Letters from the Past

[Anisha Andrews-Williams]

I had fun reading through the letters for this week’s assignments; this is the part of History I enjoy the most. I feel that is the most engaging and entertaining part of the subject. It’s interesting to see what was important and what an average day was for slave masters and the overseers. I would have liked to see more letters or stories from the slaves and their experiences. I think it would be a good project, if we had sufficient amount of the slave accounts, to compare and contrast how life was for the Master(s) of the plantation and their slaves. I think it would be a great way to have students think critically about what it was like to be a slave master and at the same time what it was like to be a slave, living during the same time but experiencing life in two very different ways.

The use of primary sources in the classroom, if used properly, I feel can lead students to draw their own conclusions from what they see, hear or read and compare their findings to what they are learning in schools now. Is there evidence for the students to object to or agree with the lessons and curriculum they learn? How can we compare what was going on back then to what is going on now? Primary sources, in my opinion, can help develop a student’s overall understanding of a particular time in the past and how that relates to our present and what implications it may have on our future.