Going to the Show: Lesson Plans

Image Analysis through the use of photographs, postcards and illustrations of the Bijou Theatre in Wilmington, North Carolina in the early 1900s

Introduction  |   Activities 1 - 2  |   Activities 3 - 4  |   Learn More

ACTIVITIES

The activities for this lesson plan will primarily focus on images from the Going to the Show website (http://docsouth.unc.edu/gtts/) from the DocSouth digital collection at the University of North Carolina Library.

Introduction

To begin the discussion, let the students know that this lesson focuses on images related to moviegoing in the early 1900's in Wilmington, North Carolina. Images may be used as a primary source. However, the type of the image may impact or influence the "information" it conveys. Specifically, they will be analyzing and comparing/contrasting an original photograph, a postcard created from the photograph and an illustration of the same subject. Explain to the students that you will be using images from a digital collection that has been developed that focuses on moviegoing in the early 1900's for the state of North Carolina that includes visual images, news clippings, and Sanborn maps, which provide geographical references for the city at several points in time.

Next, ask some questions to get students thinking and talking about photography as an historical source, such as:

• Why do people take pictures?
• Why do people save pictures?
• What can you learn from photographs?
• What historical insights can you glean from photographs?

Next, ask some questions to get students thinking and talking about postcards, and using them as an historical source, such as:

• Who creates postcards?
• Who sells postcards?
• What is the purpose of postcards?
• Who buys postcards?
• Why do people save postcards?
• What can you learn from postcards?

Before looking at the images, you might want to provide a brief historical introduction to the subject of this exercise, the Bijou Theatre. It is part of the UNC DocSouth Going to the Show digital collection that highlights the early moviegoing experience in North Carolina from 1896, at the introduction of projected motion pictures, through the 1930s. Wilmington was the state's largest city in 1900 with a population of 25,000. The Bijou Theatre was one of the first movie theaters in the state, and the first movie theater in Wilmington, opening its doors in 1906. The original Bijou Theatre was a tent with a wooden sham front, built to blend in with the other buildings on North Front Street, and a sawdust floor. The images used in this lesson are taken after the tent was replaced by a permanent building which was constructed in 1912. The Bijou Theatre was probably the first purpose-built movie theater in North Carolina. Most other movie theaters at this time - including those in Wilmington - were repurposed storefronts. The Bijou Theatre was North Carolina's longest running movie theater, closing its doors in 1956. It was demolished in 1963.

Teacher Note:

The following photograph is of the Grand Theatre, which opened in 1910, and shows an example of a repurposed storefront converted to a theater.
http://wwwtmpapps.nhcgov.com/lib/history/fales/pages/slides/650.htm

The lesson is organized into two activities:

1. In small groups, students will analyze one of the images, either the photograph, the postcard or the illustration. At the conclusion of their analysis, each small group will report their key findings and impressions. The teacher will record these in a way that the whole class can see.
2. As a class, look at the three images together, and identify the key similarities and differences. Discuss the potential reasons and motivations behind what is retained and what is modified or manipulated.

Activity 1: Analyzing the first image 20-30 minutes:

Provide students with a photo-analysis worksheet, or a questionnaire you have developed that includes the basic questions you want to cover.

For this first activity, organize the students into three separate groups. You will assign one of the three images to each of the three groups. Each group will analyze its image independently of any prior influence from the other two images. This should enable the identification of some interesting distinguishing characteristics as the students report back their image analyses.

The three images:

Bijou Theatre photograph, presumed to be taken around 1912
http://docsouth.unc.edu/gtts/content/2404/

Bijou Theatre postcard
http://docsouth.unc.edu/gtts/content/943/

Bijou Theatre advertisement - sketch illustration (Wilmington Star - 2/18/1914)
http://docsouth.unc.edu/gtts/content/381/

Teacher Note: Suggest you excerpt and print just the illustration, as it's part of an advertisement that provides a lot of additional information that could influence the image analysis.

Photo Analysis Worksheet:
http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/worksheets/photo_analysis_worksheet.pdf

Step 1A: Record your overall impression. What initially struck you about the image when you first looked at it?

Have students identify their "top 3" People, Objects, and Activities and denote them with an asterisk (*), as these will be what they highlight when they report back to the rest of the class.

Alternatively, teachers may want to use a more specific questionnaire, such as:

• Identify if you have a photograph, a postcard or an illustration. What about the image reinforces this categorization?
• What do you see in this image? (It may be helpful to direct the students to look at the picture top to bottom and left to right, noticing every detail, or to encourage them to think about a tic-tac-toe grid superimposed on the image and think about each section independently so that they focus on the details rather than the overall impression.)
• What people are in this image? How many men? women? boys? girls? How old are they? What are they wearing? How are they positioned?
• What objects are in this image? Are they old or new? Are they well-cared for? Are they expensive or inexpensive? Handmade, from nature, or store-bought?
• Are there any animals in this image? If so, what do you notice about them?
• When do you think this image was taken? What year? What time of year? How can you tell? (Teacher NOTE: the news clippings and the stories about the theatretheater tell when the "tent" theatretheater opened, December, 1906, and when a new "permanent" building was opened in May, 1912 ... so the only thing you know for sure is that it was taken after May 1912)
• What can you tell about the building or objects in this image and their relationship to any people in the image.
• What do you think is the relationship between the people in the image? What makes you think so? Are these people rich, poor or in the middle? What do you think they do for a living? How can you tell? Are they happy? Do they like each other? What kind of life do you think they have? What details in the image lead you to draw these conclusions?
• What is your overall impression from this image? What is the "mood" of the image? If you didn't know anything else about these people or this place or this object other than what you see here, what would you conclude about them/it?
• What do you think happened right before this image was taken? Right after? What would you imagine the rest of the day (before and after) was like, and was it a typical day?
• Why do you think this image was taken? What was the photographer's/artist's objective? What was the photographer/artist trying to convey? If photographic type of image, do you think this was a formal photo or a candid photo? What makes you think that? Do you think the photographer arranged/posed the people and things in this picture? What makes you think the picture was posed or not posed? If so, why do you think the photographer/artist posed them this way?
• What can you tell about life in the early 1900s by what you see in this image? Identify 3 things.
• What can you ascertain about going to a movie at the Bijou Theatre by looking at this image?
• How much did a movie cost?
• Who was their intended audience? Age? Income Level/Class? Gender? Race?
• Supplemental teacher background: Robert Allen: The Bijou Theatre appears to have admitted African Americans from its opening day. The experience of the Bijou and of downtown Wilmington more generally for African Americans, however, was very different than that for white Wilmingtonians. Following a social practice that had been in place in Wilmington for more than 25 years and would endure until the 1960s, Howard and Wells admitted African Americans only to a separate seating section. Like many other early downtown theaters across the South, the Bijou did not advertise its racial admission policy or refer to it in the newspaper ads. African Americans would have learned of it from direct experience and from that of their neighbors and friends - as a part of the rigidly segregated spaces that made up the social landscape of Wilmington in 1906-1907. ... The Bijous was the first commercial entertainment venue in Wilmington to admit African Americans to all performances.
  • Allen, Robert C. "Going to the Show." Documenting the American South. University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 2009. http://docsouth.unc.edu/gtts/.
  • For the full list of Professor Allen's essays on [early Wilmington theaters], go to http://docsouth.unc.edu/gtts/search/facet?ctype=Commentary.
  
  
  Wilmington Morning Star (5/31/1912): Bijou Opened Last Night: reports the new theatretheater included a balcony that could seat 200 colored people (http://docsouth.unc.edu/gtts/content/782/ )
  
  Supplements overview of segregation introduced in textbook: A Journey Through North Carolina, pp 282-287.
• What movies are being shown? (Teacher's Note: can't tell from the photo, but the news clippings and advertisements provide additional information .... starts prompting students to think about how multiple sources can be used together)
• How frequently are movies shown? (can't tell from the photo, but the news clippings provide additional information)
• How long did a movie last? What did you get for your admission? (can't tell from the photo, but the news clippings and advertisements may provide additional information)
  
  Supplemental teacher background : Robert Allen: Projectors were hand cranked, and the projectionist could speed up or slow down the action on the screen by "over-cranking" or "under-cranking." Percy Wells was the Bijou's first projectionist in its early days, and according to one recollection, was also a "spieler," providing a running narration and commentary for the brief one-reel (10 minutes or so) silent films he presented.]
• How frequently do you think someone went to a movie?
• What construction material was the movie theater building made of? How would this affect the movie attending experience? (Teacher note: Teachers may want to remind students that the previous rendition of this building was a canvas tent with a sawdust floor.)
• Can you tell anything about the interior of the movie theater building? How was it outfitted? (Teacher Note: can't tell from the photo, but the news clippings may provide additional information)
• Do you have any thoughts / impressions regarding the purpose of the multiple doorways? (Supplemental teacher background: There could be a variety of reasons ranging from one door was an entrance and the other was an exit, or there may have been separate entrances for whites and African Americans).
• Where do you think this movie theater is located e.g. in a city center, in the country, outside the city center? (Teacher's Note: can't tell from the photo - but can tell from the Sanborn maps - not really part of this lesson, but as the teacher you might want to open up the Sanborn map and show them the location in the city. Also reinforces the use of multiple sources to draw a bigger picture.)
• Supplemental resource/teacher demonstration: Bring up the Sanborn map for Wilmington for 1915 overlay year, zoom in on N. Front Street near the Bijou Theatre "ticket" icon. N. Front Street between Grace/Mulberry (on north) and Dock (on the south) was the center of the Wilmington business district. For a quick illustration/demonstration of the utility of the Sanborn maps, switch to the 1910 overlay year, and note the yellow image and the annotation: "Built of canvas and wood, sawdust floor"

Activity 2 Report Out: 30 minutes (10 minutes per group)

Each group will identify a spokesperson to share their analysis with the class.
They should report on:

• Their initial, overall impression of the image. What was it about the image that struck them when they first looked at it?
• Identify their "top 3" people, objects, activities
• Share 2 inferences that they drew from the image
• Share 2 questions the image raised
• Share 2 impressions about movie goingmoviegoing in the early 1900s they gleaned from the image The teacher should capture these on the white board using 3 columns, so that the class can see, at a glance, the similarities and differences of the students' analyses across the three images.

Introduction  |   Activities 1 - 2  |   Activities 3 - 4  |   Learn More