Tag: black-history

A Reflection on July 4

A Reflection on July 4th

By Lavada Nahon

Twenty-five years before Frederick Douglass gave his famous “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July” speech in Rochester, the enslaved population of New York contemplated a similar question as they prepared to celebrate the abolition of slavery, on July 4, 1827.

As communities across the state decorated to honor the birthday of the new nation, it became increasingly clear to the state’s Black communities that perhaps parading and celebrating in public space to honor their own freedom, had the potential to not end well if they did so on the 4th, the official day of the legal end of slavery in the state. They feared being attacked and suffering other types of violence from the White community because they too would call upon the words their enslavers had shouted so long ago.

They had waited 28 years for legal slavery to end, the time clock started in 1799 with the passing of the Act of Gradual Abolition, which gave no end date for their emancipation, but bound their unborn children to their mother’s enslavers until they were in their mid to late 20s. The Act that opened the way for their children, but not for anyone else. Those who toiled inside and outside for the benefit of others, would be left behind, to continue raising other people’s children, while theirs, at some point in the future could walk unfettered by the unseen, but ever-present chains they wore.

Then came the 1810 law that required the people holding those born free to teach them to read and write. This law was largely ignored, in spite of the fact that not doing so would allow those born free to see emancipation earlier at 18.  Something that the New York Manumission Society helped a number of them do, by taking their enslavers to court and proving that at 18, they could neither read nor write. Then it was seven more years to get to the 1817 Act relative to Servants and Slaves that actually set a date for abolition, even though it was ten years in the future.  It also pave the way for those born before July 4, 1799, and called “slaves” to be released. Finally, there was more than just hope.

But things rarely play out as smoothly as we would like. Weeks before the day was to arrive the conversations started happening. I imagine them beginning as whispered conversations, shared on the fly, when they were out and about working. Then in a somewhat louder voice when they were alone. Their conversations grew until preachers began talking about it. Up and down the road as they moved about, between those enslaved and those already freed, they continued.

They found themselves debating if it was wise for them to celebrate in mass on the official day, because it was the new nation’s birthday, and racism was increasingly a cause for worry as more and more were manumitted, and the presence of free Blacks walking the streets, starting businesses, living their lives began to grind on people’s nerves. Not to mention it had been against the law from the early 1690s for enslaved people to make noise on Sundays. It even appeared in the nation’s first Black owned newspaper which was published in New York City.

These conversations about when to celebrate happened years after many of them had overheard their enslavers talking about obtaining their freedom from Britain in the years leading up to the Revolutionary War. Even as their enslavers tossed around words suggesting that they were being treated like slaves and would not have it, as if taxation without representation equaled being seen as property and not people. I imagine that many enslaved men who had replaced their enslavers on the battlefield thought about their own freedom for the eight years of the war. I’m sure they wondered if the promise of their own freedom given to them when they put on the uniforms, either red coats, or blue jackets, would truly play out.

During the war years as separation from Britain reigned supreme, the large population of enslaved had to manage not only their own lot in life, but the stress and anger of their enslavers who lost homes, crops, animals, stored food, family members, and even other enslaved as various parts of the state were burned out or stolen as troops from both sides, passed by or engaged in battle.

Years after in 1783, at end of the war when Loyalists and British troops were leaving New York, some enslaved may have begun grieving the loss of family or friends who did gain their freedom and may have been aboard one of the ships that took thousands of newly freed Black people from New York’s harbor to Nova Scotia and other ports on evacuation day. After all that time, the enslaved, longing to finally be free, found themselves debating whether it was safe for them to rejoice in their own freedom on the actual day it was given.

As we approach the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in New York on, July 4/5 of 2027, many of us find ourselves contemplating some of the same thoughts the waiting to be free people of Albany and New York in general, did. Thinking on some of the sentiments Douglass shared in his 4th of July oration. Asking ourselves, what does the 4th of July mean to us? As my colleagues and I delve deeper into the mountains of documents related to the long history of chattel slavery in New York, and the cumbersome process of dismantling a portion of the institution of slavery, we find ourselves constantly amazed that so many people are still unaware of the deep roots slavery has in our state’s history.

Every once in a while, I find myself thinking that surely it is not so. To figure it out I began talks on occasion with a short three to five question survey. Answers given simply by raising a hand. Unfortunately, when I did this recently before giving an overview of Slavery in New York at Riverbank State Park, the audience of fifty or so people proved that things remained the same. That no matter if the audience is Black or White, or a mixture of our state’s wonderful cultural rainbow, the awareness of New York as a place of enslavement remains too hidden.

I can ask about the 1619 Project and people are aware of it, even if they have not read it. But if I ask when the first enslaved arrived in New Netherland, there generally is silence. I have learned to also ask them if they know what the original colonial name of New York was. Then I generally get a few hands, but not many. So, we are all clear, for years we danced around the year, finally settling on 1626, but after years of wondering, we know now that on August 29, 1627, 22 African men and women arrived in New Amsterdam on a Dutch privateer and became the first of the Dutch West India company’s slaves. We know the name of the ship and the circumstance surrounding how they ended up on a Dutch privateer. Currently we are awaiting the publishing of a paper that will also give us the name of the Portuguese ship they were taken from. Those 22 were part of a larger cargo of over 200 people headed to Brazil. Those 22 men and women were the first, but they would not be the last.

From that day forward, for 200 years, West Central, West, and Malagasy Africans would become the dominant labor force in the colony of New Netherland that would ultimately become the state of New York. Although this truth has been shared for years, it is still too common for people to say that slavery was not part of our state’s history. Part of that is due to the use of the word servant(s) instead of slave(s). In document collections across the state, in maps referring to burial grounds, the servants take up a lot of space. And with our love of British history, we imagine programs like Upstairs, Downstairs, or more recently Downton Abbey, where the servants are White making a decent wage, not enslaved Africans or their descendants. So, we read or listen to Douglass’ speech and say, well…it didn’t happen here. New York was a place of freedom, or a landmass that needed to be crossed to take people to the freedom they’d find in Canada.  But it did. And it happened in Canada too.  

The enslavement of thousands is only one part of the institution of slavery that graced New York. During the 200 years of forced servitude and long after 1827 ended the law of holding people as property, wealth flowed into the state as it had for decades because of the multiple economic links to the transatlantic slave trade, the ties that bound New York to the rest of the world. The wheat economy that was birthed in the 1630s with the establishment of Rensselaerwijck would spread southward down the Hudson River Valley and out to Long Island, and thousands of tons of wheat would flow from the harbors of New York to the Caribbean and West Indies to feed those bound to sugar and salt plantations. Money from the coffers of New York’s elite families would purchase sugar plantations in Jamaica, Barbados, and on other islands, and that wealth would create beautiful homes well into the 19th century like Hyde Hall on Glimmerglass Lake. As the years rolled along, enslaved from those sugar plantations would flow in and out of New York to serve in one way or another their enslavers or their relatives. Or to be sold, bequeathed or rented out, depending upon the need.

The ties to Southern tobacco and later sugar plantations that began during the Dutch period would continue to grow throughout the 200-year history, as people were brought directly from Africa and sold in the South, leaving New York City with the legacy of being the second largest slave market in the 13 colonies. And later in the 19thcentury, Brooklyn would flourish as more of that sugar would arrive to be processed there. As southern cotton expanded, after slavery had ended here, New Yorkers would build factories up and down the Hudson River for processing it. Political dances would be done, to hide the collusions between a free state and southern slavery. Profits would not be forfeited.

Insurance companies based in New York would grow bigger to cover cargo on ships flowing in and out including slave ships. More slave traders would move to New York, the ancestral home of many, in the early 19th century, where ships were easier to get and sail from the state’s harbors to the coasts of West Africa and even though they could not bring Africans into the US any longer, they were fine taking them into Cuba. Fine, until Lincoln finally said no more and the last of New York’s slave traders was hanged in 1861.

The New York Stock exchange would grow out of these economic links to slavery, and more money would be made. Continuing the process began by the Dutch of individual investors, buying stock in the shipments, just one of many commodities on the world market. The underbelly of slavery would continue to grow fat, well past the years of Douglass’ speech and eventually the history of New York slavery would try to be buried in the early 20th century as the colonial revival period saw many people rewriting their family’s early stories, removing the names of women who raised children, or men who plowed fields, or just burn the wills to hide the numbers of people passed on. But even as hard as they tried, the history of slavery would not be buried for long. Bones were unearthed as villages grew into towns, then into cities and land, once considered worthless was needed. In the expansion, the presence of unmarked graves sent people to maps, which showed African burial grounds or Colored or Negro ones. But that would not stop the desecration. The projects would just move on with remains being dug up and discarded or just covered over.  

The legacy of 200 years of slavery has increasingly caught up with many, as more people delve into their family histories and find that their ancestors were not as pristine as once believed, and the money they bequeathed across the generations came tainted with blood, sweat and a lot of tears. Or they run into someone with the same last name but not the same color skin which has resulted in the messages on many DNA companies which inform people of that before they are shocked by the discovery of who they really are.

What to the slave is the 4th of July is a question that haunts us even today, as we are challenged by the rewriting of our nation’s history by those who live in a settler’s colonized world. The foundation of our nation did not bypass New York. And it reminds us daily that our state was built on a slave society even as we try to pretend, we were a society with just a few slaves.

2027 is just around the corner, and July 4th will echo Douglass’ time, and fall on a Sunday. A day scared in its own right. And like the ancestors, across the state, including the folks right here in Albany, many of us will bypass it as the day to honor the abolition of slavery in New York, because well…some history does seem to repeat itself. And like them, we will take to the streets on Monday, July the 5th we will listen as bells ring in the air, and from our hands, at 12:00 noon for one minute to remind those who know, and educate those who do not, that slavery was part of New York’s history, and it will never be forgotten again.        

Book Review – Our Fragile Freedoms

Our Fragile Freedoms

By Dr. Eric Foner

Reviewed by Hank Bitten, NJCSS Executive Director

Four books that have influenced my teaching of U.S. history are: the volumes in the Jefferson Papers Project, The Life of Henry Adams, The Life of Arthur Schlesinger, and Our Fragile Freedoms. These books have left a profound influence on me because each of them included a perspective of 50 years or more.

Eric Foner’s Our Fragile Freedoms is a series of selected documents and book reviews that he has authored over 250 years of our history.  It is a collection of human stories in addition to documents, perspectives, historiography, and scholarly insights. In my reading I discovered new information and perspectives about enslaved persons, laborers, immigrants, and women.  I have also met Eric Foner, our lives share a similar chronology of the second half of the 20th century and the first 25 years of the 21st century.  Just when I thought I had mastered everything that needs to be taught in high schools, colleges, and in public discussions, I discovered somethings that are new and important in his book.

“Our Fragile Freedoms gathers together nearly sixty book reviews and opinion pieces I have written over the past quarter century,  Originally published in venues such as the New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, The Nation, and The New York Times, they reflect a period of remarkable creativity among  American historians but also intense controversy over the teaching, writing and public presentation of history.  The book examines history as refracted through the prism of some of the most influential recent works of scholarship, while at the same time shedding light on my own evolution as an historian.” (Introduction, page xv)

The insights into the U.S. history curriculum are helpful to teachers who want to engage their students in investigating history and discussing the concept of freedom.  Here are some examples:

1.Colonial America: “In South Carolina and Georgia, however, the disruption of the War for independence produced not a weakening of commitment to slavery, but the demand that the Atlantic slave trade be reopened.  At the insistence of these states, the Constitutional Convention of 1787 forbade Congress from abolishing the importation of slaves until 1808. Given this window of opportunity, South Carolina brought in tens of thousands of new slaves, further reinforcing the African presence in the low country Black society.” (page 22)

    2. President Washington: “Thompson (Mary Thompson, author of “The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret: George Washington, Slavery, and the Enslaved Community at Mount Vernon”, 2019) offers various explanations for Washington’s refusal to speak or act publicly against slavery.  She points out that freeing his slaves would have meant financial disaster for his family.  Like other Virginia planters, Washington was chronically in debt, largely because of his taste for luxury goods imported from Britain. Indeed, in 1789 he had to borrow money to pay for his journey to New York where his inauguration as the first president was to take place.” (page 35)

    3. Fugitive Slave Law: “The first arrest under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 took place in New York-a city whose economic fortunes were closely tied to the cotton trade, and whose political establishment was decidedly pro-southern. On September 16, 1850, eight days after President Millard Fillmore signed the measure, two deputy U.S. marshals arrested James Hamlet at his job as a porter in a local store. Hamlet had escaped from Baltimore two years earlier and settled in Williamsburg, a Brooklyn village with a small Black population, along with his wife and three children, all born in Maryland.” (page 53)

    4. Emancipation Proclamation: “’I cannot make it better known than it already is, that I strongly favor colonization,” Lincoln said in a message to Congress less than a month before he issued the Emancipation Proclamation.  Oakes (Professor James Oakes, CUNY) calls Lincoln’s August 1862 meeting with Black leaders (not including Douglass), where he urged them to support colonization, “bizarre,” and explains it as an effort to “make emancipation more palatable to white racists.” And he notes, Douglass reacted with one of his most bitter criticisms of the president, “Mr. Lincoln,” he wrote, “assumes the language and arguments of an itinerant colonization lecturer shows all his inconsistencies, his pride of race and blood, his contempt for Negroes and his canting hypocrisy.  (page 72)

    5. Reconstruction: “Grant’s contemporaries recognized the Civil War as an event of international significance.  One hundred and fifty years after the conflict began, the meanings they ascribed to it offer a useful way if outlining why it was so pivotal in our own history.  The Civil War changed the nature of warfare, gave rise to an empowered nation-state, vindicated the idea of free labor, and destroyed the modern world’s greatest slave society. Each of these outcomes laid the foundation for the country we live in today. But as with all historical events, each outcome carried with it ambiguous, even contradictory, consequences.” (page 85)

    As teachers, we need to understand the big picture of historical decisions and events over time.  This is why it is important for students to learn about continuity and change as one of the core skills of our discipline. Our Fragile Freedoms helped me to grasp the complexity of the concepts of freedom and equality that social studies teachers introduce in kindergarten.

    An important article and commentary in the book is “Everyday Violence in the Jim Crow South.” (pp. 201-210) This review of By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners, by Margaret A. Burnham, New York Review of Books, April 6, 2023, provides specific examples of the abuse of power by people in local and state government against innocent citizens.

    “In Westfield, a town near Birmingham, a female white clerk at a local store, claiming that a Black customer, William Daniel, had insulted her, called the police.  When an officer arrived, he almost immediately shot and killed the alleged offender, even though, as Burnham laconically remarks, Daniel had committed no crime: ‘even in Alabama, there was no law against, ‘insulting a white woman.’” (p. 203)

    Another commentary that engaged my interest as a high school teacher was “Tulsa: Forgetting and Remembering.” (pp. 211-220) The information in the Review of The Ground Breaking: An American City and Its Search for Justice by Scott Ellsworth in the London Review of Books, September 9, 2011, provides new insights and perspectives to this horrific tragedy that began with a minor encounter between two teenagers. Scott Ellswoth is from Tulsa and became interested in this race riot in his research for a high school history paper.  He pursued his passion of this massacre as a college student at Reed College, and throughout his adult life. The discussion about the importance of local research has relevance to the teaching of history and its relevance to project-based learning.

    The review of Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad by Matthew F. Delmont and An Army Afire: How the U.S. Army Confronted Its Racial Crisis in the Vietnam Era by Beth Bailey 2023) left me feeling uncomfortable. I think many teachers emphasize the role of the Tuskegee Airmen in teaching World War II and follow it up with a five-minute talk on President Truman’s Executive Order to embrace “equality of treatment and opportunity” in the military regardless of race, religion, and national origin. Because of my ignorance in this area, I never included examples of Jim Crow discrimination and the race problem in our armed forces. Our Fragile Freedoms provides graphic examples. (pp. 232-243)

    In the middle of the book there are some of the most important insights and perspectives for teachers of 20th century United States History. They have a direct relationship to what students are thinking about today as they listen to or witness events that are challenging the values of liberty, equality and social justice.  They offer teachers critical questions of inquiry regarding the continuity and change of America’s core values from the Declaration of Independence, Reconstruction Era, and Civil Rights movement. Allow me to summarize from examples on the New Deal and Civil Rights era from pages 243-267.

    “We will never know precisely why Parks refused to leave her seat when ordered to do so, her decision was not premeditated but neither was it completely spontaneous.  Perhaps it was because an all-white jury in Mississippi had just acquitted the murderers of Emmett Till, a Black teenager who had allegedly whistled at a white woman.  Perhaps the reason was that she had inadvertently boarded a bus driven by the same driver who had evicted her twelve years earlier.  Parks knew that talk of a boycott was in the air.  In any event, in the wake of her arrest the boycott began.” (p. 248)

    In the review of Riding for Freedom, teachers might ask if the foreign policy of the Kennedy Administration on the Cold War was mutually exclusive from the domestic policy of integration and racial justice. Many American presidents have faced challenging decisions regarding their promise for domestic reforms and unexpected international conflicts. Kennedy experienced this in his first year as president.

    “Certainly, the photographs that flashed across the world embarrassed the White House.  But the conflict with the Soviets also inspired deep distrust of any movement that included critics of American foreign policy.  After a telephone conversation in which he urged Martin Luther King Jr. to restrain the riders, Robert Kennedy remarked to an aide, ‘I wonder whether they have the best interest of their country at heart.’” (pp. 253-254).

    “The continuing distortion of the period (Reconstruction) by historians raised a troubling question, King had long identified the movement with core American values inherited from the nation’s founding. But what, in fact, were the nation’s deepest values? All men are created equal? Or something more sinister, exemplified by Reconstruction’s violent overthrow? King had originally believed, he told the journalist David Halberstam, that American society could be reformed through many small changes. Now, he said, he felt ‘quite differently,’ ‘I think you’ve got to have a reconstruction of the entire society, a revolution of values.’ Was the movement the fulfilment of American values or their repudiation?” (pp. 263-264)

    These excerpts are only appetizers for the full meal that is within each review and the entire book. As students think about and debate the civil rights era, they gain an understanding of the civil rights movement, its brutality, its injustice, its inequality, and its struggle. Unfortunately, too many students only know one sentence from Martin Luther King’s speech, “I have a dream….” Teachers should have students read or watch the entire speech.

    “We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protests to degenerate into physical violence. . . . The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. . . .

    We cannot walk alone. And as we walk we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.

    (https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline-pdfs/king.dreamspeech.excerpts.pdf)

    The genius of this book is that each chapter offers a new insight, a scholarly perspective, and a valuable lesson. I learned something new about integration, voting, the censorship of speech, the Chicago riots in 1968, and progressivism. The section on History, Memory, Historians is a must read for every pre-service teacher and every social studies teacher. The lessons here about historical omissions, social and intellectual history, and the lessons of history. Our Fragile Freedoms should shape the generation of social studies/history teachers who will be teaching students in the second quarter of the 21st century!

    Book Review: Ring Shout, Wheel About: The Racial Politics of Music and Dance in North American Slavery, by Katrina Dyonne Thompson

    Ring Shout, Wheel About: The Racial Politics of Music and Dance in North American Slavery, by Katrina Dyonne Thompson (University of Illinois Press, 2014)

    Reviewed by Dr. Thomas Hansen

    Katrina Dyonne Thompson draws on her work over the years as a student and then a faculty member doing research on not only the role of African music and dance in the lives of Black slaves in the US but also on the impressions made upon White observers.  The lack of the background music of slaves singing while picking cotton in the fields is an important factor in the scenery.  There were 200 years of song and dance among the slaves.  Some Whites clung to the stereotype of the “irrepressibly cheerful” Black man singing in the streets despite how “ragged or forlorn” he might actually be (p. 1).  However, the days of the happy singing slave who had a natural talent for performing and appearing light-hearted (p. 2) were disappearing.

    At the same time Blacks were becoming more successful financially as bondsmen, and as they connected with the entertainment world and more able to access highly successful careers in music and dance, the image of the docile Black who loved to sing and accept their abuse was fading quickly.   

    Already by the early 20th Century in America, White observers noticed a change in the thrill level of Blacks vis-à-vis their celebrations.  Laments one White Georgian on this noticeable change in that they “…don’t sing as they used to… (p. 1) and telling the readers they should have seen the dancing “…of the old darkeys on the plantation.”  This change in demeanor and enthusiasm was happening at the same time Blacks were beginning to speak up for themselves as a group.

    The “New Negro” was threatening to the established order and some Whites were nervous, indeed.  There were a lot of Black persons in the US by the end of the 19th Century, and the notion they were more and more of them unhappy was unsettling to many Whites.  Lack of enthusiasm in their dance and movement was a strong and obvious reminder there were many Blacks who were losing their sense of humor.

    Actually more a part of an “imagined South” with happy slaves singing in the fields, the music and dance with an African beat often celebrated not only the culture from another continent but also hidden meanings and realities among the slaves here in the US.  Many readers have probably heard that the lyrics and melodies had a varity of “hidden meanings” (pp. 108-109).  They could be used simply for relating information from farm to farm or in other cases making fun of the White owner being so down on his luck he could not contribute to the holiday celebrations of the slaves.

    Still more well-known are the songs of chariots coming to whisk the slaves away to freedom.  Ironically, it is some of these songs with the most dramatic lyrics that came to be the most well-loved.  With great passion, the slaves sang and danced as they prayed for better lives—usually far from the often rapacious and abusive owners.  Slave owners could break up families, selling different members to the highest bidder.  Thus, slave auction days came to symbolize frightening events indeed to families with “marketable” workers and healthy children.                

    Regarding the more technical aspects of the book, Katrina Dyonne Thompson frames the story told here as a performance, dividing into steps the art to be revealed.  The author organizes her work into six chapters and an epilogue: 1) The Script: “Africa was but a blank canvas for Europe’s imagination;” 2) Casting: “They sang their home-songs, and danced, each with his free foot slapping the deck;” 3) Onstage: “Dance you damned n’s, dance;” 4. Backstage: “White folks do as they please, and the darkies do as they can: 5) Advertisement: “Dancing through the Streets and act lively;” 6) Same Script, Different Actors: “Eb’ry time I wheel about, I jump Him Crow;” and Epilogue: The Show Must Go On.

    Without giving too much of the content away, I will say the book provide a great deal of information in a short space and the author demonstrates the changes of a People as their lives, livelihood, and status change immensely.   

    The author does a good job of showing how the Blacks transitioned away from giving off images of the happy and irrepressibly cheerful slaves and embracing their roles as performers, becoming successful business people, and welcoming their new voice as they created a distinct sound.  They had taken the complex patterns of the West African song and dance (pp. 23-24) of their past, tied to new styles of Native American and other rhythms, and developed a rich urban beat with stylized sequences and a completely new sound.

    It is this great change in the origins of the music to something very modern sounding that makes this book a good candidate for use in courses and seminars on the history of the Black sound in the US. 

    A second use of the book is the connection of music, dance, and historical events. 

    A third use is the insight the book gives into cultural and linguistic changes of Blacks as they and their art moved away from plantations and into urban centers. 

    A fourth use of this book is a sort of guide for setting out some basics that could be used in interdisciplinary units and lesson plans in K-12 classrooms. 

    A fifth use of the book is background reading for educators contemplating making the connections among slavery as a social studies and history topic to other fields (e.g., music, movement, singing).

    I recommend the book for these five uses and also for a clear candidate for professional development (PD) sessions.  The book would work well in a basic reading course for discussion over 2 to 3 sessions.  The book would also work well over 5 to 6 longer sessions during which lesson plans, assignments, and assessment instruments could be developed—whether on site or through a hybrid course structure.

    African American & Labor History Timeline

    African American & Labor History Timeline

    Prepared by the Queens, New York Public Library and the University of Minnesota, Carlson School of Management

    Every facet of the United States has been affected by the labor and inventions of African Americans. Discover some of the men and women who created the inventions that improved daily life, fought for fair wages, safety, equal rights, and justice for Black workers. These are just some of the important milestones in the history of Black Labor in America. To learn more, visit your local library during Black History Month—and beyond!

    1500s-1865: Transatlantic Slave Trade through the American Civil War

    1500s: Transatlantic Slave Trade

    The largest oceanic forced migration in history, the Transatlantic Slave Trade began in the late 1500s when over 12.5 million African men, women and children were removed from the continent and transported to the Americas, Brazil and the Caribbean to work on plantations and live their lives in servitude. As a result, many slave rebellions erupted throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, constituting some of the first organizing and labor-related actions in the Americas.

    1739: Traditional African drumming is banned

    Enslaved Africans were prohibited from playing traditional drums, as European enslavers feared that drumming could facilitate communication across fields, uplift weary spirits, comment on oppressive masters, and incite rebellions. In response, Black people developed alternative forms of musical expression, such as hand clapping and percussive stomping, which became the foundation of work songs and spirituals. These musical forms later evolved into genres like the blues and jazz and are integral to today’s African American music.

    c.1763-c.1826: Artist Joshua Johnson

    Recognized as one of the earliest professional African American artists, Johnson was born into slavery near Baltimore around 1763 and gained his freedom in 1782. He described himself as a “self-taught genius” and painted portraits of families, children, and prominent residents of Maryland.

    1786: The Tignon Law

    This Louisiana law was enacted to regulate the appearance of free women of color to “establish public order and proper standards of morality,” and subjection to undesirability. Women were prohibited from going outdoors without wrapping their natural hair with a Tignon cloth. As a symbol of rebellion, Black women reappropriated Tignon production into a major fashion statement, form of self-expression and business by embellishing the headscarves with decorative fabrics, feathers and jewels.

    1859: Author Harriet E. Wilson

    Our Nig; or Sketches from the Life of a Free Black is considered the first novel by an African American woman. It gave insight into the supposed “Free North,” challenging the idea that the North was a safe have providing peace and equality for African Americans

    1865: 13th Amendment Outlaws Slavery

    The official end to slavery was perhaps the greatest labor victory in U.S. history. Yet the struggle for equal rights and fair wages was far from over; the same year that Congress adopted the 13th Amendment, the white supremacist terrorist organization and hate group, the Ku Klux Klan, was formed.

    1865-1900: Reconstruction and the Gilded Age

    1865-1877: Reconstruction

    In the decade following the Civil War, Congress established the Freedmen’s Bureau to help African Americans with food, housing, education, political rights and negotiating labor agreements. This period is thought to be one of expanding freedom for the formerly enslaved but in the South they were subjected to violence and new forms of mistreatment.

    1872: Frederick Douglass

    Douglass was elected president of the “Colored” National Labor Union, and his The New National Era became the union’s official newspaper. Douglass was one of America’s most important champions of equality and the right to organize a union.

    1880s: Knights of Labor

    The St. Paul Minnesota Trades & Labor Assembly was founded with the assistance of the Knights of Labor Assembly in1883. The Knights of Labor were known for their inclusiveness for accepting women and African American members, however they also supported the Chinese Exclusion Act.

    1883: Lucy Parsons (c. 1851 – 1942)

    Lucy Parsons and her husband, Albert Parsons, a former Confederate soldier turned anarchist, founded the International Working People’s Association. In 1886, they led the city’s first May Day parade, which called for an eight-hour workday.

    1900s-1950s

    1901: Up from Slavery

    Booker T. Washington, a major voice for economic self-reliance and racial uplift, publishes his autobiography discussing his life and thoughts on race relations.

    1905-1960: The Great Migration

    In the first half of the 20th century, a mass migration of more than six million Black people took place from the South to the North. Many left to escape overt Southern racism, only to encounter racial tensions in the North as whites viewed them as a threat to their jobs. The Migration Series is a group of paintings by African American painter Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) which depicts the migration of African Americans to the Northern U.S. from the South. It was completed in 1941 and was conceived as a single work rather than individual paintings. Lawrence wrote captions for each of the sixty paintings. Viewed in its entirety, the series creates a narrative in images and words that tells the story of the Great Migration.

    1909: National Training School for Women and Girls

    Nannie Helen Burroughs (1879-1961) was a suffragist, educator and organizer, as well as a mentor to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., who worked to integrate labor reform into the movement for voting rights. Burroughs established the National Training School for Women and Girls in 1909 to combat labor exploitation through education, helping to improve working conditions and expand career pathways for Black women. She also launched the National Association of Wage Earners in 1921, a labor union for Black domestic workers.

    1910s-1930s: The Harlem Renaissance

    A period of flourishing of African American art, literature, and performance art saw the rise of iconic figures like author Langston Hughes, trumpeter Louis Armstrong, pianist Duke Ellington, and vocalists Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. Langston Hughes was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance. A major poet, Hughes also wrote novels, short stories, essays, and plays.

    1910: The Foster Photoplay Company

    William D. Foster founds the first film production company established by an African American. It features all African American casts. The Railroad Porter (circa 1913) was the first film produced and directed by an African American.

    1917: East St. Louis Race Riot

    During World War I, thousands of Blacks moved to the St. Louis area to work in factories fueling the war effort. When the largely white workforce at the Aluminum Ore Company went on strike, hundreds of Blacks were hired as strikebreakers. Tensions erupted, and thousands of whites, many of them union members, attacked African Americans and set fire to their homes. Between 100 and 200 Blacks are estimated to have been killed and were 6,000 left homeless.

    1919: Red Summer

    Racial tensions were inflamed during the September 1919 Steel Strike, when workers shut down half of the nation’s steel production in an effort to form a union. Bosses replaced them with some 40,000 African American and Mexican American strikebreakers, an action made possible by AFL unions that excluded people of color from union jobs and membership.

    1921: Tulsa Race Massacre (May 31-June 1, 1921)

    The Tulsa Race Massacre was a 1921 attack on Tulsa’s Greenwood District, an affluent African American community whose thriving business and residential areas were known as “Black Wall Street.” In response to a May 31 newspaper report of alleged black-on-white crime, white rioters looted and burned Greenwood in the early hours of June 1. The governor of Oklahoma declared martial law, and National Guard troops arrived and detained all Black Tulsans not already interned. About 6,000 Black people were imprisoned, some for as long as eight days. In the end, 35 city blocks lay in ruins, more than 800 people were injured, and as many as 300 people may have died. The Massacre was largely omitted from local, state, and national histories until the Tulsa Race Massacre Commission convened in 1997 to investigate the event. Today, memorials, historical exhibits, and documentaries are some of the ways that the Massacre has been acknowledged and the history of “Black Wall Street” kept alive.

    1925: Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters

     The first labor organization led by African Americans to receive a charter from the American Federation of Labor. African American porters performed essential passenger services on the railroads’ Pullman sleeper cars and the union played a key role in promoting their rights. In the summer of 1925, A. Philip Randolph (1889-1979) met with porters from the Chicago-based Pullman Palace Car Company. The mostly Black Pullman workforce were paid lower wages than white railway workers and faced harsh conditions and long working hours. Randolph worked with these workers to form and organize the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. When the union was finally recognized in 1935, it became the first predominantly Black labor union in the nation. As the union’s founder and first president, A. Philip Randolph became a leader in the Civil Rights Movement.

    1930s: The Great Depression

    African Americans primarily worked as sharecroppers on white-owned land, and tenant farmers in the south. They continued migrating to the north in search of better opportunities, but due to racism, they often found work as domestics, in factories, and as seasonal traveling migrant farmers. New Deal programs provided some relief, but they still faced unequal access to programs like the Works Progress Administration due to racial segregation and violence.

    1934: Dora Lee Jones (1890-1972)

    Jones helped found the Domestic Workers Union (DWU) in Harlem in 1934 in defiance of New York City’s “slave markets,” as they were known. With few options during the Depression, Black women would gather daily in the morning at certain locations and wait for white middle-class women to hire them, typically for low wages. The DWU eventually affiliated with the predecessor to today’s Service Employees International Union.

    1940s: Women Fill Wartime jobs

    During World War II, African American women contributed significantly to the war effort by taking on industrial factory jobs and working in shipyards and other war production facilities. Referred to as “Black Rosie’s.” They worked as welders, machinists, assemblers and more. They also served in the military as nurses, in the Women’s Army Corps, and in the all-Black 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, responsible for clearing the backlog of overseas mail.

    1941: Fair Employment Practices Committee

    Under pressure from labor leader A. Philip Randolph, who planned a march of 250,000 Black workers in Washington, D.C., to demand jobs, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802, creating the Fair Employment Practices Committee. The order banned racial discrimination in any defense industry receiving federal contracts and led to more employment opportunities for African Americans.

    1944: Admission to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen Union. African Americans who maintained railroad locomotive engines had to sue the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen all the way to the Supreme Court to gain admission to the union in 1944.

    1945: Maida Springer Kemp (1910-2005)

    Kemp worked as a labor organizer in the garment industry and became the first Black woman to represent the U.S. labor movement overseas when she visited post-war Britain on a 1945 labor exchange trip. She went on to spend many years liaising between American and African labor leaders as a member of the AFL-CIO and became affectionately known as “Mama Maida” for her work. Throughout her life, she advocated for civil rights and women’s rights in America and internationally.

    1946: Operation Dixie

    Encouraged by massive growth in union membership (including African Americans) during the 1930s and 1940s, the Operation Dixie campaign launched an effort to organize the largely non-union Southern region’s textile industry and strengthen the power of unions across the United States. Spearheaded by the Congress of Industrial Organizations, in concert with civil rights organizations, the campaign covered 12 states. Operation Dixie failed because of racial barriers, employer opposition and anti-Communist sentiment that labeled anyone who spoke out as an agitator. In 1947, the Taft-Hartley Act was enacted, allowing states to adopt so-called “Right to Work” laws that limited union power.

    1948: Zelda Wynn Valdes (1905-2001)

    Fashion and costume designer Zelda Wynn Valdes was the first Black designer to open her own shop and business on Broadway in New York City. Her designs were worn by entertainers including Dorothy Dandridge, Josephine Baker, Marian Anderson, Ella Fitzgerald, Mae West, Ruby Dee, Eartha Kitt, and Sarah Vaughan.

    1950s-2000s

    1950s: Post-War Era

    Despite some gains during World War II, African Americans still experienced high unemployment rates compared to white workers and faced significant barriers to upward mobility in the workforce. Labor was largely confined to low-wage, segregated jobs, primarily in service industries like domestic work, with limited access to skilled trades and significant discrimination within unions. These struggles fueled the developing Civil Rights movement and pushed for greater labor equality.

    1953: Clara Day (c.1923-2015)

    As a clerk at Montgomery Ward, she resented the segregation of white and Black employees, which led her to push for change. Clara Day first began organizing co-workers at Montgomery Ward in 1953 and went on to hold several roles in the Teamsters Local 743. She also helped found the Coalition of Labor Union Women and the Teamsters National Black Caucus. A passionate advocate for labor, civil rights and women’s rights, she helped bring attention to issues like pay equity and sexual harassment.

    1954: Norma Merrick Sklarek (1926-2012)

    In 1954, Norma Merrick Sklarek became the first Black woman to become a licensed architect in New York. Her projects included the United States Embassy in Tokyo, Japan in 1976 and the Terminal One station at the Los Angeles International Airport in 1984.

    1950s-1970s: The Era of Social Movements. The three decades after World War Il saw the emergence of many movements in American society for equal rights, most notably the Civil Rights Movement. One milestone for this movement was passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, a landmark civil rights and labor law in the U.S., outlawing discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.

    1950s-1970s: Social Movements

    During the Civil Rights Movement, African American artists like Nina Simone, and Harry Belafonte used their music and performances to advocate for social change. One significant event happened when Eartha Kitt was invited to Lady Bird Johnson’s “Women Doers Luncheon” in 1968. During the event, Kitt publicly spoke out against the Vietnam War and criticized several of President Johnson’s policies, consequentially derailing her U.S. career for more than a decade.

    1963: Bayard Rustin (1912-1987) and Anna Arnold Hedgeman (1899-1990) Plan the March on Washington

    While the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. made headlines with his “I Have a Dream” speech, it was Rustin who worked closely with the labor movement behind the scenes, planning and organizing the massive March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, one of the largest nonviolent protests ever held in the United States. As an openly gay man, Rustin’s crucial role in the March on Washington was often diminished and forgotten. As a member of the executive council of the AFL-CIO and a founder of the AFL-CIO’s A. Philip Randolph Institute, Rustin fought against racism and discrimination in the labor movement. Hedgeman was a civil rights activist, educator and writer who helped organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. She was a lifelong advocate for equal opportunity and employment.

    1968: Poor People’s Campaign

    This multiracial campaign, launched by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference under the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Rev. Dr. Ralph Abernathy, recognized that civil rights alone did not lift up African Americans. The campaign called for guaranteed, universal basic income, full employment and affordable housing. Dr. King said, “But if a man doesn’t have a job or an income, he has neither life nor liberty, nor the possibility for the pursuit of happiness. He merely exists.”

    1968: Memphis Sanitation Strike

    African American sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), went on strike to obtain better wages and safety on the job, winning major contract gains. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the strike’s most influential supporter, was assassinated on April 4 as he was leaving his hotel room to address striking workers. Today, AFSCME produces the I AM STORY podcast, which follows the history of the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Strike as told by those who experienced it firsthand.

    1969: League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW)

    Established in Detroit, Michigan, the LRBW united several revolutionary union movements across the auto industry and other sectors. A significant influential Black Power group, the LRBW had a tremendous influence on the left wing of the labor movement. Their activism played a pivotal role at the intersection of race and class in the ‘post-civil rights’ era.

    1970: Melnea Cass (1896-1978)

    Known as the ‘First Lady of Roxbury,’ community organizer and activist Melnea Cass helped provide social services, professional training and labor rights education that empowered Boston’s most vulnerable workers. One of many examples is a program she co-created that provided childcare for working mothers. Her advocacy helped achieve a major legislative victory in 1970 when Massachusetts passed the nation’s first state-level minimum wage protections for domestic workers since the Great Depression.

    1970s: Workforce and Unemployment

    By 1970, about nine million African American men and women were part of the workforce in the United States. This workforce included the steel, metal fabricating, meatpacking, retail, railroading, medical services and communications industries, numbering one third to one half of basic blue-collar workers. Yet, at that time, the African American unemployment rate was still two to three times more than that of whites.

    1970: Dorothy Bolden (1923-2005)

    Future president Jimmy Carter presents a Maids Day Proclamation to Dorothy Bolden. Dorothy Bolden began helping her mother with domestic work at age 9. She was proud of her work, but also knew how hard it could be and wanted domestic workers to be respected as part of the labor force. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., her next-door neighbor, encouraged her to take action. In 1968, she founded the National Domestic Workers Union, helping organize workers on a scale never seen before in the United States. The union taught workers how to bargain for higher wages, vacation time and more. She also required that all members register to vote, helping to give workers a stronger voice both on the job and in Georgia policy.

    1979: Wage Decline Begins

    Hourly wages for many American workers stagnated or dropped beginning in 1979, except for a period of strong across-the-board wage growth in the late 1990s. Researchers have found a correlation between the decline of unions and lower wages, and between lower wages and a growth in economic and social inequality, resulting in African Americans and Latino workers facing greater wage stagnation than white workers.

    1980s: Declines and Milestones

    During the 1980s, African American labor continued to face significant challenges including high unemployment rates, disproportionate job displacement due to industrial decline, and the widening wage gap compared to white workers. Particularly impacted were African American women, and blue-collar African American workers who relied heavily on shrinking union jobs during this period. Despite this, some progress was made with an increased Black union membership among men, affecting barriers to full equality in the workforce due to earlier civil rights movements.

    1990: Hattie Canty (1933-2012)

    Hattie Canty lived in Nevada and worked several jobs as a maid, a school janitor, and eventually a room attendant on the Las Vegas Strip. She became active in her union, was elected to the executive board of the Culinary Workers Union (CWU) in 1984 and became union president in 1990. She was the first Black woman and the first room attendant elected to this position in CWU. During her tenure, she brought together workers from several nations, helped push forward racial justice within the industry and her union, and founded the Culinary Training Academy, which helps people of color obtain better jobs in the hospitality industry.

    1990: Americans with Disabilities Act

    Inspired by the Civil Rights Act, and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush, Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act, prohibiting discrimination against all people living with developmental and physical disabilities in the workplace, transportation, public accommodations, state and local government services and telecommunications.

    Recent History

    2008: Smithfield Packing Plant Workers

    Smithfield workers join the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). After 16 years of organizing by African American, Latino, and Native American workers, the Smithfield Packing Plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina finally succeeded in joining the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union. Despite years of intimidation, violence, and illegal firings by the company’s management, the new local union was chartered as UFCW Local 1208. Today, there is a mural of civil rights leaders on the wall of the union hall.

    2008: Barack Obama (1961- )

    Barack Obama was elected to the first of his two terms as the 44th President of the United States becoming the first African American president in U.S. history. During his first two years in office, he signed many landmark bills into law, including his very first piece of legislation, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which impacted the labor movement. Obama also reduced the unemployment rate to the lowest it had been in more than eleven years.

    2012: #BlackLivesMatter

    Formed after the 2012 murder of a young African American man in Florida, Trayvon Martin, the Black Lives Matter movement grew as protests mounted against other killings, including the 2020 slaying of George Floyd in Minneapolis. In several communities, labor unions have built ties with #BLM chapters to address chronic issues of dehumanization, inequality, and exploitation.

    Underground Railroad Sites in New York’s Southern Tier

    Underground Railroad Sites in New York’s Southern Tier

    By Kalyn Grant for the Binghamton Press & Sun Bulletin

    KCGrant@gannett.com

    Source[1] 

    The Underground Railroad was a network of churches, safe houses and community centers that led thousands of people escaping slavery to freedom. Northern states like Pennsylvania played a major role in the progression of freedom, and the trail made several stops in New York, including the Southern Tier counties along the Pennsylvania border. Here are some of the local landmarks near Binghamton that played a role in the success of the Underground Railroad, including private homes and churches across the region.

    The Seymore Home in Whitney Point, New York 

    This Whitney Point home was owned by George Seymore in the late 1850s and was a spot along the Underground Railroad network. During that time most people who lived in the area knew the Seymore home was being used to hide and assist escaped enslaved people. According to former Broome County historian Gerald Smith, the home was later converted into an antique shop called the Underground Antiques and eventually turned into a private residence. 

    Cyrus Gates Farmstead in Maine, New York

    The Cyrus Gates Farmstead was once used as a sanctuary along the Underground Railroad. On 30 acres in Maine, Cyrus Gates’ home — referred to as “Gates’ white elephant” — was built in the 1850s by a New York City architect. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. Gates was a cartographer and surveyor, as well as a vocal abolitionist. Up in the attic, the Gates home had an emergency hiding place. Tucked behind a hidden panel in the back of a cupboard, escaped slaves could crawl into a 10-by-20 foot secret room in the house’s south wing attic, crouching so as not to hit the four-foot-tall ceiling, when they needed to hide.

    Park Church in Elmira, New York

    Members of Park Church, originally named the First Independent Congregational Church of Elmira, were active participants in the Underground Railroad. They included John W. Jones, an escaped slave who helped over 800 travel to freedom through Elmira and Jervis Langdon, a local financier who helped Frederick Douglass escape from slavery. The church offered shelter, provided food and finances, and took legal action against slavery. They also prepared a petition to officially record their stance as an anti-slavery church and in 1871, it became Park Church. In 2006, the church was added to the National Park Service’s Network to Freedom program. 

    Binghamton, New York home of Dr. Stephen D. Hand

    During the mid-19th century, the home of Dr. Stephen D. Hand stood at the site of the current Binghamton City Hall. After moving to Binghamton and starting a successful medical practice, he took an active role in the Underground Railroad. Hand opened his doors to those seeking freedom. His home was near two existing African American churches — the Bethel Church and the First Colored Methodist Episcopal Church — which created a trio of spots in close proximity offering help. The home was demolished in the 1960s and Binghamton City Hall took its place. The building has a plaque to recognize the significant role the Hand home placed in the Underground Railroad. 

    Trinity AME Zion Church of Binghamton 

    The church, founded in 1838, is a stop on the Downtown Binghamton Freedom Trail, recognized for its role in the Underground Railroad. The historic marker at the site shares its history as originally the AME Zion Church, a site that was a place of worship and safe spot to rest and receive help while traveling. Rev. Jermain Loguen, director of the Underground Railroad in Syracuse, was also pastor at the church in the 1860s.

    Tulsa Massacre was Erased from History

    Tulsa Massacre was Erased from History

    By Alan Singer

    My partner Felicia Hirata, friends Judy and Ruben Stern, and I were discussing the movie Killers of the Flower Moon and conversation shifted to the 1921 Tulsa Massacre. Felicia, Ruben, and I are all retired New York City high school social studies teachers and we realized we had never taught about the massacre in class, and we were unsure of whether we even knew about it when we were teachers. It had effectively been erased from history.

    As a high school teacher, I did introduce my students, almost all African American and Latinx, to post-World War 1 racist attacks on African Americans with the poem “If We Must Die” by Claude McKay that was first published in the July 1919 of The Liberator coupled with photographs and newspaper headlines of the 1919 Chicago race riot showing white mobs and police attacking Blacks in the street. The McKay poem is especially powerful and resonated with students because it is a call for resistance.

    https://alansingerphd.medium.com/the-100th-anniversary-of-the-tulsa-race-massacre-5cee3a689f6f[1]

    I now teach social studies methods at Hofstra University in suburban Long Island, New York. After our discussion of Killers of the Flower Moon and the Tulsa Massacre, I decided to review how the post-World War 1 race riots and the Tulsa massacre were covered in the textbooks I used as a high school teacher and in more recent editions used by teachers today, books my students will likely use when they become teachers, books that continue to minimize the role that race and racism played in American history.

    Ruben and I both taught United States history at Franklin K. Lane High School in the 1980s using Lewis Todd and Merle Curti’s Triumph of the American Nation as our primary textbook. Chapter 27 “New Directions in American Life Changing Ways (1900-1920)” ignores race, in fact the book’s index does not include race or racism as a category (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986). After discussing World War 1, the authors skipped directly to the “Golden Twenties” where the post-war race riots were ignored. In a later chapter, “Decades in Contrast Changing ways (1920-1939),” “Black migration to the North,” “Disappointed hopes,” and “The riots of 1919” are briefly mentioned, but not what happened in Tulsa. Students learned from the book that “Frightened whites, convinced that black Americans were trying to threaten them and gain control, responded with more violence. Police forces, ill-equipped to deal with riots, usually sided with whites” (751). Perhaps even more disturbing than the omissions, is this justification offered for the white rioters.

    I also used Thomas Bailey and David Kennedy, The American Pageant, 7th Edition (1983, D.C. Heath) with a college-level dual enrollment class. A section in Chapter 39, “The Politics of Boom and Bust, 1920-1932” titled “The Aftermath of War” includes a paragraph explaining that “Vicious race riots also rocked the Republic in years following the Great War . . . [I]n the immediate post-war period, blacks were brutally taught that the North was not a Promised land. A racial reign of terror descended on Chicago in the summer of 1919, leaving twenty-three blacks and fifteen whites dead. Clashes also inflamed Knoxville, Omaha, Washington, and other cities.” There was also no mention of 1921 and Tulsa massacre in this textbook. Unlike Todd and Curti, Bailey and Kennedy didn’t justify the behavior of the white rioters but by suggesting that these were somehow clashes between Blacks and whites, it takes the onus off white mobs killing African Americans and driving them out of housing and jobs.

    Even Howard Zinn’s widely used A People’s History of the United States, first published in 1980 by Harper Collins and reissued most recently in 2015 by Harper Perennial, the most progressive history of the United States that I used as a reference, falls short. Zinn included the post-war strike wave but not the race riots in 1919 or the destruction of the Black community of Tulsa in 1921.

    I read From Slavery to Freedom, A History of Negro Americans, 3rd edition by John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss, Jr. (1969, Vintage) as an undergraduate at CCNY in a class on American Nego History during the 1968-1969 school year. Unfortunately, it did not have much influence on the American history curriculum.

    In the 7th edition (published in 1994 by Knopf), Franklin and Moss have a chapter “Democracy Escapes” about conditions faced by African Americans in the United States in the post-World War 1 era after approximately 380,000 African Americans served in the army and about 200,000 were stationed in the European theater (346-360; Goldenberg, 2022). Despite welcoming parades in major American cities, The Crisis reported “This country of ours, despite all its better souls have done and dreamed, is yet a shameful land. It lynches . . . It disenfranchises its own citizens . . . It encourages ignorance . . .It steals from us . . . It insults us . . . We return. We return from fighting. We return fighting. Make way for Democracy! We saved it in France, and by the Great Jehovah, we will save it in the U.S.A., or know the reason why” (347).

    Between June and December 1919, Red Summer, Franklin and Moss estimate there were twenty-five anti-Black race riots in American cities (349). The most serious riot was in Chicago where there were thirty-eight fatalities, over 500 reported injuries, and 1,000 families left homeless (350-351).  The book also briefly describes a “race war” in Tulsa, Oklahoma in June 1921 where nine whites and 21 blacks were killed.

    On Long Island, New York, the most widely used United States history textbook is Holt McDougal’s The Americans by Gerald Danzer, Jorge Kor de Alva, Larry Krieger, Louis Wilson, and Nancy Woloch. The 2012 edition has two references to the post-World War I racial climate. A “Historical Spotlight” box in a chapter on “The First World War” explains that “Racial prejudice against African Americans in the North sometimes took violent forms. However, the 1917 East St. Louis riot seems to be excused because “White workers were furious over the hiring of African Americans as strikebreakers at a munitions plant.” The 1919 Chicago riot is also blamed on African Americans who “retaliated” when a Black teenager was stoned to death by “white bathers” after he swam into “water off a ‘white beach’” (600). A later chapter on the Harlem Renaissance mentions that “Northern cities in general had not welcomed the massive influx of African Americans. Tensions had escalated in the years prior to 1920, culminating in the summer of 1919, in approximately 25 urban race riots” (659). This section does not explain who was rioting and who was being attacked.

    The 12th edition of The American Pageant (2002), widely used in Advanced Placement classes, added Lisabeth Cohen as a co-author. A section on “Workers in Wartime” included the “sudden appearance” of African Americans in “previously all-white areas sometimes sparked interracial violence,” equally blamed on Blacks and whites (711). A photograph of a victim of the 1919 Chicago race riot lying on the ground face down includes the caption “The policeman arrived too late to spare this victim from being pelted by stones from an angry mob” (711). From the picture, it is difficult to tell that the victim was African American and he is not identified as such in the caption, although the police standing above him are clearly white. Members of the mob and its victims are not identified, and the caption inaccurately suggests that white police were trying to protect the Black community. The 16th edition, published in 2015, notes in Chapter 32 “American Life in the Roaring Twenties, 1919-1929” that a “ new racial pride also blossomed in the northern black communities that burgeoned during and after the war,” but contained no mention of the race riots in 1919 or 1921 (749) and the chapter on “The Politics of Boom and Bust, 1920-1932” dropped the reference to “vicious race riots” in the 1983 edition.

    The fourth edition of Making America (Houghton Mifflin, 2006) by Carol Berkin, Christopher Miller, Robert Cherny, and James Gormly references the East St. Louis and Tulsa riots in the index and race riots are paired with lynchings as examples of the conditions faced by returning Black veteran after World War 1. Unlike other texts, this book clearly identifies that “white mobs” were attacking African Americans in East St. Louis, Washington DC, Chicago, Omaha, Tulsa, and Detroit (694, 706, 732). It is also one of the few textbooks to list racism in the index.

    America’s History 9th edition for the AP Course by James Henretta, Rebecca Edward, Eric Hunderaker and Robert Self, published by Bedford, Freeman & Worth in 2018, includes Chapter 21, “Unsettled Prosperity: From War to Depression, 1919-1932.” This chapter has a section titled “Racial Backlash.” White attacks on Black workers and communities are presented as a response to the Great Migration during World War I and competition for jobs and housing. The section references 1917 riots in East St. Louis, Illinois where white mobs “burned more than 300 black homes and murdered between 50 and 150 black men, women and children”; the Chicago race riot of 1919; the Rosewood, Florida Massacre; and the “horrific incident” in Tulsa. The Tulsa “incident” did receive significant coverage, about half of a paragraph. “Sensational, false reports of an alleged rape helped incite white mobs who resented growing black prosperity. Anger focused on the 8,000 residents of Tulsa’s prosperous Greenwood district, locally known as ‘the black Wall Street.’ The mobs – helped by National Guardsmen, who arrested African Americans who resisted – burned thirty-five blocks of Greenwood and killed several dozen people. The city’s leading paper acknowledged that ‘semi-organized bands of white men systematically applied the torch, while others shot on site men of color.’ It took a decade for black residents to rebuild Greenwood” (653-654).

    The best coverage of the 1917-1921 anti-Black race riots is probably Eric Foner’s AP text Give Me Liberty (6th edition, Norton). Chapter 19 “Safe for Democracy: The United States and World War I,” has a section on “Racial Violence, North and South.” It reports on the East St. Louis and Chicago attacks by white mobs on Black workers and communities, lynchings in the South targeting returning Black war veterans, a bloody attack on striking Black sharecroppers in Arkansas, and Tulsa. Foner describes Tulsa as “The worst race riot in American history . . . when more than 300 blacks were killed and over 10,000 left homeless after a white mob, including police and National Guardsmen, burned an all-black section of the city to the ground. The Tulsa riot erupted after s group of black veterans tried to prevent the lynching of a youth who had accidently tripped and fallen on a white female elevator operator, causing rumors of rape to sweep the city” (766).

    Over one hundred years after the Tulsa Massacre, the United States needs to stop pretending that racism ended with the American Civil War and take steps to address the lingering impact of slavery and systemic racism on American society. An important step would be to ensure that high school students learn about events from the past that continue to shape the present.

    Book Review: A Hudson Valley Reckoning: Discovering the Forgotten History of Slaveholding in My Dutch American Family

    A Hudson Valley Reckoning: Discovering the Forgotten History of Slaveholding in My Dutch American Family

    by Debra Bruno (Three Hills, 2024)

    Reviewed by Imani Hinson

    For many, slavery in the North is nothing but a long-ago memory, a story that is often untold due to the cruelties of enslavement in the South and the long-lasting impact of enslavement in the Southern part of the United States. The general public is not always aware of the enslavement of African people in the North with only recent discoveries being brought to light. A Hudson Valley Reckoning: Discovering the Forgotten History of Slaveholding in My Dutch American Family showcases the stories of enslaved people who lived in Greene County, New York. The author, Debra Bruno, offers a new perspective on the enslaved in New York by exploring her own lineage and that of a distant cousin named Eleanor.

    In this thirteen-chapter narrative, Bruno tells the story of her slave-holding Dutch family and the connection between her relatives and those who they might have enslaved. Eleanor is a descendant of the individuals whom Bruno’s family enslaved. Bruno discusses how historians, politicians, journalists, and every day people have erased significant features of enslavement in the North and painted a quaint picture of enslaved people helping the Dutch with their farms, houses, and livestock. Bruno, however, provides a much clearer picture of the reality of slavery in Dutch New York. She visited Macon, Georgia, and Curacao as she dug deeper into her family’s history.

    In the introduction, Bruno describes her upbringing and the proud nature of her family’s Dutch heritage. She draws the reader in by describing her hometown of Athens and Coxsackie, places located along the Hudson River. Her American family began with Lambert Van Valkenburg, who settled in New Amsterdam in the early 1600s and later sold this land relocated on the North River, now the Hudson River. Her ancestor originally owned land in New Amsterdam where the where Empire State Building is located.

    While digging into the history of her family, Bruno decided to explore whether they were enslavers. Bruno used Ancestry.com where she found various records including newspaper clippings, census data, photographs, and wills. Valkenburg did not provide significant results, so she searched under Collier, her grandmother’s family name. Bruno found a will from what would be her Great Grandfather five times back. He had many children and grandchildren around the Coxsackie area and left a will bequeathing much of his property to them. As Bruno combed through the pages of the will she saw it, “detailed like inventory along with his property and cows were slaves” (6).

    Chapter four illustrates enslavement in the North with an analysis of a painting. “Van Bergen Overmantel” was commissioned by the Van Bergen family in the early 1700s to hang in the family home. It depicted what life was like in 18th century Hudson Valley and “is the first visual evidence of slavery on a New York farm” (56). According to Bruno, in 1714 Coxsackie’s population was 21% enslaved people. and by the 1790s in places such as Brooklyn, New York that number went up to 30%. In the late 18th century New York had an enslaved population of 319,000 enslaved people.

    In the following chapters Bruno describes the challenges she faced in finding sources from the enslaved that could detail what their life was like on these farms. She notes that they were threatened with being sold down South or the Caribbean, some ran away killing their masters in the escape, and these details just go to show that enslaved life in the North was not a cakewalk as some may think. Even after being emancipated, African Americans still struggled in New York as they fought their right to be citizens and gain full citizenship rights as discussed in chapter nine.

    In a discussion of why this history was so important to recover, Bruno emphasized that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the nation’s founding documents, not grant the same freedoms to all people living on this land, and that individuals must “accept that only some people have benefited from their promises. To deny that and to distance ourselves from that truth is to misunderstand how our county grew, prospered, and exists today” (233.

    Governed by Despots: John Swanson Jacobs Chronicles Enslavement and Resistance

    Governed by Despots: John Swanson Jacobs Chronicles Enslavement and Resistance

    Alan Singer

    (reprinted with permission from New York Almanack (https://www.newyorkalmanack.com/2024/12/john-swanson-jacobs-enslavement/)

    The University of Chicago Press recently published a unique account of an escape from enslavement in North Carolina decades before the Civil War. The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots (2024) by John Swanson Jacobs tells of his escape from enslavement by North Carolina plantation owner and Congressional Representative Samuel Sawyer in 1838 while he and the slaveholder were in transit through the City of New York. Jacobs eventually made it to Australia where his story was published serially in 1855 by the Sydney Empire. It was later republished in 1861 in London, UK under the title “A True Tale of Slavery” by The Leisure Hour: A Family Journal of Instruction and Recreation. The 1861 version of Jacob’s story is available online at the website Documenting the American South.

    John Swanson Jacobs was born in 1815 in Edenton, North Carolina, the younger brother of his better-known sister Harriet Jacobs, author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861). Harriet Jacobs originally published her book under the pseudonym Linda Brent, possibly to protect those who remained enslaved at home. In the book she referred to her brother John as “William” and Samuel Sawyer, the white father of her two children who “owned” both them and John, as “Mr. Sands.” John Swanson Jacobs, safely in Australia, published under his own name.

    In 1838, Sawyer traveled north because he and his fiancé planned to be married in Chicago, Illinois where she had family. He was able to bring an enslaved John Swanson Jacobs with him to New York State because although slavery had been abolished there in 1828, state law permitted enslavers visiting or residing in New York part-time to maintain slaves within their households for up to nine months. This statute was not repealed until 1841.

    The following is an excerpt from chapter 5 of A TRUE TALE OF SLAVERY that was published in The Leisure Hour: A Family Journal of Instruction and Recreation (No. 478–February 21, 1861). In this excerpt, Jahn Swanson Jacobs describes his escape from slavery while in New York City.

    “THE latter end of the third year after I was sold, my master was elected Member of Congress. I was ordered to get ready for Washington . . .  After my master had been there a short time, he went to board with Mrs. P—-, who had two young nieces here, to one of whom he was soon engaged to be married. As good luck would have it, this young lady had a sister living in Chicago, and no place would suit her like that to get married in . . . Everything was ready, and the hoped-for time came. He took his intended, and off we started for the West. When we were taking the boat at Baltimore for Philadelphia, he came up to me and said, “Call me Mr. Sawyer; and if anybody asks you who you are, and where you are going, tell them that you are a free man, and hired by me.”

    We stopped two or three days at the Niagara Falls; from thence we went to Buffalo, and took the boat for Chicago; Mr. Sawyer had been here but a few days before he was taken sick. In five weeks from the time of his arrival here, he was married and ready to leave for home. On our return, we went into Canada. Here I wanted to leave him, but there was my sister and a friend of mine at home in slavery . . . I tried to get a seaman’s protection from the English Custom-house, but could not without swearing to a lie, which I did not feel disposed to do.

    We left here for New York, where we stopped three or four days. I went to see some of my old friends from home, who I knew were living there. I told them that I wanted their advice. They knew me, they knew my master, and they knew my friends also. “Now tell me my duty,” said I. The answer was a very natural one, “Look out for yourself first.” I weighed the matter in my mind, and found the balance in favour of stopping. If I returned along with my master, I could do my sister no good, and could see no further chance of my own escape. I then set myself to work to get my clothes out of the Astor House Hotel, where we were stopping; I brought them out in small parcels, as if to be washed. This job being done, the next thing was to get my trunk to put them in. I went to Mr. Johnson’s shop, which was in sight of the Astor House Hotel, and told him that I wanted to get my trunk repaired.

    The next morning I took my trunk in my hand with me: when I went down, whom should I see at the foot of the steps but Mr. Sawyer? I walked up to him, and showed him a rip in the top of the trunk, opening it at the same time that he might see that I was not running off. He told me that I could change it, or get a new one if I liked. I thanked him, and told him we were very near home now, and with a little repair the old one would do. At this we parted. I got a friend to call and get my trunk, and pack up my things for me, that I might be able to get them at any minute. Mr. Sawyer told me to get everything of his in, and be ready to leave for home the next day. I went to all the places where I had carried anything of his, and where they were not done, I got their cards and left word for them to be ready by the next morning. What I had got were packed in his trunk; what I had not been able to get, there were the cards for them in his room.

    They dine at the Astor at three o’clock; they leave the room at four o’clock; at half-past four o’clock I was to be on board the boat for Providence. Being unable to write myself at that time, and unwilling to leave him in suspense, I got a friend to write as follows: — “Sir–I have left you, not to return; when I have got settled, I will give you further satisfaction. No longer yours, JOHN S. JACOB.”

    This note was to be put into the post-office in time for him to get it the next morning. I waited on him and his wife at dinner. As the town clock struck four, I left the room. I then went through to New Bedford, where I stopped for a few months . . . The lawyer I have quite a friendly feeling for, and would be pleased to meet him as a countryman and a brother, but not as a master.”

    Once free, John Swanson Jacobs moved to New England where he became an active abolitionist. His efforts took him to Rochester, New York and vicinity on a number of occasions and to New York City at least three times, in May 1849, October 1850, and July 1862. On May 11, 1849, the New York Herald printed an account of a speech by Jacobs at an American Anti-Slavery Society meeting where he called on attendees to make it “disreputable” for people who claimed to be Christians to hold other people in bondage. According to North Star on October 24, 1850, Jacobs spoke in New York City calling for active resistance to fugitive slave laws following the seizure of James “Hamlet” Hamilton by slavecatchers and on July 28, 1862, New York Independent reported on an interview with Jacobs where he recounted his experience as a cook on a British ship, with the support of British authorities in the Bahamas, that was attempting to enter the port of Charleston, South Carolina in violation of the federal blockade of Southern ports (252-258). Excerpts from these articles follow.

    American Anti-Slavery Society (New York Herald, May 11, 1849)

    “A slaveholder named Skinner, who was a skinner in every sense of the word, was in the habit of coming every year, to visit his brother, Re. Dr. Skinner, who . . . lived at 160 Green[e] street; and yet the baby-stealing, women-whipping tyrant never received a rebuke from his reverend brother, at whose table he sat . . . If anyone asked him what must be done to abolish slavery, his answer was, that it must cease to be respectable. They must make it disreputable, and then slaveholders would be ashamed of it . . . If they had less of religion, and more of Christianity, it would be all for the better” (252-254).

    Meeting of the Colored Citizens of New York (North Star, October 24, 1850)

    “My colored brethren, if you have not sword, I say to you, sell your garments and buy one . . . I would, my friends, advise you to show a front to our tyrants, and arm yourselves; aye, I would advise the women to have their knives too . . . I advise you to trample on this bill, and I further advise you to let us go on immediately, and act like men” (256).

    Running the Blockade (New York Independent, July 28, 1862)

    “[A] very intelligent colored man, formerly a slave in North Carolina, but recently for several years a resident of England, called at our office the other day, and related facts showing that British vessels are stilled engaged in running our blockade, and that the British officials in the Bahamas are, if possible, more inimical to our Union than are the same class of people at home . . . He shipped as a cook on board the steamship Lloyds, at London . . . ‘for Havana and any of the West Indies Islands’ . . . the captain (Smith) announced to the crew that he designed to run the blockade before Charleston, and offered three months pay extra to such as would remain with the ship . . . Jacobs refused to go to Charleston at any price whatever, and demanded, what was his undoubted right, that he be sent home to London. After various efforts on the part of Capt. Smith to indure (sic) Jacobs to either go to Charleston or to settle and sign a satisfaction, he attempted coercion. He had Jacobs taken before a police magistrate to answer the charge of having deserted the ship . . . The law was all on the side of Jacobs, but the public sentiment of Nassau was so strongly against him, and in favor of the unlawful and contraband trade with the Rebels” (257-258).

    The John W. Jones Story

    The John W. Jones Story

    By Barbara S. Ramsdell

    Reprinted with permission from https://www.johnwjonesmuseum.org/the-john-w-jones-story

    John W. Jones became an active agent in the Underground Railroad in 1851. In 1854, the Northern Central railroad tracks from Williamsport, Pennsylvania to Elmira, New York were completed. Jones made an arrangement with Northern Central employees and hid the fugitives in the 4 o’clock “Freedom Baggage Car,” directly to Niagara Falls via Watkins Glen and Canandaigua. Most of Jones’s “baggage” eventually landed in St. Catharines, Ontario.

    By 1860, Jones aided in the escape of 800 runaway slaves. He usually received the fugitives in parties of six to ten, but there were times he found shelter for up to 30 men, women, and children a night. It is believed Jones sheltered many in his own home behind First Baptist Church. Of those 800, none were captured or returned to the South.

    Jones became the sexton for Woodlawn Cemetery in 1859. One of his primary roles was to bury each deceased Confederate soldier from the Elmira Prison Camp. Of the 2,973 prisoners who Jones buried, only seven are listed as unknown. Jones kept such precise records that on December 7, 1877, the federal government declared the burial site a national cemetery.

    Historically, the house was the private residence of John W. Jones and his family, changed ownership several times, and was last used as rental property that fell into disrepair. Condemned by the City of Elmira in 1997, Lucy Brown brought it to the public’s attention and with a group of concerned citizens, saved it from demolition. The building currently stands on Jones’ original farm property and the site will continue to be visually interpreted as a farm.

    The museum highlights the history of African Americans who settled in New York and the activity of local abolitionists, emphasizing Elmira’s role as the only regular agency and published station on the Underground Railroad between Philadelphia and St. Catharine’s, Canada, and explore Mr. Jones’ community involvement and his relationship with his contemporaries.

    John W. Jones was born a slave June 21, 1817, on a plantation south of Leesburg, Virginia. He was owned by the Ellzey family, an influential family who treated their slaves with perhaps more kindness than some plantation owners did. Miss Sarah (Sally) Ellzey was fond of John and was a good friend to him. But she was getting on in years and John was concerned about what would happen to him once she passed away.

    On June 3, 1844, at the age of 27, John fled north to the place his mother had told him about “where there is no slavery.” It took one month for John, his two half-brothers, George and Charles, and Jefferson Brown and John Smith from an adjoining estate to walk from Virginia to Elmira, New York, a distance of about 300 miles. The route they followed was part of the Underground Railroad coming up through Pennsylvania and into New York by way of Williamsport, Canton, Alba and South Creek. In South Creek they reached the farm of Dr. Nathaniel Smith, where they crawled into the hay mow of his immense barn and went to sleep, more dead than alive. They remained there over night. Mrs. Smith discovered them and cooked food and took it to them. This is the Mrs. Smith whose grave in Woodlawn Cemetery, just beyond the Langdon plot, always had fresh flowers on it and no one knew where they came from. After John Jones died, there were no more mysterious fresh flowers.

    John Jones was an ambitious man and never idle. The first thing he did when he arrived in Elmira was to offer to cut wood in exchange for 50¢ for Mrs. John Culp, Colonel John Hendy’s daughter. Another early job he took was in a tallow and candle store working for Seth Kelly. John wanted to get an education, but was refused at first because he was black. Judge Arial Standish Thurston befriended him, realized his potential and made it possible for him to receive an education – in fact, at the same school where before he had been turned down. As a result, John went to school in the winter and worked as janitor for Miss Clara Thurston’s school for young ladies on Main Street. In October, 1847, he was appointed sexton or caretaker of the first church building of the First Baptist Church that had been constituted in 1829 under the name of the Baptist Church of Southport and Elmira. The first members gathered in homes, but as the membership grew they met in a schoolhouse in Southport. By 1832, the membership had grown to the point where they decided to build their own church building. They were sold the piece of land where the Baptist Church still is today for $1.50 by Jeffrey and Elizabeth Wisner who were in-laws of the first pastor, Rev. Philander Gillett. The first building was a barn-like structure constructed at a cost of $954.

    By 1848, 16 years later, the Baptists had outgrown that building and decided to build something larger. The 1863 City Directory says this building was constructed of wood, stucco and cost $8000. Mr. Jones was sexton of this second church building for the 42 years that it was in existence.

    In 1854 he bought the “yellow house next to the church” from an Ezra Canfield for $500. Two years later, John Jones married Rachel Swails. Rachel’s brother was Stephen Swails, a Lieutenant in the 54th Massachusetts Regiment. If you have ever seen the movie Glory, you know the story of this famous regiment.

    By 1859, Jones was already very active in Underground Railroad work. An article in The Liberator (Boston) signed J.W. Jones, Sec. said: “Resolved, That we, the colored citizens of Elmira, do hereby form ourselves into a society for the purpose of protecting ourselves against those persons, [slave-catchers] prowling through different parts of this and other States since the passing of the diabolical act of Sept. 18th, 1850, which consigns freemen of other States to that awful state of brutality which the fiendish slaveholders of the Southern States think desirable for their colored brethren, but are not willing to try it themselves.”

    Arch Merrill said in his book on the UGRR, “Jones quietly took command of the Underground in Elmira, a gateway between the South and the North. It became the principal station on the ‘railroad’ between Philadelphia and the Canadian border. Jones worked closely with William Still, the chief Underground agent in Philadelphia, who forwarded parties of from six to 10 fugitives at a time to Elmira.

    “Jones had many allies in Elmira. Mrs. John Culp hid runaways in her home. Other Underground leaders were Jervis Langdon; Simeon Benjamin, the founder of Elmira College; Thomas Stanley Day; S. G. Andrus; John Selover; Riggs Watrous and others. The station master concealed as many as 30 slaves at one time in his home—exactly where, he never told. He carried on his operations so secretly that only the inner circle of abolitionists knew that in a decade he dispatched nearly 800 slaves to Canada. “John Jones demonstrated his winning ways in encouraging the railroad baggage men to stow away the hundreds of men, women, and children who were spirited away to freedom.

    “In 1854 the railroad from Williamsport to Elmira was completed and Jones received many more fugitives by train, to ship away in the 4 a.m. ‘Freedom Baggage Car,’ directly to Niagara Falls via Watkins Glen and Canandaigua, where the car was shifted to the New York Central. Most of Jones’s ‘baggage’ eventually landed in St. Catharine’s.”

    His house right next to the church was the UGRR station of which Mr. Jones was station master. I often wonder about his wife, Rachel, who never knew how many were coming for dinner. I have also wondered if on those nights when he had 30 or more people to hide, if the church building, which he had access to, gave them shelter. There is no record that tells us this, but still, I wonder.

    If you stand at the corner of West Church Street and Railroad Avenue and look north toward the Erie depot, you can envision the journey of the fugitives in the middle of the night as they go from Mr. Jones’s home, where the parking lot of First Baptist is now, up Railroad Avenue to the depot.


    Wm. Still’s book about the UGRR is full of stories by the actual people involved in the work. In October, 1855, a lady wrote to Still asking, “Please give me again the direction of Hiram Wilson and the friend in Elmira, Mr. Jones, I think.” [Still, page 40]

    Here is a letter written by John W. Jones to William Still:
    Elmira, June 6, 1860.
    Friend Wm Still:

    “All six came safe to this place. The two men came last night, about twelve o’clock; the man and woman stopped at the depot, and went east on the next train, about eighteen miles.

    O, oldmasterdon’t cry for me, For I am going to Canada where colored men are free.

    P,S. What is the news in the city? Will you tell me how many you have sent over to Canada? I would like to know. They all send their love to you. I have nothing new to tell you. We are all in good health. I see there is a law passed in Maryland not to set any slaves free. They had better get the consent of the Underground Rail Road before they passed such a thing. Good night from your friend,

    John W. Jones”

    Challenges of Teaching African American History in Secondary Schools

    Challenges of Teaching African American History in Secondary Schools

    There are Four Perspectives in this article

    Teaching the APâ African American Studies Course By Imani Hinson

    Students Hunger for Cultural Knowledge By Romelo Green

    Emphasizing Cultural Relevancy & Providing Different Cultural Perspective By Nefe Abamwa

    Focus on Mass Struggle, Not Just the Black Elite By Adam Stevens

    Imani Hinson, Romelo Green, Nefe Abamwa, and Adam Stevens

    Imani Hinson, Romelo Green, Nefe Abamwa, and Adam Stevens presented on a panel at the 2025 conference of the American Historical Association. Hinson is a social studies teacher in the Howard County Maryland School District who formerly taught in Brooklyn and an item writer for the College Board AP African American Studies program. Green and Abamwa teach at Bellport High School in Suffolk County, New York and Stevens teaches at Brooklyn Technical High School. The session was chaired by April Francis-Taylor of Hofstra University and also included papers by Alan Singer of Hofstra University and Justin Williams of Uniondale High School.

    Teaching the APâ African American Studies Course

    By Imani Hinson

    “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.” – Maya Angelou

    Each year I start my students off with a week of lessons to understand why we study history in the first place and to get students specifically to understand why varied viewpoints are so important. This year I had my students reflect on a quote from Maya Angelou and asked them why they thought some political leaders across the United States did not think African American history was important and why they thought this history was considered controversial.

    My students responded with the understanding that by learning history we can hope to not repeat it but also that learning this history does not aim to make individuals feel bad for the deeds done but rather understand the historical situations in which our country was founded and the continued history that is shaping the way our country is moving forward today. Despite the pain and suffering lived by many in this country, especially African Americans, it is important to uncover truths about our shared history. The APâ African American Studies curriculum provides students with a chance to do just that; tackle tough questions, tough realities, glean an understanding of the world that they live in today, and it gives them a chance to acknowledge a history that many of them have not learned before.

    The APâ curriculum has a fantastic starting place with the African Kingdoms of Mali, Songhai, the Hausa States, and more. Students are able to do a deep dive into the history of Africa that many of them had never been taught about before. A question I get often from my students is “Ms. Hinson why are we not taught this in World History or any other history class?” The truth is that a lot of this history was unknown or kept secret for many years. In my classroom, we delve into the nuances of this history so that students understand how it differs from the traditional documents and writings they usually learn about in Eurocentric history classes. I introduce them to griots and students learn that different cultures pass down history in different ways. Much of the early history we know from African civilizations was passed down orally making it much harder for historians to uncover truths about these societies.  My students learned that Christianity was in Africa before European arrival when they study about places such as Lalibela. They learn about trade starting in the 8th century along the East Coast of Africa that connect places with the Mediterranean region and Central and East Asia. Students uncover truths about the Great Zimbabwe and amazing structures, built not by Greeks or aliens, but by the local Zimbabwean people who garnered their wealth from the Indian Ocean trade routes. Timbuktu is not a fictional place, but a nation where trade, advanced institutions of knowledge, and wealth resided.

    Before being exposed to this curriculum, my students were taught that Africa was backward, a continent ripe for exploitation. They saw Africa, not as the birthplace of humanity with rich cultures, but rather a place that Europeans conquered and a continent that continues to have issues to this day.

    Challenging misleading notions continues as students learn about the African diaspora. Before being exposed to this curriculum, they believed African Americans had no culture and were only brought to the Americas for harsh work and enslavement because of the color of their skin. I overheard an exchange in my classroom in which one student of color was poking fun at another. A West African student asked another Black student, “Hey, where are you from?” The student responded, “Oh well, I am just Black.” The West African student laughed and said “Oh, I’m so sorry y’all don’t have any culture.” That was an eye-opening exchange. I joined the conversation and asked, “What do you mean by that?” The student explained that they never heard of any African American culture and that Black people did not know where they came from. The conversation continued:

    “Well why do you think that African Americans don’t know where they come from?”

    “Well, I am not sure I guess slavery.”

    “Correct, but do you know about all that Black people had to do to overcome of the obstacles of enslavement? Do you know the years of oppression that then followed enslavement that African Americans continued to make strides towards crafting a new identity?”

    “The music you listen to is African American culture, some of the pieces of clothing or slang that you use are African American culture. The food that you eat, a lot of is African American culture.”

    “Wow I never thought about that.”

    “You should take the APâ African American studies course so you can learn more about Black culture!”

    The sad reality is that so many of our students think this way. They believe that Black people are a people without history and this misleading notion really stems from the fact that we have not done a good job as a society to unpack these misconceptions. In some states they still teach that slavery was a benevolent work system where the enslaved learned important skills, sugarcoating the reality of what enslavement was. Why don’t students learn that there was slavery in New York and in other northern localities? Why don’t students learn that Free Blacks and people who escaped from slavery played a crucial role in the abolitionist movement and that African Americans have fought in every war in the United States even before its inception, that 200,000 Black soldiers and sailors fought in the Civil War to end slavery and the right to be full citizens of the nation of their birth?

    The hardest part about teaching APâ African American studies course is getting students to relearn the history that was taught to them over and over again since they entered school. Black people were slaves, the Civil War happened, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, Reconstruction took place, African Americans got some rights, then skip to the Civil Rights Movement, and that’s Black history. But there is so much more to African American history. Students truly do not understand that African Americans as a people continuously strove to be accepted as valuable contributors to this great nation. Even when they were told to “go back to Africa,” they stayed and fought for equality. It is hard to teach history in a society that try to erase the African American past by making it seem Un-American to shed light on the contributions of Black people to this county.

    As a society we have prevented students of color from learning the truth about their heritage and culture and permitted all students to believe in a factionalized past. As a corrective, APâ African American studies is not just a class for students of color. Ideally, African and African American history should be interwoven into World History and United States history classes, not just relegated to an elective.  Black history truly is both World and U.S. history.

    It is challenging for many young people to see the correlation between history and the world that we live in today. I started a lesson on sugar being the driver for enslavement in the Americas showing students newspaper headlines discussing chocolate companies using child slave labor and asked students would they still eat chocolate knowing where it came from. Many of the students had to think long and hard about it, but eventually most of them confessed that “yes, they would still eat it.” After a gallery walk showing various documents about the correlation between sugar and enslavement and economics, we came back together to have a discussion. I asked my students how the legacies of sugar plantations and slavery continue to impact economic disparities and race relations today? A student raised her hand and said, “what we see is that enslaved people were working for free and that their enslavers were making loads of money because of their hard work.” I asked, “What does that mean for the Black community today?” Another student responded, “Well this means that many Black communities don’t have the same amount of money as white people because they got rich while we didn’t get anything.”

    Another student added, “Well that is the reason why so many Black people have struggled to make generational wealth. It is almost as if we started at a different place” and then another explained “they basically had a 300-year start.” This is the reality that people who criticize the APâ African American studies curriculum are afraid of students uncovering; uncovering how this history continues to play out in America today.

    Some people fear the acquisition of knowledge because they know that with knowledge can come change. The APâ African American studies course should not be labeled controversial or Un-American; in fact, it is the exact opposite. African Americans fought to be a part of this country and continue to fight for the country to stand true to its democratic values of all people having the right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. The course does not blame students for the past but rather brings them into the conversation about how we can continue to hold America to its promise by including the history of all of the people who helped to build this great nation. Thank you.

    Students Hunger for Cultural Knowledge

    By Romelo Green

    My name is Romelo Green. I am a social studies teacher in the South Country Central School District located on Long Island, Bellport, New York. I teach 11th-grade U.S. History & Government and 12th-grade AP U.S. Government & Politics. In both courses, African American history is a component of the course framework. Being a social studies teacher in the contemporary societal and political landscape presents various challenges. As historians and educators, we are entrusted with the responsibility of addressing topics that can often be sensitive and complex. It is imperative that we present these subjects in a balanced manner, offering to our students various perspectives. Many of these topics are deeply rooted in political discourse, requiring us to navigate these discussions with care.  Moreover, we face the ongoing challenge of countering the misinformation that our students see daily through various social media platforms. We also must remain informed about rapidly evolving current events. We must be equipped to respond to our students’ questions with a neutral stance. Additionally, it is essential for us to remain compliant with state standards, ensuring that we cover all mandated material effectively, and thereby preparing our students for state assessments.

    As an African American growing up, I did not hear many lessons pertaining to the deep roots of my own culture. This would include my high school and college experience. Many of the more nuanced topics in (African) American history were only brought to the surface for me once I became a teacher and began to conduct my own research, or through collegiate circles within my own department. This would include the Tulsa Race Massacre, the Haitian Revolution, the true history of policing in America, and the fact that Africans sold other Africans into slavery. I almost never heard of the achievements of African Americans except for the popular few who are always brought to light at certain points in American History (MLK, W.E.B Dubois, Malcolm X, etc…) The drastic omission from our curriculum and our textbooks leaves us with a very limited view of the African American experience.

    When we learn about our culture in a public setting, it is usually generalized and only discusses the traumatic experience of African Americans rather than highlighting the achievements of individuals representing our culture. In my school some of the teachers (who are here with us in the audience today) conducted a study using focus groups to try and create a more culturally responsive classroom. Through their research they found that students representing various cultural groups have high interest in learning more about their own culture, however, the students stated that when it is taught in the classroom it is either generalized or just taught wrong. In other words, they know more about their own culture than their teachers.

    What I see is that we have two factors at play.

    • Our students hunger for cultural knowledge.
    • Many teachers are unable to conduct such discourse freely and/or accurately.

    For example, the legacy of slavery, reconstruction, Jim Crow laws, and the Civil Rights Movement are pivotal components that require a sensitive and comprehensive examination. Inaccurate or incomplete teachings risk perpetuating misunderstandings and stereotypes. What we then need to do is find a balance where teachers are enabled to speak freely in the classroom providing students with facts and hard truths about historical cultural experiences. The students need to be inspired to think critically and be leaders of inquiry-based research. As such, the role of the teacher extends beyond mere instruction to include being a facilitator of dialogue, ensuring a supportive educational environment that encourages critical thinking and open discussion, while carefully steering conversations to be constructive rather than polarizing.

    A teacher’s freedom of speech in the classroom is one that is of great complexity, although we all have freedom of speech under the first amendment, our right to freedom of speech in educational settings is not absolute. The question then becomes what must we do as educators? With greater political pressure from the media, parents and the community, how do we still educate and fulfill the students’ drive for knowledge, while maintaining accordance with school or state policy? I think this is where we lean on our students and allow them to be leaders in the classroom. Allow our students to ask the questions and conduct the research, allow them to present information to each other and to hear the perspectives of their peers. As I mentioned our job is now to facilitate and ensure dialogue proceeds in a constructive manner. In order to do this successfully, our students need lessons on misinformation, fact-based research, and evaluating reliable sources. All of which is in alignment with NYS standards. Our teacher preparation programs also need modules on culturally responsive teaching, equipping our prospective teachers with the tools needed to navigate sensitive material respectfully and effectively.

    Lastly, professional development for educators is also essential. Teachers need training and resources to confidently navigate the difficult and often sensitive topics inherent in African American history. By investing in their development, schools can create more informed educators who are better equipped to address the diverse needs of their students.

    Emphasizing Cultural Relevancy and Providing Different Cultural Perspectives

    By Nefe Abamwa

    Good morning, my name is Nefe Abamwa. I teach 9th and 10th grade Global History, as well as Pre-AP World at Bellport High School on Long Island. Today’s panel is geared towards the challenges of teaching African American history and how to make the content more relevant. However, I believe it is also a part of a larger conversation on how to make the classroom culturally relevant as well.

    As a first-generation Nigerian-American, my culture has greatly shaped me. My parents immigrated from Nigeria to America in the 80’s and early 90’s for better employment opportunities. My father became an accountant for the NYC Comptroller’s Office, while my mother became an RN, ultimately practicing at Pilgrim State Psych Ward. They’ve always emphasized and instilled the value of education in my siblings and I. We were raised to view education as an essential tool for success and advancement. Nigerians often tend to joke that we have three options for careers; to either become a lawyer, doctor, or engineer. In our culture, an advancement in education and an outstanding career is nothing short of an expectation. Growing up in a household and with family where these values were the norm, you could understand the confusion I faced when I began to attend Amityville Public Schools. A district notoriously known for violence, poor academics and administration, and its low-income community.

    Throughout my educational career in Amityville, there were many issues I observed that made an impact on me, in regard to the staff and students. I noticed a cultural disconnect between teachers, who were predominantly white, and students, who were predominately black. I noticed that many of my peers did not value school and did not seem to understand, or care, that it could lead to endless opportunity and an escape from their environment. Lastly, the most impactful observation I noticed was that many students and staff were very ignorant and uneducated about African culture. Unfortunately, many of these observations continued to trend throughout my college, postgraduate, professional, and personal life overall. From interactions with colleagues, college professors, church members, peers, and most recently a NYSUT a union member; African culture and history tends to be stigmatized, stereotyped, and homogenized. As I faced these experiences, I would often have conversations with my parents unpacking these interactions and how disappointing it was to have these encounters so often. During these discussions, my parents would share their own experiences in America, where they too have faced racism and ignorance from people of all races, backgrounds, and levels of education.

    My cultural values and upbringing, compared to my educational experiences, inspired me at a very young age to go into education. I felt there was a strong need and lack of support for students in low-income communities that may not have proper guidance otherwise; I wanted to show students of color that there are opportunities beyond their environment; and I wanted to make the classroom experience more culturally relevant. I began to instill these changes during my student teaching assignment in a 6th grade classroom at Washington Middle School in Meriden, Connecticut. The demographics there were very similar to Amityville Public Schools, as were the observations I made initially throughout my primary and secondary educational experience. In my class, I began a daily segment at the beginning of the period called “Figure of the Day”. “Figure of the Day” started off as a daily 5-minute black history lesson, during Black History Month, after learning that students knew very little about any historical black figures. These 5-minute sessions would often unintentionally run over time due to the conversations and engagement it brought out of students. Soon enough, students were so intrigued, they would request people they wanted to learn more about. Eventually, that grew into wanting to conduct their own research and present their own projects. And it ended with us expanding “Figure of Day” to cover other races and cultures, well after Black History Month had ended. With each lesson presented, whether it was from me or their peers, I could tell each student found a connection, was inspired, and genuinely excited by what they were being taught because not only was it interesting, but very relatable. Many would go home and discuss what they learned with their parents and share more with their peers the following day.

    During my first year at Bellport High School in 2020, I taught my very first Global 10 class. To describe that experience as challenging would be an understatement. 10th graders and 6th graders are quite different, as you can imagine. And this was during covid. Half of my students were in person, half of them online and I’ve never met, and engagement was at an all-time low. That year I decided to conduct a project to reflect on revolutions, a prominent topic in Global 10. Throughout the year, students learn about many revolutions including the French, Haitian, and Latin American revolutions, as well as unifications such as the German and Italian. All of these movements highlight the effects of nationalism, or pride in one’s country or culture. I wanted to show that many of the issues that lead to revolutions still endure today. At the time, the #EndSARS movement was occurring in Nigeria. This was a campaign to stop police brutality led by the Nigerian youth and made international news. I felt learning about this movement was a great way to connect students to issues outside of America as well as bring awareness to some African culture and societies. Students watched a cover of Childish Gambino’s “This is America” called “This is Nigeria”, which highlights political, economic, and social issues Nigerians face. Then, my students produced questions to ask one of my cousins in Nigeria about his experience there. He was able to respond to the questions with a series of videos. Through this and document analysis, students realized many of their own experiences and issues were similar. Many were also surprised to learn that my cousin had an iPhone and could make videos. For these students, this project helped humanize a continent that is often seen as lesser than and irrelevant.

    Lastly, during the Imperialism unit, for Global 10, I emphasize the long-lasting effects of White Man’s Burden and eurocentrism, as many students are unaware of how these concepts influence many aspects of our lives. I include how these concepts have impacted the world’s view of anyone that is not a WASP. This is done through document analysis, where students study different events, letters, and political cartoons. I teach them to focus on tone, POV, and how images are portrayed. When conducting these lessons, it’s easier to find the British view of imperialism versus Africans. For African perspectives I use sources such as Jomo Kenyatta’s “Gentleman of the Jungle”, documentaries, primary documents, and my own parents and grandparents’ experiences of living in Nigeria and having government positions while under British occupation. We discussed how Europeans had many negative impacts, disregard and ignorance towards natives because they had different lifestyles and only cared for profit. We also study how ignorance and stereotypes play out in modern society, pop culture, and their own personal lives today. These activities often lead to discussions about common stereotypes and misconceptions about different races, cultures, and religions. When beginning these activities, students are often embarrassed and resistant to participate at first; but it opens up important dialogue about why it is dangerous to think that way. I find that not only are most students genuinely intrigued by history behind many of these misconceptions and stereotypes, but they often notice that these lasting impacts have affected them as well. What is most rewarding is when they are able to identify and call out these issues in their own lives and well after the lesson has been taught.

    As a social studies teacher that emphasizes cultural relevancy and providing different cultural perspectives, I fear retaliation, being silenced, or accused of pushing certain agendas. I believe teachers must maintain a certain level of academic freedom and it is an absolute necessity for students to learn how to have hard and constructive conversations without having to agree with one another, especially in today’s climate. Unfortunately, I never experienced a teacher that brought these things to my attention but, I was fortunate enough to have a support system and grow up in an environment where I had exposure, which then fostered my own curiosity. I would like to pay that forward and not only be a support and role model for students, but to help them make the connections and realize the importance of education.

    Focus on Mass Struggle, Not Just the Black Elite

    By Adam Stevens

    “Is Black resistance the highest form of Black excellence?” During Black history month the past few years this has been the focusing question in the Black history class I teach at Brooklyn Technical High School. By February we have been together since September, and the range of opinion on this question is wide. The room crackles with intellectual energy.  Scholarship and emotion combine to produce forceful arguments. Radical and conservative traditions contend. Outside the classroom we are saturated by a media environment where images of Black wealth are iconic, think Beyonce and Jay-Z. From time to time these Black images compete for our attention with images flowing out of what I’ll call a Black radical or activist tradition – think ‘End Racism’ appearing in NFL end zones or black screens on social media in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.

    Inside our K-12 school buildings Black achievement is generally embodied in homage to great Black individuals, our unspoken mission is to lift our students out of the working class into the middle class or to keep them firmly planted in the American middle class. We may even provide a platform for a handful to become truly rich, to achieve ‘generational wealth.’. This unspoken mission is shared by parents, and if we are being honest, we hold it as a mission for our own children as well.

    Our schooling involves an implicit renunciation of working-class life; under capitalism, workers are not winners. Yet workers are what most of our students will be. Black history in the United States is, by and large, the history of a working people. I have my students read passages from Barbara Fields’s seminal essay “Race, Slavery and Ideology in the United States.” Fields is careful to remind us that plantations in the American South existed to produce cotton first, not white supremacy. In small groups my students are taken aback by a passage that describes the numerous recollections of planters, overseers and enslaved persons of circumstances where the ‘smooth running’ of the plantation required the planter taking the word of the enslaved over that of the overseer, or of overseers being dismissed because of their management practices.

    The power of economic development and class goals continued after the end of slavery. During a century of Jim Crow, a Black middle class and Black elite clawed their way up out of economic precarity, even as state-sponsored and vigilante racist terror haunted them. In the post-Civil Rights Movement era, a Black middle class was consolidated.  In April of 1968 elite institutions threw open their doors to the Black in a cynical but consistent response to the mass uprisings after the shooting of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in April of 1968.

    Should curriculum focus on the history of a Black elite? The tenets of ‘social history’ seek to ground historical investigation in the lived reality of the masses of the people, to get us away from understanding history as the work of ‘great men.’ When the masses are white, the rules of American racism have meant that we are studying a group that, over time, has experienced great chances for uplift, for rising in social status. Social history of the white working-class rests on a certain implicit substrate of hope. The problem in Black history is that for the whole era of slavery and much of the period after that ‘hopeful narrative’ is by definition closed.

    This continent would not house a world power if it were not for the stolen  labor and amassed capital of the slavery era. Silence on slavery and its afterlife suits a ruling class that would have us forget this one fact. This is why the hysteria over Critical Race Theory. Forget slavery. Forget Jim Crow. Forget George Floyd. The U.S. ruling class knows what they did to get where they are, what they do to stay there, and they don’t want the next generation being reminded of it.

    In the face of these stark facts of history and given the political headwinds, teaching of Jim Crow by retreating into the salve of figures of Black Excellence such as Madam CJ Walker feels safer not just in the face of conservative school boards, but as a way to boost the morale of a room where the course material can otherwise feel like a catalogue of Black suffering. Of course, by neglecting struggle, we don’t know what to do with Nat Turner, let alone John Brown, or Paul Robeson, or Claudia Jones, or W.E.B. DuBois.

    That’s why historians and teachers matter so much. We need historians and teachers who can foreground the majesty of the Black struggle for liberation, for justice. We need historians and teachers who invite us to have pride in the broad masses of our ancestors, not just the elites. We grasp intuitively, perhaps, that it was the action of these broad masses that formed the motive force behind every great liberation movement of our history.  Black history as hero worship of great leaders disempowers every student who can’t see themselves becoming the next Martin Luther King. This problem is one that King grappled with himself on the day he died, there in Memphis, binding himself more closely to the cause of the sanitation workers of that city. He was building a Poor People’s Movement with a strong anti-imperialist element. The images of those Black workers with signs reading “I Am a Man” are iconic but they are iconic as protesters, not just as workers.

    Eugene Genovese (Roll, Jordan Roll, Book Three, Part Two) helps my students understand slavery as a world where far more choice was exercised by the enslaved than we are given to imagine. I teach the returning veterans from World War I and World War II whose refusal to accept the business as usual of Jim Crow. Their energy gave birth to a Harlem Renaissance and a Civil Rights Movement. To see Black workers gathered in their masses, politicized, in motion against racism as the most powerful force in history, to see honor and glory in joining such a movement, this is an alternative view of Black Excellence and approach to curriculum. Teaching the struggles of ordinary Black people for dignity and equality is the curriculum focus we need to empower our students to survive and defeat the growing threats of fascism and war and to avert climate disaster.