Lunsford Lane: A slave in North Carolina who buys his freedom

In this lesson plan, students read a primary source document to learn about the life of Lunsford Lane, a slave who worked in the city of Raleigh, North Carolina. Students answer questions about Lane based on his memoir to help them understand the details of his life.

A lesson plan for grades 9–12 English Language Arts and Social Studies

By John Schaefer and Victoria Schaefer

Learn more

• Primary source: Lunsford Lane buys his freedom Excerpt from the autobiography of former slave Lunsford Lane, explaining how he was able to purchase his freedom. Includes historical commentary.

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• Mountain dialect: Reading between the spoken lines: This lesson plan uses Chapter 13 of Our Southern Highlanders as a jumping-off point to help students achieve social studies and English language arts objectives while developing an appreciation of the uniqueness of regional speech patterns, the complexities of ethnographic encounter, and the need to interrogate primary sources carefully to identify potential biases and misinformation in them. Historical content includes American slavery, the turn of the century, and the Great Depression.
• The African American experience in NC after Reconstruction: The documents included in this lesson come from The North Carolina Experience collection of Documenting the American South and specifically focus on African Americans and race relations in the early 20th century. The lesson juxtaposes accounts that relate to both the positive improvements of black society and arguments against advancement. Combined, these primary sources and the accompanying lesson plan could be used as a Document Based Question (DBQ) in an AP US history course.
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Related topics

• Learn more about African American history, African Americans, American history, North Carolina, freedom, slavery, social studies, and urban slave.

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Learning outcomes

Students will demonstrate an understanding that slaves could have a variety of jobs and roles.

Teacher planning

Time required for lesson

One to two hours

Materials/resources

• Narrative of Lunsford Lane from the Documenting the American South website
• Guided reading worksheet
• Computer with internet access connected to a multimedia projector
• Computer lab or individual student computers (if not printing out copies of the narrative)

Teacher background

Lunsford Lane’s story is about a slave who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. Though his master owns as many as three plantations outside of Raleigh, Mr. Lane is not a plantation slave. Rather, he works for his master in the city dwelling. His story provides an example of an ingenious, determined, and disciplined slave who’s vision and creativity affords him the opportunity to earn money and eventually buy his freedom.

With this primary source, we expand students’ notions of the kinds of jobs held and skills acquired by slaves, extending beyond the plantation, and the roles they played within their family units. This lesson can be tied to several goals and objectives in both US History and African American History.

Many students think that slaves only worked on large plantations as fieldhands, while in reality slaves performed many other types of work including highly skilled jobs. Lunsford Lane provides an example of a slave who lived in the city of Raleigh with his master.

In addition to meeting a non-plantation slave, students are introduced to a slave who learns to read, becomes an entrepreneur, buys his freedom, and records his life story. Here we catch a glimpse at a human being held as a slave, who became determined to be free, and how that determination shapes his life.

This is an incredible story.

Pre-activities

Students should have an understanding of slavery in the United States and the division it ultimately creates within the country.

Activities

1. Introduce Lunsford Lane and his story, showing the narrative on the DocSouth website. Give a short biographical sketch of Mr. Lane, explaining that he was a slave in Raleigh, North Carolina and that his story provides a glimpse into the life of a non-plantation slave. Explain that he was quite an entrepreneur and eventually saved enough money to buy his freedom.
2. Emphasize that this lesson looks only at the first part of Mr. Lane’s life — focusing on his life as a slave and his efforts to buy his own freedom and that of his family. This lesson is not designed to examine the total story provided by Mr. Lane. Rather, we use this is an example of an urban slave experience, in contrast to the plantation slave experience, as well as an example of a slave who bought his freedom.
3. Provide students with a copy of the Guided Reading Worksheet and access to the selected pages from Lunsford Lane’s narrative (pages 1-24). Students should work either independently or in groups to answer the questions.
4. The teacher should discuss the questions posed by the guided reading worksheet with the class. Projecting certain text passages onto the screen for class discussion would be useful.

Assessment

Assess students based on their responses on their Guided Reading Worksheets, as well as their participation in whole-class discussions.

Supplemental information

Teacher may give additional assignments that are of a creative nature such as the following:

• Draw a sketch of how you imagine Lunsford Lane looked.
• Pretend you are Lunsford Lane speaking to a group of slaves about how he purchased his freedom. Write the speech, including details of what you might have encouraged other slaves to do.

If internet access is not available for all students, a hard-copy of the primary source can be printed out from the DocSouth website.

This lesson plan was created at the 2004 Documenting the South Summer Writing Institute and made possible through funding provided by NC ECHO, Learn NC, the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Education, and the UNC-Chapel Hill library system.