American History

As Black History Month comes to a close, my students and I are taking up the story of slavery in antebellum America.  We started talking about the stories of Africans in America when we studied Jamestown; this group knows why the date 1619 matters.  We talk a lot about black history in my class, which covers the period from 1609 to 1850.  We don’t only speak of enslaved Africans in America, though the stories are obviously prominent.  My goal is to ensure that these 7th graders always know that black history is American history. 

Though we’d prefer to ignore it, slavery is a prominent part of the American story.  When I teach my students about the history of slavery, I show them that damage can be inflicted more quickly than a cure can correct it.  So I point out that the North American English colonies began enslaving people in 1619, protected the continuation of slavery when the Constitution was adopted, and didn’t officially make slavery illegal until 1865.  Those years were followed by systemic racism in the form of segregation and denial of rights; a condition that lasted until at least 1964, with the passage of the Civil Rights Act.  Even that date is a generous “end” date for the legal practice of slavery and segregation of blacks in America.  But if we use it, we’re talking about more than 350 years of time spent inflicting a wound.  

In this generous definition, we’ve only “officially”ended legalized racism for 55 years.  And I note that this is generous.  The Black Lives Matter movement of the last decade didn’t occur in a vacuum; it’s a response to the systemic racism that continues to exist in the United States.  From the incarceration rate of African Americans to the modern segregation of American schools and the maternal and infant mortality rates of African Americans mamas and their babies, the inequality that first came to our shores in 1619 persists today.

It will take much more work for us to recover from it.  We can only make progress if we are truthful with ourselves.  As Bryan Stevenson reminds us, “The great evil of American slavery wasn’t involuntary servitude: It was the ideology of white supremacy, in which people persuaded themselves that black people aren’t fully human.” We would do well to remember it every time we consider our nation’s history.