Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. After the Civil War, many public facilities and services throughout the United States became systematically separated on racial grounds. Particularly in the South, what were the types of facilities/services most frequently segregated by race? What were the laws in place that formalized segregation in the early 20th century?

Teaching Suggestion: One of the core themes of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings—perhaps the most important theme—deals with Angelou’s experience of Race and Racism growing up in the South in the 1930s. Students should be able to draw upon their knowledge from history and social studies classes related to the New Deal, Jim Crow, and other governmental laws and policies, all of which affected Black Americans at the time.

• “Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s” from the Library of Congress gives a sweeping overview of this era.
• NPR’s “A ‘Forgotten’ History of How the U.S. Government Segregated America” focuses on the New Deal’s efforts to segregate America’s housing stock in the 1930s.