Safe Travels - with the Uppers
Our first-trimester work with One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia gave us meaningful opportunities to explore themes of family, racism, and violence in the 1960s. The fall was filled with thoughtful conversations about segregation and Jim Crow laws, the Black Panther Party, the Civil Rights Movement, Muhammad Ali, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, poetry and the power of words, microaggressions, code-switching, African American Vernacular English, and much more.
The knowledge gained during the first trimester has prepared us well for our current work, as sixth- and seventh-grade students continue their study of African American history while reading The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis. We are about halfway through the novel, approaching the moment when the family travels from their home in Flint, Michigan, to a relative’s home in Birmingham, Alabama.
As the fictional family runs errands around town in preparation for their journey south, the Uppers have been busy, in real time, diving deeper into The Negro Motorist Green Book to find safe places for the family to stop along the way. As students learned in the fall, Victor Green and his wife, Alma, began The Negro Motorist Green Book in Harlem, New York, in 1936. This small but powerful book listed gas stations, hair salons, restaurants, stores, tourist homes, and other businesses that welcomed and treated African American customers and employees with respect and dignity.
Victor & Alma Green
Traveling while black in the 60s came with risks and required meticulous planning under Jim Crow Laws. Many travelers tried to minimize stops along the way to avoid violence and humiliation due to the color of their skin. So, before the Watsons embark on their trip, Uppers used the The Negro Motorist Green Book to map out a safe route containing multiple safe places to stop for food, gas, or lodging.
Uppers searched towns and cities in Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Alabama. They compared locations listed in The Green Book with the suggested routes from MapQuest and made adjustments to ensure there were safe stops for the family. They recorded the time and distance traveled between each location and tallied these to find the total for a one-way trip.
Next, they created colorful visuals to represent their final routes.
At the end of last week, students selected one of their safe stops to research more deeply. This week, they will practice their lateral reading skills as they explore articles and websites to better understand the realities of racism and activism in the 1960s at their chosen location. Students will create slideshows to showcase their learning and share their findings with classmates before rejoining the Watsons on their journey to Birmingham, Alabama.