Written by Grace Smith

We are looking high and low for the best educational web sites active today. The School House presents the Too Cool School House Educational Site of the Week as carefully selected by our resident educator, Grace Smith. Check it out, and happy learning!
 

Melrose Interactive Slavery Environment Week of 02/07/2005 http://206.137.17.63/melrose/melrose.htm The Melrose Interactive Slavery Environemnt takes students into Melrose, a pre-Civil War "suburban estate." Students will explore the estate from the perspective of the men, women, and children who were enslaved there. The real-life Melrose, in Natchez Mississippi, was the home of the McMurran family, who owned all or part of five plantations in one of the wealthiest slave-based districts of the lower-South. Today, Melrose is part of the Natchez Historical Park administered by the United States Park Service. Many pre-Civil War planters built suburban estates close to towns and urban communities, preferring to live there in luxury rather than on their working plantations surrounded by the dust and harsh conditions that came with growing cotton, rice, tobacco, or sugar with enslaved field labor. These great houses were the centers of the genteel southern life romanticized in so many books and films. Life was not so genteel, however, for the 23 people who were enslaved at Melrose in 1850. As students will find when they enter the estate, the slaves' day usually began before sunrise and continued long after the McMurran family was asleep. As the visitor moves from room to room in the big house, and from structure to structure on the estate, he or she hears voices representing the African-American people who worked there, explaining the kind of work that consumed their entire lives as enslaved domestic servants. A lesson plan based on the Melrose experience will be available soon. Rating: timely and thought-provoking

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Have a suggestion for a site? Mail it to the Grace: gracemi@comcast.net