TOPIC 4.5 Housing (+ 2.6 Economy, 3.3 Reconstruction, & 3.6 Red Summer)

DBQ: Explaining the Wealth Gap, with graded student samples

“Some landlords and real estate owners blandly tell us they do not sell to negroes. Handbills, announcing sales of lots are thrown on our doorstep with the statement, “Negroes Not Wanted”…Our men are denied lucrative work and limited largely to positions as railroad porters or hotel waiters. You well know how small the wages are. Yet we have done well financially. The negro has proved his qualities as a soldier - such dash and bravery have never been surpassed by any other race. You cannot very well eliminate the negro.”

- Rev. Henri Browne, Grand Rapids, MI, 1913

LO 2.6.C - Evaluate the economic effects of enslaved people’s commodification and labor

LO 3.3.B - Explain how new labor practices impeded the ability of African Americans to advance economically after the abolition of slavery.

EK 3.6.A.3 - the Tulsa race massacre…destroyed more than 1,250 homes and businesses in Greenwood, …which was one of the most affluent African American communities in the United States.

LO 4.5.A - Explain the long-term effects of housing discrimination on African Americans in the second half of the twentieth century.

Objective: Students will contextualize and analyze primary source documents in order to explain how historical developments have contributed to wealth disparities affecting African Americans in the United States.

LINK: Click here for an introduction to the DBQ which includes student and teacher guides, handouts, and slides.

Notes

I waited to share this DBQ until the release of a second practice DBQ from the College Board so that I could closely align my approach with their prompts and formats. My previous Unit 2 Haitian Revolution DBQ followed a structure more familiar to APUSH and AP African American Studies, focusing on different perspectives on a single topic and using the "Evaluate the extent" phrasing.

Now that the College Board has released two official examples (one in the Course and Exam Description (CED) and one on AP Classroom), I've adjusted my approach for this DBQ to more closely align with these examples by:

1. Using documents spanning multiple units rather than focusing on a single event.

2. Utilizing the "Explain" task verb instead of "Evaluate."

A Deep Dive into Source Selection

Creation of this DBQ started with a hunt for a unique written source for the Tulsa Massacre, this led me down a fascinating research rabbit hole, ultimately bringing me to the Oklahoma State University Archives.

There, I found something incredible: a press clipping from a Tulsa newspaper that had been deliberately destroyed to cover up the massacre— but was saved by a Red Cross worker. The article is a fascinating piece of evidence! The Tulsa Daily World not only promised compensation to Black Tulsans through a premade form that only needed a signature, but it also told them not to bring lawyers and outright stated that Greenwood’s land would be better used for industrial production than as a Black neighborhood.

Source 3 is also unique as I believe the full text hasn’t been transcribed. It comes from the Grand Rapids Public Library archives. Our local press reported on a lecture given by Reverend Henri Browne, the pastor of Messiah Baptist Church, the oldest Black church in our city. It offers a perspective on the harsh economic realities of life in the North for the first wave of travelers in the Great Migration.

I’m excited to share this DBQ with fellow educators! If you use it, let me know how your students engage with it.

The Sources / Notes

Notably missing in these documents is a reference to the G.I. Bill (Essential Knowledge 4.3.C.1). This is by design as it is a simple concrete example that students could use for the outside evidence point.

The 5 documents include 2 required sources:

• Frederick Douglass’s My Bondage and My Freedom (required source 2.9)

• A petition from a committee of Freedmen in South Carolina regarding President Johnson’s directive that white landowners be allowed to return to their land after South Carolina was readmitted into the Union. (3.3 - “40 Acres & a Mule”)

• A public lecture by a Black preacher on life in the North during the early stages of the Great Migration (3.16)

• Newspaper article from Tulsa in the days following the 1921 Massacre (3.6)

• Redlining map of Philadelphia (required source 4.5)

On the AP exam, students will have 45 minutes to read the documents and make a historically defensible claim based on their contextualization and analysis of at least 3 of the 5 documents.