The Democratic Knowledge Project (DKP) has partnered with the History and Social Studies Department and 5th grade educators in the Cambridge (MA) Public School District to create 5th grade curricular materials aligned with the Massachusetts History and Social Studies Frameworks. 

Our “Expanding Liberty and Equality: Agency, Abolition, and Suffrage” unit was redesigned in 2024, and is publicly available to any educators who would like to use it. In “Expanding Liberty and Equality: Agency, Abolition, and Suffrage,” students explore two movements to expand liberty and equality in the United States. They study enslavement and the antebellum abolition movement, they learn about the ways suffrage was restricted and for whom, and they explore the women’s suffrage movement and the Snyder Act of 1924.

Throughout the unit, students engage in the critical historical skill of close reading. They read and analyze primary sources, including narratives written by self-emancipated African Americans. They compare and contrast excerpts from primary sources that contend with the ideals of liberty and equality articulated in the 1776 Declaration of Independence.

In 2022, an earlier version of this unit was named as a recommended resource by DESE. Learn more about the DESE review of K-5 Curricular materials here.