Common Core Standards
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Book: Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self
Author: Danielle Evans
Grade Level: 9-12
Lesson Type: Culture & History
Our Football Field Was a Civil
War Graveyard
Concept: Civil War Memory in the Contemporary South
Primary Subject Area: US Culture & History
Secondary Subject Areas: English
Common Core Standards Addressed:
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Grades 11-12
Grades 9-10
Key Ideas and Details
o Determine a theme or central idea of a text and
analyze in detail its development over the
course of the text, including how it emerges and
is shaped and refined by specific details; provide
an objective summary of the text.
Integration of Knowledge and Ideas
Key Ideas and Details
o Analyze the impact of the author’s choices
regarding how to develop and relate elements of a
story or drama (e.g. where a story is set, how the
action is ordered, how the characters are introduced
and developed).
o Analyze how an author draws on and
transforms source material in a specific work
(e.g. how Shakespeare treats a theme or topic
from Ovid or the Bible or how a later author
draws on a play by Shakespeare).
Footer-Title Field (double-click to edit): Common Core Standards
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Lesson Plan
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Our Football Field Was a Civil
War Graveyard
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Book: Before You Suffocate Your Own
Fool Self
Author: Danielle Evans
Grade Level: 9-12
Lesson Type:Culture & History
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Overview:
The class will discuss Danielle Evans’s short story “Robert E. Lee Is
Dead” in her collection Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self focusing on
the story’s themes of Civil War memory and segregation along racial and
class-based lines. Students will compare the story to an excerpt from
WEB DuBois’s The Souls of Black Folk, which the narrator, CeeCee, reads at
the start of the story.
Materials:
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Whiteboard/Chalkboard
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Excerpt from The Souls of
Black Folk
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Copies of Before You
Suffocate Your Own Fool Self
Objectives:
Students will be able to:
• Analyze and compare texts belonging to very different genres
and written with very different purposes
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Isolate specific arguments in DuBois’s writing
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Find rhetoric in a short story and see how a piece of fiction can
make an argument
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Understand the historical context of CeeCee’s experiences
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Fully construct the world that Evans implies in the story
Other Resources:
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Key Vocabulary Terms
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General
Discussion/Comprehensio
n Questions
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Text References Useful for
Analysis Assignments or
Essay Question
Warm-Up Activity:
Have the students read paragraphs 1-3 and 5-7 from the excerpt
from The Souls of Black Folk. As a class, summarize what
Washington advocated in 1-2 sentences, and then do the same for
DuBois’s opposition. Write each one on the board, with plenty of
space underneath for students to fill later. Ask students what
might have motivated Washington to argue for the temporary
sacrifice of political power, civil rights, and higher education.
Lead the class to the idea that Washington was afraid of white
aggression and backlash against Reconstruction.
Footer-Title Field (double-click to edit): Lesson Plan
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Lesson Plan
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Our Football Field Was a Civil
War Graveyard
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Book: Before You Suffocate Your Own
Fool Self
Author: Danielle Evans
Grade Level: 9-12
Lesson Type:Culture & History
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Short Lecture:
Transition from the Warm-Up into a roughly 10-minute lecture
on Reconstruction after the Civil War and its failure, which led
to the creation of Jim Crow laws. Specifically locate Booker T.
Washington, the Tuskegee Institute, and WEB DuBois in this
time period. If time, show History Channel video “The Failure of
Reconstruction.”Ask students how Reconstruction and Jim
Crow shaped the South of Evans’ story. Answers should
include: the names of the high schools, Robert E. Lee’s “de facto
segregation” (p. 206) and resulting achievement gap (p. 215), the
Rebel Yell football game and prize Confederate sword (p. 204).
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Partner Activities:
Return to the two arguments summarized on the board. Ask
students, in pairs, to find and underline statements in “Robert E.
Lee Is Dead” that align with either one of those arguments. Then
each pair will come to the board, write one statement under the
summary of either Washington or DuBois’s argument, and
explain why they believe it belongs there. For example: “We
think that when Eric says, ‘I go to Robert E. Lee High School, I
know damn well ain’t no Souls of Black Folk required reading.
Maybe Black Folk Ain’t Got No Souls, Who The Hell Told ‘Em to
Stop Picking Cotton, Anyway?’” (p. 207) he agrees with DuBois
that educational systems that do not encourage AfricanAmericans to advance, as we have seen is true of Robert. E Lee
High School, are dehumanizing.”
Discussion Wrap-Up:
Return to the original summaries of the arguments from The Souls of Black Folk. Ask the class to
generate a similar (though it can be longer) summary of Danielle Evans’s argument about race
and educational disparities in “Robert E. Lee Is Dead.” The class will use the statements they
collected on the board as evidence. !
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Writing Activities/Evaluations:!
Footer-Title Field (double-click to edit): Lesson Plan
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Lesson Plan
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Our Football Field Was a Civil
War Graveyard
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Book: Before You Suffocate Your Own
Fool Self
Author: Danielle Evans
Grade Level: 9-12
Lesson Type:Culture & History
! Analytical:
Write an 8-10 sentence paragraph discussing CeeCee’s plan to vandalize Robert E. Lee, p. 208-212. Why is
it important that nobody cares about the school? How does this scene foreshadow the end of the story?
Creative:
Write a 1-2 page dialogue between either CeeCee and Geena or CeeCee and Mrs. Peterson about The Souls
of Black Folk. Think about what CeeCee would want each of them to understand from the text you just
read. What would she find most important or interesting? How would she explain it? Try to match her
voice in your writing to her voice as a narrator.
Footer-Title Field (double-click to edit): Lesson Plan
4
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Discussion & Comprehension Questions
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Our Football Field Was a Civil
War Graveyard
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Book: Before You Suffocate Your Own
Fool Self
Author: Danielle Evans
Grade Level: 9-12
Lesson Type: Culture & History
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Who were Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, and why is this important to the story?
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How does Evans’ story show the impact of Jim Crow laws?
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How does the achievement gap at CeeCee’s high school bear out DuBois’s argument that
Washington was wrong to de-emphasize higher education?
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During her summer at the state university, CeeCee learns that the world is not “just a bigger
version of Lee High School—a line running down the middle of it and people on either side
telling me that I didn’t really belong there” (p. 217). Why is this lesson important for her to
learn? And what exactly is the dividing line at Lee? (Use to call attention, at least briefly, to
the role of immigration in this story.)
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How is Robert E. Lee dead at the end of the story?!
Footer-Title Field (double-click to edit): Discussion & Comprehension Questions
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Key Vocabulary
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Our Football Field Was a Civil
War Graveyard
Word:
Definition:
Redundant
Unnecessary, superfluous, extra
Affectation
An assumed manner of speech, dress, or behavior
Prominent
Standing out, noticeable; widely known
Saunter
A leisurely walk or stroll
Mystify
Confuse, baffle
Anomaly
Deviation from the normal order
Capacity
The amount that can be contained; the ability to contain
Footer-Title Field (double-click to edit): Key Vocabulary
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Book: Before You Suffocate Your Own
Fool Self
Author: Danielle Evans
Grade Level: 9-12
Lesson Type: Culture & History
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Footer-Title Field (double-click to edit): Text References
Text References
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Our Football Field Was a Civil
War Graveyard
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Book: Before You Suffocate Your Own
Fool Self
Author: Danielle Evans
Grade Level: 9-12
Lesson Type: Culture & History
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Footer-Title Field (double-click to edit): Class Handout
Title Field: Class Handout
Name:
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W.E.B. DuBois
The Souls of Black Folk
(1903)
Excerpts from the Original Electronic Text at the web site of the Bartleby Project, Columbia
University.
W.E.B. Dubois articulated an alternative to the approach advocated by Booker T.
Washington. Dubois was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. at Harvard, and he went
on to become a professor at Atlanta University and the University of Pennsylvania. In 1905,
he and his followers founded the National Associated for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP). In his famous work, The Souls of Black Folk, published in 1903, he criticised the
philosophy of Booker T. Washington. In it he refers to the "Atlanta Compromise," a famous
speech made by Booker T. Washington in 1895. As Dubois understood the speech, Booker T.
Washington argued that blacks should focus on economic gains and not agitate for political
or civil rights or challenge segregation, in effect submitting to second-class citizenry.
III
Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others
[1] EASILY the most striking thing in the history of the American Negro since 1876 is the
ascendancy of Mr. Booker T. Washington. It began at the time when war memories and
ideals were rapidly passing; a day of astonishing commercial development was dawning; a
sense of doubt and hesitation overtook the freedmen's sons,--then it was that his leading
began. Mr. Washington came, with a simple definite programme, at the psychological
moment when the nation was a little ashamed of having bestowed so much sentiment on
Negroes, and was concentrating its energies on Dollars. His programme of industrial
education, conciliation of the South, and submission and silence as to civil and political rights,
was not wholly original; the Free Negroes from 1830 up to wartime had striven to build
industrial schools, and the American Missionary Association had from the first taught
various trades; and Price and others had sought a way of honorable alliance with the best of
the Southerners. But Mr. Washington first indissolubly linked these things; he put
enthusiasm, unlimited energy, and perfect faith into this programme, and changed it from a
by-path into a veritable Way of Life. And the tale of the methods by which he did this is a
fascinating study of human life.
[2] It startled the nation to hear a Negro advocating such a programme after many decades of
bitter complaint; it startled and won the applause of the South, it interested and won the
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Footer-Title Field (double-click to edit): Class Handout
Title Field: Class Handout
Name:
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admiration of the North; and after a confused murmur of protest, it silenced if it did not
convert the Negroes themselves.
[3] To gain the sympathy and coöperation of the various elements comprising the white South
was Mr. Washington's first task; and this, at the time Tuskegee was founded, seemed, for a
black man, well-nigh impossible. And yet ten years later it was done in the word spoken at
Atlanta: "In all things purely social we can be as separate as the five fingers, and yet one as
the hand in all things essential to mutual progress." This "Atlanta Compromise" is by all
odds the most notable thing in Mr. Washington's career. The South interpreted it in different
ways: the radicals received it as a complete surrender of the demand for civil and political
equality; the conservatives, as a generously conceived working basis for mutual
understanding. So both approved it, and to-day its author is certainly the most distinguished
Southerner since Jefferson Davis, and the one with the largest personal following.
[4] Among his own people, however, Mr. Washington has encountered the strongest and most
lasting opposition, amounting at times to bitterness, and even to-day continuing strong and
insistent even though largely silenced in outward expression by the public opinion of the
nation. Some of this opposition is, of course, mere envy; the disappointment of displaced
demagogues and the spite of narrow minds. But aside from this, there is among educated and
thoughtful colored men in all parts of the land a feeling of deep regret, sorrow, and
apprehension at the wide currency and ascendancy which some of Mr. Washington's theories
have gained. These same men admire his sincerity of purpose, and are willing to forgive much
to honest endeavor which is doing something worth the doing. They coöperate with Mr.
Washington as far as they conscientiously can; and, indeed, it is no ordinary tribute to this
man's tact and power that, steering as he must between so many diverse interests and
opinions, he so largely retains the respect of all. . . .
[5] Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and
submission; but adjustment at such a peculiar time as to make his programme unique. This is
an age of unusual economic development, and Mr. Washington's programme naturally takes
an economic cast, becoming a gospel of Work and Money to such an extent as apparently
almost completely to overshadow the higher aims of life. Moreover, this is an age when the
more advanced races are coming in closer contact with the less developed races, and the racefeeling is therefore intensified; and Mr. Washington's programme practically accepts the
alleged inferiority of the Negro races. Again, in our own land, the reaction from the sentiment
of war time has given impetus to race-prejudice against Negroes, and Mr. Washington
withdraws many of the high demands of Negroes as men and American citizens. In other
periods of intensified prejudice all the Negro's tendency to self-assertion has been called
forth; at this period a policy of submission is advocated. In the history of nearly all other
races and peoples the doctrine preached at such crises has been that manly self-respect is
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Footer-Title Field (double-click to edit): Class Handout
Title Field: Class Handout
Name:
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worth more than lands and houses, and that a people who voluntarily surrender such respect,
or cease striving for it, are not worth civilizing.
[6] In answer to this, it has been claimed that the Negro can survive only through submission.
Mr. Washington distinctly asks that black people give up, at least for the present, three
things,-First, political power,
Second, insistence on civil rights,
Third, higher education of Negro youth,-and concentrate all their energies on industrial education, the accumulation of wealth, and
the conciliation of the South. This policy has been courageously and insistently advocated for
over fifteen years, and has been triumphant for perhaps ten years. As a result of this tender
of the palm-branch, what has been the return? In these years there have occurred:
1. The disfranchisement of the Negro.
2. The legal creation of a distinct status of civil inferiority for the Negro.
3. The steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for the higher training of the Negro.
[7] These movements are not, to be sure, direct results of Mr. Washington's teachings; but his
propaganda has, without a shadow of doubt, helped their speedier accomplishment. The
question then comes: Is it possible, and probable, that nine millions of men can make effective
progress in economic lines if they are deprived of political rights, made a servile caste, and
allowed only the most meagre chance for developing their exceptional men? If history and
reason give any distinct answer to these questions, it is an emphatic No. And Mr. Washington
thus faces the triple paradox of his career:
1. He is striving nobly to make Negro artisans business men and property-owners; but it
is utterly impossible, under modern competitive methods, for workingmen and
property-owners to defend their rights and exist without the right of suffrage.
2. He insists on thrift and self-respect, but at the same time counsels a silent submission to
civic inferiority such as is bound to sap the manhood of any race in the long run.
3. He advocates common-school and industrial training, and depreciates institutions of
higher learning; but neither the Negro common-schools, nor Tuskegee itself, could
remain open a day were it not for teachers trained in Negro colleges, or trained by their
graduates.
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Footer-Title Field (double-click to edit): Supplementary Materials Chart
Title Field: Supplementary Materials Chart
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Category of
Resource
Exhibit
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Description of
Resource
Potential Educational
Uses of Resource
Link to Resource
Articles
Excerpt from The
Soul of Black Folk on
Booker T.
Washington and the
Atlanta Compromise
(on handout, website
is source)
Video
“The Failure of
Reconstruction”
Students will discuss the
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Magazine
Article
Photo Gallery
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