Roots Lesson Plan

Roots is an account of African-American history in the United States that takes into account the culture and history of Africans in their home continent prior to being enslaved. This seminal work made a major contribution to extending the history of African-Americans beyond their (usually involuntary) arrival in the United States, and attempted to describe the fullness of their lives in the small African villages where they had lived for at least hundreds of years. This was a major contribution to both literature and history, both because it led other Americans to try to find their histories and because it brought into stark relief the fact that slavery was a completely dehumanizing...