Today, Explained - Missing history

Episode Date: September 3, 2019

Kids in school don’t learn much about American slavery. Professor Hasan Kwame Jeffries says students deserve the real story. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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because I know there are other ways to spell labor. What's good, y'all? I'm Gene Demby. I'm one of the co-hosts of the Code Switch podcast at NPR. I'm currently sitting at Sean Ramos' desk and using the many essential oils on his windowsill while he's on vacation. And just a heads up, this episode includes violent content. We'll get started in a couple seconds, so you have a little bit of time to turn it off if there are any little ones

around. A few weeks ago, I was down in Hampton, Virginia, standing at this windy spot. Some folks nearby were setting up a stage for festivities to commemorate, I guess commemorate is probably not the right word, to remember what happened on this spot in August of 1619. And there's a marker here that says, First Africans of Virginia. I just want to read it really quickly. The first documented Africans of Virginia arrived here in August 1619 on the White Line, an English privateer based in the Netherlands, I just want to read it really quickly. became free. A legal framework for hereditary, lifelong slavery in Virginia evolved during the 1600s. The United States abolished slavery in 1865.

Uh, yeah, about that. So a lot happened between the early 1600s and 1865, but most of us don't know a whole lot about the two and a half centuries of slavery. Up until I took that trip to Hampton, I thought that the first Africans who arrived here were indentured servants. That's what I was taught in school. That's very wrong, by the way. And believe it or not, we are actually getting better at teaching the history of slavery in America.

But the place where we started from was so awful that literally you couldn't get any worse. When you're describing happy darkies, you can only go up from there. Hassan Kwame Jeffries, you're a history professor at The Ohio State University, and you did a massive study for the Southern Poverty Law Center looking at textbooks, and you surveyed more than a thousand teachers and students to see just how slavery is taught. So what did you find? That the way American slavery is taught in our schools today is generally incorrect,

insufficient, and inaccurate. And it matters because slavery is really the foundation of this nation. We often talk about or hear people talk about slavery being America's original sin, when in fact it was America's origin. So if we don't get the history of American slavery correct, then we will not understand and our students will not understand how the American journey, the American project has evolved over time. So let's go to the curriculum for a second. What is the first thing that American schoolchildren learn about slavery and in what grade do they learn it? Most children are exposed to slavery indirectly very early on, usually through an introduction to American presidents, because so many of the first presidents, nearly three quarters of the first dozen or so, were enslavers. So although we're not calling them out as such, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, all of whom claimed ownership over several hundred people of African descent,

that is actually the first introduction to slavery. George Washington was the first you see. He once chopped down a cherry tree. President number two would be John Adams and then number three. introduction to slavery. In third grade, late elementary, many places will introduce African-American history through folk who were enslaved, i.e. now we're going to have two days during Black History Month on Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. We'll talk about a civics, a government class in which you're talking about the construction of the Constitution, but again, often not mentioning slavery, although slavery was so central to the way the Constitution was formed and framed. We hold these truths to be self-evident.

That all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their creator. With certain unalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Okay, so what happens in high school? Like, how much of that picture gets filled out then? What happens is slavery is mentioned, but the focus is off. It's not really put in a global context. So we don't really hear about the middle passage. You might hear about a triangle of trade, but not the middle passage. You certainly don't hear about the African context, the African cultures and communities from which African-Americans are drawn from, from which enslaved people are torn. So it's about

resistance without actually explaining why people resisting or what it was they were actually resisting against. So we get a whole lot of Underground Railroad, but not necessarily a whole lot of discussion about the violence that enabled this system to exist. And in high school, it takes it through the Civil War, and then things get just as confused. A multiple choice survey asked high school seniors across the country what caused the South to secede from the Union. Only 8% of the students answered slavery. And this emphasis on multiple causes of the war that de-emphasize slavery as the primary cause and looks at other things like states' rights disconnected from the reality that the state right that the Confederate states were fighting for was the right to maintain slavery. So let's talk about everything that this approach leaves out and how slavery should be taught.

If you could design a K-12 curriculum, what would that look like? And what would you want every high school senior to understand about slavery? The first thing is to introduce it through resistance. As long as slavery existed, as long as African-Americans, African people were held in bondage, they resisted. And so we see them engage in overt acts still, such as flight, but then also form families and cling to the bonds of kinship when they knew full and well that they could be separated, sold apart. What allows slavery to exist is violence. Violence is the cornerstone of slavery. If you took up arms in rebellion, that was practically an act of suicide. There are a number of conspiracies and rebellions, Nat Turner's being the most famous perhaps, that all end, some with some

white folk being killed, some enslavers being killed, but with enslaved people en masse being executed. So most folk, enslaved folk, come to the reasonable conclusion that if my goal is to survive, then armed resistance in that way simply is not the most effective means of resisting. Why is that so important? Because if we say slavery is such a terrible experience, the mind naturally drifts towards, well, why didn't they fight back? And so in the absence of the resistance, there is this sense of, oh, well, one, it either must not have been so bad or two, that enslaved people were complicit in their own enslavement. But once you say, no, no, no, that they fought back, then students can see not only students of color, but white students as well.

They can make this human connection and then you can open it up and say, OK, this is why slavery existed. This is the economic motivation for it. And then begin to unpack the related components such as white supremacy, justifying the institution and being the primary legacy of what slavery was. So we're talking about this broad historical ignorance that we have as Americans around slavery. But part of that story is also that we've been intentionally misled or miseducated around slavery. Well, a major textbook publisher is apologizing this morning for a glaring error about slavery. So a few years ago, there was this controversy in Texas over the textbooks there because Texas supplies textbooks to a lot of the

rest of the nation. It had Africans and African Americans as workers, implying pay as if we had come here willingly and were paid to do our job. But there is no mention of Africans working as slaves or being slaves. It just says we were workers. And it was a deeply partisan fight there. And it was a deeply partisan fight there. And it was a reminder that how we learn slavery is not an accident, that there are political interests that inform the way that we are misinformed around slavery. No, you're absolutely right. The narratives around slavery, the misinformation, the myths and misconceptions are purposeful. Then we have this attempt to rationalize evil.

And so, you know, we talk about, yeah, maybe a Jefferson or a Madison or Washington claimed ownership over other people, but weren't they good masters? But didn't they treat them well? Right. Like that's rationalizing evil. Thomas Jefferson is raping a 15 year old by name of Sally Hemings. He's 45. And we're going to talk about him as this good, loving master, or this is some wonderful romance in Paris. Do you remember what the first things that you were taught about slavery were when you were in elementary school? I'm originally from Brooklyn, New York, and there was no discussion of slavery in the public schools that I went to in New York City, Midwood High School. But then I had the informal track of what I was learning at home, what I was learning from my

parents, what I was learning from my uncles, what I was learning from the community. In other words, outside of school, I understood black humanity and that enslaved people were human beings and were fighting for their survival and resisted. But I didn't have the foundation to understand the connection between the textile industry in Massachusetts and the cotton plantations of Mississippi. What I was missing were the connective tissue that we ought to be getting in the classroom. So I'm listening to you talk about this, and you're saying that there was this disconnect between what you were learning at home and what you were learning in school. So I went to an all-black elementary school. All of my teachers were black. I'm from South Philadelphia. And so there was less distance between what I was learning at home and what

I was learning in school. And I'm just curious, when you were learning about the history of this country at home in a sort of more informal way and you were going to school and you weren't learning about it, did that make you sort of side eye the way you were being educated more broadly? No, it did. I literally was thinking as I'm sitting in these classrooms that this shit don't make no sense. I'm supposed to be, you know, singing the praises of these presidents. And I'm like, yeah, but they own people, right? I'm not feeling this, right? The trip to Colonial Williamsburg isn't sitting right with me. So nothing that I was learning about the past was helping me to understand

what I was seeing when I was riding the train from President Street to Flatbush Avenue. I think any time you can shine a bright light on these aspects of American history, and certainly American slavery is so central to the American experience, that's a positive good because we have to pull this history out of the shadows. It's the only way that we can make sense of the problems that we're facing today and come up with adequate solutions to address those problems. And we always have had this hesitancy to deal honestly and forthrightly with racism, with the American past,

and with slavery. So much of our understanding of slavery is shaped, maybe even more profoundly than it is in the classroom by popular culture, by movies and music and TV, right? Oh, absolutely. And in many ways, that's the driving force behind the persistence of the myths about slavery. And this has been whether we're talking about Birth of a Nation or Gone with the Wind. I mean, you could still watch Gone with the Wind on Turner Classics. I mean, it's still being broadcast. But then it's many films that then pick up many of the myths and misconceptions.

So a few years ago, a decade or so ago, you had that film The Patriot starring Mel Gibson. By standing order of His Majesty King George, all slaves of the American colonies who fight for the crown will be granted their freedom without victory. Sir, we're not slaves. We work this land. And here he's a South Carolina planter and he must be the only one

who has wage laborers. It's like, what is going on? Wait, wait. So Mel Gibson's character is a planter in the South, I think around the time of the Revolutionary War in this movie, right?

Right. In the Revolutionary War, yep. And he has black folks working for him and he's paying them? Yeah. No, no, no. He's paying wages. It's like it's like, wait. I mean, I was confused at first. I was like, wait, OK, so are these not the enslaved people? Like, no, I mean, I think they're paying them. Like, what the hell is that?

I mean, that's the whole good master thing. Right. Like and those are the people who we're going to cling to. That's why the flip side of it. And you get to something like roots. Oh, God, no, no, master. You can't sell kids to offers a completely different picture of what the institution of slavery and what American slavery was actually really like. She disobeyed the rules. She has to suffer the consequences. That's all there is to it. Messer, please. Please, Messer. I beg you, please, dozella. Please, Messer. She's already been sold. Mama! Mama, no! Mama! For those of us who are too young to remember Roots, can you explain what it was and why it was such a big deal?

Roots is the story based on a book by Alex Haley that charts his family's journey from kidnap and capture in Africa, literally up until the 20th century. And so it's a multi-generational history of the African and the enslaved African, the enslaved African-American, and the free African-American experience. It does a wonderful job of showing the humanity of enslaved people. I mean, it was far ahead of its time and it really shook people to the core. I remember watching it in the third grade on VHS in Miss Curtis's class. Shout out to Miss Curtis. Do you see any differences in when an African-American director approaches a film about slavery versus, you know, a non-black director? What we often see when we have black directors, black production companies, is a greater sense and appreciation for the agency of African people,

making the story about a driving central African-American character without a lot of the sort of nonsense that we could often get in other films. So I'm thinking about Django Unchained by Quentin Tarantino. There is a scene in there where the main character is sort of riding up to a plantation. And there's like these young African-American women who are enslaved and they're like sitting on a swing, just sort of swinging away. And it's like, what the hell is this?

Like, I don't understand. In what world would that happen? Bettina Sugar, could you take Django there and take him around the grounds here and show him all the pretty stuff? As you please be there. Mr. Bennett. And of course, for the longest time, you couldn't make a major motion picture about slavery or even a major motion picture centered on black folk in

the African-American experience without having the primary character be white. And so you think about a film like Glory, about the Massachusetts 54th Regiment, United States Colored Troop, the first black regiment to head south and fight for freedom on the side of the Union during the Civil War. And it's told from the perspective of the white commanding officer. If I should fall, remember what you see here. Yep, it was all about Matthew Broderick. All about Matthew Broderick. And he does a hell of a role. I mean, you know, that's one of my favorite films of all time. But we have to be real about what it was, right? This is a story

about a white dude. And yet, Frederick Douglass, for example, who was the driving force behind getting this the regiment up and started, who was in Lincoln's ear in the ear of the governor of Massachusetts saying, look, you've got to make this a fight for freedom. And you've got to bring black soldiers, got to bring black men in. You've got to let black soldiers fight. And he literally has one line in the whole film. Two influential white filmmakers, Steven Spielberg with Amistad, Ken Burns with The Civil War and some of his other documentaries, try to tackle slavery. What did you make of their portrayals? Well, Amistad is interesting because so here again, the central characters in many ways are these white attorneys and a former president. But you have this really powerful scene about the Middle Passage and arguably the most powerful depiction of the Middle Passage

in a major motion picture. Oh, no! Oh, no! More recently, we have 12 Years a Slave, you know, that had a black director and Steve McQueen. And that was much more narrowly focused on the experiences of enslaved people. I wonder what you make of that movie. So I think 12 Years a Slave is a phenomenal film. And part of how I view films and sort of judge films in my mind is how useful could it be in the classroom? And 12 Years a Slave is absolutely a useful film in the classroom, age appropriate, but certainly for high schoolers, late middle schoolers, more than appropriate and effective for showing and dramatizing and depicting what slavery literally was like.

And that being said, you still got Brad Pitt. So there still is this, you know, it's not the central driving figure, but you have this white anchor. I call him white anchor character. I will write your letter, sir. And if it brings you your freedom, it will be more than a pleasure. It will have been my duty. Yeah, he comes up, he's the good white man for like literally two minutes in the movie. Exactly,

right? But as long as he's there, the entire white audience can zoom in and be like, okay, that would have been me. Like, no, you wouldn't have been Brad Pitt, right? But that gives him a little out. And of course, no film is perfect, but that aside, you really get a sense of what this experience, again, may have been like. Stop. Stop. You're waiting.

You let yourself be overcome by sorrow. You will drown in it. Have you stopped crying for your children? You make no sounds, but will you ever let them go in your heart? I mean, one of the powerful things I think in 12 Years a Slave is you don't really realize how long he has been in bondage, right? Time sort of slows down. And then you realize, man, he had been gone bondage, right? Time sort of slows down. And then you realize like, man, he had been gone a while, right?

But then at the same time, he had a hope that the vast majority of enslaved people never had. At least he knew that somebody may be looking for him, that he had a chance to regain his freedom. But the folk on the plantations in Louisiana and these other places that he found himself, how do they live day to day without any hope to cling to for generations? So part of the

problem is we are so desensitized to violence on screen. So it was actually interesting to see in 12 Years a Slave one or two of the brutal whipping scenes. 40, 100, 150 lashes. That's scripture. To see people cringe in the audience and tears to well up and to see them turn away because it captures, I think, in that one moment how brutal the institution of slavery actually was. One of the things we talk about a lot on our podcast at Code Switch is the fact that college freshmen are coming to campus, coming from segregated high schools. And so they have to sort of relitigate every year how to live in community with people who are not like them. And they have to learn all of this history for the first time in a lot of cases. And I'm curious as to whether or not you're seeing more literacy among the students you teach,

and whether they're more receptive to talking about these very tough things. There's a couple things that I have found going on on my college campus, and I don't think Ohio State is particularly unique in this regard. You're absolutely right that students are coming from very separate and distinct communities. The vast majority of my white students are coming from suburbs and rural Ohio. The vast majority of black students are coming from urban spaces, metropolitan areas, and both are coming from rigidly segregated black and white communities. So it's totally these two different perspectives. But now I think we're also living in a very

interesting moment because of the rise of Donald Trump. And I just don't have random students because of the classes that I teach, civil rights movement, African-American history through film, and a first year seminar on mass incarceration. my students are very self-selecting. But what I have seen since Donald Trump has been in office, there has been an increase, not only in the number of people taking my class, civil rights class jumping from 30 to 40 to now 75, but the students who are coming in are coming in with a mentality of how do we change this world? And this is just not the black folk. This is also the white folk, the Asian students, Latinx students. And it is a direct reflection of them trying to understand the madness that they're seeing playing out before them. And this is also the generation that their first political memory is the election of Barack Obama. But their first political involvement, if you will, is very much connected to the rise of Donald Trump. Hassan Kwame Jeffries is a professor of history at The Ohio State University. I'm Gene Demby, keeping the seat warm for Sean Ramos for him while he's on vacation.

This is Today Explained.