Lesson Activity: 40 Acres and a Mule: Role-Playing What Reconstruction Could Have Been

Forty Acres and a Mule

Lesson Activity: 40 Acres and a Mule: Role-Playing What Reconstruction Could Have Been

2020

Lesson Activity

Zinn Project Education features a lesson activity created by Adam Sanchez that involves multiday role play based on the phrase, "Forty Acres and a Mule," which utilizes creative writing exercises, map-making, and film clips to introduce students to the ways African American life changed immediately after the Civil War by focusing on the Sea Islands before and during Reconstruction. The lesson activity prompts students to engage, debate, and answer questions related to historical themes stemming from "Forty Acres and a Mule," which was part of Union General William Tecumseh Sherman’s Special Field Order No. 15 that was issued on January 16, 1865, to allot land and leftover Army mules to formerly enslaved African American families.

Zinn Education Project (Contributor: Rethinking Schools)

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