Let’s build historical learning experiences that will last a lifetime.

Freedom on the Move is a searchable database of fugitives from North American slavery. On our site, students have access to thousands of stories of resistance that have never been accessible in one place. There are endless possibilities for using the database in your classroom, but to make things easy, we’ve created four lessons you can use to bring the ads to life and introduce students to the brave people who resisted slavery by running away.

Watch the Freedom on the Move Webinar hosted by Hasan Kwame Jeffries HERE.

View the lesson plans created for this project HERE.

The first round of lesson plans for FOTM were created by teachers in Atlanta, GA. To take student engagement with the FOTM materials a step further, we are currently in process of working on a city-wide project in the New Orleans schools that will bring students and teachers together with community partners to explore the history of self-liberating people in New Orleans. The goal will be to innovate teaching and learning about slavery, public memory and social justice, fueled by the creativity and curiosity of school children seeing their city and its past in new ways. With the support of our community partners, the students will develop public-facing projects in a variety of possible formats--from maps, visual art, and spoken word to digital pieces and video postcards. By late spring, the students will be able to showcase their work at community spaces around the city.

This project is still in progress.

Stay tuned for lesson plans, videos, and photos about FOTM NOLA.

Freedom on the Move: Last Seen

The Hard History Project teamed up with Freedom on the Move and Last Seen to develop, pilot, and promote resources for K-12 educators using ads of self liberating people and “lost friends” ads. The project included a virtual professional learning community with six educators from multiple grade levels. The teachers created classroom activities which helped students make connections between those who self liberated from slavery and friends and family members who searched for their loved ones once slavery was abolished.

Classroom resources will be posted soon!

Educators were invited to be a part of an educational pilot project focused on teaching the story of enslaved people in the colonial North using resources from the Historic Hudson Valley’s “People Not Property” website.

In this project, educators are working with People not Property resources to create new classroom strategies for teaching the story of slavery in the colonial North. Pilot participants will also model the strategies they create and will have an opportunity to share their classroom strategies with a national audience via video and a webinar.

This project is still in progress.

Stay tuned for lesson plans, videos, and photos about the People not Property project.

The Hard History project worked with the Delaware Historical Society (DHS) to develop, pilot, and promote resources for K-12 educators using the DHS Liberty in our Grasp collection. Major components of the project included facilitating a six-month virtual professional learning community made up of six Delaware educators from multiple grade levels. Teachers evaluated the LIOG collection and created classroom resources to help students connect with primary documents and learn about the history of slavery in Delaware. These educators have not only become experts on the artifacts of the LIOG collection, they have also become teacher leaders and liaisons who will be able to train other teachers and promote DHS’s teacher resources moving forward.

This project is still in progress.

Stay tuned for lesson plans and photos about the Delaware Historical Society.

Educators from the Salem, Saugus, Revere and Lynn school districts came together to produce an educational pilot project focused on teaching the story of enslaved people at the Salem Maritime and Saugus Ironworks National Historic Sites. In this project, classroom teachers worked with museum educators to create new classroom strategies for teaching the story of slavery in Salem. Pilot participants also modeled the strategies they created and will have an opportunity to share their classroom strategy with a national audience via video and a webinar.

This project is in progress.

Stay tuned for lesson plans, videos, and photos from the Salem Maritime & Saugus Iron Works.

The Hard History Project teamed up with the Belmont-Paul Women's Equality National Historic site to create a series of lessons called "Teaching Justice." These learning activities engage students with the history of women's ongoing struggle for equality. Each lesson uses an item from the National Woman's Party collection or an aspect of the story of suffrage to make connections to broad questions of equity and the work of social change using anti-bias objectives from the Learning for Justice framework.

View the lesson plans created for this project here.