Session 1 · TRACE: Time & Place
Free, but not equal
- 10 minHook: show the photo of the empty Greensboro lunch counter. Ask: what is this? Why might a stool at a café be in a national museum? Record every guess.
- 15 minMap and timeline: find the southern states of the USA on a map. Place three dates on a floor timeline: 1865 (the 13th Amendment ends slavery), 1896 (the Supreme Court allows 'separate but equal'), 1954 (Brown v Board).
- 20 minJim Crow rules: in pairs, read short, teacher-chosen extracts of real segregation laws about buses, schools, cafés and voting. Sort them: which part of daily life did each law control?
- 5 minExit card: in one sentence, what did 'separate but equal' mean in real life?
Session 2 · TRACE: Time & Place
Two places, two times
- 10 minRead the exhibition brief. Choose the class context: the American South, Aotearoa in the 1970s, or youth voice here and now (you will still meet all three).
- 20 minBuild the living timeline: peg photographs and date cards on a string across the room, from 1865 to 2021, including Montgomery 1955, Little Rock 1957, Greensboro 1960, Birmingham 1963, the 1964 and 1965 Acts, the Polynesian Panthers 1971, the te reo petition 1972, the Dawn Raids 1974–76 and the apology in 2021.
- 15 minGallery walk: which events happened when your grandparents were children? Which surprised you? Add sticky-note questions.
- 5 minChoose three questions for the class inquiry wall.
Getting started
Use the picture timeline cards, which have the date, a photo and one sentence, and place them with a partner.
Stretch
Find out what a poll tax and a literacy test were, and why they stopped many Black Americans from voting even though the law said they could.
Checkpoint
Every student can explain what Jim Crow laws were with one example, and place five events on the timeline.
Activities for this week
- Living timeline, 1865 to 2021: How long did it take for rights to be won, and what was happening in Aotearoa at the same time?
Useful this week
- 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Abolition of Slavery (1865) ↗ The original document and a short explanation of how slavery was ended in law.
- Brown v. Board of Education (1954) ↗ The Supreme Court decision that ruled school segregation unconstitutional.