• The ways slavery shaped social and economic life in the South after 1800 (e.g., how the cotton gin and the opening of new lands in the South and West led to increased demands for slaves; differences in the lives of plantation owners, poor free black and white families, and the enslaved; methods of passive and active resistance to slavery; escaped slaves and the Underground Railroad).
• Different economic, cultural, and social characteristics of slavery after 1800 (e.g., the influence of the Haitian Revolution and the ending of the Atlantic slave trade, how the enslaved forged their own culture in the face of oppression, the role of the plantation system in shaping slaveholders and the enslaved, the experiences of escaped slaves).
• The religious, political, and social ideas that contributed to the nineteenth century belief in Manifest Destiny (e.g., “City Upon a Hill” and the subsequent Protestant belief in creating a model Christian community).

• The narratives: Runaway Journeys; The Great Migration; and The Western Migration

1. Poll students to learn whether they consider cities good places to live or not.
2. Ask students to brainstorm the advantages of city life.
3. Record the answers on the chalkboard, a flipchart, or a transparency.

1. Explain to students that they will be examining why many fugitive slaves migrated to cities and towns rather than rural areas. Direct students to read the narrative Runaway Journeys, focusing on “Escape to Cities and Towns” and “Up North.” Or, you can have them focus on either the Great Migration cities by reading The Great Migration or the western cities by reading The Western Migration, focusing on “To the Cities” and “The Golden State.”
2. Ask students to answer the following questions: For Runaway Journeys:

   1. What economic opportunities did urban communities offer fugitive slaves?
   2. How did urban communities help former slaves conceal their identities and create new ones?
   3. Was it easier to hide from authorities in urban or in rural areas?
   4. How did residential patterns and the lack of racial separation (segregation) in urban communities contribute to the success of fugitive slaves in maintaining their freedom?
   5. What individuals or groups could former slaves find in urban communities that might help them get started in their new lives?

   For The Great Migration

   1. What economic opportunities did urban communities offer African-American migrants from both rural areas and from cities and towns?
   2. How did businesses and industries fuel African-American migration? How did the cities' roles as transportation hubs further attract African-American migrants?
   3. What was the role of African-American urban newspapers, such as the Chicago Defender, in migration?
   4. What was the impact of African-American migrants on labor disputes and unions?
   5. What were accommodations like for African-American migrants to the cities? What groups segregated themselves from the migrants? Describe community patterns formed by migrants.
   6. What was the impact of segregation on health of African-American migrants?
   7. What organizations provided aid and support to migrants?
   8. How did migrants' residential patterns make them easy targets for violence?
   9. How did migrants' residential patterns contribute to empowering them politically?
   10. Describe the artistic and cultural “renaissance” that arose in urban African-American communities.

   For The Western Migration:

   1. What economic opportunities did urban communities offer migrants to the West?
   2. Who were some of the outstanding African-American entrepreneurs who developed their businesses in western cities, and what types of businesses did they create?
   3. What opportunities were there for professional African Americans, such as physicians, lawyers, and artists?
   4. Describe residential patterns in urban communities of the West, and the degree of integration or segregation that African-American migrants experienced.
   5. What social and cultural opportunities could African-American migrants to western urban centers enjoy?

3. Discuss the readings and students' answers to the readings as a class.
4. Explain that urbanization was a major demographic trend for members of all races and immigrants from all places throughout the nineteenth century. Ask students to conduct additional research into the causes of urbanization in the nineteenth century or the ways urban concentration has changed America. Ask them to prepare their findings as a three-five minute oral presentation that may include audio or visual enhancements. You may wish to assign topics or create a sign-up list. General topics may include:

   1. Victorian ideas about civility and civilized living.
   2. Economic forces such as industrialization, the factory system, and concentration of business.
   3. Social factors, such as law enforcement.
   4. Cultural attractions (for example, entertainment, schools and adult education, lending libraries and public lecturers, religious outreach, and immigrant-migrant aid societies).
   5. Anonymity and identity in the urban environment.

Assess oral presentations using the 20-point rubric that follows as a basis, multiplying by five to weight the grade or to convert to a letter scale.

• The Schomburg Center has numerous images of African Americans in urban settings in the nineteenth century. Visit Images of Nineteenth Century African Americans, an online digital collection, at: http://digital.nypl.org/schomburg/images_aa19/main.html. Additional images of African-American Women Writers of the Nineteenth Century are available at the Schomburg Center's digital library collection at: http://digital.nypl.org/schomburg/writers_aa19/.
• Further images of urban communities may be found online at the Mid-Manhattan Library Picture Collection featuring 30,000 pre-1923 images from books, magazines, newspapers, prints, postcards, and photographs at: http://digital.nypl.org/mmpco/.
• The Library of Congress' American Memory Collection features over seven million online digital documents. It is a rich resource for a wide variety of documents about the African-American experience, including the online exhibit African-American Odyssey. American Memory's homepage is: http://memory.loc.gov/ and African-American Odyssey is at: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/. The segment on "Western Migration and Homesteading" can be accessed at: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african/afam009.html.