Hog River Journal Curriculum Lesson Plan

Topic: Mary Townsend Seymour: Progressive Era Reformer, African American History
Article:  “Audacious Alliances” by Mark H. Jones, Volume 1, No. 4 http://www.hogriver.org/issues/v01n04/audacious_alliances.htm.
Written by:  Tracey Wilson, Conard High School, West Hartford CT 06107  tracey_wilson@whps.org; traceymwilson@gmail.com; 860-231-9836


Lesson Overview

Description:  Students will use the material from Mark Jones’s article on Mary Townsend Seymour (1873-1957) to evaluate her accomplishments during the Progressive Era (1890-1925).  Students will learn about her as a Progressive reformer including her work as a leader in the African American community, founder of Hartford’s NAACP chapter, labor organizer, suffragist, and leader in the war effort during World War I. Students will display what they know either by writing her obituary or by writing a paragraph about her to fit into their U.S. History textbook.


State Standards Addressed

Content Standard 1: Historical Thinking.  Students will develop historical thinking skills, including chronological thinking and recognizing change over time; contextualizing, comprehending and analyzing historical literature; researching historical sources; understanding the concept of historical causation; understanding competing narratives and interpretation; and constructing narratives and interpretation.

Content Standard 2: Local, United States, and World History.  Students will use historical thinking skills to develop an understanding of the major historical periods, issues, and trends in United States history, world history, and Connecticut and local history. 

Content Standard 3: Historical Themes.  Students will apply their understanding of historical periods, issues and trends to examine such historical themes as ideals, beliefs, and institutions; conflict and conflict resolution; human movement and interaction; and science and technology in order to understand how the world came to be the way it is.

Content Standard 4: Applying History.  Students will recognize the continuing importance of historical thinking and historical knowledge in their own lives and in the world in which they live.


Historical Background

Mary Townsend Seymour’s activities in Hartford between 1917 and 1920 place her squarely in the Progressive Era. The Progressive Movement included many different reforms, but all had in common the desire to fight abuses of power – in the economy, in government, and in the social and cultural spheres.  Progressive issues included women’s right to vote, city planning, social work for the disadvantaged, school reform, unionization, and government regulation.  For African Americans, segregation and discrimination were important issues as well.

The Progressive Era held many challenges for African Americans.  The Plessy v. Ferguson case (1892) gave federal support to segregated public facilities.  Federal government support for equality, which had been evident during Reconstruction, disappeared.  Pseudoscientific research proclaimed that blacks were intellectually inferior.  State and local governments restricted black rights, freedoms and opportunities. 

As a result, many African Americans chose to migrate north looking for economic opportunity and escaping discrimination and lynching.  Between 1899 and 1915, depleted soil and the boll weevil caused Blacks to move out of the south.  Once World War I began, the number of migrants increased as factories opened their doors to Black migrants.
Those African Americans who moved to cities like Hartford developed their own communities with churches, clubs, and businesses.

African Americans continued to agitate.  They promoted unity and racial pride.  Some tried to earn their inalienable equality by serving in WW I.  Others supported organizations like the National Association of Colored Women and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Urban League.

African Americans had lived in Hartford since the city’s founding in 1636 when they arrived as slaves with the English settlers.  But the population remained small for the next 250 years.  In Hartford, the number of blacks in 1900 stood at about 1,650 out of a total population of 79,850 (2%) and by 1910 rose to 1,745 out of a total population of 98,915 (1.7%).  At that time, the black population was distributed throughout the ten wards of the city.  Seventy percent lived in three wards, but each of the others had at least 5% of the population of the ward.  By 1920, with the city’s total population at 138,036, there were 4,199 African Americans in Hartford, an increase of 140%, though still just 3% of the total population. At least 37% of the blacks in Hartford in 1921 were born in Georgia, a ten-fold increase from 1910.  By the end of the migration, the African American population became more concentrated in the North End and on the East Side on Front Street.

Their arrival, spurred mostly by the surge in jobs offered by the war economy, did not always sit well with blacks who had lived in Hartford for generations, known as Hartford’s Black Yankees.  These newly arrived migrants had less education, were farmers, and were much less sophisticated than those who had been living in the city, some for generations.  This led to tensions and to the Black Yankees reaching out to the migrants in much the same way settlement house workers reached out to European immigrants. 

It is in this milieu that Mary Townsend Seymour was spurred to organize Hartford’s chapter of the NAACP, and work on labor and suffrage issues.

Every U.S. History textbook defines Progressivism.  According to Alan Brinkley in The Unfinished Nation (2000. p. 557), Progressives had an optimistic vision, believed in the idea of progress, believing that growth and progress had to be controlled, believed that purposeful human intervention was necessary to solve the nation’s problems, and believed that government should play a role.  The Progressive’s main issues included democracy, efficiency, regulation of corporations and monopolies, conservation, and social justice.


Objectives

  1. Students will be able to explain how Mary Townsend Seymour is an example of a Progressive reformer.
  2. Students will use “Audacious Alliances” by Mark H. Jones in Hog River Journal to define the ways Mary Townsend Seymour’s actions reflect Progressivism and how they shape her life’s work.
  3. Students will be able to write either an obituary on Seymour or a paragraph placing her in their textbook in the unit on Progressivism.


Authentic Assessment Activity

Assessment #1
Read Mary Seymour’s 120-word obituary from January 14, 1957. Write a 500-word obituary in which you include Seymour’s main accomplishments focusing on her work as an African American, as a woman, as a reformer, and as a community builder.

Assessment #2
Write a paragraph on Mary Seymour for your U.S. History textbook to place in the section on Progressive Reform.  Locate the appropriate page for your paragraph, and then write it.  Pick out the information about Seymour that is most appropriate for this section of the text.  Be sure to connect the information about Seymour to the previous paragraph and the paragraph that follows.


Materials

“Audacious Alliances” by Mark H. Jones, Volume 1, No. 4, Summer 2003. http://www.hogriver.org/issues/v01n04/audacious_alliances.htm.
The following two primary documents are easily accessible to students.  They can use the reading guide provided to glean the key information.

“Merited Tribute to a Cultured Woman,” Hartford Courant, September 11, 1952.  This article acknowledges Seymour’s role on the 35th anniversary of the founding of Hartford’s NAACP.  It supports Seymour as a dedicated reformer and good citizen.

“Mrs. Mary T. Seymour, NAACP Leader, Dies,” Hartford Courant, January 14, 1957. This 120-word obituary hardly does Seymour justice.  See Jones’

Reading Guides #1 and #2 will help students find the important information in the articles.  You may want to jigsaw the Jones article, depending on the age and ability of your students.


Strategies

This lesson could fit in a number of places as Seymour was such a wide-ranging reformer.  It should be taught during the Progressive Reform Era and should use her as an example of the work of reformers throughout the country. 

Be sure students have a working definition of Progressive reform and know what the NAACP is.  Introduce Seymour by having students read her obituary and the article about her service written in 1952. 

Then ask students to either write her obituary or the paragraph for their textbook using the guides provided.


Annotated Bibliography

Carson, Clayborne, et. al. African Americans:  The Struggle for Freedom, New York: Pearson, Longman Press, 2005.  This African American history textbook provides excellent context for Seymour’s life.

“The Colored People Who Lived in Hartford,” Hartford Courant, October 24, 1915.  This article describes the lives of the native born “Colored People” in Hartford, with the highest ranking men, according to the Courant, being janitors, butlers, and doormen.

Johnson, Charles S.  "The Negro Population of Hartford, Connecticut." Published by National Urban League, found at Trinity College Hartford Studies Project, http://www.trincoll.edu/UG/UE/HSP/Collection_PD.htm . This internal report of the National Urban League, 1921 describes at length the migration of southern blacks to Hartford and the results for employment, education, and community churches and organizations.

Jones, Mark. “"To Tell Our Story": Mary Townsend Seymour and the Early Years of Hartford's Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 1917 - 1920.”  Connecticut History, Fall 2005, Vol. 44, Issue 2, p205-223.  This article expands on the information in the Hog River Journal Article

Lewin, Ross. “The Formation of Hartford’s Black Ghetto During the World War I Period,” 1977, typescript in author’s possession.

Martin, Daisy. “From Lecture to Lesson through "Opening Up the Textbook"” OAH Newsletter 36 (November 2008).

 “Merited Tribute to A Cultured Woman,” Hartford Courant, September 11, 1952.  This article acknowledges Seymour’s role on the 35th anniversary of the founding of Hartford’s NAACP.  It supports Seymour as a dedicated reformer.

“Mrs. Mary T. Seymour, NAACP Leader, Dies,” Hartford Courant, January 14, 1957. This 120-word obituary hardly does Seymour justice.  See Jones’ article.

For a general description of African Americans in Connecticut from Colonial to modern time: http://www.ctheritage.org/encyclopedia/topicalsurveys/blacks.htm


Field Trip(s)

A trip to the Old North Cemetery in Hartford would be a place to visit Seymour’s grave.  Seymour could be seen among the graves of members of Connecticut’s 29th Colored Regiment from the Civil War as well as the grave of Frederick Law Olmsted. 


Lesson Journal

Please keep a journal of the pre-lesson, the lesson, and the post lesson, if possible to have taught the lesson by the submission date.  Record your observations, thoughts, and reactions.  These will be used primary to evaluate the lesson and any changes that need to be made in the future.


Reading Guide #1: Mary Townsend Seymour

Read “Mrs. Mary T. Seymour, NAACP Leader, Dies,” Hartford Courant, January 14, 1957.  Record the following information:
Birth date                                Age at death                           Year of death
Place of death                         Place of burial                         Marital status
Name three organizations to which she belonged
            1.

            2.

            3.

Now read “Merited Tribute to A Cultured Woman,” Hartford Courant, Septembe 11, 1952.

  1. What caused Seymour to call a meeting in 1917 to start a chapter of the NAACP?


  2. Seymour dedicated herself to fighting for freedom for which other two groups?


  3. Copy the quote from the Hartford Courant article which evaluates how her “race” has done in the past 35 years.


  4. What were Seymour’s two goals in establishing the NAACP?


  5. Name three people who came to her first meeting who then when on to become famous.  Tell what they were famous for.



  6. How does the Hartford Courant define being a good citizen?


Reading Guide #2: Mary Townsend Seymour

Now read “Audacious Alliances” by Mark H. Jones, Volume 1, No. 4 http://www.hogriver.org/issues/v01n04/audacious_alliances.htm. In this article you will find out more details of Seymour’s life.  When you read, take notes in the following categories.  Find details that would be important to include in an obituary that would summarize Seymour’s life.  Find details that show her as a Progressive Reformer.


Hartford's African American Community

 

Co-founded NAACP Chapter in Hartford

 

Involvement with Labor Issues

 

African American Women and the Vote

 

Now go back and highlight the most important issues to use in your assessment.


Mary Townsend Seymour’s Obituary

Write an obituary for Mary Townsend Seymour.  The 1957 Hartford Courant obituary was short and did not capture the many accomplishments of Seymour’s life.  You have the chance to restore her to her rightful place in Hartford history and establish her as a leader in the African American and reformer communities.  Use the information from the two newspaper articles, and the Hog River Journal Article to write your obituary.

Be sure your obituary follows the appropriate form.  You can start with the first sentence of the Courant obituary.  Then you need to add details of what you consider to be her main accomplishments.  Evaluate what you consider to be her most important work.

Be sure to include the following:

            Role with NAACP, and African American migrants to Hartford

            Role with women’s rights and the suffrage movement

            Role with workers

            Role in building the African American community

            Alliances across race

            Leader in war effort with African Americans

Your obituary will be assessed on the following basis:

  • In the form of an obituary
  • Accurate information from three sources
  • Proper grammar and spelling
  • Establishes the important parts of Seymour’s work, including four of the following
    • NAACP
    • Women’s rights
    • Workers
    • Community building
    • World War I work
    • Alliances across race


    Mary Townsend Seymour Enters our U.S. History Textbook

    Mary Seymour was a quintessential Progressive Reformer and you believe people nationwide should know about her.  You will write a paragraph about her that will fit into your U.S. History textbook.  To accomplish this task, you should follow the steps below:

    1. Find the pages in your textbook about the Progressives.  Find the spot where you think writing about Seymour is most appropriate.
    2. Pick out the issues you want to highlight in Seymour’s life and find the appropriate spot in the textbook section.
    3. Write your paragraph of 5-7 sentences summarizing Seymour’s work.
    4. Read the paragraph before and after your paragraph and be sure your paragraph is connected to that paragraph.

    Rubric:

  • Written in the form of textbook writing
  • Accurate information from three sources
  • Proper grammar and spelling
  • Paragraph connects to previous and next paragraphs
  • Establishes the important parts of Seymour’s work, including three of the following
    • NAACP
    • Women’s rights
    • Workers
    • Community building
    • World War I work
    • Alliances across race