Worksheets and No Prep Teaching Resources Reading Comprehension Worksheets Black History and Blacks in U.S. History A Nation Divided (1840-1861)

Amistad Black History and Blacks in U.S. History

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Amistad
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Reading Level

	edHelper's suggested reading level:	grades 4 to 5
	Flesch-Kincaid grade level:	5.54

Vocabulary

	challenging words:		jubilant, onboard, resold, towed, unchained, anti-slavery, seaman, slavery, affected, script, settled, bribe, supplies, docks, slave, fellow
	content words:		United States, Sierra Leone, Sengbe Pieh, Jose Ruiz, Long Island, New York, United States Navy, New London, Spanish Ruiz, Joseph Cinqué

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Amistad By Jane Runyon

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¹     The story of the Amistad reads like a movie script. As a matter of fact, Hollywood made the story into a movie in 1997. The story is true. The events took place over a two year period in the 1840s. The results affected the way people in the United States saw slavery.
 
²     The story of the Amistad began in Africa. African natives in the area around Sierra Leone were kidnapped. They were sold into slavery. They were put onboard ships and sent to islands in the Caribbean. There they were resold. They were sold to plantation owners in the Caribbean or in the southern states of America.
 
³     Sengbe Pieh was a captured African. He had lived happily with his wife and children near the town of Mani. His village was about a ten day walk from the west coast of Africa. He was a farmer. While working in his field one day, he was taken captive. He was taken to the coast and put onboard a ship that was sailing to Cuba.
 
⁴     While in Cuba, Sengbe was sold to a Spanish plantation owner named Ruiz. Jose Ruiz purchased forty-eight other slaves at the same time. He hired a ship to take his new workers to his plantation three hundred miles away from Havana. The ship Ruiz hired was called the Amistad.

Paragraphs 5 to 14:
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Black History and Blacks in U.S. History

Black History and Blacks in U.S. History

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A Nation Divided
(1840-1861)

A Nation Divided (1840-1861)

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United States

United States

American Government         Black History and Blacks in U.S. History         Children in History         Government Careers         Hispanic Heritage         How Can I Help?

Immigration         National Parks and Monuments         Native Americans         Presidents of the United States         Women's History

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United States History

A Nation Divided (1840-1861)         A New Nation (1776-1830)         After the Civil War (1865-1870)         American Revolution         Cold War (1947-1991)         Colonial America (1492-1776)         Lewis and Clark (1804-1806)         Pearl Harbor         Spanish American War (1898)         The 1890's         The 1900's         The 1910's         The 1920's         The 1930's

The 1940's         The 1950's         The 1960's         The 1970's         The 1980's         The 1990's         The 2000's         The Civil War (1861-1865)         The Great Depression (1929-1945)         The United States Grows (1865-1900)         The War of 1812         Wild, Wild West         World War I (1914-1918)         World War II

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50 States

Fifty States Theme Unit

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Document Based Activities

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