"(US President Thomas) Jefferson...had always been kind to the negroes on his plantation. When he got back they were so rejoiced that they took him out of his carriage and carried him into the house, some of them crying and others laughing with delight because 'massa come home again.'" - Excerpt from A First Book in American History, 1889, by Edward Eggleston:circa 1789

Hand in hand with slavery came attempts to whitewash it with romanticized claims that loving relationships existed between masters and slaves. Teaching these myths, as well as not teaching basic Black American history, was and still is an attempt to erase our shameful history of slavery and systemic white supremacy.

In the 1970s, a Texas geography book referred to slaves as "workers". In Alabama, the textbook, "Know Alabama", falsely claimed that slavery on the plantation was "one of the happiest ways of life." A fourth grade text book claimed slaves were treated like "family".

Make no mistake, there was no loving slave master. Despite whatever outrageously false and irresponsible claims are printed in these textbooks, 388,000 men, women and children were kidnapped, chained shoulder to shoulder to the floor of a ship, brought across the ocean, never to see their loved ones or home continent again, or speak their native tongue again. After being dispersed as property throughout the American slave community, North and South, they became the property of another human being. Slaves were given a new name, treated like cattle, sold at auction, branded, whipped, forced to breed, forced into labor. Men, women, men and children were raped. As property of another human being, and if slaves bore children, by law their children would also be someone's property. 

Up until the 1970s, an Alabama textbooks described slavery was "the happiest ways of life". A curriculum which teaches that the enslavement of human beings is "happy" is a clear reflection of a very sick society, and a very sick culture. Sadly, we still see symptoms of this societal and cultural illness today fueling our inability and/or unwillingness to end systemic racism and white supremacy in America.

Slavery exposes the lowest possible depth, solid rock bottom, of man's inhuman cruelty and willingness to inflict endless suffering onto his fellow man. 

For centuries the slave trade flourished in the Americas. In 1492, when Columbus landed on the shores of the Caribbean, like other European conquerors ("explorers" is far too nice a word to describe them) before him, he arrived with a business plan reliant on slave labor. Columbus's system of extremely violent slavery resulted in the genocide of the indigenous people who had the misfortune of living on the islands where his ships landed.

The first European settlers in what was to become the United States, found the indigenous people living here on their ancestral land were nearly impossible to enslave. Hell bent on free slave labor, the colonists brought in kidnapped slaves from Africa. Those Africans who weren't killed crossing over in the slave ships, were left so traumatized and broken, they were defenseless against additional violence and abuse.

In the United States, hundreds of landmark buildings were constructed literally by the blood, sweat and tears of slaves: the White House, Monticello, the US Capital, the residences of former presidents including George Washington's Mount Vernon and James Madison's Montpelier, American universities and churches. Not only were these structures built by slaves, they remained connected to the slave trade and continued to use slave labor. In their ongoing attempt to justify slavery and white supremacy, American universities further disgraced themselves by being central to the development of the ridiculous pseudoscience of scientific racism which was of course embraced by slave owners. Confederate Vice President, Alexander H. Stephens famously asserted: “Our new government is founded upon… the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. “ Facts be damned, this theory wrongly claimed biological superiority and inferiority of certain racial groups. Never a group to be skilled in the realm of facts, some white supremacists still perpetuate this non-science.

Since our nation's inception, opponents of emancipation were diabolically masterful at creating hurdles to giving slaves and freed men their rights. Legislation often failed to achieve what it intended, also failing to live up to the name given the legislation. In 1807 President Thomas Jefferson signed legislation that was supposed to have officially ended the African slave trade beginning on January 1808. Rather than end slavery, this act switched the trade from trans Atlantic to domestic slave trade in the United States. The thriving cotton economy of the South relied on continuously replenishing its supply of new slaves. The lifetime of someone in slavery was expected to be about seven years, and some slaves succeeded at running away, creating the demand for new slaves. Jefferson's legislation was met with the heinous practice of “slave breeding,” which was not unlike animal husbandry. Since slaves would no longer be brought over on boats from the trans-Atlanctic slave trade, slaves were violently forced to "propagate". Female slaves as young as age 13, were forced to give birth as often as possible. Some slave owners raped the women and girls. Some slave masters forced the biggest and strongest male slave to have sex with his female slaves, not unlike livestock propagation, threatening violence to anyone who resisted, while the slave masters watched. 

Another piece of legislation that did not live up to its name, was the Emancipation Proclamation. It is wrongly assumed that with the Emancipation Proclamation, former slaves were automatically granted citizenship with true equality and the same rights as white Americans. It is wrong to assume the playing field was made level, fair and equal for Black and white Americans, and has been ever since. True equality and human rights have never been granted to Black Americans, even to this day.

On June 5th, 2020, yellow paint spelled out in huge letters: Black Lives Matter. Each letter two-lanes wide and two blocks long down the road leading to the White House. A few hundred years late, but still a great thing.

Born a slave in Maryland’s Dorchester County around 1820, Harriet Tubman escaped to the North in 1849 out of fear that she was to be sold to another plantation. Shortly after her escape, she became one of the Underground Railroad’s most famous conductors. Tremendously courageous and selfless, for the next decade, she returned to the South approximately 13 times and helped an estimated 70 slaves, including multiple family members, reach freedom. 

"I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to; liberty, or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive." - Harriet Tubman

Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison called her “Moses” after the Biblical prophet who led the Jews out of bondage from Egypt and Frederick Douglass said that “Excepting John Brown—of sacred memory—I know of no one who has willingly encountered more perils and hardships to serve our enslaved people than [Harriet Tubman].” 

Though a cash reward was offered for Tubman’s capture, she was never caught. (See poster below.) She served as a nurse, scout and spy for the Union during the Civil War. After the war, Tubman moved to Auburn, New York, where she lived until her death in 1913.

PBS, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross