Alexandria Black History Museum - Slave Trading Lesson Plan





Introduction

About This Lesson

Getting Started: Inquiry Question

Setting the Stage: Historical Context

Locating the Site: Map

Determining the Facts: Readings The Trade in Human Chattels An Abolitionist's Perspective on the Alexandria Slave Pen Advertisements for the Sale of "Negroes"
Visual Evidence: Images The Firm of Franklin and Armfield as Featured in an American Anti-Slavery Broadside, 1836 Interior View of Alexandria Slave Pen Exterior View of Alexandria Slave Pen Site Plan of Franklin and Armfield Slave Complex Exterior View of Alexandria Save Pen, 1864
Putting It All Together: Activities Timeline of Developments in the African and Inter-State Slave Trade My Community’s Labor History Slavery through the Eyes of the Enslaved
Supplementary Resources

Lesson Plans: Teaching with Historic Places in Alexandria, Virginia

"A Loathsome Prison:"
Slave Trading in Antebellum Alexandria

Visual Evidence

Photo 2: Interior View of Alexandria Slave Pen

(Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

Slave traders boasted of providing enslaved persons with fairly better conditions than they were accustomed to since they wanted to maintain the value of their merchandise. What do you think of the accommodations at the slave pen? Are the traders’ assertions correct? Why or why not?

Approximately one hundred enslaved persons were usually housed in the slave pens awaiting transport to the South. Do you think that the slave pen can accommodate one hundred enslaved persons adequately? What do you think this does for the daily living conditions of the enslaved?