Philadelphia’s Antebellum Black Metropolis: Curriculum and Resource Workshops

Monday & Tuesday August 11 & 12, 2025
11am-1pm on Zoom | 2:30pm-5:00pm onsite
Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1300 Locust Street, Philadelphia
Co-hosted by 1838 Black Metropolis & Historical Society of Pennsylvania

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Through online talks and onsite activities, teachers will explore a curriculum that shares content, strategy, and resources to explore the local free Black community of the 1700 and 1800s. This active, robust, strategic, and innovative free Black community led the struggle for emancipation in the years before the Civil War and demonstrated how the tools of democracy can be deployed to insure a more perfect union.

The virtual workshop will explore the tremendous historical narratives available through the 1838 Black Metropolis’s site along with newly developed curricular resources. It will equip educators outside of Philadelphia with the research skills needed to identify local history resources that portray Black civil rights activism in their neighborhoods or regions. It will also share relevant primary documents from the Library of Congress to put the story of Philadelphia’s Black community in a national context.

The onsite workshop will invite teachers to dive into the primary documents themselves, developing the strategies necessary to read, analyze and deploy these original historical evidences. Activities will model replicable lessons for the classroom. The onsite experience will also include exploration of the actual neighborhood in which this community lived and thrived through an interactive walking tour.

Local registrants are welcome to join the Zoom session from 13th and Locust if easier. Lunch is not provided, but HSP is close to dozens of wonderful restaurants.