Visiting Yale Art Museums

Project LUCID visits The Yale Center for British Art

School to School Visits: Highcrest and LRMS

In April and May of this year Ms. Avery and Mrs. Kopecki's classes came together as they continued studying slavery and the quest for freedom, but this time while exploring the visual arts and poetry.

Session 1: Ms. Avery's students traveled by bus to work collaboratively with their partner class.  Mrs. Kopecki led a Powerpoint discussion with the students on the connection that art makes to a society.  Together they explored the art of Dave, an enslaved African American potter from South Carolina who began making pottery around the early 1820’s up until the mid-to-late 1860’s. Dave was a skilled artisan, able to throw very large pots often up to 40 gallons or more.  He was able to read and write, which was uncommon for a slave living in the South at this time.  Dave often signed his work and wrote short poems on his vessels.  The poetry and pottery created by Dave serve as excellent primary source artifacts that shed great light on life and conditions of slavery in the first half of the 19th century.

After the powerpoint, the students listened to an PBS podcast  from Leonard Todd’s book, ‘Carolina Clay: The Life and Legend of the Slave Potter, Dave." 

Students also viewed images and text from  recently published book: "Dave the Potter:  Artist, Poet, Slave" by Laban Carrick Hill and Bryan Collier.

After a group discussion about Dave and his life, the students chose one of Dave's poems and held small group discussions on the poem's meaning, continuing to learn about Dave's life as a slave and his desire for freedom, current themes of his poetry.  The day finished with the classes creating their own clay plate. Students shaped their slab into a decorative plate shape, trimming edges and some adding decorative borders and various textures.  Plates were then left to dry at Highcrest, fired in the kiln and transported to LRMS for their completion.

Session 2: The classes next got together at LRMS.  Ms. Avery led a Powerpoint discussion on the celebration of "Juneteenth," a commemoration of African American freedom.  Students wrote their own poems on freedom.  They used various underglazes to write their poem on their plate and to embellish their plates with the colors, patterns and symbols. Plates were fired in the kiln and proudly displayed. Just like 'Dave the Potter', students were able to connect their art with both the written and visual language.

Videoconferencing Task # 2: "Escape From Slavery"

 The Project Lucid students read fugitive slave stories from the book entitled, Escape From Slavery by Doreen Rappaport.  The students read one of the five stories of escape and drew a picture illustrating an important scene from the story.  They next summarized the scene and shared their drawings with both their fellow classmates and as well as virtually with their videoconferencing partners. 

Field Trip 2: Visiting "Fortune's World" at the Mattatuck Museum

On April 4th our students visited the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury CT. Our day focused on the impact of slavery in Waterbury. We toured the Waterbury Green and discovered so many interesting facts about life in early Waterbury, learned about the Porter family and the slaves that lived here too! In the museum our docents shared several exhibits with us, helping us to see what life what like in early Waterbury and everyone's favorite exhibit, 'Fortune's Story'.

Graphic Novel Workshop

Attended a great series of Saturday workshops (Jan 22 and Feb 12) on using the Graphic Novel in your teaching, at the Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

Coming soon, a Graphic Novel on Slavery!

"Slavery's Storm" Bentley Boyd

"Teaching American History Grant"

LLHP Summer Institute Brown Chapel
 AME Selma Alabama

For the last two years, Mrs. Kopecki & Ms. Avery have been participants of the "Teaching American History Grant" held at ACES in Hamden. ACES has been awarded $1,000,000 as part of the 2008 Teaching American History federal grant program. ACES will work in conjunction with the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition and the Yale History Department to conduct a multi-year, document-intensive professional development institute for middle school and high school teachers on the history and development of the idea and practice of democracy in America. Each project year, historians and cultural institutions work



After school lecture on Slavery
TAH Grant ACES Hamden

with participants on content, highlighting a period of U.S. history that influenced the development of democracy, with special attention given to key documents related to the specific subject. The five broad themes are: The Foundations of American Democracy, Slavery and Emancipation, The Struggle for Democracy in Twentieth Century American, Women and the Struggle for Inclusion, and Race, Ethnicity, and Civil Rights." The year

long learning on slavery provided by the 'TAH Grant" provided a great deal of knowledge and inspiration for our unit on slavery.  Click here to see lesson plans created by  TAH participants.

Field Trip #1: Studying the Slave Trade at the Yale Museums of British and American Art

The Project LUCID students enjoyed their first face-to-face gathering as they toured the Yale Center for British Art and The Yale University Art Gallery.  In the first session the students examined pieces of British Art from the 18th century while Great Britain was an empire engaged in the slave trade.   In the second session, the students examined West African artifacts as well as some contemporary artwork with themes connected to slavery. The students were asked to look beyond the surface when studying works of art and see the deeper connections that the art piece may reveal.  Both programs engaged the students in visual literacy while fostering discussion, critical looking and thinking skills.  Thank you to both museums for a wonderful morning!

As a post visit activity the students created graphic illustrations of their trip to the art museums.

Videoconferencing Task 1: Learning About The Middle Passage

The students have started the new Project Lucid year with some background on the Slavery in America.  Next they read and responded to a primary source document on the "Middle Passage" passage. Through video conferencing and journaling the students shared their responses with their Project:LUCID partners.  

Early European settlers in America had a lot of work to do, but not many people to do it. To solve the problem, they brought slaves from Africa to do the work. Slavery was a cruel experience that has left lasting effects on American life.

Slavery began in the U.S. Colonies in the early 1600’s and lasted until 1865. By that time, the slave population was approximately 4 million people. 95% of slaves in America lived in the Southern states. European slave traders kidnapped people from Africa and shipped them to America. Slaves were chained so that they could not escape or fight back. They were sent by ship across the Atlantic Ocean. The terrible voyage, called the “Middle Passage,” lasted up to a month. As many as half of the slaves died along the way.

Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797)

Olaudah Equiano was abducted at the young age of 11 from his Ibo village in West Africa (Benin) and enslaved, endured the terrible "middle passage" and was sold into slavery.  Thirty years later he was able to purchase his freedom and wrote his famous autobiography, "The Life of Olaudah Equiano."  His slave narrative was very influential in bringing about an end to slavery, especially in Great Britain.  He later became an abolitionist and spent the last part of his life traveling the world speaking out against the cruelty of slavery. 

The excerpt below describes his voyage from Africa to the New World. 

[1] "I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a salutation (greeting) in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life: so that with the loathsomeness of the stench (stink) and crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste anything....two of the white men offered me eatables, and on my refusing to eat, one of them held me fast by the hands and laid me across I think the windlass, and tied my feet while the other flogged (whipped) me severely. I had never experienced anything of this kind before, and although, not being used to the water, I naturally feared that element the first time I saw it, yet nevertheless could I have got over the nettings I would have jumped over the side, but I could not; and besides, the crew used to watch us very closely who were not chained down to the decks, lest we should leap into the water...

[2] The stench (stink) of the hold (below deck) while we were on the coast was so intolerably loathsome that it was dangerous to remain there for any time, and some of us had been permitted to stay on the deck for the fresh air; but now that the whole ship's cargo were confined together it became absolutely pestilential (sickening). The closeness of the place and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us. This produced copious perspirations, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration (breathing)  from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died...The shrieks of the women and the groans of the dying rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable. Happily perhaps for myself I was soon reduced so low (I was getting very sick) here that it was thought necessary to keep me almost always on deck, and from my extreme youth I was not put in fetters (chains). In this situation I expected every hour to share the fate of my companions, some of whom were almost daily brought upon deck at the point of death, which I began to hope would soon put an end to my miseries. Often did I think many of the inhabitants of the deep much more happy than myself. I envied them the freedom they enjoyed, and as often wished I could change my condition for theirs...

[3] One day they had taken a number of fishes, and when they had killed and satisfied themselves with as many as they thought fit, to our astonishment who were on the deck, rather than give any of them to us to eat as we expected, they tossed the remaining fish into the sea again, although we begged and prayed for some as well as we could, but in vain; and some of my countrymen, being pressed by hunger, took an opportunity when they thought no one saw them of trying to get a little privately; but they were discovered, and the attempt procured them some very severe floggings (whippings).

[4] One day, when we had a smooth sea and moderate wind, two of my wearied countrymen who were chained together (I was near them at the time), preferring death to such a life of misery, somehow made through the nettings and jumped into the sea: immediately another quite dejected fellow, who, on account of his illness, was suffered to be out of irons, also followed their example; and I believe many more would very soon have done the same if they had not been prevented by the ship’s crew, who were instantly alarmed...''

Discussion Questions: 
1. Describe what the middle passage was like.  Why was it often so deadly?


2. What would you have found most difficult about the middle passage?