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Summary and Objective
Students will understand that charts are tools that historians use to organize and present information. Students will understand that,in the years after the American Revolution, there was a struggle to define what it meant to be American, and that race was one aspect in this struggle. Students will understand that a census is used to count and categorize people.
Teaching Plan
Step 1.
Brainstorm with students: What does it mean to identify oneself as an American? Propose that, since the nation was so young and composed of relatively recent immigrants, the newly independent colonists were uncertain what it meant to be American.
Step 2.
Define vocabulary:
1. naturalization:getting citizenship of a country by somebody who was not a citizen or national of the country he or she was born in. Consider ideas of jus sanguinis -- citizenship through blood -- and jus soli -- citizenship through birth on national soil.
2. census: count of people
3. race: according to the 2000 census, race is a socio-political construct
Step 3.
Review significant local and federal events since the Revolution. These events could suggest both an expansive understanding of American identity and a conservative reaction to that expansion.
Suggestions:
1. Ratification of state consitiutions (Massachusetts in 1780).
2.Quok Walker case and the end of slavery in Massachusetts, 1783.
3. Shay's Rebellion,
4. Constitutional convention and ratification of Constitution, 1787.
5. Naturalization Act of 1790: Have student(s) read the selection of the Act that declares only free white persons may become citizens of US.
Step 4.
Explain that in 1790 the United states undertook its first census. Hand out or project the 1790 census of Hampshire County. Point out how population is categorized. Ask for observations about census (age of population, how males are divided and not females, ration of free whites to free others). Who could be the "others"?
Step 5.
Hand out or project results from 2000 Federal Census. List observations (for example, diversity of categorizations).
Step 6.
Look at examples of how bar graphs and pie charts provide alternative ways of viewing and understanding data. See the Census Scope website for examples of bar graphs. See Census 2000 profile maps for an example of pie charts.
Step 7.
Have students individually or in groups practice making pie charts or bar graphs from data of 1790 census.
Step 8.
Reflection writing: Which do you think is more descriptive, the 2000 census or the 1790 census? Why? What do you think was the impact on individuals to be either categorized as "free white" or "free other"? Why do you think the term "free other" was used instead of a more descriptive term?
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