Entry written by Mary Ann Cappiello and Amina Chaudri, on behalf of The Biography Clearinghouse.
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Research & Writing ProcessWho is Don Tate?Don Tate is an award-winning author, and the illustrator of numerous critically acclaimed books for children. He is also one of the founding hosts of the blog The Brown Bookshelf – a blog designed to push awareness of the myriad of African American voices writing for young readers, with book reviews, author and illustrator interviews -- and a one-time member of the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign, created to address the lack of diverse, non-majority narratives in children’s literature. Don’s books include Carter Reads The Newspaper (Peachtree Publishing, 2019), No Small Potatoes: Junius G. Groves and his Kingdom in Kansas (Knopf, 2018), Whoosh! Lonnie Johnson’s Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions (Charlesbridge, 2016), The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch (Eerdmans, 2015) and many others. He is also the author of Poet: The Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton (Peachtree,2015); It Jes’ Happened: When Bill Traylor Started To Draw (Lee & Low Books, 2102), both books are Ezra Jack Keats award winners, and recently, Strong As Sandow: How Eugen Sandow Became The Strongest Man on Earth (Charlesbridge, 2017), Par-Tay! Dance of the Veggies (and their friends), written by Eloise Greenfield (Alazar, 2018), and Stalebread Charlie and the Razzy Dazzy Spasm Band, written by Michael Mahin (Clarion, 2018). Don’s latest titles include William Still and his Freedom Stories: Father of the Underground Railroad (Peachtree Publishing Company, Nov. 2020), and Swish! The Slam-Dunking, Alley-Ooping, High-Flying Harlem Globetrotters, written by Suzanne Slade (Little Brown, Nov. 2020). He lives in Austin, Texas, with his family.
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Don's Process & Artifacts
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Listen to Don Tate talk about how he got the idea for William Still and His Freedom Stories, and how, as both the author and illustrator, he went back and forth between text and illustrations as he worked. The artifacts demonstrate his process of planning and revision. He also discusses:
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Bonus Content
In 2020, the New York Oratorio Society performed and produced a Grammy-nominated album entitled Sanctuary Road, based on the writings of William Still. You can learn more about their production in this NPR story, and listen to portions of Sanctuary Road via these streaming services.
Craft & Structure
Biography in Verse
In our interview with Don Tate (27:30), Don reveals that at first he shied away from ever considering himself a poet, but then he realized that in writing picturebooks, “there is an economy to the way you are laying the words down, and picturebooks are poetry.” Initially, he was writing too much, and he realized he would overwhelm his readers. So he “backed-up” and rewrote the manuscript in prose verse. As he did so, he thought about himself as a child reader. A full page of text could feel overwhelming. The space that poetry provides allows the reader to concentrate more comfortably.
The poetic nature of William Still and His Freedom Stories makes it particularly well suited for a read aloud. For some readers, this may be their first opportunity to hear a biography written in verse. |
To start, read the book aloud all the way through, pausing to allow your students to respond to the content of the text. When the book is complete, ask your students how this book sounded similar to and different from other picturebook biographies that they have read. Next, using a document camera or screen share, show students the first two-page spread and read it aloud. What do they notice about how the sentences are arranged on the page? Did they realize it was verse during the read aloud?
After reading William Still and His Freedom Stories, have students explore other picturebook biographies written in prose verse as a whole class, in small groups, or in pairs. Suggested titles include: Above the Rim: How Elgin Baylor Changed Basketball by Jen Bryant and illustrated by Frank Morrison, Dancing Hands: How Teresa Carreño Played the Piano for President Lincoln, written by Margarita Engle and illustrated by Rafael López, and Chef Roy Choi and the Street Food Remix written by Jacqueline Briggs Martin and June Jo Lee and illustrated by Man One. Provide students with the opportunity to conduct a small research project on a person or a topic using a series of short texts (age-appropriate periodicals and websites) and have them demonstrate their learning in verse. |
Sentence Variety
Throughout the book, Tate offers readers a constantly shifting sentence style within his prose verse. Some sentences are long, and cover several lines, while other sentences are short two-word fragments. This variety creates a rhythm to the reading that moves the reader along. For example: “He threshed clamshells./Hauled wood. Laid bricks./He peddled oysters./Dug wells. Hawked clothes./He worked on a dock, then at a hotel./Barely earning the smell of money.”
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As a whole class or in small groups or pairs, have students identify other stanzas within the book that offer rich sentence variety. Read them aloud together. Have students focus on sentence variety in whatever writing they are currently working on.
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Content & Disciplinary ThinkingHistorical SignificanceAfter the miraculous reunion of Peter with his family, William Still begins to record the details of the lives of everyone who passed through on the Underground Railroad because he recognized that doing so was critical to reuniting families. When he was younger, William Still read Black-owned newspapers, where he learned “stories about slavery. Stories about escape./Stories about his older brothers, /left behind in bondage.” William Still knew that people’s stories were an important part of the historical record.
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This idea of information that is important for the historical record lends itself to research projects. Students could interview people for their stories, read other biographies and identify the legacies of those subjects, write biographies of people they admire, imagine what they want their own biographers to include. Encourage students to seek out life stories that complicate history and give voice to perspectives that have been silenced or minoritized. To explore this idea on a national level, students can listen to the stories of real, ordinary people recorded on StoryCorps: https://storycorps.org/
Cause and Effect and Context |
In William Still and His Freedom Stories, Don Tate paints a picture of William’s childhood and youth so that we have a sense of the factors that lead him to become an agent on the Underground Railroad. Have students do a close reading of William’s early years, and identify the factors/events that they think were most salient to William’s later work. What experiences did young William have that enabled him to do the difficult and dangerous work that he did as an adult? What traits did he have as a result of these experiences?
Continuity and Change
William Still and His Freedom Stories and other books about the Underground Railroad describe the conditions that led people to flee their homes and begin anew despite the dangers and uncertainties that involved. Additional nonfiction picturebooks about the Underground Railroad and other enslaved African Americans who escaped slavery include:
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When William Still’s parents fled the South, they left behind people they loved - their sons. They began life anew in a place that was unfamiliar, and perhaps only less racist. While the conditions of slavery were unique to that particular institution, the experience of being forced from one’s home in order to survive is shared by many people across the globe and over time. The books below feature fictional children whose lives were uprooted and who traveled long and dangerous distances in search of safety. Teachers can create thematic text sets using the nonfiction books listed above and the fiction books listed below so that students can explore concepts of forced migration, resilience, hope, collaboration, etc. through different genres.
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Where do Primary Sources Come From?
William Still’s notes from Journal C of the Underground Railroad are the first thing a reader sees when opening William Still and His Freedom Stories.The front end pages introduce excerpts from the journal and the back end pages superimpose a typed transcription over the excerpts. Still created his journals - if there is a C we assume there was also an A and a B, though we don’t know for sure - out of a recognized need to privately document who was passing through Philadelphia on the Underground Railroad in order to support families in finding one another. For some readers, this may be the first time they are seeing a primary source and understanding how and why it came into being.
Have students explore details from William Still’s Journal C of the Underground Railroad. Support students as you examine the information, as this material is painful to read. What kinds of information did Still document to help reunite loved ones?
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Next, have students consider primary sources from the same time period where you live. Partner with a local historical society, and have someone teleconference into your class and share some digitized mid-19th century primary sources from your local area. What was the need that these primary sources served? What did they document? What was their purpose? As students to brainstorm a list of what primary sources exist today that future generations will be able to look at to learn more about our lives.
Social & Emotional Learning
Biographies of Change Agents
Many biographies highlight the role of a person as a change agent. Readers can learn about how taking an active role in their community can cause change to happen. After reading a biography about someone like William Still, for example, readers can discuss the qualities he had that helped him pursue his goals. Reading several biographies would help readers see the varied characteristics of change agents.
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After discussing the character traits of the subjects of multiple biographies, students can reflect on their own traits and how they might direct or develop them towards social justice.
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Turning Points
One turning point in William Still’s life was when he helped an elderly fugitive to safety when he was just a boy. Don Tate writes that this moment “defined the rest of his [William’s] life.” The book includes several other turning points. Have students identify them and discuss the language Tate uses to signal turning points and their purpose in the narrative. Students can also identify turning points in their own lives (text-to-self connection) and examples in other texts (text-to-text connection). A lengthier activity could include interviewing adults in the community about turning points that have shaped their lives.
New Texts & ArtifactsMultigenre Response ActivitiesAt the start of the interview, Don Tate talks about the book, The Biographical Dictionary of Black Americans, in which the entry about William Still caught his attention. He also tells us that his mother gave him this book as she thought it would give him ideas - which it did. This is just one example of where writers get their ideas, and where inquiry can begin. Ask students to think about where they get their ideas, what sparks their curiosity, where and how they seek out information. Create a list and share with peers. Then have a discussion about where ideas come from and how to follow them to create more information (younger students can read Kobi Yamada’s book, What do you do with an Idea?). Students can pursue these inquiries and compose multimodal texts (e.g. biography picturebooks, videos, posters, and live wax museums) reporting their findings.
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Other learning experiences based on student-generated ideas can include:
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Advocating for and Learning from 19th Century Black-Authored Texts
For far too long, too many students in the U.S. have been taught a white-centered modern history that avoids a close examination of imperialism and the legacy of Europe’s colonial reach. The brutal history of the global slave trade of the 17th - 19th centuries has been marginalized as have the many stories of Black agency, resistance, and liberation. As a consequence, young people - and many adults - have limited knowledge of that history. We need this to change. Reading William Still and His Freedom Stories is one text that helps to make that change. In this teaching idea for middle school students, we leverage the conversations that this book can open with more in-depth research on the writings of 19th century activists such as William Still and 19th century Black journalists.
If you have 1-2 hours . . . |
If you have 1-2 days . . . |
If you have 1-2 weeks . . . |
After reading William Still and His Freedom Stories, provide students with the opportunity to read pages from Journal C of the Underground Railroad. Support students as you examine the information, as this material is painful to read. What kinds of information did Still document to help reunite loved ones? What are some connections students are able to make across the journal? How were those fleeing slavery similar to one another? How were their circumstances different from one another?
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After exploring Still’s own writing, have students consider his personal path to literacy. How might his writing voice and identity be shaped by the texts that he read? In the narrative, Don Tate notes that Still read The Colored American. “An “anti-slavery newspaper,/it was owned and published by Black people.” Share this description of the newspaper with students. Next, have students spend some time reading through digital copies of The Colored American from The Center for Research Libraries. What do they notice about the information in the newspaper? Have students take notes on what they are learning about the lives of free and enslaved Blacks at the time of the newspaper’s publication.
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The Historical Society of Pennsylvania has created a prototype of a digital database, the “Family Ties on the Underground Railroad” project that connects information from Journal C with Still’s 1872 book The Underground Rail Road. You and your students can access the prototype with the codes available on the landing page. Provide students with time to explore the prototype and see the ways in which it uses information from the two texts and allows us to learn more about Black individuals and communities “geographically and chronologically.” Students can learn more about the process of putting the prototype together via the blog entries available on the right margin of the site.
Next, you might partner with your local historical society to see what you can learn about Black history in your area from the texts and artifacts from the collection. How can your students raise awareness of that history? What new texts can they create in response to their learning? Allow students to make those choices and determine a way to share their texts with your local community. You could also inform students of the Pennsylvania Historical Society’s efforts to raise money to expand the digital “Family Ties on the Underground Railroad” digital database project. Have students brainstorm ways to raise both awareness and funding for this important project and then carry them out, using their literacy skills as a force for good like William Still. |
For access to a range of Black newspapers from the 19th and 20th century, the following resources may be helpful:
- Marist College Lib Guide: Historical African American Newspapers Available Online https://libguides.marist.edu/c.php?g=87271&p=563206
- Black Press Research Collective: http://blackpressresearchcollective.org/resources/scholarship-archives/
- Library of Congress: Chronicling America
- Google Newspapers: Google Newspaper Archive
William Still and his Freedom Stories as a Mentor Text for Close Reading, Writing, and Research
Don Tate, like William Still, understands the importance of word choice and organization of ideas in writing. William Still and his Freedom Stories can be used as a mentor text to teach these literacy concepts. The brevity of the picturebook lends itself well to repeated readings and analysis of the precise language Tate employs to convey his message. A writer’s message is effective if it evokes a response in the reader. The suggestions below invite students to reflect deeply on the text and their own responses in the process of making meaning.
If you have 1-2 hours . . . |
If you have 1-2 days . . . |
If you have 1-2 weeks . . . |
Model the Double Entry Journal strategy for responding to text with a focus on text analysis/close reading using a selection of quotes from William Still and his Freedom Stories:
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William Still’s writing was a form of activism because it contributed to the work of changing people’s lives and resisting a brutal system. Compare and contrast this form of activism with the work done by other historical and contemporary figures in other biographies (such as the ones listed in the sections above). A graphic organizer such as a T Chart can help students organize their observations. Next, following a discussion, students can identify the skills and talents these subjects brought to their work. Finally, they can extend their thinking by listing other ways people can use their skills (such as in art, music, sports etc.) in order to build awareness and create change. This list can lead to inquiry projects.
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When students have understood the concept of turning points as life-altering experiences, and as literary devices that authors use to further their ideas, they can synthesize their learning within the context of studying biographies.
One project could be to create a biography of someone in their community with specific requirements including elements found in William Still and his Freedom Stories. These include but are not limited to: childhood, youth, and adult phases of life, ideas and/or people who were influential, and 2-3 turning points that were particularly salient in the person’s life. If possible, the student could research the person’s context in order to understand the various factors that inform decisions and actions. The project can be taken through all the stages of the writing process and completed in pairs or groups. Final projects could be written, illustrated, recorded, dramatized or created in any way that suits the form and content. |
Cappiello, M.A., & Chaudri, A. (2021). William Still and His Freedom Stories: The Father of the Underground Railroad. The Biography Clearinghouse.]