Molasses to Rum to Slaves…

I grew up mostly in Virginia. It was mandatory for students in grades Four and Seven to learn Virginia’s history from a specific set of textbooks. High school students studied Virginia history and government as well. When I got to college, several history credits were mandatory to get a teaching degree.

I remember how much I enjoyed our fourth-grade Virginia history lessons in Mrs. Jennings’ class. We would read and discuss a chapter, and our assignment was always the same: Write half a page about the chapter and draw a picture in your notebook. This was great because it gave me plenty of opportunity to draw Colonial or antebellum ladies in their elaborate gowns. Or I could turn to my other favorite drawing subject and work in a horse or two. I loved to draw. During the course of our history lessons, we learned that there were slaves in Virginia who had been brought from Africa against their will and who did the work on the plantations and were the property of their owners. It was all OK, because most of the “masters” treated their slaves well, and most of the slaves were “happy and content.” (Cue up an image of happy, sleek, well-dressed dark-skinned people playing music on the steps of adorable little white-painted cabins with porches and shutters. When did I learn this, you ask? Oh, about 1960 or so.) The whole thing somehow offended my eight-year-old’s sense of fair play. Really. In my young mind it was “not fair” for people to be taken away from their homes and made to work hard for no pay. I suspected that the slaves might not have been happy and content because I knew that I wouldn’t have been. I knew revisionism when I saw it, even though I was too  young to articulate it as anything but “not fair.”

As I grew older, and right up to the present day, I was able to find out for myself about the evils of the Middle Passage and the slave trade. I know about the Door of No Return. I’ve seen the diagrams of ships’ holds and how they could be most efficiently loaded with human cargo. I know about the auctions, the separations of families, the broken lives, the broken hearts, the broken bodies. I’m perfectly content to leave the intricacies of the story to scholars and wiser heads. My take-away lesson has always been that slavery was an evil that tainted all it touched and that continues to haunt us all right up to the present day.

I also believe that there is no country on Earth, past or present, no matter how highly regarded, that does not have dark and shadowy areas in its past. Nations are made up of human beings, and we are all capable of great nobility and of terrible evil. The United States is no different in this respect. Slavery is a dark, ugly shadow on our past. We can’t go back and cause it not to have happened. We can’t make it right. All we can do is acknowledge it, own up to it, and get on with trying to make a better nation for all of us. We can do a better job of that if we stop from time to time and learn from our past–our real past, not our glorified one.

I’m appalled by the recent actions of the Texas Board of Education, who are apparently preparing to revise our history for us. The Middle Passage is about to become the “Triangle Trade.” (Catchy phrase, that…) Of course it was a triangular trade route–one of many, not all involving traffic in human beings. As a young college student, it suited me very well to be able to remind Northern friends that the ships of New England brought the captives to our shores. Still, teaching young people to hide the monstrous evil behind the catchy slogan is a terrible thing, and it will have terrible repercussions. As is said, those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.

Apparently slavery isn’t the only facet of our history that’s about to get a re-write. Texas plans to lose Thurgood Marshall and Cesar Chavez. Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson are about to step back into the shadows. Lincoln, apparently, had too much to say on the unpleasant topic of slavery. Jefferson carved out every shining word of the Declaration of Independence, the document that still defines our national ideals. Alas, he apparently didn’t follow a Texas-approved Christian religion. Still, a quotation from Mr. Jefferson makes an appropriate message to the Texas Board of Education: I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

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A word about the accompanying photo: This is a bead card showing the products of a European manufacturer of beads. The riches of Africa were considered to be of four kinds: Palm oil, ivory, gold, and slaves. Each item of wealth had certain trade beads associated with it. This card shows beads considered appropriate to trade for human beings. It’s a misnomer to call all trade beads “slave beads.” And trade beads in general can be viewed as a triumph for Africa, as her people took them and made them their own.