Today three of my classes reenacted the Dred Scott Court Case. Scott sued his owners for his freedom and the case made it all the way up the Supreme Court.
In order to get the students to have a deeper understanding of the case, as a class we had a mock trial presentation. We had two judges (from the original trial and then the Supreme Court trial) Dred Scott, Scott's attorney, Scott owners, their attorney, and at least two witnesses.
The first class did fine, it could have gone smoother but since none of us had done project like this before there were some problems that came up that we never thought of. But it went well none the less.
The next class I did it with I set some guidelines and an order that we were going to do things in the "court room." They all really got into it, the lawyers were great on both sides and Dred Scott really held his own. The judge had parted his hair during lunch so he would look more professional even. (The judge also got to wear my robe from graduation).
The next class got into it too. They were giggling and stuff the whole time, but it still worked and the objective of the project was made. The owners' lawyer compared Scott to a chair trying to say that Scott was just property, at which time Scott yells "Does a chair plow fields!? Does a chair have a soul? etc" It was really funny.
I was glad to see all the kids get into it. I'm finishing up with this project on Wednesday with my 2 other classes, they're Honors so we'll see if there's a difference. But on the whole all the students really appreciated this type of project and asked if they can do something like this again.
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