The Shields-Ethridge Farm: The End of a Way of Life (Teaching with Historic Places)

This lesson is part of the National Park Service’s Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) program.

From the late 1700s until the early 1900s, two different families lived at the Shields-Ethridge Farm. One family, the Shields-Ethridge family, were white landowners. The other family was descended from Leah, the first enslaved woman at the farm. Members of this family were African-American enslaved laborers and later wage workers and sharecroppers on the farm. Over 150 years, the members of these families experienced very different fates. In this lesson, students will trace these two families’ experiences at the Shields-Ethridge Farm, learn how these experiences relate to other events in U.S. history, and consider ways of making amends.

Essential Question

Learn about the role cotton farming played in the South after the Civil War and how African Americans shaped the economic landscape.

Objective

1. To describe the role cotton farming played in the South after the Civil War;
2. To explain the work sharecroppers did throughout the year to produce a cotton crop;
3. To identify some of the factors that brought about the end of the sharecropping system in upland Georgia;
4. To research agricultural change in the local community and to plan an exhibit based on such research.

Background

Time Period: 1900-1940
Topics: This lesson could be used in units on the transformation of agriculture in the United States; the era of the Great Depression; and the impact of the New Deal on farms in the southern United States.

Full Lesson Plan