Page 129 - 1619 Project Curriculum

SUNDAY, AUGUST 25, 2019
4

National

THE YEAR 1619
WHY
YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT

THIS YEAR marks the 400th anniversary of when the first enslaved Africans were brought to what is There is virtually no part of modern life in this country that has not been affected by slavery — from our

now the state of Virginia. Most of us are familiar with how slavery worked in this country. We learn that legal system to the schools we attend. “The story of 1619 is not a black story, and it’s not a white story; it’s

enslaved men, women and children were kidnapped from their homes in Africa, locked into heavy iron truly an American story, ” says Nikole Hannah-Jones, a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine. She
chains and crammed onto ships for a dangerous journey. They had no idea where they were going and proposed that the magazine devote an entire issue to tracing how slavery affects different parts of life in

often died on the way — from heat, starvation, thirst and violence. They were brought to the colonies America. Last Sunday, Aug. 18, that special issue and a special broadsheet section appeared in the paper.
and were sold and forced to work on the land and in the homes of white people for the rest of their lives, On this page, The New York Times for Kids joins the effort to acknowledge the importance of the year 1619

though resistance and rebellion were common. And they eventually fought for and won their freedom — in United States history, to explain how slavery has shaped our country and to examine how we talk about
sacrificing their lives to escape bondage. But this is only part of the story. slavery today. Lovia Gyarkye
SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES THROUGH TIME 4 MYTHS
1619 45 68 180,000 12 ABOUT

THE YEAR THE THE ROUGH THE NUMBER THE APPROXIMATE THE AGE OF SLAVERY
FIRST PERCENTAGE OF THE OF DAYS FOR NUMBER OF BLACK THE GIRL REDOSHI
SLAVE SHIP 55 AMERICAN WHICH SOLDIERS WHEN SHE BY ERICA L. GREEN
ARRIVED REVOLUTIONARIES NAT TURNER WHO SERVED IN THE WAS BROUGHT

WHO MET IN 1781
IN POINT COMFORT, AVOIDED CAPTURE UNION ARMY TO THE UNITED EVEN THOUGH it has been more than
TO FINALIZE THE
CARRYING BY LOCAL DURING STATES. SHE IS 150 years since slavery ended in the
CONSTITUTION United States, we Americans have a
MORE THAN AUTHORITIES. HE THE CIVIL WAR, BELIEVED
WHO ALSO OWNED difficult time discussing the pain
20 ENSLAVED LED ONE OF WHICH STARTED TO HAVE BEEN and shame of slavery. In few places
ENSLAVED PEOPLE.
AFRICANS. THE MOST FAMOUS IN 1861 THE LAST SURVIVOR is this more true than in the nation ’ s
classrooms. Depending on where you live,

REBELLIONS BECAUSE NORTHERN OF THE SLAVE what textbooks your school districts buy
1781 AGAINST SLAVERY, AND SOUTHERN SHE DIED IN 1937. you might graduate from school with an
and what lesson plans your teachers use,
TRADE.

American
understanding of this part of

WITH MORE THAN

STATES

history that is vastly different from
50 ARMED

from what actually happened. Historians
THE BLACK MEN, IN 1831 COULD NOT AGREE someone else ’s — and vastly different

ABOUT ENDING
YEAR ELIZABETH IN VIRGINIA. SLAVERY. THE WAR 98 and researchers who study how slavery

is taught in school have found that
FREEMAN, AFTER HE WAS WOULD NOT END important facts and context are often
ignored, downplayed or misrepresented
UNTIL 1865.

CAUGHT,
AN ENSLAVED
5,000 MASSACHUSETTS HE WAS HANGED. THE PERCENTAGE to perpetuate more comforting myths ’’

WOMAN IN
about slavery. ‘‘We don’t want to inflict
OF BLACK

shame upon black children, and we

CHILDREN
don’t want to shame white children,
MUM BETT,

professor at Ohio State University.

THE ESTIMATED BETTER KNOWN AS 1836 IN THE SOUTH WHO says Hasan Kwame Jeffries, a history
STILL ATTENDED

DISTANCE, SUED FOR HER SEGREGATED ‘‘So, what we have been teaching is a
what slavery
very sanitized version of
IN MILES, OF FREEDOM AND WON. $2,500 was.’’ Here are four common myths and

misunderstandings about slavery that

THE YEAR
THE MIDDLE IN COURT, SHE THE HOUSE OF SCHOOLS are taught in schools throughout the
ARGUED

IN 1964.

PASSAGE, THAT SLAVERY REPRESENTATIVES THE PRICE THAT THIS WAS 10 YEARS United States.

WHICH VIOLATED ADOPTED A TWO 18-YEAR-OLD AFTER THE 1
DESCRIBES THE NEW ‘‘GAG RULE’’ GIRLS SUPREME COURT STATES’ RIGHTS LED TO THE
CIVIL WAR. Many states in the

THE SLAVE -TRADE MASSACHUSETTS ON SLAVERY, EACH SOLD FOR IN UNANIMOUSLY South have had school curriculums that
ROUTE CONSTITUTION REFUSING TO DISCUSS SAVANNAH, GA., RULED IN THE CASE emphasize ‘‘states’ rights’’ (the right
FROM THE COAST OF 1780, GETTING RID OF IN 1863. KNOWN AS of states to follow their own rules rather
than those of the federal government) as
OF AFRICA WHICH SAID THAT SLAVERY OR THE the main cause of the Civil War. But the
TO ONE OF ALL MEN ARE RIGHTS OF BROWN V. BOARD right that the South fought to protect —
to declare that black people were legally
THE COLONIES BORN FREE AND ENSLAVED PEOPLE. OF EDUCATION property — is rarely clearly identified as
IN THE 13 THAT RACIAL the chief cause of the conflict.
AMERICAS EQUAL. SEGREGATION THE REALITY: Southern states
sought to leave the United States to
OR THE IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS preserve slavery, which they saw as
THE

CARIBBEAN. 1793 AMENDMENT VIOLATED vital to their economy.
2
12.5 THE YEAR ABOLISHED THE CONSTITUTION. ENSLAVED PEOPLE WERE was
THAT

‘WORKERS.’ One of the largest
textbook publishers in the country

CONGRESS PASSED 3 SLAVERY criticized in recent years for a passage

in one of its old ‘‘World Geography’’
THE ESTIMATED THE FIRST IN THE UNITED 2013 textbooks. It said the African slave trade
NUMBER OF PEOPLE OF FUGITIVE THE ESTIMATED STATES. brought millions of ‘‘workers from Africa
AFRICAN DESCENT, SLAVE ACT, VALUE, IN BILLIONS OF IT WAS PASSED THE YEAR to the Southern United States to work
on agricultural plantations.
’’
IN MILLIONS, WHICH DOLLARS, OF THE BY CONGRESS IN MISSISSIPPI THE REALITY: Enslaved people
FORCIBLY MADE IT A CRIME 4 MILLION ENSLAVED 1865, OFFICIALLY were not ‘‘workers, ’’ which implies paid,
voluntary labor. Enslaved people were

TRANSPORTED TO HELP AN PERSONS LIVING TWO YEARS ABOLISHED forced to work without pay, considered

property by law.
ENSLAVED PERSON IN THE UNITED STATES AFTER
FROM THEIR SLAVERY
WHO HAD ESCAPED. IN 1860. ABRAHAM LINCOLN 3
HOMELANDS TO ISSUED THE BY RATIFYING SLAVERY ONLY EXISTED IN THE
PLANTATIONS EMANCIPATION THE 13TH SOUTH. When schools teach the
ACROSS THE AMENDMENT. history of slavery, they often focus on
the Civil War, which can lead to the

AMERICAS AND THE PROCLAMATION — misunderstanding that slavery only

existed in Southern states.
CARIBBEAN WHICH THE REALITY: Slavery existed in
FROM THE 16TH DID NOT FREE every colony, although Northern states
CENTURY TO THE ALL ENSLAVED abolished slavery by the early 1800s,
was
before the Civil War began. Slavery
19TH CENTURY. PEOPLE. not abolished in New York until 1827.
4

SLAVERY WASN’T THAT BAD.
Until last year, some students at a
HOW I BECAME A school in Texas used a textbook that
stated some enslaved people weren’t
‘‘terribly unhappy’’ with their conditions,
because some had ‘‘kind and generous
WHEN I WAS a little girl, there was a become a professor, first at New York son, and another enslaved person ’ owners ’’ who didn’t beat or kill them.
s
court decision in 1954 that mandated Law School, then teaching history at account that confirmed it. I checked THE REALITY: Slavery was a violent,

life, whose very basis was
that schools be integrated — that there Rutgers-Newark. timelines. I read the private diary of painful way of
racism and oppression through mental
couldn’t be separate white schools and
Then I wrote a book, and it changed
Jefferson s. I came to the
’
a friend of
HISTORIAN black schools. My school in Conroe, Tex., my life. When I was in third grade, I conclusion that the story about them and physical brutality. Enslaved people

suffered a
variety of abuses, from
had been avoiding acting on the decision
was most likely true. A
year after my
read a child’s biography of President
for more than a decade. My parents sent Thomas Jefferson, told through the book was published, DNA evidence savage beatings to the threat of being
me to first grade at the white school. I eyes of a fictionalized enslaved boy. He corroborated what I found. sold or separated from their families.
was there for a year by myself, until there was depicted as lazy and trifling, while Now my day job is as a professor of Leaving the violence and degradation
was a court ruling, and then everyone was Jefferson was intelligent. I remember law and history at Harvard University. out of school lessons partly shields
mixed together. Lawyers as heroic figures wondering why you had to tell the story In any given semester, I might teach kids’ innocence, but it also preserves
the legacies of our celebrated heroes
were in the back of my mind all that time. this way. As an adult, I wrote my first criminal procedure — when police can who were enslavers. For example, some
When I went to college, I majored in book about how historians had weighed stop you in a car, or come and search textbooks depict George Washington as
history. I was thinking I would become a the evidence that Jefferson had had your house — or a history class about a ‘‘kind and generous’’ owner because
lawyer and write on the side. After I went children with Sally Hemings, an enslaved law and politics in the 1790s. In my he eventually freed his enslaved people,
to Harvard Law School, I worked for a woman on one of his plantations. spare time, I write. Right now, I’m but that didn’t happen until after he and
big law firm, and then for the Board of (Enslaved people had no legal right to doing a second volume of the Hemings his wife died. And even enslaved people
Correction in New York, which oversees refuse relationships with their enslavers.) family story. I feel like a kid who grew who worked on President Washington s
’
BY ANNETTE GORDON -REED Rikers Island jails. Then my urge to write I read what Hemings ’s son Madison up in Little League and made it to the plantation, Mount Vernon — including his
s
seriously came back. So I decided to Hemings said about being Jefferson ’ Yankees. As told to Elise Craig personal assistant — tried to escape. ◊
Spot Illustrations: Natasha Tibbott. Gordon-Reed: Illustration by Kyle Hilton; source photo: Stephanie Mitchell.