'Creative' Ideas for a ten-minute history lesson?

Creating a script and reading it out loud to the clroom isn't embarring! Just go for it. I think that you and you're group should write a script in that time period. You can make the script really deep/emotional so that it's serious and people won't laugh, but get really into it. I never laugh at scripts unless they're intended to be funny. You can also always gather research materials like quotes from famous African-Americans and play teacher.