = 92 and 4 = 100. Use judgment for below-74 projects.