I learned about slavery in grade school through reading history books, participating in what I saw as insensitive school plays, and learning songs that defined the civil rights movement. I think this was all window dressing and many of the teaches that had to facilitate this were white so I know they must have experienced a great discomfort in doing this with us. I was not exposed to the actual horrors of slavery until I saw Roots back in 1977. That program really opened my eyes to the gross injustice done to those who were brought to the States against their will. I also saw the injustices that many of my African-American friends experienced in the inner city along with me and my family. It was an eye-opener, even for a young 10-year old Puerto Rican kid from Brooklyn. As I grew older, I later began to embrace the fact that slavery had been a part of my own cultural heritage. I have family members in Puerto Rico who are lily white and others who are a sweet dark chocolate brown. Today, I can honestly say that I have ancestors not only from Spain, Taino Indians, and from Africa as well. I definitely want to continue to learn more about my family history because there was so much that was not explored during my childhood.
I'm currently taking AP US History and I think the education about slavery is very comprehensive. We go slightly into depth about the subject and learn about the rebellions, causes of the civil war, and atrocities faced by slaves in their entirety. Last year in AP World History we also learned about it accurately, so I'd say that at least AP classes are doing a good job of teaching it.
They taught me slavery since I was in first grade. They taught me that they mistreated the slaves, they gave them nothing in return. Sometimes abuse their own slaves.
There's always more to learn.
History classes should include a quick read of the Confederacy’s own constitution. It made clear that no member state could opt out of slavery, all states had to recognize slave ownership even when owners and slaves crossed state lines, and it outlawed importation of slaves, which was not a humanitarian act, but a way to preserve the economic value of the existing slave population.
Understanding these parts of the Confederate constitution quickly cuts the heart out of the entire “states rights” and “Lost Cause” lies propagated by Jefferson Davis and others after the Civil War. The truth is that states rights was only a concern when it would preserve slavery against federalized abolition in the United States. In the Confederacy, slavery was federalized and states rights dismissed. As such, Confederates weren’t fighting for political freedom as part of some idealistic “lost cause,” they were fighting to preserve their financial investment in the subjugation and enslavement of other human beings. They were invested in slavery in order to financially benefit from the forced, unpaid labor of people they imprisoned on their farms and plantations. There is nothing noble in that, and there was nothing idyllic about the Old South unless you were a white, male property owner who subscribed to the racist idea that not all people are created equal.
4
You will never be able to learn much about slavery or any history on an in depth basis in both elementary and secondary school. Why? Many reasons such as: not enough time, unqualified presenters, competing agenda's etc.
If you want to learn subject matter then dive into the deep end of the pool of knowledge. You will get wet, bet be amazed at what you find.
I taught American History for 32 years and over that time my lessons on slavery became more and more pointed on the issue. Slavery was the main cause of the Civil War and I made sure that every one of my students understood that. In my AP US History class I had my students read a chapter in Zinn’s book called “Slavery without Submission, Emancipation without Freedom”. I asked students to consider, “What does Zinn mean by Slavery without submission? By Emancipation without freedom?” The next day in class students discussed this and cited information from Zinn’s chapter to support their conclusions. It was a fascinating exercise and one that stuck with my students. Students in all my classes have also read the works of Douglass, particularly his Fourth of July speech. I was not the only one to use such materials to teach about slavery. So you see, somewhere in this nation, teachers are trying to do the right thing.
My husband just reminded me of a story he often mentions about his middle school days in Wiscasset ME. At that time (1981) the school had 'slave day', where the 8th grade students bought 7th grade students. Not sure the origin of 'slave day' or when it (hopefully) ended.
I don't remember much discussion of slavery in high school fifty-five years ago. I came away believing that slavery was the reason we fought the Civil War, the South called it The War Between the States, there was something called States' Rights, which the South believed in (but not today), and that Lincoln's words about preservation of the Union (half-free, half-slave comment).
I am chastened by how much I learned from the 1619 Project, and how late in my life I learned it. Still, better to learn something late than never to have learned it at all. I can't write here some of the things the Project made clear that I hadn't fully appreciated. It's too embarrassing.
1
The most shocking fact is that only 92 people commented on such a fundamental and ongoing American educational weakness.
Do you also find it shocking that the Japanese educational system has never honestly and explicitly admitted and illustrated the depravity and cruelty that the Imperial Government inflicted on its Pacific neighbors? They do teach about Hiroshima/Nagasaki, but not about the Rape of Nanjing or the Battan Death March or the enslavement of countless women (particularly Korean) as sex prisoners.
I was profoundly moved by this 1619 Project. I had no education on slavery in high school. I can tell you from personal and career experience as an award-winning high school science teacher that deep race-related issues in our country are not being addressed as they should be in schools. Just like evolution and climate change in science. Teachers get lost in teaching about “trees” and lose any grasp and opportunity for teaching about “the forest”. Education fails miserably in prioritizing for quality. And we have no solution in the works because each state is responsible for establishing their learning goals and content objectives. Despite efforts to include important ideas like race into curriculum offerings thru the federal title programs it is totally scuttled. Unless students perform a “ history” strike like the recent “climate” strike, they will never know about slavery. Again, teach the “forest” instead of the “trees”.
2
We can never come to a true understanding of racism in America until we tell the true story of slavery to our children.
1
I don't know this to be a fact, but I have wondered if the material taught wasn't softened in our schools (Selma, Ala) for the purpose of avoiding conflict. In the fourth grade I remember a post civil war / slavery brawl on the playground.
The thing that has struck me since high school (1989) was the void of material taught on the Reconstruction era. Anything I have learned about Reconstruction has been due to my own reading.
Any other Selma Saints want to chime in?
1
This is one of the more depressing articles I've read. I can't remember when or how I was taught about slavery, but I definitely knew that being a slave was horrible, that people got raped and beaten, sometimes to death, and that the people who helped slaves escape via the underground railroad were true heroes. I also was taught that the prime reason for the Civil War was slavery - that slavery wasn't being allowed to extend west, and the South succeeded to save "their way of life." I never understood why symbols of the Confederacy weren't outlawed like symbols of the Third Reich, but that is just me thinking about it. Roots was on TV when I was in high school, and I think that must have had a huge impact on my thinking as well. I thought it was riveting.
2
I wanted to add that despite attending one of the best public school districts in the State of Ohio from 1969 to 1982, we weren't taught about -- women's rights, African, South American, or Asian history, WWI, WWII, Vietnam, the First Nation peoples of the America's and how they were slaughtered and enslaved by European colonizers, the Korean War, the history and relevance of Canada or Mexico, various world religions, LGBTQ rights and probably a few more important subjects.
I do remember a heavy emphasis on math, European and American History (from a white perspective) and English Lit classes. All that other stuff I mentioned above I missed out on until I learned about from television documentaries, newspaper articles and reading books on my own after I graduated from university.
As for my own history, I also didn't know until recently that my Greek grandparents fled Turkey because the Turks expelled them (along with a million other Greeks). I learned that the Turks killed or sold into sexual slavery approximately one million other Greeks in the 20th century but all I ever heard about was the Armenian Holocaust committed by the Turks after WWI.
In 1976, in my public school classroom in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, we were hardly taught anything about slavery. The Civil War was framed as a states right issue, with the major bone of contention of being slavery and the desired expansion of slave states by the South. Our teacher taught us more about the wonders of the invention of Eli Whitney's cotton gin but additional information was not added how the South needed more slaves to pick the cotton to feed the cotton gin. The Dred Scott case was also minimally discussed.
I learned a 100 times more about slavery watching Roots, which came out when I was in the 9th grade, which I watched in its entirety.
1
How pro-active are parents in filing the lacunae in their children's education at school, I wonder. There are excellent public libraries in U.S. cities. The videotapes, books & journals are freely available. Introduce children to them, and with a little guidance they learn to educate themselves. As an academic and parent, i know that one cannot escape the shortfalls in courses, text books and teachers ... but the U.S. invests heavily (from my Indian perspective,) in making material available through the public library system. I found this to be true in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Minneapolis and its suburbs, Boston, Shreveport and i'm sure there must be other cities too providing this service. In Minneapolis I was struck by the number of parents bringing quite young children to these centers where learning is such a pleasure. Public schools are often overcrowded, and teachers underpaid ... it is daunting to attract talent under such conditions. Parents need to step up, if children are to become socially aware and develop critical thinking about issues plaguing the nation and the world at large.
1
White girl educated in the NC public school system. This podcast along with others from NPR have been my education about slavery. It is a shame that it took me 15 years after high school to learn about this.
1
I grew up in Augusta, Georgia, in the early 1960. The Jim Crow laws were widely practiced. My father was an Episcopal priest who worked hard for civil rights. Our family was discriminated against often. I don't remember hearing anything about slavery in any of my history classes. But my father made sure we knew what slavery was, and how the current situation with African-Americans was unacceptable. We learned about slavery from books. My dad opened his church to African-Americans and I knew them well and they were my friends. I also knew they were still treated poorly by white people. To this day I remember riots by African-Americans because they were treated like second-class citizens. The inside of my father's humble church was set on fire by those who disagreed with my father's efforts, but thankfully no major damage was done. I'm proud to have been a part of my father's cause and to learn the true history of African Americans The situation is better now, but I can't ever go to Augusta without remembering that difficult time.
7
In the 1990's in Massachusetts I was given an American lit. anthology to use with my high school juniors. There was a section of slave narratives, but I noticed that the narratives were filled with three dots, indicating that something had been left out. The librarian found the original narratives for me, and I saw that every time a slave mentioned being beaten or starved or mistreated in any way, that section was cut out. I was shocked, and immediately ordered a set of Frederick Douglas's autobiographies for my class to read, and they were shocked at how cruel slavery really was. I was shocked at how the American Lit. anthology had been edited.
3
Slavery did not begin in America in 1619. It began much earlier when the Spaniards brought some slaves to the New World (America) and enslaved Native Americans.
Before that some Native American tribes made slaves of other tribes, and Africans in Africa enslaved many of their fellow blacks and later sold them into the slave trade that served the Middle East, Europe and America.
Yes, America had slaves, but slavery in the North ended around 1804, and in the South ended in 1865, after hundreds of thousands of white and black Northern soldiers gave their lives to end slavery in the US.
So, no, slavery in America did not begin in 1619, when what became the US was a group of British colonies. Ignoring all the pertinent prior history of slavery totally distorts the subject, and places the NYT clearly in the role of grinding an axe rather than trying to bring insight and clarity to a complex and challenging subject.
1
You use the words "some" a lot in your skewed narrative ... "some brought to the New World"... "some Native American tribes" Yes slaves have existed throughout history and American history.
The difference is that for Blacks in American it wasn't "some" it was "all" were subjected to slavery. And u conveniently ignore segregation and racism.
I think you're the one with the ax, buddy
2
I'll never forget my 11th-grade APUSH class. We were taught by the only woman in the high school with a doctorate. Yet I think she was the most ignorant person. We spent months on Columbus and the colonies. In September we spent the week learning about 9/11. She prefaced a video of people jumping out of the towers with "Now these people ain't like us. They's Yankees. They gon use some 'unsavory' language." As someone born in New York, with friends whose parents worked in the Twin Towers I sat there in shock. Looking back I should've told the principal. I should've given her some 'unsavory language.' We eventually made it to the Civil War. She would talk about the south "rising again" and skewed everything to glorifying the south. She would degrade the Union soldiers. When I asked if the south succeeding was treason I remember her getting furious. "States rights" was pounded into our heads. She discussed reconstruction and how it was a good thing that Lincoln was no longer president and Calhoun went easy. She said the south shouldn't have been punished. We never made it past Teddy Roosevelt probably because she would've mangled the teachings about Jim Crowe so bad. I moved to Georgia in 4th grade and the Civil War is still felt. Children run around talking about Dixie and how it'll rise again. It is like a different world in Georgia. People don't talk to me and my parents because we're "Damn Yankees."
What's hilarious is that my parents are actually Canadian.
2
Last year a student brought an old Virginia history textbook she had come across to my class. We set environmental science aside, because this text demanded our attention. For almost an hour, she read excerpts and we took turns being astonished, shocked, and disgusted. One of the things we discussed is how that textbook, used during the 1950's-70's, no doubt formed the thinking of many Virginians today with statements like this: "Life among the Negroes of Virginia in slavery times was generally happy. The Negroes went about in a cheerful manner making a living for themselves and for those for whom they worked...The Negroes had their problems and their troubles. But they were not worried by the furious arguments going on between Northerners and Southerners over what should be done with them. In fact, they paid little attention to these arguments."
1
I think that the truth of slavery is still not taught because it was so shockingly brutal. The women and girls were not only labor slaves, but sexual slaves to the master and any other whites of authority. Even our beloved Thomas Jefferson was guilty of this humiliation. Add in the brutality meted out for minor indiscretions like a desire for literacy or an intact family and the true horror of the times starts to sink in. The fact that the South was run like a giant concentration camp for 100 years after emancipation is another sad topic that is never really taught in schools, either.
10
This article is part of the NYT’s ongoing effort to promote reparations, which are untenable for many reasons:
1. Slavery ended in 1865 and most non-black Americans are descended from immigrants who arrived after 1865 and were not slave-holders, and thus do not owe reparations.
2. Many blacks are descended from Africans who came to the US after 1865 and therefore are not owed reparations.
3. Many blacks are of mixed race; will their payments be pro-rated on the percentage of black/slave ancestry? How will such ancestry be measured? DNA? Historic or genealogical records?
4. Will blacks descended from African tribes that captured members of other tribes and sold them into slavery receive reparations?
5. Do all taxpayers have to pay into a reparations fund, or only non-blacks?
6. Will rich blacks (e.g., the Obamas) receive reparations or will there be a cap on recipients' income?
7. Will illegal immigrants receive or pay reparations?
8. Will payments to blacks be reduced by the amounts paid for welfare, affirmative action and other benefits they and their ancestors have received since 1865?
9. Will reparations mean the end of affirmative action for blacks?
10. What about reparations for Native Americans, who lost so much land and so many lives?
11. Poor blacks are far outnumbered by poor whites, Hispanics, Native Americans; won't they be eligible for guaranteed incomes?
If reparations are part of the 2020 Democratic platform Trump will be re-elected.
I disagree.Even if some Europeans
did arrive after 1865 if they were of White ancestry,they likely benefited from the enslavement of Blacks. Also most Blacks who live in the northern states like myself have parents or Great Grandparents that lived in the South and they came north to escape Jim Crow,and Lynchings. And finally many Blacks are of Mixed race Only because the blacks of the south were raped by white slave masters,so that now we don't truly resemble our African ancestors
Much like what we were taught about socialism: it was wrong and dangerous, a tragic history of human oppression that inevitably led to human misery. We have ended the allure of slavery. Socialism, the left won't let end. A stunning blind spot. It has also fetishised racism. Hence the preoccupation with slavery and the willful ignoring of the socialist rise among Democrats. Be careful. Dump the white privilege rhetoric and check your hypocrisy. Or we may get another 4 years of Trump.
1
Born and raised in DC in the 50s, they told us how great all the monuments were and how all the [white] architects were so great to build them...the US Capitol, the White House etc. But they forgot to mention that they were able to afford all of that building because they had slave labor....
AND, no one mentioned how Jefferson, Washington, Madison had all that free time to think about government, either - enslaved labor. Tsk Tsk. guess that wasn't important
2
Slavery is as evil as the holocaust, that’s why as a nation we shun from teaching about it.
5
Despite the heavy emphasis of european history that was the focus of my primary and secondary education, I was surprised that we were never exposed to the facts that europeans were enslaved by Barbary pirates in Africa, this is truly shameful.
1
Compulsory unpaid labor is slavery (definition). Compulsion is a matter of degree. Compensation is a matter of degree. Therefore, slavery is a matter of degree.
Morality evolves. Under what circumstances will a society evolve into or out of acceptance of slavery? In the US today laws compel fifty million children to work, unpaid, as window-dressing in the massive make-work program for dues-paying members of the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel that many speakers of American English call "the public school system".
My school missed the Civil War. It was probably more disorganized curriculum and a teacher who didn't get through the history material fast enough. I learned my Civil War history from Gone with the Wind. Needless to say, re-reading it as an adult was quite a shock. The slaves were depicted as loyal and stupid, needing the benevolent guidance of their masters.
I grew up in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, a segregated all white city of 45,000 people from 1944 to 1961.
I remember being taught almost nothing about American slavery in any grade.
I learned all the details of the Civil War and slavery from my own research up until the present at my age of 75.
I recently discovered that Lincoln called a meeting at the White House with all the local black leaders and asked them to help with arranging a program to relocate freed slaves to another country because they would adjust better outside America.
The black leaders were silent and shocked. They did not help in this endeavor.
American slavery is bad enough but the rewriting of history is a lifelong continuation of a lie.
As an expatriate of 75 years old, my shame as an American is mostly about slavery, not welcoming Jews to America after WW II, and all the unnecessary wars like Vietnam and Iraq.
6
As a Jew, I learned about slavery with every Passover Seder. We say as part of the ceremony that we were slaves. I hated slavery from the first moment I learned the word.
I never needed to be taught that enslaving Africans was bad. I knew with every fiber of my being how horrible it must have been. There were no go slavers. Not for my ancestors, not for African Americans, not for anyone, anytime, anywhere.
At least as a Jew, we have Passover to celebrate how some Hebrews escaped slavery at one time. We will never forget, nor should the descendants of American slavery.
2
My earliest teacher said, "Slaves were sold into slavery by other Africans" as if their complicity made everyone else's participation less horrible. Amazing the lengths some people will go to, in blaming the victim.
1
I grew up in South Florida, south of Miami proper. In my early childhood (1950's) there were still segregated housing developments, segregated grocery stores, "colored" and "white" water fountains and bathrooms......all this was taken as normal. I never heard anyone explain it or try to excuse it.
Throughout my public school education I never went to school with a Black student....de facto segregation.
I remember JFK becoming president, and was all for him....I didn't understand the civil rights movement, really, but knew the way the Black protesters were being treated: beatings, dogs set on them, water hoses sprayed on them, was evil and wrong. I followed the career of MLK and was very impressed by him.
I clearly remember the day JFK was killed, and so soon after, the assasinations of MLK and RFK. Those events, plus the attitude of the teachers and most of the kids in my high school made me become anti-VietNam war and anti-racist to the core and I've never changed from that.
I remember reading "The Confessions of Nat Turner" and many other such books...including "Soul on Ice and so forth. They, too, made a huge impression on me.
Yes, along with the rest of the country we watched the TV miniseries "Roots"....but early on had learned of the issues of accuracy with it, and so was never particularly impressed by it (also read the book). See: https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2017/feb/09/alex-haley-roots-reputation-authenticity.
I am 68 years old and experienced shockingly little about the true nature of slavery during my public school years. What is even more shocking to me is I see similar replies from readers that are currently 25 years old. We seem to have learned nothing. It's no wonder that white people fail to see the current level of racism in our society.
6
Growing up in the 50's, I visited often, Lynch street in Jackson, MS and came to understand slavery.
Apparently the way many of us were taught about slavery was mostly flawed and incomplete. On the other hand, my West German friends in the postwar period were taught very little about World War II and certainly not about the atrocities Hitler perpetrated in the name of the German people. When asked what they made of all the American soldiers in occupation, many thought we were there to protect them from the Russian threat to bring them under socialist rule like East Germany. What little they knew was learned outside the classroom, and few parents volunteered to tell them their history.
During 1944-45, at the private, progressive North Country School in Lake Placid, NY, our sixth grade class spent the year studying "the Negro"(still the progressive term for African-Americans in the 1940s). In the fall, we studied Africa, made map of it, gave play based on African folktales. In the winter, semester, we got slavery - no apologies for it whatsoever. I remember especially the evils of tearing families apart, and selling family members "down the river." "Uncle Tom's Cabin," "Railroad to Freedom," and "Freedom Road" were read aloud to us during "rest hour." "Railroad to Freedom" is a biography of Harriet Tubman -- our class made this into a play (I played Tubman). "Freedom Road," by Howard Fast, deals with Reconstruction, that brief period right after the Civil War when African Americans were protected by Northern troops ( still in the South) and exercised their Constitutional rights--before racist whites seized power by underhanded means such a poll taxes & lynchings & Jim Crow --all taught to us again with no apologies during our spring term, which dealt with "the Negro" after the Civil War. Can't remember what if anything we were taught about the Harlem Renaissance but I do remember reading biographies of George Washington Carver and Booker T. Washington. True, the school had no African American students but it was very expensive and being young had no money for scholarships. I am still very grateful to it and for our inspired teacher, Edgar S Bley.
3
I spent my early childhood in Florida in the 50s. I remember then that all black people lived outside of the city in a town called Roseville. My mom and dad had a couple babysit us one night , a black man and his wife. I remember the black man had one arm missing. I had a cough and the black woman came into my room and gave me honey and lemon juice. I thought she was so kind. As we passed by a school one day the recess bell rang and all these kids came running out to play. They were all black and one girl stood out to me, she had a big smile on her face and she beat everybody to the swings. I asked my mom if I could go play with those kids and she said no, because they are colored. I did not understand what that meant. All I knew was they were kids and I wanted to play with them. In school we learned about the civil war and I admired Lincoln because he freed them. I remember watching the story of Rosa Parks and when I went home to tell my mother and aunt how terrible people were to that old lady, my aunts face went white. My mother told me she had grown up in Springfield , Illinois and was there when there were riots. She was very afraid of black people. It took a long time for me to understand white privilege and I am still learning about it. I did not know that also the Irish were sent in the 1600s to work as slaves in the West Indies and the colonies until I was twenty and understood why many Irish changed their names and tried not to be Irish .
I grew up on Long Island. We learned a lot about slavery and the South. I was in my forties before I learned about the extent of slavery in NY that was never mentioned in history classes.
I had the misfortune of attending an extremist fundamentalist church school in Illinois that functioned like a de facto extension of Bob Jones University, where most of the school's leaders and teachers were from. Regarding the Civil War, it was emphasized to us that the Civil War was not about slavery, just states' right. Our books were from Bob Jones University Press and contained so much fiction, and so much bashing of groups they despised (such as Catholics). When I was later able to get away from this group and attend a normal college, I had to learn a lot of basic history and science and...reality! (What, the Earth isn't just 6,000 years old?) I'm still upset about being taught tons of fiction out of these books. I've never understood how this is allowed (though that was probably one of the lesser transgressions there).
1
I was born in 1962—white, working-class, Irish-American Catholic in what’s now known as the Rust Belt. As far back as I can remember, from before I could have understood what it really was, I somehow knew that slavery was ugly and evil, but I have no memory as to how I came to know this. It must have been the nuns. In school, we were taught that the Civil War was fought over slavery, but we didn’t really learn anything substantive about slavery. We read about sequences of compromises and Supreme Court cases that lead up to the outbreak of Civil War, but that was taken up only as historical cause-effect and legal abstraction. Prior to the Civil War materials, we were taught about slavery in similarly abstract terms relating to a trade triangle composed of slaves being sold in the West Indies and the South, then sugar from there sold to makers of rum in New England, and then the rum sold in England, which turned into money to buy more slaves.
Our textbook included the familiar sketch diagram of a cross-section showing slaves packed tightly into the lower deck of a slave ship. (Though this image was never discussed, it spoke nonetheless.) The historical experiences of slaves and slavery were never taught in school. This I first learned from watching “Roots” on TV in 1977.
1
When I was a young kid we went to see 1776 on Broadway and I didn’t understand the part about what John Adams was so worked up about. I remember my parents explaining that he had tried to have the Declaration make clear that slavery was wrong but that slave holders from states like Virginia and the Carolinas would not sign the Declaration with that in it. My father said it was good to remember that even then people knew that owning other people was absolutely abhorrent and that those who ignored that fact put their economic interest above any moral imperative. He also told me that cultures react most strongly to the worst things that were ever done to them in a way that makes sense then even if it hurt the culture later and said to remember that when thinking about how slavery affected black people in this country. I was lucky to have lessons like this at a young age. I didn’t get much in school.
Than you for a peek into the educational system in this country, warts and all.
The words of these Americans show the challenges and pitfalls of having any discussions about race in this country, especially if we can't all agree that owning other people as chattel was never a good place to be in.
Reading the headlines of today, and the puzzlement I see on so many faces when watching their elected tricameral government claim their part of the "power pie" sliced up by the constitution itself.
I wonder how citizens of this land have been taught, or not taught Civics.
How many native born folks took a test on the constitution and understand it?
I wonder.
Next
1
The 1619 Project is inherently flawed and "tell us what you learned about slavery" is a perfect example why. The responses will overwhelmingly come from a self-selecting pool of people who believe the nation has grossly failed to heal the wounds of slavery & segregation AND that poor school instruction on the subjects is part of the reason why.
In other words, the people most motivated to respond are the ones who feel the most passionately that they received the most inadequate education about slavery and Jim Crow.
If John Doe and Jane Doe sat next to each other in the exact same high school US history class, John today may feel the class was horribly negligent in addressing our country's original sin, while Jane may feel the opposite. Or simply not remember the details from one class in HS decades ago.
John Doe is going to reply to you. Jane Doe is not.
You did not get a true valid sample.
I, for one, had an excellent US History teacher who pulled no punches and made it quite clear that--whatever the South said--slavery was always the root of the war. In middle school, 6th/7th grade history/civics education was horrible because it was all lumped under the intellectually lazy program of "Social Studies." In 8th, however, we finally got some real history education and my teacher was great. I remember, when we watched "Glory," him pausing it and shouting "That's leadership!" when Matthew Broderick refuses his pay because his soldiers are getting lower pay than whites!
I am 62. Astonishing but true: at one of America's best (and most expensive) girls' private schools, we were not taught about slavery at all--nope, not even during tenth grade American History. That year, the focus was on Watergate and Nixon; on our class trip to D.C. we got to stay in the Howard Johnson's from which the Watergate hotel had been bugged.
I started to learn about slavery when I began teaching American culture: I read Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglas, before moving on to the many slave narratives that have been preserved. Before I found these texts, I read memoirs of life "after" slavery, which was in many ways not different. Coming of Age in Mississippi was a revelation to me as a teenager.
http://www.thecriticalmom.blogspot.com
I grew up in Illinois. There was a huge emphasis on Lincoln. We were told that Lincoln freed the slaves and we heard about the underground railroad. This all seemed very far away since there weren't any plantations or slave auction sites in Illinois. I was in high school during the Vietnam war and read "Black like Me", "The Invisible Man" and "The Confessions of Nat Turner" while I was in high school. We listened to National Public Radio and subscribed to The New Republic. My father had a black friend from college who came to dinner. I remember when Kennedy was killed and that schools in the South were being integrated. There was a real anti southern feeling. Never met anyone from the South. Never went South except to Florida. Some of my relatives moved to North Carolina with a business relocation and everyone felt sorry for them. It was inconceivable that any of us would ever live in the South. My parents didn't admire the East coast either. There was a kid in my class whose mother had been in Auschwitz and I read the Trials at Nuremberg. I also read a lot about Roman torture of early Christians. My family were all Scandinavian immigrants and I never ever thought that we benefited from slavery at all. My grandfather worked for room and board for 4 years when he was a teenager.
I never saw the subject of slavery treated with any kind of jokes or levity in all my school years. The brutality of it was not discussed until my college reading. I did hear and see the argument that since slaves were expensive, smart owners treated them well.
I never saw the argument now being advanced, that slavery was the source of USA economic success. I saw it presented as an antiquated system that benefitted only the owners and impoverished the society, creating a group that could not buy or deal in the marketplace, that damaged the enterprises of free workers and business owners.
Only recently have I seen news of crazy, in bad taste school projects. Nor did I ever attend any events where people dressed in blackface. I realize there is a national tendency to make jokes about everything/anything.
In my Social Studies classes I teach that people are not slaves, but instead enslaved by others. It is not who they are-it is a situation forced upon them.
1
Unlike Athena who also attended school in Utah--Pretty much nothing. Our Jr. High School teachers taught us that American History was basically Utah Pioneer history. One read the book Papa Married a Mormon in an American History class. Civil War? Lincoln freed the slaves--that was about it. Like many others have voiced--we were taught that many slaves were very scared about their futures and unhappy when slavery ended.
I went to Parochial school (Catholic) and one thing Catholic schools do WELL is teach... almost anything. It was, without a doubt, the finest education you could possibly have. We studied American history twice, in grade school and in high school. I remember being taught about slavery both times. While, I think that the terror and misery of it was downplayed, there is a duty to present material at age-appropriate levels. In addition, in our last 2 years of high school, we had formal education in Catholic Social Justice Theology which covered social issues like prisons, slavery, and sex trafficking.
But I do have to say, that "popular culture" taught me more about the evils of slavery than my history classes. I grew up in the era of North and South, of Alex Haley's Roots, and A Woman Called Moses. While these are movies which are made for TV and are fairly watered down from an adult perspective, for a child, they were VERY intense fare, indeed. I still remember the agony of watching the overseer whip black flesh or of Harriet Tubman pull a WAGON up the hill like a mule!
Those things might not have been "history," but they are no less ghoulish than reading about what Thomas Jefferson wrote about how to make money off the "increase" of Monticello's slaves. The *primary* cash crop of Monticello in many lean years was not tobacco or cotton... it was humans. Black children sold from their mothers.
The things you can learn if you want to!
I was taught about slavery first in my "socialist" school years. The usual route: reading "Uncle Tom's Cabin," admiring Paul Robeson, and forming a solid picture of the American South.
Then, at an American university I palled around with Arab students who told me how their country's present form of slavery is practcial, moral and even religiously defensible.
And then, of course, I lived for years in cities such as Pittsburghj, where reality was daily in my face.
1
I am surprised to notice how young some of these contributors are. Some of this stuff happened 15-20 years ago and, unfortunately, still goes on today.
And for all of the people who are not in favor of reparations ...
This is why we need them. It's not just about money, it's about how we teach our history and the language we use to describe our African American, Latinx, and Asian fellow citizens.
It's about learning about the 'Great Contradictions' that our country was founded on. We can still be proud of our country while recognizing these things.
It will not be easy to figure out how to do this ... which is why we need to study it. A lot.
1
I went to school in Virginia Beach, Virginia. We studied history in seventh grade using "Virginia: History, Government, Geography," one of the textbooks included in the photo. The book admitted that there were cruel slaveowners but claimed most owners were kind and it was a beneficial institution. We were all white suburban kids, but we weren't stupid. It was 1964 and Martin Luther King was regularly in the news, speaking about race and history. We exchanged skeptical looks with each other while the teacher read these pages, then hurried on to safer subjects.
2
Given that I went to school in the western NY stomping ground of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, during the 100th anniversary of the Civil War, I learned plenty about the evils of slavery and the efforts of abolitionists (reading Uncle Tom's Cabin and plenty of biographies on my own also helped). Trouble is, it was taught with a certain self-congratulatory air of "we fought the good fight, ended slavery, and it would be all fixed up now if it weren't for those disgusting bigots in Alabama." Then the Rochester riots occurred and the irony became obvious. It's not just what you learn in the school system.
1
Slavery did not begin in America in 1619. It began much earlier when the Spaniards brought some slaves to the New World (America) and enslaved Native Americans.
Before that some Native American tribes made slaves of other tribes, and Africans in Africa enslaved many of their fellow blacks and later sold them into the slave trade that served the Middle East, Europe and America.
Yes, America had slaves, but slavery in the North ended around 1804, and in the South ended in 1865, after hundreds of thousands of white and black Northern soldiers gave their lives to end slavery in the US.
So, no, slavery in America did not begin in 1619, when what became the US was a group of British colonies. Ignoring all the pertinent prior history of slavery totally distorts the subject, and places the NYT clearly in the role of grinding an axe rather than trying to bring insight and clarity to a complex and vexing subject.
I grew up in VA. I had a history teacher in 1969 say the south should have won as her great grandfather lost everything??? We were shown well cared for slaves with loving owners who were sometimes beaten when needed, just like children. I applaud every statue taken down, every confederate flag lowered and slavery called out for what it was, slavery, brutal and wrong.
3
It was 1955 at PS 108 in the Bronx. This white Jewish first grader was dressed in a gingham dress and white pinafore with hair in multiple braids on stage with four other girls singing “way down upon the Swanee river.” We were told we were “pickaninnies.” It is seared into my memory.😢😔😠
The horrors of slavery were never emphasized, nor was the humanity of the enslaved ever considered. The view we were given as children was not even close to being the truth. At times we were taught "fake history".
In the fifth grade we were covering land grants for American history, I was the only Black student so I seldom had any friends, mentors, or calm environment to learn . The teacher casually looked at me and said "your ancestors were slaves so I doubt this would apply to you". This would have been in the mid 60s and very few books were available that covered American history to include the history and contributions of any group except White Europeans. I didn't receive any exposure to Black history or slavery until I went to college and took extensive course work on Black studies.
I can't say I remember any slavery lessons in school, but Mark Twain 's Huck Finn and later William Styron's Nat Turner were very educational on the subject
1
In the 60's and 70's in San Diego public schools I was taught about the horrors of American slavery. I remember being read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" when I was younger and later "Harriet, the Moses of Her People" and selected writings of Frederick Douglass. Post-civil war was focused on the achievements of African Americans such as Thomas Jennings, Jan Ernst Matzeliger, and George Washington Carver, but not the politics of race. Then skip to the 1950's with Black Like Me and To Kill a Mockingbird. Completely missing was Reconstruction and the resurgence of white supremacy after 1876.
1
Reading these in today's context is not shocking. But I am also grateful we had a deep education on the history of, evils of, the political and economics of slavery in our high school history as well as the issues in reconstruction, voter rights and so on. This was New York state in the 1960's and I think standard text books and so on for those times.
It is a real disappointment to many of us, the poor eduction we see. But most importantly, not educating the educators on how to teach! It is no wonder we have a divided society as the poor education on slavery is probably also true about other critical topics that an everyday citizen SHOULD be learning.
The fraught topic of slavery was not taught in the schools I attended and I attended many, all in the South. I was, in fact living Southern style segregation and sharecropping which was bad enough. When slavery was discussed at all, which was rare, it was talked about as a benevolent society. I was thoroughly immersed in a world so different that it boggles my mind and makes me want to cry as I type.
1
My early 1960s American History class in high school was a bit skewed--the teacher was a descendant of one of Robert E. Lee's nephews! So we learned a LOT about Civil War battles and precious little about slavery per se.
This was a private school in California (I was a boarding student). It was segregated--to my horror, since I had a number of close black friends back home.
We did learn that the North depended on slavery to provide the materials (such as cotton) that its burgeoning industries required. I think it's rarely taught even today that slavery created many a New England fortune.
8
I was fortunate in being introduced to the history of African-Americans in this country early and by a fine teacher, Edgar S. Bley. This was in sixth grade at the North Country School, a private, progressive institution in Lake Placid, NY, then only in its seventh year (1944-45). In the fall, we studied Africa, made a map of it and learned some of its folk tales. In the winter, we got the evils of slavery, nor were apologies made for it (I remember in particular the cruelty involved in selling a member of a family "down the river.") Read to us were "Uncle Tom's Cabin," sometimes called the book which started the Civil War; and "Railroad to Freedom," a biography of Harriet Tubman. We gave a play based on the latter (I played Tubman), In the spring, which dealt with the post-Civil War period, we were read "Freedom Road," by Howard Fast. This dealt with African American efforts to build democracy during Reconstruction after the Civil War. If I recall correctly, this book said that this effort was made possible because Union troops remained in the South, and when (as a result of the Presidential election of 1876) these troops were withdrawn, white supremacy took over. We were introduced to lynchings, poll taxes and Jim Crow, and read biographies of George Washington Carver and Booker T. Washington....All this was a very helpful beginning.
11
Like many people in the US, I learned about slavery and thought about what the experience of a slave might have been like from the mini-series Roots that first aired on ABC in 1977. I remembering watching it with my white, middle class family when I had just started high school. I thought the series did a good job of showing the brutality of slavery and of humanizing the slaves by showing details of their lives and families. I also remember that millions of people across the country watched and it became my definitive interpretation of that period of US history. l also believe it became accepted as an important and significant American Story.
6
When he was 7, my son went to a summer camp for gifted students that had week long sessions, focused on a single topic. One of the first he attended was focused on the Civil War. He came home the first night and was indignant - Did I know that it used to be legal for some humans to own other humans? That white people could own black people like they were pieces of furniture? Why was this legal? Why had no one ever explained this to him? It was a very difficult conversation because I could not explain the "side" of the slave owners as being justified. I was taught that slavery was an abomination. But my then-partner had grown up in the south and had a glorified view of enslavement. It was the first of many challenging conversations we had on this topic. When I recently read the description of the plantations (in the NYT 1619 Project) as "forced labor camps", it all came into focus for me. So grateful that this is being discussed now.
15
Here's the best response I ever heard to the "Lost Cause" version of slavery. Suppose you are Lassie and you have the kindest master in the world. You're still a dog and inferior to the worst human. That is what slavery is. It legally reduces human beings to the status of livestock.
I watched "Roots" with family members when I was 11--in my nearly all white grammar school, slavery had never been mentioned. Around this time my mother told me that white kids in her 1930s NJ neighborhood blacked their faces for Halloween (Aunt Jeremiah, etc.), and that Black students in her Catholic school made it clear how they felt about it. My father talked about how his Black fellow soldiers were treated in Washington State before heading off to the Korean War. By the way, the year before, we all watched "Gone with the Wind" on HBO--and somehow the topic of slavery and its continuing aftermath never came up.
1
I am still learning about slavery after more than 65 years. I still do not understand it completely. The definition itself is elusive. It has meant different things at different times, even to the same person. I do not think that it ended in this country with the Emancipation Proclamation, nor the 13th Amendment, and that by some definitions, it may exist to this day.
I started reading contemporary sources on the Civil War as the 150th anniversary went by, and I am beginning to have some feeling for it. But I do not think that slavery was the only reason for the war, just as states' rights was not. The best I can come up with was that when the southern states found that even though the rules were written to give them a tremendous advantage in the federal government, that they could no longer win, the minority in those states who were in power in those states decided to take the game ball home, and quit playing.
As for slavery itself, I believe that there are very few white people in this country who can imagine themselves to be enslaved to black or other minority people, and vice versa, and until that people can imagine that, few will even have the slightest idea of what slavery means.
1
Thankfully my APUSH teacher Mr. Poccia went through this subject in-depth, pulling out an old projector showing the slaves injuries and having a casset tape of John C. Calhoun arguing for the justness of slavery playing. Never in my life had I seen slavery in that light, and I am thankful for the lessons learned in that class. I wish more people had the same education on the topic.
7
I received the same education about the civil war and slavery as Bruce did, but in Utah. No state rights was mentioned. I never received any education about what happened after, such as Jim Crow laws, much less the more complicated history my son decades later received in high school in Arizona, which included both Jim Crow laws, Martin Luther King Jr. and changed demographics in the industrial north.
3
It was the early 1970's and my first-grade teacher, a Catholic nun, read aloud a book to my class about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railway. I was 6. I had been to Boston and ridden the subway there. So I envisioned the Underground Railway as a subway. I've never forgotten the story of Tubman and am looking forward to seeing the movie Harriet when it comes out. I also have a stamp of Tubman which I stamp over the image of Jackson on the 20 dollar bill. It was the Jesuits who said "give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man". I was inspired by Tubman as a girl and I continue to be inspired by her today as a woman.
17
I tutor high school students in math, pro bono. Every year, I take a day away from Algebra II to read the Mississippi Declaration of Secession with my students. The language is hard for them, so we go over it line by line. The very first argument in favor of secession begins, "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery." I make the kids count the number of times the words "slavery" or "slave" appear in the document. I tell them that I am departing from math instruction for one day because every American needs to know that, despite Confederate propaganda to the contrary, the Civil War was, indeed, all about slavery.
44
What a wonderful teacher!
1
My High School teacher repeated twice, for emphasis, that the Civil War was a war of succession. This was at Phillips Andover, in the 90s. I knew he was wrong, but as a teenager I was far less likely to disagree with an authority figure, particularly an educator. Reading these stories gives me hope that some long overdue discussions are underway.
6
"Secession." And it was such a war. It was also a war based on economics. It was also a war revolving around competing concepts of the boundaries of federalism.
But the heart of the disputes of all the above issues was slavery.
8
Phillips Andover in the 90s!!?? Hard to believe being it is considered one of the best schools in America but then again many consider the Academy an 'elitist'
school.
I had an excellent education in Morris County NJ but cannot remember topic being discussed in sophomore American History. Maybe the teacher or the 'book'. Other excellent History classes like World History or History of English and American Literature...not a word. A little shocking in hindsight.
It's interesting to read these accounts.
I grew up in Holliston, Massachusetts. We learned that the Civil War was about slavery, that slavery was unambiguously wrong, and that the elimination of slavery made the US a better country. We also learned that slavery was an inefficient system, and that the US became better, both morally and economically once slavery was eliminated.
12
What was never discussed was how slavery has affected the ongoing history of this country. We never heard how many social programs were rigged to limit or exclude African American participation. We were left with the impression that Reconstruction handled everything. Our history books touched a bit on Jim Crow laws but didn't really tell us how deeply slavery was woven into the fabric of American society or how it continued to be woven in after the Civil War ended.
25
You were never taught that Reconstruction basically failed and whites regained power afterwards and then introduced Jim Crow laws? You were *never* taught that? Did you go to an all-white high school in 1950s Alabama?
I went to high school in Arlington, Virginia, and I distinctly remember being taught two obvious falsehoods: The Civil War was about states' rights, and slaves were largely treated well because they were valuable.
Flash forward forty-five years. I get an email from my high school alumni association asking for financial support to oppose changing the name of my high school. It seems that eighty-five percent of alums wanted to keep the name the same: Washington Lee High School! The effect on a black student who had to walk through the door of a school named in honor of a man who fought to keep his or her ancestors enslaved, did not, it seems, matter to most.
No wonder I've never attended any reunions.
21
Who was Washington Lee?
It may be a shocking experience that the pro-slavery side "won" a debate in a classroom, but it also does teach the important lesson that in the debate over abolition large numbers of white people actually did believe that slavery was more than OK, that it was useful and even benevolent. This is important knowledge about American history: many people were actively pro-slavery and demanded that it be a protected social institution. To make the lesson useful, the teacher could have unpacked the reasoning behind the pro-slavery arguments and asked why they were persuasive enough to justify enslaving people (and to whom they were persuasive).
16
Can you believe that -- the Foundation for Teaching Economics has a "game" for teaching students about Indentured Servitude:
https://fte.org/wp-content/uploads/Game.Indentured-Servitude.x.2-061.doc
1
It's important to remember that slavery has existed from the beginning of human history. Even today there is a constant search for unfree or cheap as dirt labor. Sociologist Orlando Patterson's book, "Slavery and Social Death," shows how slavery worked in different societies over thousands of years. Too many Americans are inadvertently taught that slavery was something invented by racist Europeans to bedevil poor Africans. What we should be celebrating is the great moral awakening that occurred in Britain and America (started by the Quakers and expanded to other Christians) that, for the first time, insisted that slavery was immoral in itself for any people and not just for one's own. A good source for this is Adam Hochschild's "Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves.
More than 50 years ago I attended segregated public schools for three grades in Loudon County, Virginia. I remember that I had a class on state history, a requirement that still seems common in many states. I cannot remember if the class on Virginia state history was a semester long or a year long, but I can remember some of what was taught about slavery. What I remember is we were taught that slaves were well fed and liked their masters. I do not remember learning about Nat Turner and other stories that would have been based on circumstances different from the notions that slaves were well fed and happy with their masters.
I also do not remember being taught about Jim Crow.
12
We hardly studied slavery when I was a kid in 80's/90's central PA public education (mostly white, suburban). We spent a full year on Babylonia and Mesopotamia, but scarcely a week on slavery and the Holocaust combined. Nothing at all on Civil Rights. I didn't even know who Martin Luther King was besides a holiday from school, and I was in AP History class. It was that bad.
I am now learning about the details of slavery for the first time because I have a 10-year-old who is studying it in depth for a full year school-wide project on African-American history (she just did a presentation on Frederick Douglass for her class today - I hardly knew anything about this enormously important American hero until now).
Also, our family visited the deep south over the summer and learned so much more than what my public education provided. The Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Legacy Museum, the 16th Street Baptist Church, the National Civil Rights Museum, the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the march from Selma - these places have shown a light on things I had never learned about when I was a kid with a supposedly excellent public education.
I hope many schools are adopting the curriculum of my kids' school, rather than my own.
And the 1619 Project has opened my eyes to an entirely different world that has been here the whole time, but which many of us didn't see.
19
Central PA? Like York? A southern town that just happens to be north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Charlie Robertson? That York? Moving away permanently 12 years ago, was the best thing I ever did and now that my parents and my wife's parents have gone to wherever it is you go, we have no need to go again. My oldest son just submitted his Ph. D dissertation at UCLA on this topic: "Matters of Life: Writing Lives in the Age of United States Slavery"
Interesting reading these memories. My own memory of school in NJ in the 60s and 70s is that we had a fair amount of Civil War history, and we were left with absolutely no doubt that the war happened because of slavery. I don't remember any sugar-coating of slavery, either; it was presented as unambiguously bad. We didn't spend huge amounts of time on the topic, but certainly I took away from the classes the notion that the North had moral superiority, and the war was one that needed to be fought.
18
My experience as to how we were taught about slavery and the Civil War in my elementary and secondary schools in Pennsylvania was similar. This was quite some decades ago...but no teacher I had ever made remarks such as some that I've read here. Some of the stories related in the article are quite shocking to read that teachers joked or downplayed the true history of slavery.
5
I will never forget that when I was in my early 20's, I visited George Washington's plantation, Mount Vernon, and was absolutely shocked to see the slaves' quarters and graveyard. I was already a graduate of a prestigious college (Georgetown University, which as it happens is now coming to terms with the fact that the University's early finances benefited from the selling of slaves), yet I did not know that George Washington had owned slaves. I had learned the myth of Washington and the cherry tree, but not the reality of Washington the plantation owner and slaveholder. Even in liberal, supposedly good school districts, the teaching of American history is often severely lacking with regard to the African and Native peoples.
24
I remember being taught that Washington had slaves, but it really hit home when I visited his plantation while on a trip to Washington.
When I got older, I learned that Washington freed his slaves in his will and that he provided a small pension to his personal servant, William Lee. A number of years ago, the Times had an Op-Ed; I think it was on President's Day. The writer indicated that when Washington went to Philadelphia, he noticed that everyone was energetic and productive. Washington said that the slaves were not as productive because they did not have good incentives under slavery. After meeting Phillis Wheatley, Washington said in a letter that Blacks could be productive members of society if they were educated (this is included in the Library of America volume on Washington's writings). Washington was certainly not perfect, but he showed a lot of growth in his thinking.
6
I read in Ron Chernow's biography of George Washington that the main reason he kept his enslaved people was the most were elderly or very young, and they literally would have had no where to go and no way to support themselves if freed, at that time and place.
No idea how true this was, but it is interesting.
Washington COULD easily have been made "king"....he was that popular, but he made a point of refusing this, and insisting on being a president.