Between Freedom and Equality

For Teachers

This website has been created to help history teachers supplement the formal curriculum  with true human interest stories based on six generations of one Black family.

The website’s home page summarizes the stories:

  • The family patriarch, George Pointer, was born enslaved before the Revolution.
  • He bought his freedom and then worked for George Washington’s Potomac Company all of his life.
  • He became a supervisory engineer for the Potomac Canal, one of the first big infrastructure projects of the new country.
  • Eventually, he piloted President John Quincy Adams to the groundbreaking of the successor, C&O Canal. 
  • His descendants lived through some of the most important events of DC history, such as the Civil War and the Confederate invasion of the city.
  • His descendants took advantage of Reconstruction schools and became well respected as a civil servant, Pullman porter, cathedral sexton, and an eminent Georgetown undertaker.
  • However, at the beginning of the 20th century the family lost their family farm that they had owned for 80 years because of the gentrification of formerly rural land in Washington, D.C. 

Teaching Aids

To help history teachers supplement their history curriculums with the story of this family this web page provides several teaching aids:

  • Historical images that can all be projected on a screen in the classroom with the ability to zoom in or out to illustrate different historical points
  • A summary of the main points for each chapter 
  • A section in each chapter entitled “Did you know….” to get the students’ interest
  • A list of questions for students to help make history relevant
  • Endnotes referencing information in each chapter to the book
  • A list of other sources that help to understand the historical period

This family’s story told in Between Freedom and Equality is a natural supplement to DC and US history classes. It could be included in the current (April 2023) curriculum’s scope and sequence 8th and 12th grade history as illustrated below: 

8th Grade History

  • Unit 1 Colonial America: George Pointer was born enslaved on a tobacco plantation in colonial Maryland. The conditions and economics of the colonial plantation dominated his young life.
  • Unit 5 Westward Expansion: By age 13 Pointer was rented out to George Washington’s Potomac Company which was making the Potomac River a major commerce transportation route to the west. The canal and locks built at Great Falls, Virginia were considered a great engineering achievement in the 18th century.
  • Unit 6 Industrializing America: Pointer was pilot of the boat bringing President John Quincy Adams to the groundbreaking ceremony of the C&O Canal. The new canal competed with the railroads to become the trading network for new industries, but three decades later the railroads eclipsed the canals. One of Pointer’s great-grandsons would become a railroad porter for the newly developed Pullman Company.
  • Unit 8 Causes of the Civil War: In the 19th century DC was a large slave trading center. Pointer’s freedom was fragile, and his family was always vulnerable to pervasive racism that eventually became the cause of the Civil War. 
  • Unit 9 The Civil War and Reconstruction: Two of the Pointers’ great-grandsons joined the 1st Regiment of the US Colored Troops in the District. While they were fighting in Petersburg, Virginia, their family’s farm was surrounded by skirmishing Confederate troops when rebels invaded the District. After the war their younger siblings attended Reconstruction schools and used the Freedmen’s bank. 

12th Grade DC History

  • Unit 2 Changing Neighborhoods, Changing City: The post-Civil War history of the family focuses on the population and political dynamics in Georgetown, and then in Tenleytown and Chevy Chase. At the beginning of the 20th century four Pointer descendants lost their homes because of the systematic use of eminent domain to buy Black homes to build white schools.

While changes to the curriculum may occur periodically, the history of the family is now well known and can be retold to fit those changes. Any history teacher who supplements their own history lessons with this family history will receive a free copy of the book. In turn they will be asked how to improve this webpage to make their teaching easier.