One Saturday March 23rd my co-author Dawn Comer Jefferson and I were invited to the California African American Museum (CAAM) for their annual literacy day, this year titled “Heads are Turning, Children are Learning”. We presented a workshop on African American on the Oregon Trail, based on the research we did for the story in our children’s book The Promise which involves an enslaved family taken on the Oregon Trail with the promise of freedom if they survive. Sadly, when they all arrive in Oregon, the owner frees the parents but not the children since he had never mentioned the children in their original deal.
About 20 children and parents attended the workshop and participated in an exercise where they wrote a letter back to family and friends about their experience on the Oregon Trail. It was fun to hear what parts of the presentation they remembered enough to include in their letters and to see them enjoy a chance to be creative.