Collaboration, Slavery, and History Education

Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory

James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton

(These are just some of my thoughts, but I also thoroughly enjoyed chapters four, six, and ten!)

Throughout the process of reading this book I felt saddened, indignant, angry, hopeless, hopeful, and did I mention angry? Maybe angry is too harsh a word, but over and over I thought, “Why won’t you talk about this? How dare you leave this out or cover this up! How can we hope to understand our past if we pick and choose what we will and won’t preserve?! How dare you!” Anyone else? (Mind, I am not sure who the ‘you’ necessarily is in every case). Has anyone else read or heard of A People’s History of the United States, by Howard Zinn? Some of the stories of sites and histories covered in this book reminded me of his approach to sharing our past. While reading Zinn I was continuously angered and saddened as I discovered pieces of my past that were kept from me through a public education system that deemed them ‘inappropriate’ or ‘unimportant’. My reaction to most of the chapters in this book was similar, but I’m now angrier because these places and histories are supposed to be run by people who should know better! “Historians are custodians of the past; we are preservers and discoverers of the facts and stories of which people imagine their civic lives.” (Chapter 2, p. 34).

I thought Blight did an amazing job of truly outlining the difficulties of discussing slavery and managed to come to a great conclusion with those words. “‘If you don’t tell it like it was,’ he said, ‘it can never be as it ought to be.’ Whatever else we do about the legacies of slavery [or any topic] in our history, our institutions, or our lives, we can do no less than heed Fred Shuttlesworth’s plea.” (Ch. 2, p. 45). The chapter by Nash on the Liberty Bell gave me hope and highlighted an excellent, if trying and difficult, example of working in collaboration to tackle the hard topics of history. The fact that the NPS has a General Management Plan that calls for that collaboration raised my spirits. I really liked the quote from Kenneth Moynihan at the end of the chapter that stated, “an ongoing conversation that yields not final truths but an endless succession of discoveries that change our understanding not only of the past but of ourselves and of the times we live in.”

Chapter three, “Slavery in American History: An Uncomfortable National Dialogue” caused a loud and rather heated outburst as I read about the research on history education. Did anyone else lose it there? Teachers with inadequate or no training in history?! The following percents of students were taught by teachers without even a minor in history: 88% in Louisiana, 83% in Minnesota, 82% in West Virginia, 81% in Oklahoma, 73% in Pennsylvania, and 72% in Kansas! WHAT?! How have we as a society, allowed sports to become more important than adequate education for our children? Do we believe that history is a secondary subject unworthy of our attention? I absolutely love the point this chapter makes about our failure to educate our youth. “Public education prepared children to think about slavery and race in ways consistent with the assumption of white supremacy built into twentieth-century American law and custom.” (p. 52). Recent events in Ferguson and elsewhere elucidate the fact that we are now reaping the consequences of this miss-education. “Gettysburg National Battlefield, for example, mentioned neither slavery nor slaves with regard to the war. Significantly, at that time Gettysburg was attracting almost two million visitors yearly. The pattern of ignoring slavery was widespread within the national parks.” (p. 54). As trivial (and possibly ironic given my statement about sports above) as it may seem, the reference that immediately popped in my head when I read this was a scene from Remember the Titans. One hundred years after the battle of Gettysburg, the fear and hatred and racism of slavery’s legacy separated adolescents before they knew one another. It still separates us and if we continue to refuse to engage in dialogue about the tough pieces of history, we will never learn and we will continue to fail our children.

P.S. I meant to put this on here too.