Oh Freedom After While: The Missouri Sharecropper Protest of 1939

A curriculum guide designed to supplement the Emmy-Award-winning documentary Oh Freedom After While, The Missouri Sharecropper Protest of 1939, led by Rev. Owen H. Whitfield, Depression Era Civil Rights activist. Learn about Thad Snow, outspoken land owner, and Fannie Cook, St. Louis activist, supporters and friends of the Whitfield family. Analyze Arthur Witman’s archival photos of the protest and Cropperville. Explore the Whitfield family oral histories of Cropperville experiences through creative drama and Sam Armstrong’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch article through reader’s theater.  Investigate labor laws, impact of unionization, and resulting social changes through primary source documents. These classroom activities bring the film to life. 

You will find primary source items including photographs, newspaper articles, oral histories, and other personal recollections of events that shaped the roadside protests in Bootheel Missouri.  Watching the three documentary segments before each of the three lessons will enhance student understanding and comprehension skills and make for a rich and vibrant learning experience.  Explore photographs, get to know the people involved in this event, and learn about life in Cropperville through oral histories and stories from those who lived to tell about their experiences. We have included an additional Historical Literacy Lesson Using Poetry, Creative Drama and Reader’s Theater, and Living History to enrich your language arts and performing arts curriculum.  Here you will find activities that involve song, story, and performance.

In order to support historical literacy skills, lessons have been designed with History’s Habits of Mind from the National Council for History Education (NCHE) as well as meeting national and state standards in History and Language Arts.  Each lesson contains a summary, outcomes, materials, and strategies to use with students so that they get a well-rounded experience and become immersed in the materials.

This guide, designed for upper elementary through adult, will provide students with a better understanding of civil rights issues in our country during The Great Depression. It supports developing a more peace-filled and compassionate world through historical literacy and the expressive arts.