Extension Activities

Family Tree Worksheet

Created specifically for readers of Kin, this worksheet can be used to start your own journey in exploring your family, your ancestors. and their lives. Partners can print out copies and distribute at your events.

Nature

Carole Boston Weatherford highlights the importance nature plays in the everyday lives of both the enslaved and their enslavers.

a. Select four poems from Kin: Rooted in Hope that incorporate the importance of nature, and discuss how they do this.

b. Research some wild fruits and edible grasses that occur naturally in your area. Create a presentation or report that includes their edibility, their optimal growth environment and season, any animals or insects that use these fruits/grasses as a primary diet source, and any meals, dishes, or medicinal salves they could be incorporated into.

Music

Listen to music that was performed by the Fisk Jubilee Singers, for example this 1909 recording.

a. Describe your reactions.

b. Research how this group came to be.

c. Identify insights you discovered about the Fisk Jubilee Singers in this news report. What is the current status of the group?

d. Listen to other performers that recorded songs about African American experiences—whether folk or work songs, spirituals, etc.—such as Odetta, Oscar Brown Jr., Nina Simone, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Abbey Lincoln, and Rhiannon Giddens (who has resolved to highlight roots music and recently won a Pulitzer Prize for music, her second Grammy Award, and a MacArthur fellowship). Describe your reactions.

e. These songs are examples of how music can tell a story and have an impact on social movements. Discuss how listeners during and after the time periods of these songs can continue to react to these songs to learn about Black narratives and resistance.

Stories

Slave narratives, historic records, and books and articles written by historians document enslavement resistance ranging from breaking tools to poisonings, fires, and revolts.

a. Select one of the movies listed and watch it. Write a review for one of the following movies: Amistad, 12 Years a Slave, and Harriet. Identify major themes, point of view, character development, and historical accuracy. Would you critique or defend the film as an appropriate or fair representation of this history?

b. How does the form/genre/writing of the film affect its ability to impact the viewer?

c. Locate interviews with Carole Boston Weatherford (PBS, Reading Rocket, author’s page, etc.). Many of these can be found on YouTube. What insights does she reveal about her writing (e.g., choice of topic, genre, format, etc.)? How do her different choices impact how she is telling her narratives?

Math

Plantation records provide stark realities of the financial aspects of purchasing a human and providing meager food and clothing, the sale of products produced on the farm or plantation, and how inheriting enslaved people improved the economic standing and lifestyles of the enslavers.

a. Document the rise in economic status of the Lloyd family in a graph. Create a key that explains the points on the graph. What insights can be acquired from the graph?

Information Searches

Developing research skills is necessary for critical thinking and discernment that goes beyond using Google. Librarians and media specialists welcome your queries.

a. Interview a librarian about the best techniques for locating information about slavery and the use of archives.

b. Review information included in the author’s note, bibliography, and back matter. Identify an archive (museum, library, online source, etc) used by the author, and document the information contained within it. Discuss why the author used these particular archives. Why was it relevant to creating the book? What were the advantages to using it? What are some of the challenges a researcher faces when trying to access an archive?

c. Interview a member or members of your own kin (birth, adopted, or chosen family) or someone in your community to learn their history and record their stories. If you’re not sure where to start, ask them about what their life was like when they were your age. Create a presentation or write an essay that captures these experiences.

d. Discuss the oppressive purpose of unmarked and anonymous graves of enslaved people on plantations. Consider having students research various grieving and mourning practices from different African countries and cultures and present their findings to the class.

e. Alternatively, you can also consider ways that African Americans are working to preserve and/or remember the histories of enslaved peoples on plantations. Some examples to consider: The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s work on ethical stewardship and interpretation plantations or the building of petrochemical plants in of Cancer Alley in Louisiana.

e. Using your school or local library, or trusted online sources, research the ways in which slavery in the United States was different from other forms of slavery across time and in other countries.

Music Vocabulary

Some of the types of music created by the enslaved include work songs, coded songs about flight and freedom, and spirituals or “sorrow songs”; later, African Americans created the blues, gospel, jazz, and rock and roll.

a. Describe the ways in which the book includes references to these genres of music.

b. African instruments brought to the Americas included drums, banjos, balafon, flute, and panpipe. Read this article on the University of Houston’s Digital History website and discuss as a class the key points it makes.

c. Many spirituals were coded songs that the enslaved sang to share with one another hidden messages about flight and freedom. Identify three coded spirituals and discuss the hidden messages they contain.

Interdisciplinary / Music

Music is integral to all cultures. African Americans are credited with creating the blues, gospel, jazz, rock and roll, and rap, and significantly influencing others. Wynton Marsalis and Rhiannon Giddens are two exceptional composers and musicians that have received critical acclaim and honors.

a. What views do Marsalis and Giddens hold about music, performance, and creative processes? How do they compare with your own views on how music is made, presented, and heard?

b. Identify why each received the Pulitzer Prize for music. Review information on the Pulitzer Prize website. Marsalis was the first jazz musician to win the prize.

c. Both created music that explored slavery. Listen to excerpts from each prize-winning body of work (Omar and Blood on the Fields), and describe your reactions. How does musical genre influence the presentation of information?

Art

Cover art, frontispiece, back pages, endpapers, and other formatting decisions shape the interpretation of a poem, fiction, or nonfiction. Jeffery Boston Weatherford selected scratchboard as the style for the book’s illustrations. Watch a video of him describing his artistic journey.

a. Read interviews with Jeffery Boston Weatherford found on the PBS website, YouTube, and elsewhere, and identify key aspects of his artistic philosophy.

b. Collect or check out several books illustrated by Jeffery Boston Weatherford from the library. Identify the artistic style of each. How does the style generate certain reactions from the readers? Does he lean toward a particular style, or does he incorporate an eclectic style?

c. Become the artist: Using photos of family members or loved ones, work on creating portraits of your own kin. You could try working in Jeffery Boston Weatherford’s style or your own.

Cooking

Weatherford carefully compares and contrasts the variety of dishes enjoyed by the enslavers and the meager amounts of food given to the enslaved. Consider reviewing plantation records for similarities.

a. Analyze the diets of the enslaved for their nutritional value. Consider or research the ability of the enslaved to work endlessly on these meager diets.

b. Additionally, you may want to extend this conversation to the continued disenfranchisement of African Americans today along food lines; consider examples such as food deserts in Black communities or the food treatment of imprisoned people, of which 32% are Black.

c. Many enslaved people were chosen to be cooks because of their knowledge around food. How might the enslaved learn to cook the fancy meals found in the book?

c. Read cookbooks written by African Americans such as Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking (T. Tipton-Martin); The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South (M. W. Twitty); and High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America (J. B. Harris & M. Angelou). Comparable cookbooks exist about Caribbean, Central American, and South American cuisine. Identify the key history in each. How do the cookbooks differ or present similar information? Alternatively, consider how enslaved cooks used their knowledge and ingenuity with the food sources they were allowed to develop these culinary traditions.

d. Talk to your family about the food and meals that are traditions for them. Collect a few of these recipes by writing out the ingredients and the cooking instructions on a piece of paper and put it in a binder. On another piece of paper, draw or place a photograph of the finished meal to create a personal family cookbook. Consider also asking your family member where the recipes originated in your family and what has changed about them over the years, or why they haven’t changed at all.

Social Studies

Slave narratives were collected in the eighteenth through twentieth centuries. Those produced through the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s often have recorded memories of the formerly enslaved.

a. Why is the collection of enslaved narratives important? What makes it an important part of the WPA’s work? Discuss the process of identifying the formerly enslaved and the collection of their personal histories.

b. You may also want to consider the race and gender of the interviewers – Zora Neale Hurston was one of the many interviewers. How might her identity impacted collecting the narratives differently?

c. Identify and list how the narratives differ on the basis of gender, age, type of plantation and crops, and location of the enslaved—for example, slavery in the North, Southwest, mid-Atlantic states, and deep South (Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, etc.).

c. Listen to slave narratives in the Library of Congress. Afterwards, take some time to reflect and react through writing.

d. “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “Lift Every Voice and Sing” are considered the American national anthem and the African American national anthem, respectively. Compare and contrast each stanza of each anthem. For whom is each written? What is controversial about the third stanza of the “Star-Spangled Banner”? Discuss why brothers J. Rosamond and James Weldon Johnson wrote “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”

e. Read the poem and examine the time line of “A Tale of Two Statues,” which starts on page 184. After reading, provide printouts of articles about the removal of the Common Soldier statue, or another statue in your area or region, and lead a civil discussion about the meaning behind the statue, its location, dedication, etc. Discuss what the statue’s presence and its removal means, and what it tells you about its surrounding community or society.

1. Discuss recently erected statues and art installations in your area, and what these mean to students. What stories do statues tell about a community? Who gets to have a statue, and why? Who should decide, and how? Consider hosting a class debate about the removal of statues, and whether the act is erasing history or displaying cultural growth.
2. Students can create their own “Tale” by having them choose one or two statues or monuments from a list of those available in their state or region. Using trusted library and internet resources, as well as their city’s historical archives, research the history of the person the statue or monument represents, the erection of the statue, and how the decision to build it came about. Students should then create a poem from the statue’s perspective about its “life” and what people think of it.

Poetry

Write a poem that describes your responses to slavery. Identify and review other books written in poetic forms that parallel Kin, such as books written by Marilyn Nelson.

Back Matter

The author’s afterword provides more detailed information about the catalysts for the book. Similar to others searching for their personal histories, Carole Boston Weatherford explores her African ancestry as a means of acquiring knowledge about her family’s history in America.

a .Explain how the 1619 Project and the “Year of Return” to Ghana on the four hundredth anniversary of the Transatlantic slave trade influenced Boston Weatherford’s crafting of the poetry collection.

b. What insights can be gleaned about the author’s search for information from her bibliography?

c. Identify key points in Jeffery Boston Weatherford’s illustrator’s note.