Tag: Racism

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.

The Exploitation of Enslaved Women During The 18th Century Colonial America

The Exploitation of Enslaved Women During The 18th Century Colonial America

Logan Stovall

Logan Stovall is an eighth grade student at Montclair Kimberley Academy in Montclair, NJ

The 18th century represents a dark period in American history when the institution of slavery thrived, and the exploitation of enslaved Black women flourished. The cruel realities endured by Black women during this time were not only a consequence of their enslavement but were magnified by both their race and gender, perpetuating a cycle of inequality and suffering. Beyond the physical captivity, these women endured a complex oppression that not only involved grueling labor but also made them victims of sexual violence. The harsh reality of this oppression becomes evident when one reflects on how the clothing worn by enslaved Black women served as a physical manifestation of their fragile existence. The clothes they wore were not just rags or pieces of fabric used to cover their bodies; they represented a system that dehumanized and abused them.  During the 18th century, an enslaved Black woman’s gender and race primarily affected the way she lived and thrived in an illiberal society. Understanding the exploitation of enslaved Black women during the American colonial era requires a closer look into the sweat of their daily labor, the sexual abuse they endured, and the clothing they wore that bound them to such a harsh life.

However, before any analysis regarding the exploitation of enslaved Black women is made, one must first consider that the racial stereotypes and discriminatory practices against enslaved Black women during the colonial era were the underlying causes of their mistreatment. The widely accepted racist ideas of Antebellum white slaveholders led them to think of their enslaved people as both biologically and culturally inferior. Due to their understanding of the social hierarchy at this time, slaveholders often whipped and physically mistreated enslaved women under their supervision.[i] In addition to the racist beliefs they held, slaveholders also created various stereotypes about enslaved Black women. One such popular stereotype was the “Mammy” caricature. The “mammy caricature” depicted enslaved Black women as enjoying their servitude, being physically unattractive, and only fit to be domestic workers.[ii]

In contrast to the “mammy caricature”, slave owners also created a more promiscuous stereotype of enslaved Black women: the “Jezebel” figure. The Jezebel caricature was used during slavery to justify a slaveholder’s objectification and sexual exploitation of enslaved Black women.[iii] The Mammy and Jezebel caricatures, along with various other derogatory stereotypes that plagued enslaved Black women, heavily influenced how the rest of the White population during the Antebellum period perceived and treated Black women. Sadly, these caricatures endured for decades even after colonial times.

With racial stereotyping forming the underlying cause of discrimination against Black women, a significant amount of White slave masters often subjected Black women to harsh labor conditions. Enslaved women were often forced to work in the fields from sunrise to sunset where they endured physical and emotional abuse. On larger farms and plantations, for example, women were forced to perform tasks like hoeing and ditching entire fields. These were the most exhausting and uninteresting forms of fieldwork.[iv] Slaveholders also held enslaved women accountable for cleaning and tidying communal areas like stables and expected them to spread manure as a fertilizer.[v] Moreover, slave owners frequently questioned how much time off enslaved women needed to adequately take care of their families and children. When not offered any downtime by their slaveholders, enslaved women had to bring their children with them to the fields and strap them to their backs as they worked tirelessly. [vi]

Black women’s exploitation extended beyond the fields. In many instances, the labor performed by enslaved women was prolonged and complicated. For example, many enslaved women began to work for slaveholders at a very young age. There was little free time for enslaved women to rest, given that most women worked for their master five to six days a week. This included keeping the owner’s homes clean, cooking food, and washing their clothes.[vii] In short, enslaved women were expected to work tirelessly, both in the fields and in the house. The slave masters did not care about  the well-being of their enslaved women and exploited them for their free labor.  For Black women, slavery in the southern colonies meant long days performing menial, exhausting tasks, sometimes in the hot, baking sun.  After working prolonged, hard days for the slaveholders, these women had to care for their own families, which was often a physical and mental challenge due to the absence of time to rest. When enslaved women did not meet the expectations for their work by their enslaver, they would oftentimes be taken advantage of sexually or physically assaulted as a form of punishment. Unfortunately, this possibility became a reality for many enslaved Black women.

Indeed, as the slave population in America grew larger through the importation of slaves, enslaved Black women primarily as reproducers of a valuable labor force rather than merely a part of the labor force.  The sexual exploitation of Black women extended from sexual gratification of their White slaveholders to include reproducing offspring that would expand their workforce. Though slave owners valued enslaved women as laborers, they were also well aware that female slaves could be used to successfully reproduce new labor (more children who would grow up to be slaves) by continuing their role as full-time mothers.[viii] This presented slaveholders with a dilemma because West African women usually had some prior agricultural experience (like growing tobacco and rice) which could be used to the slaveholders’ benefit.[ix]

In 1756, Reverend Peter Fontaine of Charles City County, Virginia, stated that Black females were “far more prolific than…white women.” This form of racial stereotyping made enslaved women extremely vulnerable to physical assault.[x] Many white enslavers raped Black women for sexual pleasure, as well as for their ability to produce children who would become slaves and ultimately increase their wealth. Instead of perpetuating the stereotype that all enslaved Black women were unattractive and were only fit to be domestic workers, they now were feeding into the stereotype that Black women were promiscuous and desired for the reproduction of enslaved children who could be used or sold. This form of physical exploitation was pervasive throughout the Antebellum South.

In addition to labor and sexual exploitation, clothing was another form of exploitation that enslaved Black women were forced to endure. While these women often knitted or otherwise made beautiful garments for White women and their children, the fabrics that enslaved Black women wore themselves offered minimal protection from the weather and had to be inexpensive and easy to make.[xi] Their clothing was so cheap in quality that it often disassembled or tore within weeks. As a result, enslaved women often borrowed clothing from one another or even stole clothing from the slave master’s house. They did this to give themselves or their families warm, sustainable garments, and sometimes, to blend into the free population. Oppressors often made enslaved women wear poor, rugged clothing to symbolize a Black woman’s low status and to cultivate racial stereotypes depicting Black women as inferior. Indeed, one reason why enslaved women wanted to steal White people’s clothes was because they wanted to appear as free Black people with increased status.[xii]

Despite being subjected to clothing exploitation, many enslaved women nevertheless tried to continue to be connected to their former culture by wearing West African garments. Enslaved women working in slaveholders’ homes were expected to cover their heads with lightweight white caps, which other members of the household also wore. However, to continue the West African tradition, many enslaved women also chose to wear brightly colored head wraps that surrounded their heads and were secured with knots and tucking’s.[xiii] They also sometimes wore cowrie shells in their hair; which were very expensive and far more valuable than money. These cowrie shells also appeared in spirit bundles as parts of clothing and jewelry, implying their use as amulets.

Black women not only wore these West African garments to remain connected with their former cultures, but they also wore the garments as a form of resistance against enslavement.[xiv] Enslaved Black women despised their status as slaves but were able to feel proud about and connect to their former West African heritage when they wore their cultural headdresses. The significance of these garments likely gave Black women a feeling of strength and empowerment as they were emotionally frightened by the abuse they faced from their enslavers.

During the 18th century, the exploitation of enslaved Black women through their gender and race greatly influenced the way they survived and flourished in a prejudicial society. Enslaved women were exploited in numerous ways and were expected to address the needs of others to the detriment of caring for themselves and their families. They worked extremely hard, both in the house and in the field, and did whatever they were commanded to do withstanding both physical and emotional abuse. They were often raped through their shabby clothing and physically assaulted by their master’s for punishment, as a means to increase their profit in human labor. But still, an enslaved Black woman was able to overcome these acts of exploitation non-violently and create her own peace by wearing and displaying garments that were distinct to her West African culture. Given all that these enslaved women endured, we should respect and admire their ability to overcome such incredible hardships.

Bibliography

Primary Sources:

Smithsonian, and National Museum of African American History and Culture. “Cowrie Shells and Trade Power.” National Museum of African American History and Culture. Accessed November 15, 2023. https://nmaahc.si.edu/cowrie-shells-and-trade-power#:~:text=Europeans%20in%20the%2016th%20century,at%20their%20use%20as%20amulets .

[i] LDHI, “Hidden Voices: Enslaved Women in the Lowcountry and U.S. South,” LDHI, accessed November 27, 2023, https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/hidden-voices/enslaved-womens-work.

[ii] LDHI, “Hidden Voices,” LDHI.

[iii] LDHI, “Hidden Voices,” LDHI.

[iv] Jennifer Hallam, “The Slave Experience: Men, Women & Gender,” Slavery and the Making of America, accessed November 27, 2023, https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/slavery/experience/gender/history.html.

[v] Emily West, Enslaved Women in America: From Colonial Times to Emancipation (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2017), 29

[vi] West, Enslaved Women, 28.

[vii] LDHI, “Hidden Voices,” LDHI.

[viii] West, Enslaved Women, 28.

[ix] West, Enslaved Women, 29

[x] West, Enslaved Women, 31.

[xi] Daina Ramey Berry and Deleso A. Alford, eds., Enslaved Women in America: An Encyclopedia enhanced credo edition ed. (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2012), 34 and 35.

[xii] Katherine Gruber, ed., “Clothing and Adornment of Enslaved People in Virginia,” Encyclopedia Virginia, last modified December 7, 2020, accessed November 5, 2023, https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/slave-clothing-and-adornment-in-virginia/.

[xiii] Gruber, “Clothing and Adornment,” Encyclopedia Virginia.

[xiv] Smithsonian and National Museum of African American History and Culture, “Cowrie Shells and Trade Power,” National Museum of African American History and Culture, accessed November 15, 2023, https://nmaahc.si.edu/cowrie-shells-and-trade-power#:~:text=Europeans%20in%20the%2016th%20century,at%20their%20use%20as%20amulets.

Secondary Sources:

Berry, Daina Ramey, and Deleso A. Alford, eds. Enslaved Women in America: An Encyclopedia. Enhanced Credo edition ed. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2012.

Gruber , Katherine, ed. “Clothing and Adornment of Enslaved People in Virginia.” Encyclopedia Virginia. Last modified December 7, 2020. Accessed November 5, 2023. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/slave-clothing-and-adornment-in-virginia/.

Hallam, Jennifer. “The Slave Experience: Men, Women & Gender.” Slavery and the Making of America. Accessed November 27, 2023. https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/slavery/experience/gender/history.html.

LDHI. “Hidden Voices: Enslaved Women in the Lowcountry and U.S. South.” LDHI. Accessed November 27, 2023. https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/hidden-voices/enslaved-womens-work.

West, Emily. Enslaved Women in America: From Colonial Times to Emancipation. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2017.

Teaching with Documents: Wallace’s Defense of Segregation

Teaching with Documents: Wallace’s Defense of Segregation

Alan Singer

Alabama Governor George Wallace delivers his first inaugural address.

In Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power (Basic Books, 2002), Jefferson Cowie focused on the history Barbour County, Alabama, to document the way a deeply self-serving concept of “freedom” was used by whites to justify racist policies. It was all about their “freedom.” White freedom meant freedom from government restraints; freedom from taxes to support public institutions and services; freedom to own and use guns; and freedom to mistreat African Americans without federal intervention. White freedom, dating to the era of Black enslavement and Jim Crow segregation, equated with racism. Source:https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/12/books/review/freedoms-dominion-jefferson-cowie.html

Sadly, fear of federal imposition on white freedom remains alive and well today and was part of the justification for the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the United States Capitol building in Washington DC and is the ideological underpinning for the attack on Critical Race Theory by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and other conservative Republicans. When DeSantis was reelected in November 2022, he declared that his election signified “Freedom is here to stay!” Polls repeatedly show that a large majority of white voters who identify as Republican believe that there is discrimination against white people in the United States and that little or nothing needs to be done to ensure equal rights for African Americans and other minority groups.

Sources: https://www.local10.com/vote-2022/2022/11/08/is-desantis-on-path-to-remain-governor-of-florida/;  https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/433270-poll-republicans-and-democrats-differ-strongly-on-whether-white/;  https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/08/12/deep-divisions-in-americans-views-of-nations-racial-history-and-how-to-address-it/

Barbour County’s best-known native son was George Wallace, Governor of Alabama from 1963 to 1967, 1971 to 1979, and 1983 to 1987. Wallace was also a candidate for President of the United States four times, both in Democratic Party primaries and as an independent candidate. In June 1963, while Governor of Alabama, Wallace staged standing in the entrance to the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa to block the enrollment of Black students. In defiance of a federal court order, he accused the federal government of usurping state authority in the field of education by calling for desegregation. Wallace finally backed down when the Kennedy Administration federalized Units of the 31st (Dixie) Division of the Alabama National Guard.

Source: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/national/race/061263race-ra.html

For Black History Month, students, Black, white, Asian, and Latinx, should read texts and listen to speeches by inspiring Black authors and orators. But to understand the depth of racism in the past and today, they also need to read and understand racist texts that defended slavery and racial segregation. In his January 1963 inaugural address, George Wallace, as the newly elected governor of Alabama, issued a defiant defense of racial segregation. At the time, only fourteen percent of eligible Black citizens were registered to vote in Alabama although at least 30% of the population was Black. Poll taxes, literacy tests, and hostile registrars effectively ensured white supremacy, white freedom, in the state. Sources: https://rediscovering-black-history.blogs.archives.gov/2016/10/25/voting-rights-in-the-early-1960s-registering-who-they-wanted-to/; http://www.bplonline.org/resources/government/AlabamaPopulation.aspx

“Segregation Now, Segregation Forever” (1963)

By Alabama Governor George Wallace

Click to access g.wallaceshort.pdf

A. “Before I begin my talk with you, I want to ask you for a few minutes patience while I say something that is on my heart: I want to thank those home folks of my county who first gave an anxious country boy his opportunity to serve in State politics. I shall always owe a lot to those who gave me that first opportunity to serve . . . This is the day of my Inauguration as Governor of the State of Alabama. And on this day I feel a deep obligation to renew my pledges, my covenants with you . . . the people of this great state.”

B. “General Robert E. Lee said that ‘duty’ is the sublimest word on the English language and I have come, increasingly, to realize what he meant. I SHALL do my duty to you, God helping . . . to every man, to every woman . . . yes, to every child in this state . . . I shall fulfill my duty in working hard to bring industry into our state, not only by maintaining an honest, sober and free­ enterprise climate of government in which industry can have confidence . . . but in going out and getting it . . . so that our people can have industrial jobs in Alabama and provide a better life for their children.”

C. “Today I have stood, where once Jefferson Davis stood, and took an oath to my people. It is very appropriate then that from this Cradle of the Confederacy, this very Heart of the Great Anglo­ Saxon Southland, that today we sound the drum for freedom as have our generations of forebears before us done, time and time again through history. Let us rise to the call of freedom­ loving blood that is in us and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the South. In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny . . . and I say . . . segregation today . . . segregation tomorrow . . . segregation forever.”

Questions

  1. Who did Wallace quote on the importance of “duty”? What signal was Wallace sending to his audience by quoting him?
  2. What other references does Wallace make in the speech to ensure his audience understands his political point of view?
  3. How does Wallace propose to battle “tyranny” and defend “freedom”?
  4. Wallace pledged to honor “covenants with you . . . the people of this great state.” In your opinion, to who was Wallace referring? What evidence in the text supports this interpretation?

Teaching “What to the Slave Is the 4th of July?” by Frederick Douglass: A Two-Part Student Led Lesson

Teaching “What to the Slave Is the 4th of July?” by Frederick Douglass:

A Two-Part Student-Led Lesson

Jeff Schneider

Reprinted with permission (https://historyideasandlessons.substack.com/p/teaching-what-to-the-slave-is-the-66e?r=710fi&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web)

Now that Ron DeSantis has caused a widespread walkout by Florida college students defending both their right to diversity and the free exchange of ideas in the classroom, and he virtually outlawed any teaching of conflict in Black history, it is evident that he will run into serious roadblocks in his campaign to rule the whole country with an iron fist. The increasingly cloudy and claustrophobic atmosphere emanating from the formerly sunny state of Florida begs for an eloquent and big-hearted response. The following two-day student-led lesson will introduce American history students to one of our leading intellectuals and, arguably, the greatest speaker of the 19th century: America’s teacher, Frederick Douglass. He never fails to impress.

Day one

The assignment I give the students for the first day is to download and read the first 10 pages of “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” They choose one sentence from each page for homework, write it down on a separate sheet of paper, and explain underneath each one why they chose it. They are to read to the end of the top paragraph of the second column of page 10. The students are asked to underline their sentences on the PDF. It is necessary to collect the homework at the beginning of the class in order to make sure each one of them did their own work. Since they had underlined their sentences on the PDF, the students did not need their homework for class. I asked the students to write the first 5 words of those sentences on the blackboard. I picked the students randomly by jumping around asking for their fifth sentence or their first sentence or their eighth sentence and so on. Each student was to sign their name and sit down. Before class I had drawn 10 vertical lines with one horizontal line across the middle, forming 20 boxes on the board for the students to write in. I placed two pieces of chalk under each vertical group of two boxes so that the writing could go faster. The teacher should know the speech inside and out to create an ease of discussion. It makes the class more interesting. While the students were writing the words they had to start at the beginning of their sentence and make sure that no one else had picked the same sentence. From the time the students were entering the class through the writing on the board, I played a song by the Melodians called “By the Rivers of Babylon.”

Once the students had finished writing on the board, they sat down, and I asked literally “Who has comments or questions?” Nothing more: no suggestions or hints. Usually, they remarked how impressed they were by Douglass’ intelligence and language, or they mentioned how understandable the speech was. They found it a shock to read the work of an escaped slave who could write with clarity and on such a high level of complexity. After the comments died down, I would ask the class to turn to page 6 and look at the bold indented passage in the first column. The students recognize the words of the tune they had just listened to. They appeared in the speech from 1852! I played the song again and asked why Douglass had quoted the verse. Some students might have heard the song because their parents or grandparents had played it at home: It is from the soundtrack of the movie “The Harder they Come” from 1972. Alternatively, some might know that it is the Old Testament Psalm 137 that Douglass quoted. I asked if there were any words they did not understand in the passage, or if someone had picked that passage or would like to comment on it, even if they had not picked it. Someone might want to know what Zion was or eventually someone would notice that the exiled Jews were asked to sing one of the songs of Zion, their homeland. Many thousands of Jews were enslaved in Babylon from 586 BCE to about 538 BCE. It was great insult to be asked to sing for their enslavers the students could conclude. Africa is Zion for Douglass someone might say.

Now it was time to begin analyzing the sentences that the members of the class had chosen. As I called on the students to read their sentences, I asked them to point out the page, the column, and first words of the paragraph where the sentence appeared. The students must read slowly and loudly so that the others can get the meaning. “Why did you choose that?” I asked. Often the student explained what it meant but not what attracted them to it. I would ask what they thought or why they liked it or impressed them or not. Sometimes, I would ask who else wanted to comment, but it is not possible to do that more than a few times because there is not enough time in a period to keep discussing one sentence. The students did not often choose the long period sentences that took up whole paragraphs. Most of those we would pick up later because they are the emotional heart of the speech.

When there is time at the end of each class, I asked the students for their favorite sentences and had them read these out loud. The speech is so powerful partly because the rhythm of the words, the internal rhymes and alliterations drive you on. Reading the “Fourth of July Oration” is a real learning experience: Douglass employs grand and deeply affecting rhetoric to illuminate wrongs of slavery. It also shows the great power of the Declaration of Independence despite its obvious hypocrisy. These contradictions have led to tragic cancellations of the Declaration by Nikole Hannah-Jones of The 1619 Project and others. The importance of the study of slavery and of the Declaration has been confused by these journalists who are not trained historians.

In the course of this exposition of my lesson on Douglass’s speech, I will discuss sentences frequently chosen by the students. We had to leave out much of the speech, but what we did in class explored the breadth and depth of the oration giving the students giving them the confidence that they had discussed the work in detail and that they had directed the learning themselves. I had them write a paper on the speech by first summarizing it, choosing 2 ideas in the speech and explaining what each meant and why they were important. They often produced wonderful papers because we had gone over the Oration in sufficient detail. They were comfortable in their interpretations and almost everyone was excited by the assignment. I chose one essay each year to go in our social studies magazine.

Now we are ready to dive into the speech itself.

Douglass’ introduction

At the beginning of the Oration, Douglass confesses his trepidations about the task before him. Despite his close relationship with the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society and the Corinthian Hall, where he had spoken many times, he declared, “The fact is ladies and gentlemen the distance between this platform and the plantation from which I escaped, is considerable. . .  That I am here today is a matter of astonishment as well as gratitude.” The students will know that he was born into slavery. “This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the Fourth of July.” “Why did you choose that?” I asked. The students will realize he is not speaking on July 4th. Instead, he said that he is protesting the day right from the start. Many versions of the speech on the web, in fact, begin with that sentence. He continues, “It is the birthday of your political independence and political freedom,” starkly using the second person plural that he was not speaking of his liberation, but theirs. All this the students can glean after you ask why did you choose that? He then compares the day to Passover when the Jews, the “emancipated people of God,” were delivered from bondage in Egypt. The students will notice that there are numerous quotes from and references to the Bible.

Douglass’ writing is so densely packed that the ideas rush at you as you read. He points out that the country is “young,” only “76 years old,” in 1852; That it is a topic for rejoicing, noting that a young river that can change its course more easily than an old river or a country thousands of years old. He adds that the nation is still in the “impressible stage of its existence . . . Great rivers are not easily torn from their channels worn deep by the ages . . . [but while] refreshing and fertilizing the earth . . . they may also rise in wrath and fury and bear away on their angry waves the accumulated wealth of years toil and hardship. . . As with rivers so with nations.” Recently floods and tornadoes have been ravaging wide swaths of land and forests in nearly every part of the US. From the waters and winds of Hurricane Katrina to the floods of Hurricane Sandy to the fires and droughts in the far West, we have seen unprecedented levels of destruction. Eliciting these resonances with open-ended questions such as why did you choose that or what does that remind you of should be straight forward. At some point in discussing the speech it will be clear that Douglass is setting the context for discussing the effects of the multifarious and wholly predictable dangers of slavery to the body politic of the young nation.

The Revolution

In the second paragraph of the second page, he turns to his duty to the 4th of July itself. Addressing his “Fellow citizens,” he introduces the history of the Revolution explaining that in 1776 “your fathers were British subjects” who “esteemed the English Government as the home government” which “imposed upon…its colonial children such restraints, burdens and limitations…it deemed wise, right and proper.” However, these acts produced a widespread reaction by the future revolutionists not “fashionable in its day” because the colonists did not believe in the “infallibility of government” but “pronounced the measures unjust, unreasonable and oppressive.”

“To side with the right against the wrong, the weak against the strong and with the oppressed against the oppressor! here lies the merit and one which seems unfashionable in our day . . .” Here, is the first burst of eloquence from Frederick Douglass. The internal rhyme and the rhythm of these lines stand out. Douglass could astound the listener in just a few words. His eloquence matched the gravity of the cause. His description of the Stamp Act protests and the protests against the Townshend Acts and the Tea Tax bring us back to the streets and the harbors of our colonial past connecting his listeners to our heritage of activism.

But the colonists “saw themselves treated with sovereign indifference, coldness and scorn . . . As the sheet anchor [heaviest anchor] takes a firmer hold when the ship is tossed by the storm, so did the cause of your fathers grow stronger as it breasted the chilling blasts of kingly displeasure.” But “like the Pharaoh whose hosts were drowned in the Red Sea, the British Government persisted in the exactions complained of . . . Oppression makes a wise man mad. Your fathers were wise men. They did not go mad . . . They became restive under this treatment . . . With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression. Just here the (startling) idea of the separation of the colonies from Britain was born!” However, the opposition Loyalists or Tories “hate all changes . . .  (b)ut silver gold and copper change! . . . amid all their terror and affrighted vociferations against it the alarming and revolutionary idea moved on and the country with it.” Are there words here you do not know, I ask. Mad of course refers to mental illness and restive means to be agitated. Vociferations are chants shouted by the demonstrators.

The revolutionists’ solution was to “solemnly publish and declare that these united colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states and that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown.” This is the famous core of the Declaration by Richard Henry Lee that is in the penultimate paragraph of the document. It rings with preternatural force shocking the sleepy 18th century kings and subjects in the monarchies of Europe. Many American and British historians who still claim in 2023 that the Americans were provincials who had no good reason to rebel, but over the course of the next 7 years the British learned they had to accept the wishes of these “naive” colonists.

Douglass continues “I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt [fastener] to the chain of your nation’s destiny, so, indeed I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions in all places, against all foes and at whatever cost.” Students will realize that Douglass had great respect for the Declaration and the dogged persistence of the revolutionary forces.

Douglass says, “My business, if I have any this day, is with the present. The accepted time with God and His cause is the ever-living now.” A phrase I had to look up to confirm that it was Douglass”! “We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present . . . Washington could not die until he had broken the chains of his slaves. Yet his monument is built up by the price of human blood and the traders in the bodies and souls of men shout — ‘We have Washington to our father.’– Alas that it should be so, yet so it is. ‘The evil that men do, lives after them, The good is oft’ interred in their bones.’” Douglass challenges his audience with that quote from Shakespeare: Mark Antony’s funeral oration for Julius Caesar.

He praises Washington for freeing some of his stolen human “property” before he died, but immediately pulls the compliment back by condemning the first president’s admirers for employing enslaved workers to build the Washington monument. “Can anyone comment on that?” I asked the students. Some members of the class might know that later the capitol building and the White House were also built by slaves. Now he is done with his task of recalling the Fourth of July.

The thesis

“Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? . . . I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us . . . The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. to drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me by asking me to speak here today?”

In discussing these lines above someone will point out that the stripes are the wounds caused by whips and also are the stripes on the flag. This was a common abolitionist trope utilized even in an Abecedarium, an alphabet book for children. 

“Are there any words you do not know?” I asked. The students will probably not know what a pale is. Those were the segregated areas where Jews were confined in the shtetls of Russian-Poland, but also more precisely in this case the English confined themselves in a pale after conquering Northern Ireland. The idea of “American exceptionalism” was clearly a commonplace in 1852. His sarcastic description of the “grand illuminated temple of liberty” is shocking to see in his 1852 speech. Americans, even then, had a bloated idea of the purity of American democracy. He goes right for the jugular: Douglass states his thesis as his duty to defend the slave and his condition.

He refers in the paragraph above the Psalm to the violent retribution that Yahweh ( a Jewish name for God) at the Hebrews’ request to be visited upon the Babylonians for enslaving them and mocking them, which is rarely quoted by Christians. The shocking lines which Douglass avoided are in the King James Version of the Old Testament. 

Then he quotes the first parts of Psalm 137 that we have encountered before: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.”

I asked the students to recall the song we heard at the beginning of the class in the light of our analysis so far. “How can you interpret these words now?” I asked. The students will conclude that the enslaved Jews were mocked by the Babylonians who asked them to sing a song of their homeland, Zion – just as he is in America singing the praises of the white people’s freedom document while his people are enslaved.

The thesis

“My subject, then fellow-citizens is American slavery. I shall see this day . . . from the slave’s point of view . . . I do not hesitate to declare… that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than it does on this 4th of July! . . . (T)he conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.” He dares to “call into question and to denounce . . . everything that serves to perpetuate slavery, the great sin and shame of America.” Then, quoting his teacher, William Lloyd Garrison, “’I will not equivocate, I will not excuse’ . . . and yet no one word shall escape me that any man whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.”

The students will conclude that the Declaration from the past is the founding document but has been desecrated and tossed aside by the slave holders in power in the country from then, through the present and into the future. Anyone who finds slavery to be repugnant will discern the truth in his arguments.

In order to continue with the lesson, over the next few pages (from the last paragraph of 6 to the middle of the second column on page 9), every sentence and every word is crafted to thrill the reader with Douglass’s intelligence and skill and cringe in horror as he speaks the truth of the brutality of American slavery. Each passage is another lesson in the illogic of the excuses for the system and cruel treatment perpetrated on the Black population in our so-called democratic and freedom-loving land. I will provide the teacher with sentences and clauses comprising a bare bones narrative. But most of this, must be read aloud in class. These paragraphs are too dramatic and inspiring to skip over. Here is a precis of the next few pages. I quote some of the sentences, but the full power is in the reading. Be sure to have the students read them. They will be shocked at how the words help them keep the rhythm with both understanding and expression: The images, the sounds, and the meters carry them, pushing and pulling them along. Douglass’s energy is so intense that the quotes never lose their power.

“Must I argue that the slave is a man?”

“Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? . . . Nobody doubts it . . . There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man . . . (no matter how ignorant he be), . . . (acknowledging) that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being . . . It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or to write… When you can point to any such laws, in reference to the… dogs in your streets, (or) when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then will I argue with you that the slave is a man!”

When you ask how the students understand this sentence you are not done until they can say “Even animals see the enslaved as men, but the slaveholders cannot.” The students discover that the enslaved are expected to know right from wrong, but animals are not expected to. “For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, . . . having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, . . . living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian’s God, . . . we are called upon to prove that we are men! . . . Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? that he is the rightful owner of his own body?”

All the verbs, all the verbs strung together: An astonishing effect! So many powerful images in this paragraph.

“There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.”

Here we must stop and make sure the last thought is clear. The students must interpret this last sentence. Is there a word you do not know in this? A canopy is a covering. All men are beneath the canopy of heaven. The analysis is not complete until the students state that no man wants to be a slave. The listeners are cornered. The orator has taken their minds hostage.

And now one of the most powerful passages of all. “[T]o work them without wages . . . to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families.” The paragraph is a masterpiece. This is a sonorous but brutal description of violence complete with startling images, crafted with alliterations and internal rhymes. As above the reader must ask: Is he arguing or not while he claims not to argue at all? “What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? . . . Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is past.”

And now the most famous paragraph: “What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless . . . your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.”

“How do you comment on this?” I asked. It is a perfect description of systemic racism: Incontrovertible intersectionality. It is where Governor DeSantis’s views come to die.

Bringing slavery before the eyes

“Go where you may, . . . for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival. Take the American slave-trade, . . . This trade is one of the peculiarities of American institutions. It is carried on in all the large towns and cities in one-half of this confederacy; and millions are pocketed every year, by dealers in this horrid traffic.”

Here Douglass refers to the euphemism, “the peculiar institution,” which is supposed to assuage the guilt of the leaders of the so-called southern “civilization.” It is the hackneyed trope of a racist attempting to endear himself to his audience by turning slavery into a peccadillo. Continuing, he quotes the proposed paragraph written by Thomas Jefferson for the Declaration of Independence but rejected by the Continental Congress calling slavery “piracy” [manstealing] and “execrable commerce.” “Are there words here you do not know?” I asked. Excrement is human waste. Nearing the end of this paragraph, he denounces the scheme of colonization that our “colored brethren should leave this country and establish themselves on the western coast of Africa!”

“Behold the practical operation of this internal slave-trade, (The slave drivers) perambulate the country, and crowd the highways of the nation, with droves of human stock…They are food for the cotton-field, and the deadly sugar-mill. . . Cast one glance, if you please, upon that young mother, whose shoulders are bare to the scorching sun, her briny tears falling on the brow of the babe in her arms. See, too, that girl of thirteen, weeping, yes! weeping, as she thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn! . . . suddenly you hear a quick snap, like the discharge of a rifle; the fetters clank, and the chain rattles simultaneously; your ears are saluted with a scream, that seems to have torn its way to the center of your soul! The crack you heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard, was from the woman you saw with the babe. Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! that gash on her shoulder tells her to move on.”

The students will comment that this paragraph is filled with images and rings with sounds of whips and clanging chains. The powerful ideas are matched by the thundering rhetoric keep you on the edge of your seat.

Then: “I was born amid such sights and scenes. To me the American slave-trade is a terrible reality. When a child, my soul was often pierced with a sense of its horrors. I lived on Philpot Street, Fell’s Point, Baltimore, and have watched…this murderous traffic (which) is, to-day, in active operation in this boasted republic. In the solitude of my spirit . . . My soul sickens at the sight.”

Students will see how he brings this experience directly to our hearts. Is this the land your fathers loved, the freedom which they toiled to win? Is this the earth whereon they moved? Are these the graves they slumber in? Students will react to the emotion in the lines of his childhood memories. The paragraph and the lines of the poem are poignance beyond measure. The lines by the abolitionist poet, John Greenleaf Whittier, are a tribute to the lost glory of the American promise. It can make the reader cry. When activists say that the “personal is political” there is no better example than this memory of Douglass’s childhood traumas. This concludes the first day of the lesson.

Top of Form

Day two

The second day I would ask the students to finish the speech, choosing 5 more sentences from pages 11 to 15 and to find places in the first 10 pages that explain that the slave is a man. They also were asked to point out the structure of the speech: where does the introduction end and the conclusion begin? Where is the thesis? Here we discussed the major sections of the speech which they could identify as the introduction, the Revolution, the section in which the thesis is stated and the proofs of why the slave is a man and why slavery is wrong. The speech’s final sections Douglass argues that slavery is not divine, examines the politics of slavery, and the Constitution, delivers a summary, and a peroration (conclusion).

American religion and The Fugitive Slave Law

“But a still more inhumane, disgraceful, and scandalous state of things remains to be presented. By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has been nationalized . . .  (T)he Mason & Dixon’s line has been obliterated; New York has become as Virginia; and the power to hold, hunt, and sell men, women, and children as slaves . . . the liberty and person of every man are put in peril…. The oath of any two villains is sufficient, for black men there are neither law, justice, humanity, not religion. The Fugitive Slave Law makes mercy to them a crime; and bribes the judge who tries them. An American judge gets ten dollars for every victim he consigns to slavery, and five, when he fails to do so.”

“How can you comment on this?” I asked. This bribe is rarely mentioned in the standard discussion of the odious Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which of course, was part of the Compromise of 1850. In 2021 the vicious Texas anti-abortion bill borrowed its form and method of enforcement to this law. The reward of $10,000 has been substituted for the $10 in the 19th century law. It deputizes the whole population of Texas to arrest anyone who aids in arranging for an abortion. Douglass points out that the magistrates for the fugitive slave law were acting like the Protestant, John Knox, denouncing the Catholic supporters of Mary Queen of Scots who were threatening to murder Queen Elizabeth.

The leading American ministers “have taught that man may properly be a slave that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God . . . and this horrible blasphemy is palmed off upon the world for Christianity.” “How do you think about this,” I asked. Black men slave or free walking down the street even in the North were subject to false identification, imprisonment, and enslavement. It became a religious duty to show no mercy! What an abomination and evisceration of religious belief and practice. Are these Evangelical Christians in the Texas legislature or in 1852 practicing the teachings of mercy and forgiveness?

Douglass answers the question: “For my part, I would say, Welcome infidelity! welcome atheism! welcome anything—in preference to the gospel, as preached by those divines. They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny, and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke, put together, have done! These ministers make religion a cold and flinty-hearted thing, having neither principles of right action, nor bowels of compassion.”

“Do you know these names,” I asked? Some students might know Thomas Paine or Voltaire. Bolingbroke was also a free thinker, an 18th century term for atheists, agnostics, and deists. Here Douglass claims he would favor these anti-slavery free thinkers, Thomas Paine, and Voltaire and he adds the dissenter Viscount Bolingbroke, claiming they were all three at least sympathetic to the plight of the enslaved. If students have a question, bowels of compassion refers to the deepest recesses of the human body, a common 18th and 19th century expression. These last lines are really shocking coming from such a religious man as Frederick Douglass.

“At the very moment that they are thanking God for the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, and for the right to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences, they are utterly silent in respect to a law which robs religion of its chief significance and makes it utterly worthless to a world lying in wickedness.” “How would you interpret that,” I asked. The students will come to the conclusion that Douglass is emphasizing the hypocrisy of the leaders of the congregations and denominations in the United States.

Douglass continues: “The American theologian, Albert Barnes uttered what the common sense of every man at all observant of the actual state of the case will receive as truth, when he declared that ‘There is no power out of the church that could sustain slavery an hour, if it were not sustained in it.’” “How do you understand that?” I asked. The students will reach a conclusion that this is a very broad statement. It is a condemnation undercutting all the pronouncements of the pro-slavery divines. In contemporary terms, this is a thought based in the ideas of systemic racism and embedded in the American economy and society. It is an example of intersectionality between religion and politics, an unmistakable interdependence, however much Ron DeSantis might argue to the contrary. In a previous passage, Douglass had pointed out that there were many minister abolitionists in Britain where the monarchy opposed slavery since the 1820s but very few in America where the weight of the church was behind the slaveholders. Above on page 12 of the speech he calls them out: the many pro-slavery American ministers and the few anti-slavery heroes in the United States.

And now we are coming to the ending of the speech. There are just two topics left before the Summary and Conclusion: America’s hypocrisy toward foreign nations and the nature of the Constitution.

American foreign relations

Douglass turns to yet another theater of hypocrisy in the United States. “Americans! your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. You boast of your love of liberty, your superior civilization . . . You hurl your anathemas [condemnations] at the crowned headed tyrants of Russia and Austria, and pride yourselves on your democratic institutions, while you yourselves consent to be the mere tools and bodyguards of the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina. You invite to your shores fugitives of oppression from abroad, honor them with banquets, greet them with ovations, cheer them, toast them, salute them, protect them . . . You profess to believe ‘that, of one blood, God made all nations of men to dwell on the face of all the earth’ . . . yet, you hold securely, in a bondage [a seventh part of the inhabitants of your country] which, according to your own Thomas Jefferson ‘is worse than ages of that which your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose’.”

The students will understand that Douglass contrasted the boasts of equality including in the Declaration of Independence that “‘all men are created equal’ yet (they) steal Black wages and deny the common ancestry of Adam that all men are of one blood.” “How do you interpret that quote from the Bible?” I asked. The students will conclude that a single origin for all humanity [Adam], which we now know to be African, proves the equality of all men. Finally, Douglass quotes Jefferson’s comments in his book, Notes on the State of Virginia, on the oppression of the enslaved as being worse than the so-called slavery of the Patriots to England.

The Constitution

If a student chooses the sentence containing “as it ought to be interpreted the Constitution is a glorious liberty document,” it is likely they will not agree with Douglass. Currently, almost all textbooks and historians contend that the Constitution is pro-slavery. Douglass’s interpretation is frankly a surprise for Americans even in 2023. The great abolitionist has been criticized for the latter statement by everyone from William Lloyd Garrison in the 1850s to Nicole Hannah-Jones in The 1619 Project, but his argument has a more complex basis that has not been brought to light except in the most recent academic monographs on abolitionism. 

Douglass debated for more than two years until he became exhausted with his friend and ardent supporter, Gerrit Smith, whether there existed a morally justified position that the founders opposed slavery. In the oration he said, “if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slave holding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it.” Students might know that the words slave or slavery are never mentioned in the Constitution. Instead in the 3/5 Compromise slaves are called “other persons.” In the international slave trade compromise in Article I section 9, slaves are called “such persons.” Finally in the fugitive slave clause in Article 4 the escaped slave is called “no person.” Douglass was still hesitant in 1852 about this position as you can see when he continued, that the founders were not to blame for the apparent support of slavery “or at least so I believe.” But after such a long struggle he was relieved to be able to support a fight in the Congress (i.e., politically) and not just by “moral suasion,” as Garrison had taught. The Constitution, then, was not Garrison’s “covenant with death,” but became a “glorious liberty document” that he could use to fight for the freedom of his people. 

Conclusion

“Fellow-citizens! I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretence, and your Christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral power abroad; it corrupts your politicians at home.

“How do you interpret that sentence?” I asked. The students will realize that Douglass is signaling he is coming to the end of the oration: he is ready to conclude. Here he lists the topics of the oration after the recital of the facts and ideas of the Revolution. At this point he adds one powerful metaphor relating to slavery that we have before encountered in the raging rivers and their dangerous floods in the introduction. Now these dangers have become one “horrible reptile…coiled up in your nation’s bosom; the venomous creature is nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic; for the love of God, tear away, and fling from you the hideous monster, and let the weight of twenty millions crush and destroy it forever!” “How do you interpret this?” I asked. The students will realize that the twenty million was the northern majority. The undemocratic nature of the slave power is reminiscent of the white nationalist minority we are suffering from today in the arguments about abortion, the warming of the planet and the massive inequality to which our mainstream politicians are bowing today.

Here is where Douglass defends the founders as blameless, as above, for the pro-slavery Constitution, “at least, so I believe,” he maintained. “Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. ‘The arm of the Lord is not shortened,’ and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope.” “How can you comment on this,” I ask. The students will remember that at the beginning Douglass, pointed out that the young country was only 76 years old in 1852. God’s arm is all powerful. “The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together . . . Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are, distinctly heard on the other.”

The students will interpret these ideas as the familiar causes and effects of globalization. “Wind, steam, and lightning” are boats and telegrams. These are all causes of optimism the students will conclude.

“The fiat of the Almighty, ‘Let there be Light,’ has not yet spent its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen, in contrast with nature. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. ‘Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand unto God.’” “Are there words here you do not know?” I ask. A fiat is a command. The passage also refers to foot-binding in China that ended only with the revolution in 1911, and Ethiopia is a reference to all of Africa and the effects of imperialism and racism. The very last part of the speech is a poem by William Lloyd Garrison who was Douglass’ teacher and mentor from early in his life as a free man. Here is an excerpt:

God speed the year of jubilee.

The wide world o’er

When from their galling chains set free

God speed the day when human blood

Shall cease to flow!

In every clime be understood,

The claims of human brotherhood,

And each return for evil, good.

“How would you interpret that?” I asked. Certainly, first of all the speech has been about freedom for the slaves, but second as a personal and political gesture Douglass showed his respect and admiration for Garrison even though their interpretations of the Constitution conflicted. Jubilee is the abolitionist term for emancipation which originated among the secular kings in the ancient holy land of the Hebrews as a 50-year celebration of forgiveness of slaves, debts, and debtors. There is a similar concession to Garrison’s leadership of the abolitionist movement when Douglass states his thesis later on.

The structure of the speech

Now that we are at the end of the speech, it is time to go back and figure out how Douglass put the speech together. Seeing the speech as a whole is a revelation for the students. After the rhetorical apologies at the very beginning, the speech proper begins: “This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July” is near the top of the second column of the first page of the speech. The students have realized that he begins with a protest, it is the 5th. The first extended section is about the Revolution which comes after the context of the young nation and the hopes and dangers of rivers with their dual roles of fertility and flooding. His recounting of the floods includes power of the Red Sea. “How do you understand his reasoning?” I ask.

To begin with these stories, the students might say that he is clearly paying respect to the tradition of July 4th celebrations. But the great upheaval of 1776 was marked by patriotic sacrifice and brave action by the ancestors of the whites. There is a strong and dangerous undertow preceding the discussion of the Revolution. Douglass is setting a context unique to his purpose in the speech.

In the next section Douglass introduces his Thesis. He leads up to it from the first full paragraph on the left column of page 5 of the document. The thesis itself is on the bottom of the right column on page 6.

“My subject, then fellow-citizens, is American slavery . . . Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery—the great sin and shame of America!” It is a bold and dramatic period sentence. Next is his first quote from Garrison, his mentor. “I will not equivocate; I will not excuse.” This is one of the most famous lines from the great leader.

The optimism Douglass feels for the young country at the “impressible stage of its existence” only 76 years old at the beginning is always in conflict in the speech with the dangers of nature and the wrath of God against the Egyptians and Babylonians. Similarly at the end he describes his feeling of possibility for peace and abolition despite the “dark picture” he has painted. But this joy in the chances for change are abruptly flung aside as he describes the “horrible reptile . . . coiled up in your nation’s bosom,” of the “youthful” republic. However, again, the “arm of the Lord is not shortened” and change can be part of the work of history and if Americans “act in the living present.”

Douglass signals many of the sections by using the phrase, “My fellow citizens” or directly addressing his audience as “Americans.” He introduces the section on the Revolution with “Fellow-citizens.”  He asks, “Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask why am I called upon to speak here today?” after the description of the Revolution to introduce the central conflict of the speech with Psalm 137 that identifies the oppression of the Jews during the Babylonian Captivity with his cause as a representative of the American slaves. We have quoted the thesis above that contains the same signal. Again, as he begins the topic of slavery: “Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions!” right under the quote of Psalm 137. It is in this section that Douglass proves that the Slave is a Man despite his protestations to the contrary and then he describes the slave trade in Bringing Slavery Before the Eyes saying, “Behold the practical operation of this internal slave-trade.”

Finally, Douglass introduces his Summary and Conclusion going back to the very same call to attention. This time with a deeply sarcastic turn of phrase: “Fellow-citizens! I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretence, and your Christianity as a lie.”

This statement shows the power behind the ideas of systemic racism. The teacher is now prepared to take on the machinations of Ron DeSantis. The self-educated escaped slave puts the Governor’s inhumane and frankly ignorant ideas in the dustbin of history. Frederick Douglass oration, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” is a powerful antidote to DeSantis’ anti-woke bullying. Douglass’s descriptions make you feel their power. They will entrance your students and leave them ready to defend their values as learners and humanitarians. Douglass’ oration shows Ron DeSantis to be a man of limited intellectual force and a mean spirited and dangerous leader who acts with thoughtless abandon. His actions are the very definition of performative. He is an authoritarian poseur. In the face of Douglass’s oration DeSantis is shamed and outclassed.

I dedicate this this lesson to the brave students and educators who are in the classrooms fighting for the truth and complexity in the study of history. Remember that Frederick Douglass believed, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”

History of America’s Immigration: The Background to Today’s Border and Asylum Crises

History of America’s Immigration: The Background to Today’s Border and Asylum Crises

Dr. Harry Stein, City University of New York

Harry.stein@manhattan.edu

Defining American: The Bureau of Naturalization’s Attempt to Standardize Citizenship Education and Inculcate ‘the Soul of America’ in Immigrants during World War 1

Barred Zones, Rising Tides, and Radical Struggles: The Antiradical and Anti-Asian Dimensions of the 1917 Immigration Act

In this wood engraving caricaturing the Chinese Exclusion Act, a well-dress Chinese man embodying “Order” and “Industry” sits outside the Golden Gate of Liberty. The sign to his right declares “Communists, Nihilist, Socialist, Fenian & Hoodlum Welcome but no Admittance to Chinamen.”  Below the title, the text reads: “Enlightened American Statesman – “We must draw the line somewhere, you know.” Reprinted from Frank Leslie’s illustrated Newspaper, April 1, 1882. Courtesy Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ds-11861.

U.S. Immigration History – There are 4 eras

Following is a description with vocabulary for each era.  Following the four eras mis a collection of data that students can use to learn more about each time period.  In each era examine who came to the USA, why, and how did government policy favored or discouraged immigration.

Era #1: Populating the Continent-Colonial to 1875

Authority was with individual states, not the Federal Government.  States used what was then called “state police power” to set and enforce rules.  States set rules stopping the admission of convicts, free Blacks, paupers, diseased, sick or disabled persons or passengers on ships who tried to enter without the captain posting a bond on their behalf.  No free person whether black, mulatto, or colored from a Caribbean country, especially Haiti, could enter some states.  Haitian seamen on a ship entering Charleston, S.C., could not leave the ship.  These powers were confirmed by a Supreme Court decision (Miln Decision, 1837) and the Passenger Cases decision (1849) approve state laws on bonding and taxing incoming passengers.  The 1830 Indian Removal Act was another example of state police power.  The movement of free Blacks within Missouri and Ohio was also regulated.

There were also federal laws in 1793, 1842 (Prigg decision), and 1850 concerning the return of runaway slaves to their owners.  Legislation in 1809 prevented the importing of additional slaves from west Africa.  In 1817 the Liberia colony was established and federally funded for free Black who wished to return to Africa. 13,000 did.

Federal laws permitting or excluding contract labor from China and Europe were enacted.  In 1862 the Coolie importation from China was stopped under the logic that since slavery was illegal in northern states and Coolies were slaves therefore, they could not get into the USA.  In 1867 contract labor was permitted from Europe.  In conclusion, high, consistent demand for labor led to favorable State and federal immigration policies.

Critical terms: Era #1

1790 Naturalization Act

Know Nothing Party

Dred Scott Decision

Burlingame Treaty

Northern European Migration from Ireland, UK, Germany, Netherlands

Era #2: The Opening and Closing the Immigration Doors, 1875 – 1924

During this era, power to legislate and enforce laws came totally to the national government. Immigration power resided in the Federal government’s ability to control commerce, Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) and the theory of national sovereignty critical for national security through border control.  Between 1871 and 1914, 23.5 million Europeans entered.  Eastern and southern Europeans joined those from Ireland, the U.K. and northern Europe. 1.7 million entered in 1907.

The country was industrializing and urbanizing.  Labor demand was high.  But gradually laws were established excluding some and regulating the entry of others.  Many Americans wanted more immigration.  Other Americans were critical of who were admitted.  By 1924 the doors were almost closed to many Jews, Catholics, Hindus, and Chinese. See the Page Act (1875) and Chinese Exclusion Act (1882). Research the Foran Act (1885) and the Dillingham Commission (1911).

1917 –  Law aimed at South Asians, Indians, who settled in California and Washington and spoke out against British control of their homeland.  This was part of a wider American nativist movement merging with white supremacy ideology, anti-communism and earlier opposition to immigrants with physical or mental disabilities.  A literacy test was passed.  A “barred” zone was created stopping all Asian entry except from the Philippines and Japan, already excluded by an informal 1907 “Gentlemen’s Agreement”, Mexicans were turned into temporary labor migrants.  There was also the fear that if the US entered the League of Nations this could endanger national security.  In 1920, 16% of the US population was foreign born.  Bad foreigners = crime, immorality, and labor conflict.

1921 – First law closing loopholes in the 1917 law and establishing first national origin quotas. This law fused beliefs about eugenics, racial bigotry, anti-disabilities prejudice, mixed racial marriages into a category of undesirable immigrant groups.  The Johnson-Reed Act (1924) created quotas by ethnic origin.  The Border Patrol created an illegal entry called a misdemeanor and felony (1929) if done twice.

Critical Terms: Era #2

Harry Laughlin

Madison Grant

Prescott Hall

Bracero

Thind Supreme Court Case, 1923

Wong Kim Ark Supreme Court Case, 1898

Jones/Shafroth Act, 1917

Ellis Island,

Castle Garden

Era #3: The Closed Door, 1925-1965  

The Johnson-Reed Act (1924) confined immigration to mainly northern Europe.  National quotas were based on ethnic origins of the 1890 census.  Through the Depression of the 1930s and World War II, immigration was severely curtailed.  Following World War II, the law remained intact and parallel laws dealing with World War II refugees were created that bypassed but did not displace the 1925 Law.

In 1948, Congress passed the Displaced Persons Act permitting European refugees to enter.  In 1948 the law was amended permitting refugees from camps in west Germany who could not return to former homes in Poland and the USSR to enter the USA.  332,000 arrived including 141,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors between June 1948 and December 1951.

Critical Terms: Era #3

Xenophobia

The 1938 Voyage of the St. Louis

Project Paperclip

Chinese Citizen Act of 1943

Mariel Boat Lift, 1960

Era #4: The Door Opens to the World, 1965 – Present

The 1925 law was replaced by the Hart/Cellar Act of 1965.  Racial and ethnic quotas were eliminated.  Numerical quotas were retained.  Entrance was open to people from anywhere.  The law favored family unification, preference for certain occupations, and a new side variety of visas.  In 1950, the USA was 90% white with a European origin. By 2000, 50% of new immigrants were from Latin America and 27% from Asia.  In 2020, the USA population was 69% European white.

This law changed the racial composition and, some say, the national identity of the USA.  The acrid, hot odor of 1924 bigotry and nativism returned magnified and channeled through social media.  By 2020, some Americans were talking of white racial suicide and replacement theory.  Politicians pointed to the loss of border control.  The 9/11 Attack on America led to Islamophobia and Muslin immigration bans.

Many Americans supported legal immigration and the use of work visas for both unskilled and professional work.  Most wanted to stop migration but the government system to judge asylum claims became broken.  Since May 2022, 1.85 million border crosses have been permitted to remain in the country following a favorable “credible fear” claim.  By September 2022, 86,815 immigrants were deported and 1.7 million were approved to stay.  200,149 immigrants came to New York City.

More Data:

  1. From February 2021 to September 2023, Border Patrol arrested 6 million migrants who crossed the border illegally.
  2. 1.7 million immigrants were released to stay in the USA.
  3. There were about 1,500 immigration judges and asylum offices available to decide these immigrant cases.
  4. People apply for asylum at the border or if they are caught illegally in the country or overstay a visa.  They have up to one year to apply.  800,000 applied in 2022.
  5. It could cost $2 billion to hire more staff to eliminate the 2 million backlog of cases.
  6. In some cities, it will take up to ten years to hear a case.
  7. 1.3 million have been told they must leave the USA.  They have 90 days to do so.
  8. Many do not leave and they disappear.  There is no national ID in the USA to identify them.
  9. Some marry Americans and become parents of children who are natural born citizens.

All of this data is used by politicians running for federal office. Some promise to clear them ‘out.’  How they will do this is not clear.

Many local officials run to Washington, D.V., seeking money to care for migrants in their cities.  There is a deadlock in Washington, D.C.  Many do not want to tax the many to pay for the foreign immigrants.  The memory of 1924 is in the air and a chaotic border has become a drug channel.

Critical Terms: Era #4

Pyler Supreme Court Case, 1982

Temporary Protective Status

Humanitarian parole

Refugee Act, 1980

DACA

Visa Lottery System

John Tanton

Naturalization

Our laws were not designed to deal with BOTH old and new reasons for migrations.  The new reasons are climate change, corruption in many countries, the I-phone which immediately connected migrants with friends already in the USA who send money to assist migrants in their journey.  Migration used to be single men seeking jobs who would then return home.  Now, it is entire families seeking a new life in the USA.  Many Americans do not know what to make of it and they will vote their hopes and fears.

The Usage of Film in Teaching History through the Lens of the Civil Rights Movement

The Usage of Film in Teaching History through the Lens of the Civil Rights Movement

Elizabeth Sullivan

Film, in the wake of the 21st Century, has become a highly popular type of media to portray historical events. Society has evolved to a point in which it is a visual culture. No longer are we represented by oral and written means; visual communication is much more popular. Traditional school experiences juxtapose this idea. Students are still bound by books and written texts in order to receive information. Educators need to be willing to continue to learn how to introduce new modes of expression in their classroom.

Topics like the Civil Rights Movement are often whitewashed in educational texts. Because most films are produced outside of K-12 schooling environments, producers are able to recreate controversial situations, relationships, and people. This paper will provide summaries and analyses of three modern films depicting different aspects of the American Civil Rights movement. It will then discuss why showing these films in classrooms are worthwhile.

Introducing the films

Historical film projects have created controversial figures and taken controversial figures and turned them into likable characters. The Civil Rights movement has been portrayed in film time and time again, each with a slightly different take. The Help tells the story of a White woman in Jackson recording the stories of Black maids, and ultimately publishes them. This film creates white saviors, a specific character type in media, often seen in pieces that discuss issues pertaining to people of color. One Night in Miami focuses on four prominent Black men in the 1960s; Malcolm X takes the main stage. The film wrestles with Malcolm’s stiff exterior and anxious personal life. Selma tells the story of the Selma Marches in 1964. The film highlights Martin Luther King’s actions and how they led to the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Each protagonist in these three films is understood by audiences differently. How a Civil Rights activist is appreciated in film greatly depends on the general public’s pre-existing opinion of the character. Regardless of a production team’s goals, an activist’s infamy or other characteristics influence the audience.

The Help

The Help was directed by Taylor Tate and released in 2011, grossing $216 million worldwide and receiving positive reviews from critics.[1] The movie takes place in Jackson, Mississippi during the 1960s.[2] Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, a new college graduate, wants to become a writer. She is given the chance to have a book published, but the story hinges on Black maids being willing to speak to her about their experiences working for White families. The issue lies in finding Black help that was willing to risk their livelihoods for Skeeter’s writing.[3] Minny Jackson begins to work for Celia Foote after being fired by a different White woman.[4] After gathering enough stories, Skeeter publishes her book, which is a massive hit. Skeeter chooses to stay in Jackson instead of moving to New York City with the promise of a job in a publishing agency.[5]

Hollywood has a tendency to find a newsworthy topic and exploit it; despite the Civil Rights Movement being a “hot” topic in America for decades, it was mostly left out of the film industry.[6] However, in recent years, stories about the era of civil rights have graced screens. The development of white savior stories has become prevalent in American films. These stories amplify (or overamplify) a white character’s influence regarding issues faced by people of color.[7] The white character rescues non-white characters, often learning more about the problem than they originally knew and evaluating how they contributed to the problem. It makes the white character appear as the hero of the story, despite the size of their role, or the danger the characters of color face fighting issues.

The Help created two white savior characters: Skeeter and Celia. The women become white saviors through different experiences. Skeeter is meant to be portrayed as a young woman who does a great service by exposing the nature of treatment White employers subjected their Black help to. She does this without realizing the importance of what she is doing. The film also emphasizes how she will be viewed in the White community, breezing past the reality Black women will face if the location of the book is revealed. Skeeter’s risks are overplayed (especially because she is promised a job if the book sells well) while the maid’s risks are underplayed, painting Skeeter ultimately as the hero of the film. This imagery is only furthered as Skeeter chooses not to accept her dream job working in a New York publishing firm to stay in Jackson and help the women who gave her stories for her book.

Celia is slightly different. She hires Minny after being unable to find help for her house. She wants to impress her husband and the women of Jackson. She treats Minny with kindness and does not seem to grasp certain societal expectations, like the help and employers eating at different tables and the help and employers not being “friends.” During one specific scene, Celia takes Minny by the arm, walks her into the house, and offers her a coke.[8] In another scene, Celia and her husband offer Minny a meal (prepared by Celia) at their dining room table.[9] The film alludes to the idea that because of Celia’s kindness, Minny’s problems are lessened or completely gone. This then creates the idea that a white woman’s kindness solves issues that are systemic racial issues, when in reality, Minny and the rest of the Black community face issues that could only be corrected through legislative changes.

However, different from most narratives, both of these characters are women. By regendering the white savior, two things occur. The first is the idea that they may not be able to be saviors because they also come from oppressed communities. Because they are not men, it is assumed they do not have the power to overcome societal beliefs regarding their own womanhood, let alone fight against anti-Blackness. The second is that they become harder to identify because of tropes surrounding what a woman is supposed to be and how she is supposed to act.[10] Both of these women hold stereotypical traits, such as kindness and empathy. Celia also yearns to be a mother, another trait that has been associated with femininity. Because they have “female” characteristics, audiences need to decipher what aspects are stereotypes and which are aspects of the white savior trope.

Despite having stereotypical personality traits, the women defy traditional womanhood in different ways, making it easy to see how they fill their white-savior roles. Skeeter is considered a tom-boy; she is a college graduate who does not plan to marry until she has established her career. She grew up in Jackson and, after graduating from college, returned, continuing to be well-liked until she gave a voice to Black maids.[11] Celia moved to Jackson and married her husband because of an unplanned pregnancy. She is also one of the loudest women in the movie, trying to push herself into Jackson’s social circle. Until hiring Minny, she did not have help in her house. Because of this, she is regarded as an outsider by most White women but yearns to be accepted.[12]

Ultimately, the regendering of the white savior in The Help created a character that was not as easily identified as in other films, such as Green Book and Hidden Figures. The two women appear as outcasts who do not fully understand societal roles, instead of two women extending a hand to the Black community in Jackson. The audience feels its heartstrings being tugged at as Celia is outcasted by other women in Jackson, both because of her own identity and because she hired Minny.[13] Skeeter is threatened by another White woman after realizing that the book featured her home.[14] If Skeeter and Celia had been written as male characters, it is much more likely that this character trope would be more apparent. As a result, Skeeter and Celia become characters that are endearing to the audience; the two women are effective in their roles of “hero.”

One Night in Miami

Starkly different from the two White women of The Help are the four men of Regina King’s One Night in Miami. More specifically, the four Black men in the film. Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, Jim Brown, and Cassius Clay (more famously known as Muhammad Ali) are the focus of this 2020 film. It was released directly to Amazon Prime Video streaming, receiving glowing reviews from critics and the general audience.[15]

The four men unite in Miami, Florida in 1964 to watch Cassius Clay box in the championship round.[16] After Clay wins, the men return to X’s motel room to celebrate. Instead of celebrating, the men have a serious night. Coming from different backgrounds (one activist, one football player, one singer, and one boxer) the men have curt conversations about the Civil Rights Movement and Black support of the movement. Paranoia, racism, and Islamophobia are all commented on in the film, as Malcolm criticizes his friends but also speaks to them about his decision to leave the Nation of Islam.[17]

Going into production, director Regina King had a unique problem. How does one create a positive protagonist out of a man disliked or misunderstood by many Americans? Malcolm X’s legacy is often misinterpreted or never properly learned. Media pushes X’s original ideas, many of which the Nation of Islam was responsible for propagating. The figure seen in much of American media is a representation of Malcolm X prior to his revelation about black and white segregation, “white devils,” and many of his polarizing ideas.[18] King directed a film that humanized X, showing anxiety, paranoia, and friendship as a way to create a likable (or at least neutral) film character.

Casual Islamophobia arises throughout the film as X’s friends Cooke and Brown try to discourage Clay from converting to Islam; Muslims do not drink, smoke, or “have fun.”[19] If a friend does not accept you for something as personal as religion, it makes an onlooker feel sorry. This usage of stereotyping lends itself to the audience feeling empathetic toward Malcolm X.

One Night in Miami was a refreshing media perspective of Malcolm X. The film shows how Malcolm was a polarizing figure but did not villainize him, which is an overarching theme across Hollywood film. The activist has been painted as one who advocated for violence, black-and-white separation, and the Nation of Islam. Time and time again, the media forgets that X gave up those ideas after his journey to Mecca to complete Hajj, an important Muslim pilgrimage. He gave a voice to “the subterranean fury, [gave] it a voice, not a gun… and [staved] off the rising violence with which he and every human being must struggle when men are brutalized by men.”[20] However, it is important to keep in mind that many audience members may not have this complex understanding of X and how his ideas evolved before his assassination. The movie ultimately portrays this; Malcolm Xnever advocates for the men to pick up arms and storm cities, he implores his friends to use their fame and resources as a voice for the voiceless.[21]

One Night in Miami also does an excellent job of portraying Malcolm X as the man most people know. Known for being strong-headed throughout his life, Malcolm X is presented as a man firm in his stances and was not afraid to tell someone if they did not align with what he thought was right. Because of this, he was often seen as judgmental towards his friends and American society.[22] He and Sam Cooke butt heads several times as Malcolm chastises him for not doing enough for the Black community and Civil Rights Movement. “…He longed for peace and believed it could only come when men were honest with each other.”[23]

This chastisement could turn audiences against Malcolm X, or there could be a moment of realization that he was not the man that the media at the time painted him as. Shortly after his assassination, James Loomis wrote to the editor of the New York Times explaining that Malcolm X was not the violent figure that White media made him out to be during his life. Loomis did admit that the activist was set in his ways; he set the way for future Civil Rights activists “much as the Old Testament laid the foundation for the New Testament.”[24] If a film viewer was somewhat familiar with X after his Hajj, they would understand, much as Loomis did, that X’s original separatist ideas were not the ideas that he died with. One Night in Miami portrays Malcolm X in a light that allows the audience to better understand his purpose, looking past the “harsh” exterior of his words.

Selma

Selma was directed by Ava DuVernay and released in 2014. It was popular with critics and well-liked by general audiences, grossing more than $66 million worldwide.[25] The film opens in 1963 with four girls running down a stairway. A bomb is set off, killing all four girls; the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing sets the emotional tone for the remaining film.[26] It then moves to 1965 in Selma, Alabama, where Black Americans are being turned away from voting. Martin Luther King Jr. was called down to help advocate for voting rights legislation that would protect Black Americans from poll taxes and tests.[27] After arriving in Selma, he quickly butts heads with local activist groups. There are several scenes in which King meets with President Lyndon B. Johnson to pressure him to pass voting rights legislation.[28] Eventually, King and other activists plan to walk from Selma to the state capitol, Montgomery. During the first attempt, protestors are brutally beaten by police officers and rush back to Selma to escape said violence.[29] During the second march, King decides to turn the group around to avoid traps set by police or White aggressors along the way.[30] Finally, backed by the state, King and thousands of protestors completed the 50-mile march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.[31] The movie closes with the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and King’s speech in Montgomery.[32]

King had relationships with powerful White individuals, such as President Johnson. Often, an activist who has this kind of support will be much more successful in their cause because it seems reasonable. Selma highlighted these relations, showing the president and his advisors in several scenes.[33] This association implies backing from the federal government. It creates a positive air around King, something that the audience can recognize and absorb.

Martin Luther King gathered more support than other activists during the Civil Rights Movement. As seen in Selma, King directs a group and few and far in between are the decisions made by the other members. Even fewer are activists not in King’s posse. Malcolm X, for example, was mentioned but never seen. [34] President Johnson makes a negative comment about X, saying King is better suited for the American people because he is not as radical.[35] The audience can speculate who Johnson means when he says “American people,” but if the president sees King as a more palatable Black activist, it can be assumed that America is synonymous with White and not all Americans. Little else is said about X; his ideas, policies, speeches, and actions are not mentioned. If an audience member has little knowledge about the other activist, it is likely that they would have a much more positive thought process about King and his actions from there on.

Selma, much like the other two films, casts its main protagonist in a neutral, if not positive light. However, part of this positive atmosphere around King may have been from the lack of other important stars in the Selma March. The film never refers to the other celebrities that came down to Alabama, many of whom were actors. The decision to not feature more of Hollywood in Selma enlarges the light shown on King.[36] This issue continues throughout the film; DuVernay wanted to create a “‘demonstration of our moral certainty’ – sacred art,” so, while she wanted to produce a history piece, she had other motives.[37]

By creating a piece about King and the people of Selma, the director chose to eliminate other aspects of the historical narrative.[38]  DuVernay does not change King’s actions, making him a historically accurate figure in the film, but she does omit aspects of events that bolster King’s role, which ultimately pushes him to the front of the film and enlarges his moral character.[39] Historians took issue with this because it “egregiously distorts a significant element of that history,” changing the emphasis each individual carried within the Civil Rights Movement.[40]

What does this all mean?

The film industry, after long avoiding The Civil Rights movement, has begun to produce film after film about it. The Help focuses on Skeeter, with Black maids as supporting characters despite their stories being the reason for her success. This paints Skeeter as the hero of the movie, emphasizing her role as a White savior. Minny is influenced by a second White savior, Celia, as the woman’s kindness seems to alleviate Minny of all problems. The two White women sneak under the radar as saviors because their gender makes their powerlessness evident. One Night in Miami attempts to show Malcolm X in a more humane light, in an attempt to make audiences more willing to understand him and his goals as an activist. The United States has a perverse idea of X; Regina King’s film attempts to display how X’s frustration and curt way of speaking was only because of his passion and desire to find equality and Black rights in America. Selma creates a reverent picture of Martin Luther King by maximizing his role in the Selma Marches in 1964. Differently from X, King already has a respected and positive legacy, making the production much more palatable to many more people. The four protagonists in these three films produce different reactions from an audience. The way a Civil Rights activist is able to be understood and appreciated in film greatly depends on the general public’s pre-existing opinion of the character of character-type.

Applying these films to teaching

            Film differs from written sources because it has the ability to bring people, places, and events to life. Too often educators rely on students being able to read well to understand the deeper nuances and feeling of the writer or the details being described. Choosing to present information through visual sources evens the playing field for many students because they do not need to rely on their reading skills. Using film provides a new way to learn; it provides auditory and visual learners a positive experience. Captions can provide students who are hard of hearing or in need of written reinforcement to read what is being said. Film has the ability to serve as a platform that benefits many types of learning.

            As mentioned in the previous section, the film industry has recently started to embrace the production of film that focuses on the United States Civil Rights movement and the treatment of People of Color in American history. Due to this, there has been an uptick in historically accurate films that celebrate influential members of the Black American community. Often, film directors have much more freedom than textbook creators do. Films are able to incorporate aspects of history that have been whitewashed or completely removed from educational sources. The United States has a heavy history of whitewashing curriculum related to the Civil Rights Movement. The three films described in the first section are films that I have deemed as accessible and useful to teaching. Each film provides viewers with a different understanding and line of inquiry regarding civil rights and the role in which people played in the movement.

             The Help conveys an important message about the white savior complex. Despite financially providing for the Black women who shared their stories with her, Skeeter would never have suffered the same backlash and potential violence that these women would have if it became apparent that these stories were from Jackson. Skeeter’s race keeps her away from loss of employment, finances, and the potential for violent retaliation. Class lectures or discussions about how history has shown that identities dramatically shape a person’s quality of life can be related to the way Black women were forced to work in harsh conditions and Skeeter was able to write about these experiences and create a best-seller. In addition to this, class discourse after viewing could include a conversation about the introduction of White characters in Black stories and the space they then take away from Black individuals. The Help serves as an introduction to race and the way it shapes experiences.

            One Night in Miami retells the story of Malcolm X, Jim Brown, Sam Cooke, and Muhammad Ali reuniting in Miami for the boxing match. However, the film does something that most media does not. Malcolm X has been villainized throughout American media. This film allows Malcolm to be seen as a person with emotions, fears, and friendships. This humanizing aspect disrupts the narrative that most textbooks create. Very rarely does media, especially literature, acknowledge Malcolm’s humanity. They paint him as a hard radical. This film could also be used as a segue into Malcolm X’s life and ideas after his hajj, a Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.

            Selma takes place in Alabama before the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed. It focuses on Martin Luther King Jr., but also incorporates activists that are taught about less often such as John Lewis. Showing this film allows students to understand that MLK did not act alone and was often called to areas to act as the face of a movement. The film also illustrates the violence against Black Americans and Americans that supported integration and equal rights. It does so in a matter that makes viewers understand the severity, but it does so with becoming too explicit. For instance, the film opens with the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing. It shows the four young girls that would be killed but the bombing does not show the individuals.

            As discussed, the usage of film can be an effective use of media in the classroom. It is used far too often; written sources are no longer reflective of today’s society. With the recent boom of media representing the Civil Rights Movement or racial inequality, it seems clear that film needs to be present in classrooms while teaching these events and concepts.

References

DuVernay, Ava, director. Selma. Pathé, Plan B Entertainment, Harpo Productions, Ingenious Media, Celador, Cloud Eight Films, 2014. 2 hr., 33 min. https://www.showtime.com/movie/3505943

“The Help.” IMDb. IMDb.com, August 10, 2011. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1454029/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0. 

Horne, Gerald. “‘Myth’ and the Making of ‘Malcolm X.” The American Historical Review 98, no. 2 (April 1993): 440–50. https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/98.2.440. 

Housley, Jason. “Hollywood and The Civil Rights Movement.” Black Camera 19, no. 1 (2004): 7–8. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27761632.

King, Regina, director. One Night in Miami. Amazon Studios, 2020. 1 hr., 55 min. https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.e8badd0e-9d87-114a-934b-54a31210c34f?autoplay=0&ref_=atv_cf_strg_wb

Knapp, Jeffrey. “Selma and the Place of Fiction in Historical Films.” Representations 142, no. 1 (2018): 91–123. https://doi.org/10.1525/rep.2018.142.1.91. 

Loomis, James. “New York Times,” February 27, 1965.

“One Night in Miami…” IMDb. IMDb.com, January 8, 2021. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10612922/. 

Reed, Adolph. “The Strange Career of the Voting Rights Act.” New Labor Forum 24, no. 2 (2015): 32–41. https://doi.org/10.1177/1095796015579201. 

Seekford, Brett. “To Kill a Mockingbird, The Help, and the Regendering of the White Savior.” James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal 4, no. 1 (2016): 6–12. https://doi.org/https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/jmurj/vol4/iss1/1/. 

“Selma.” IMDb. IMDb.com, January 9, 2015. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1020072/. 

Taylor, Tate, director. The Help. DreamWork Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, Paramount Vintage, StudioCanal UK, 2011. 1 hr., 35 min. https://play.hbomax.com/page/urn:hbo:page:GYe7uAgqQlZyQwgEAAAAf:type:feature?source=googleHBOMAX&action=play

[1] “The Help,” IMDb (IMDb.com, August 10, 2011), https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1454029/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0. 

[2] Taylor, Tate, director. The Help. DreamWork Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, Paramount Vintage, StudioCanal UK, 2011. 1 hr., 35 min. https://play.hbomax.com/page/urn:hbo:page:GYe7uAgqQlZyQwgEAAAAf:type:feature?source=googleHBOMAX&action=play

[3] Taylor, Tate, director. The Help.

[4] Taylor, Tate, director. The Help.

[5] Taylor, Tate, director. The Help.

[6] Housley, Jason. “Hollywood and The Civil Rights Movement.” Black Camera 19, no. 1 (2004): 7.

[7] Taylor, Tate, director. The Help.

[8] Taylor, Tate, director. The Help.

[9] Taylor, Tate, director. The Help.

[10] Brett Seekford, “To Kill a Mockingbird, The Help, and the Regendering of the White Savior,” James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal 4, no. 1 (2016): pp. 6-12, https://doi.org/https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/jmurj/vol4/iss1/1/. 

[11] Taylor, Tate, director. The Help.

[12] Taylor, Tate, director. The Help.

[13] Taylor, Tate, director. The Help.

[14] Taylor, Tate, director. The Help.

[15] “One Night in Miami…,” IMDb (IMDb.com, January 8, 2021), https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10612922/.

[16] King, Regina, director. One Night in Miami. Amazon Studios, 2020. 1 hr., 55 min. https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.e8badd0e-9d87-114a-934b-54a31210c34f?autoplay=0&ref_=atv_cf_strg_wb 

[17] King, Regina, director. One Night in Miami.

[18]  Gerald Horne, “‘Myth’ and the Making of ‘Malcolm X,” The American Historical Review 98, no. 2 (April 1993): pp. 442-444.

[19] King, Regina, director. One Night in Miami.

[20] James Loomis, “Letter to the Editor – Death of Malcolm X,” n.d.

[21] King, Regina, director. One Night in Miami.

[22] King, Regina, director. One Night in Miami.

[23] James Loomis, “Letter to the Editor – Death of Malcolm X,” n.d.

[24] James Loomis, “Letter to the Editor – Death of Malcolm X,” n.d.

[25] “Selma,” IMDb (IMDb.com, January 9, 2015), https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1020072/.

[26] DuVernay, Ava, director. Selma. Pathé, Plan B Entertainment, Harpo Productions, Ingenious Media, Celador, Cloud Eight Films, 2014. 2 hr., 33 min. https://www.showtime.com/movie/3505943

[27] DuVernay, Ava, director. Selma.

[28] DuVernay, Ava, director. Selma.

[29] DuVernay, Ava, director. Selma.

[30] DuVernay, Ava, director. Selma.

[31] DuVernay, Ava, director. Selma.

[32] DuVernay, Ava, director. Selma.

[33] DuVernay, Ava, director. Selma.

[34] DuVernay, Ava, director. Selma.

[35] DuVernay, Ava, director. Selma.

[36] Jeffrey Knapp, “Selma and the Place of Fiction in Historical Films,” Representations 142, no. 1 (2018): pp. 113.

[37] Jeffrey Knapp, “Selma and the Place of Fiction in Historical Films,”114.

[38] Adolph Reed, “The Strange Career of the Voting Rights Act,” New Labor Forum 24, no. 2 (August 2015): pp. 33.

[39] Jeffrey Knapp, “Selma and the Place of Fiction in Historical Films,” 92-94.

[40] Adolph Reed, “The Strange Career of the Voting Rights Act,” 34.

Teaching with Documents: The 1892 Lynching of an African American Man in New York State

Teaching with Documents: The 1892 Lynching of an African American Man in New York State

Alan Singer and Janice Chopyk

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama memorializes the over 4,000 African Americans murdered by vigilante terrorism in the American South between the end of Reconstruction in the United States in 1877 and 1950 and the more than 300 victims of racial terrorism in other states. Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia were the worst offenders, but there were also significant numbers of vigilante murders of African Americans in Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, and West Virginia. Eight hundred steel columns hang from the ceiling at the Memorial, each with the name of a county where a lynching occurred with the names of victims engraved on it. The only lynching in New York State during this period occurred in the town of Port Jervis, Orange County in 1892. Port Jervis is located on the Delaware River at the border of New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. At the end of the 19th century, it was an important stop on the Delaware and Hudson Canal for barges transporting anthracite coal to Philadelphia and New York City from Scranton area coal mines and on the New York, Lake Erie and Western Railroad.

In his new book, A Lynching at Port Jervis: Race and Reckoning in the Gilded (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022), Philip Dray documents racial violence in Port Jervis about sixty-five miles northwest of New York City. The story of what happened to Robert Lewis, a 28-year-old African American teamster and coach driver on Thursday June 2, 1892 was largely told through the eyes of white residents and white-owned newspapers. Unfortunately, there are no sources that address the Black perspective on the lynching of Lewis by a white mob. A coroner’s inquest was held with witness testimony, but there is no surviving transcript. At least one witness, Officer Simon Yaple, is known to have named some of the members of the murderous mob, but none were ever tried or convicted of crimes.

Robert Lewis, described in the press as a powerful man of about five feet seven and 170 pounds, was accused of assaulting and sexually abusing a 22-year-old white woman named Lena McMahon on a riverbank where the Cuddeback Brook meets the Neversink River before it flows into the Delaware River just south of Port Jervis. Participants in the mob attack on Lewis claimed that before he was murdered, Lewis confessed to the assault and implicated McMahon’s white boyfriend, Philip Foley as an accomplice. Lewis was then lynched on East Main Street, now U.S. Route 6.

Lena McMahon reported to authorities that she was approached by a heavy-set Black man with a light complexion who she did not know, although he appeared to know her. In her testimony about the assault, McMahon claimed that she was “terribly frightened” because her assailant had an “evil look in his eyes” and that after she rebuffed him he grabbed her shoulder and covered her mouth in an attempt to keep her from screaming. Local boys interrupted the attack on McMahon and her attacker, presumably Lewis, picked up fishing gear and left the scene. While McMahon initially reported that the man who attacked her was a “tramp,” one of the boys later identified Lewis as the assailant.

Robert Lewis was seized by a posse on the towpath of the D & H Canal while riding on a slow moving coal barge, not a very likely escape plan and Lewis made no effort to avoid capture. He had fishing gear with him and said he was planning to spend the night fishing. Sol Carley, part of the posse that captured Lewis, claimed that he questioned Lewis while they were bringing him back to Port Jervis. According to Carley, Lewis confessed to what had taken place, but claimed that Foley, who he knew from the hotel where he previously worked, told him McMahon would be receptive to a sexual encounter and if he wanted a “piece to go down and get it.” Lewis seemed to think that the entire situation could be resolved if they questioned Foley and Lewis had a chance to speak to McMahon’s father.

The initial police plan was to bring Lewis to the McMahon home to see if she could identify him, although Lena McMahon continued to maintain her attacker was a stranger, probably a tramp, who was camping in the woods. This plan was interrupted when a rumor spread that Lena McMahon had died from her wounds, dooming Robert Lewis. A crowd of over 300 white men was gathered in downtown Port Jervis. Upon hearing the rumor, it was transformed into an uncontrollable mob and murdered Lewis. Port Jervis’ small African American community, in defiance of white authority, insisted on a proper funeral for Lewis and contributed funds for burial at Laurel Grove cemetery, while at least some whites tried to steal souvenir relics from his body.

Students can read, compare, and discuss newspaper coverage of the events in Port Jervis. In the age of #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, it is difficult to dissect aspects of events that took place over a hundred years ago, especially where the surviving documentation is sporadic and clearly biased. How much of Lena McMahon’s story should be believed? Does questioning her account reflect what we now recognize as gender bias? On the other hand, how much of her story was colored by racism? We know from similar accusations made by white women against Black men that led to the arrest and imprisonment of the Scottsboro Boys and the murder of Emmett Till, that in a climate of intense racism, white women protected their reputations by fabricating stories of disrespect or assault. It is hard to believe that Robert Lewis did not know that a “confession” meant a death sentence. A compelling question for students to consider is: What do the events in Port Jervis and the newspaper coverage tell us about race and racism in New York State during this period? Teachers should alert students that there are overtly racist comments in the newspaper articles, but that “negro” was in common usage at the time to describe the group of people we now call African American and was not a racist term.

Documenting the Lynching of Robert Lewis at Port Jervis, New York

A. LYNCHED AT PORT JERVIS. ROBERT JACKSON, A COLORED MAN, HANGED BY A MOB. New York Times, June 3, 1892           

Robert Jackson, a young colored man, was lynched in this village to-night, receiving swift retribution for an assault committed this morning on Miss Lena McMahon, daughter of John McMahon of this place. The crime occurred on the outskirts of the village, near the banks of the Neversink River. Two young negroes and a crowd of children were near by, but when the former tried to interfere Jackson kept them at bay with a revolver. He made his escape without trouble. Miss McMahon was left in an insensible condition. Her injuries may prove fatal. A posse started in pursuit of Jackson as soon as news of the assault spread . . . The capture of the fugitive was finally made at Cuddebackville, a small village on the Delaware and Hudson Canal about nine miles from Port Jervis, by Sol Carley, Duke Horton, and a man named Coleman. Jackson had borrowed a canal boat at Huguenot, and had reached Cuddebackville, when he was overtaken by the three men. On the way back to this village he confessed the crime, and implicated William Foley, a white man, who, he said, was in the conspiracy against Miss McMahon. Foley has been paying attention to the girl contrary to the wishes of her parents, and the feeling against him in this community is such that, should he be taken, a fate similar to that which has overtaken Jackson would probably be meted out to him. The news of the capture of Jackson soon spread through the town, and a large crowd of men collected about the village lock-up, awaiting the arrival of the prisoner. The word was whispered through the crowd “Lynch him, lynch him!” The suggestion spread like wildfire, and it was evident that the fate of the prisoner was sealed. On his arrival at the lock-up Jackson was taken in hand by the mob. The village police endeavored to protect him, but their efforts were unavailing. It was at first proposed to have Jackson identified by his victim before hanging him, in order to make sure of his guilt. With this object in view the mob tied a rope around his body and dragged him up Hammond and down Main Streets as far as the residence of E. G. Fowler, Esq. By this time the mob had reached a state of uncontrollable excitement, and it was decided to dispatch him without further ceremony. A noose was adjusted about his neck and he was strung up to a neighboring tree in the presence of over 1,000 people. For an hour the body hung from the tree, where it was viewed by crowds . . . Public sentiment on the subject of the lynching is divided, although a majority approve and openly applaud the work of the lynchers, declaring that a terrible warning was necessary to prevent future repetitions of the same offense.

Questions

  1. Where and when did these events take place?
  2. Who was Robert Jackson?
  3. What was Robert Jackson accused of?
  4. What happened to Robert Jackson?
  • What is the attitude of the New York Times toward these events? What evidence from the text supports your conclusion?

B. Mob Murder at Port Jervis, Brooklyn Eagle, June 3, 1892, pg. 4

A negro was hanged by a mob in Port Jervis on Thursday night. He was charged with the crime of violence on a white girl, who is now said to be lingering between life and death. The crime was committed. The victim of it and two other witnesses charged the commission of it on a negro called by the name of the one who was lynched. The accused criminal was caught a long distance from the spot, while trying to run away. He was not, however, taken for identification before any of the persons who had accused him. A rumor prevails around Port Jervis that, after all, the wrong negro was captured and killed. Negroes are not easily distinguished from one another, unless by marks of identification carefully registered on scientific examination and then carefully compared when any man to whom they presumably refer is apprehended. There is very little doubt that the negro who was killed was the man who committed the crime, but there is some doubt that he was. That doubt, however slight, should harrow the memories and consciences of the men who lawlessly destroyed him. Aside from this fact, the offense of which the negro was accused but not convicted does not carry the punishment of death in this state by law. http://www.bethlehemchurch.com/admin/Law has found that capital punishment in cases of violence against women has been inflicted on innocent persons. The accusation is easily made. It is hard to disprove. A predisposition to believe it exists when it is brought against the lowly and the humble, the obscure or the repulsive. The pardoning power is not seldom required to rectify the errors of courts and juries in cases of violence to women. On these accounts the punishment has been reduced below the death penalty, to give time and government a chance to correct the wrongs of law. The event at Port Jervis, Thursday night, was a disgrace to the State of New York. The heinousness of the offense may explain but does not excuse the popular violence. This is supposed to be a government of law. Citizens are supposed to be law abiding. Moral culture and obedience to law are supposed to be an insurance that communities will not take the law in their own hands in any cases, and especially in cases which excite and inflame them. It may be roughly said, so far as lynch law is concerned in New York State, that the greater the provocation the less the excuse. The crime of which this negro was guilty cannot be overcharacterized, but there are worse crimes than it, by the definition of the law of the State of New York. A worse crime is murder. Murder is the destruction of a human being without warrant of law, with malice and premeditation, and not in self defense. The hanging of the negro in Port Jervis on Thursday night mates with that definition of the crime of murder. It was murder.

Questions

  1. Are there features in the Brooklyn Eagle article you would identify as racist? Explain.
  2. Compare coverage of the events in Port Jervis as reported in the Brooklyn Eagle the New York Times. How is it similar or different?
  • In your opinion, are there errors of fact in the Brooklyn Eagle account? Explain.

C. Port Jervis Disgrace, The Daily Standard Union, June 3, 1892, pg. 2

Port Jervis has not added to her good name by the brutal murder of a negro, who was, no doubt, no less brutal than the white men who took the law into their own hands and inflicted the death penalty without sentence. Has the Empire State fallen so low that criminals cannot be punished by due process of law? . . . There is no reason why a Northern State inhabited by justice-loving people, should be Southernized by a few misguided men in a country town. A heinous crime was charged against the negro, but there was no sworn evidence that he was the guilty person. Sympathy was strong for the young woman who, it is said, suffered from the negro’s violence, and this sympathy was proper and creditable; but it does not justify killing by mass meeting. It is to be hoped that every one of the men who actually took part on compassing the negro’s death will be apprehended and made to feel the hand of the law he has outraged.”

Questions

  1. How is coverage of the events in Port Jervis in this article from the Daily Standard Union, a Brooklyn, New York newspaper, similar to and different from coverage in the New York Times and the Brooklyn Eagle?
  • What is conspicuously missing from this excerpt from the article? In your opinion, what does that suggest about the viewpoint of the Daily Standard Union about the events?

D. Local Newspaper Coverage

Port Jervis Union: The Excitement in this village over the lynching of the negro, Robert Lewis has abated somewhat but further developments are awaited with the most intense interest. Attention is now centered upon the work of the coroner’s jury which was empanelled yesterday and whose duty it is not merely to investigate the manner of Lewis’ death but if possible to trace out the leaders and instigators of mob violence and to fix upon them the responsibility which belongs to them. Public sentiment and the honor and fair fame of the village demand that an earnest effort be made to do this. Now that the excitement attendant upon the awful events of Thursday has partially subsided a decided reaction has taken place in public sentiment and there are few who do not deplore and condemn the work of the mob. It is now generally admitted that the ends of justice would have been fully satisfied by leaving Lewis to be dealt with according to the regular forms of law, while our village would have escaped the world-wide notoriety which now attaches to it as the scene of one of the worst manifestations of mob-violence which has occurred in recent years. To be known as a community controlled and dominated by lawless elements is a penalty which we must now pay.

Middletown Daily Press: What a hard question to decide: the right or the wrong of Thursday night’s outrage in Port Jervis. One man, a father, and a county official, said: “It’s all right for some of us to moralize. But put yourself in that father’s place.” Another man, also a father: “Those men are worse than the negro. No matter how heinous the crime, can any human being think of a life being tugged along through public streets by a howling, half mad crowd which handled the rope, without saying ‘They’re brutes, and God does not sanction their work.’”

Middletown Argus: That the punishment so summarily meted out to the black ruffian who made Lena McMahon victim of his lust was more than merited, there is no division of sentiment . . . Lewis might better have been left to be dealt with by court and jury, inadequate though his punishment, if convicted, would be, but informal as was his exit from it, no one will say nay to it that the world is well rid of him.

Newburgh Daily Journal: The outbreak in Port Jervis is wholly without justification . . . The mob’s crime was an attack upon the cause of law and order. It remains with the criminal authorities to deal with the perpetrators of this crime as the law provides.

Questions:

  1. The Port Jervis Union is a weekly newspaper. This issue was published two days after the events and coverage is on page 3. What is the primary focus of the article? What does this suggest about local attitudes toward the event?
  • What are the attitudes toward the events in Port Jervis expressed in newspaper coverage from neighboring towns?

E. The Dangers of Lynching (Editorial). New York Times, June 4, 1892

A considerable number of persons, some of them possibly very worth citizens in a general way and others pretty certainly nothing of the kind, united on Thursday in Port Jervis to hang a negro who had committed a criminal assault upon a white girl. The feeling that actuated the mob was doubtless the same that is cited as defense for like lynching in the Southern States. It is that the penalty prescribed by law is not sufficient for the offense which is punished by lynching. It is not to be denied that negroes are much more prone to this crime than whites, and the crime itself becomes more revolting and infuriating to white men, North as well as South, when a negro is the perpetrator and a white woman the victim . . . It is unlikely that such a change in the law would diminish the number of lynchings. These are commonly committed by crowds which are animated by so furious an indignation that they would not wait for the law to take its course, even though the punishment were capital and certain, but would insist upon themselves doing their prisoner to death rather than to wait for months, or even weeks, to have him done to death by the law. This lawless temper is not commendable, and it ought to be discouraged by the law. Although it is probable that the good citizens of Port Jervis sympathized with the mob when they first learned of its murderous work, it is also probable that they are by this time ashamed of it and of their sympathy with it, and regard the lynching as more of a disgrace to the town than the crime it avenged, for which only a single brute was responsible . . . [I]t is admitted that the mob, misled by one of the rumors that spread in times of excitement, came very near hanging the wrong man, and this is a danger that always attends the unlawful execution of justice . . . [T]he lynchers by their precipitation seem to have operated a defeat of justice almost as great as if they had hanged the wrong man. The negro not only confessed his crime, but declared that he had been instigated to commit it by a white man whom he named. . . . The greater criminal, if he be a criminal at all, is likely to go scot free because the people of Port Jervis have hastily and carelessly hanged a man who, if he had been spared, might have proved a valuable witness. This is a danger of lynching that the lynchers have incurred which they themselves must confess to be a serious drawback to the success of their method of doing justice.

Questions

  1. How does the New York Times describe the people who participated in the lynching of Robert Lewis?
  2. In the opinion of the New York Times, why is the incident regrettable?
  • What evidence, if any, does the excerpt from the editorial suggest about the biases of the Times?

F. VERDICT AT PORT JERVIS, No One Held Responsible for the Lynching of Lewis. The Aspen Daily Chronicle, June 15, 1892, pg. 3

The coroner’s inquest over the lynching of Bob Lewis, the negro, terminated at 4:30 o’clock yesterday afternoon. The jury, after being out one hour, rendered the following verdict: “We find that Robert Lewis came to his death in the village of Port Jervis on June 2, 1892, by being hanged by some persons or person unknown to this jury . . . The thinking public doubts Miss McMahon’s story, as it also does Foleys . The circumstances are to conflicting. If the young woman had practically no knowledge of her surroundings from Wednesday to Thursday morning, then she must have been crazy. Not a living female would or could be hired to stay over night in Laurel Grove cemetery, as she stated she did. The stormy weather and the delicate physique of the girl would knock that story in the head. It is a fact that when Foley was arrested on the morning succeeding the assault of Miss McMahon, he trembled like a leaf and had to be supported. There is something back of the whole affair and those facts are held by Squire Mulley justice of the peace, who refuses to allow the contents of Foleys blackmailing letters addressed to Miss McMahon, to appear in print. Mr. Mulley says that the investigation of Miss McMahon and Foley will be strictly private.

Questions

  1. What was the verdict of the coroner’s inquest?
  2. What is the attitude of this newspaper to stories of the incident?
  • This article appeared in a Colorado newspaper. What does that suggest about reaction to the lynching?

G. MISS M’MAHON WRITES A LETTER, SHE EXPLAINS WHAT HER RELATIONS WERE WITH FOLEY. New York Times, June 25, 1892:

To the Editor of the Daily Union:

Sir: As my name has been so freely circulated throughout the press of the country during he past few weeks in connection with the infamous scoundrel, Foley, who has been airing his ignorance and viciousness in frequent letters from the county jail, that I wish, once for all, in justice to myself, to refute and brand as malicious falsehoods the statements this person has seen fit to utter. I first became acquainted with Foley when he assumed to be a gentleman, through the introduction of a mutual friend. He paid me attention, and I was foolish, as other young girls have been, to believe in his professions of friendship, and when I, in the indiscretion of youth, had some trifling difficulty with fond and loving parents who endeavored to give me wise counsel and advice, resolved to leave home, this inhuman monster egged me on and endeavored to carry into execution his nefarious scheme to ruin and blacken my character forever. When I discovered “the wolf in sheep’s clothing,” the true character of the parody of manhood, I at all risks and perils resolved to prosecute him as he so richly deserves. That resolution I still maintain, and I wish to assure the public that the maudlin, sentimental outpourings from this person, who, relying upon the fact that I was once his friend, has seen fit to make me the victim of extortion and blackmail, have no effect whatever on me, and it will not be my fault if he does not receive the punishment he so richly deserves. There is nothing to prevent this man writing letters, and I do not consider it either wise or discreet to pay any attention to them. I simply desire to say that his insinuations and allegations are falsehoods; that my relations with him have been those only of a friend. God only knows how much I regret that. I cannot have my reputation as an honest, chaste, and virtuous girl assailed by this villain without a protest, and I ask all right-thinking people who possess these qualities to place themselves in my position and then ask if they would act differently than I have done. The evil fortune that has overtaken me has been no fault of my own, and I trust that the light of truth will reveal this man as he truly is, the author of all my misfortune. I do not intend to express myself again to the public concerning this matter, nor pay any attention to what this man may say or do. All I desire is peace, and the consideration and fair treatment that should be extended to one who has suffered untold misery, and whose whole life has been blighted by one whose heartlessness and cruelty is only equaled by his low cunning and cowardice. LENA M’MAHON.

Questions

  1. Who is Lena McMahon?
  2. What prompted her to write this letter?
  3. What is missing from the letter?
  • What does the missing part tell us about events in Port Jervis?

H. Port Jervis Lynching Indictments. New York Times, June 30, 1892
The Grand Jury of Orange County to-day indicted nine persons in the Port Jervis lynching case. Two of these were officers of the village . . . Five of the indictments are for assault and the rest for riot.

Arrested for the Port Jervis Lynching. New York Times, July 1, 1892
Bench warrants for the arrest of five men indicted by the Grand Jury, and alleged to have been in the party who lynched the negro in this place, were issued to-day . . . The indictment is regarded as the weakest that could have been made.

Port Jervis Lynchers Not Indicted. New York Times, September 30, 1892
The Orange County Grand Jury reported to-day to Judge John J. Beattie. They said they had not indicted the Port Jervis lynchers of the colored man Robert Lewis. The reason was that the Port Jervis people had failed to give the evidence necessary to indict.

Questions

  1. What was the final resolution of the Port Jervis lynching?
  • In your opinion, what does this tell us about race and justice in New York in this period?

References      

Dray, Philip. 2022. A Lynching at Port Jervis: Race and Reckoning in the Gilded (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022).

Disciplinary Literacy, Trade Books, and Culturally Responsive Teaching in Middle Grades Social Studies

Disciplinary Literacy, Trade Books, and Culturally Responsive Teaching in Middle Grades Social Studies

Dr. Caroline Sheffield & Dr. Jeremiah Clabough

Disciplinary literacy, which emphasizes teaching students the skills and strategies used by practitioners, has become more prevalent in U.S. schools over the last 15 years. Therefore, teachers need to be deliberate as they assist students to think and write like practitioners (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008). The National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) has placed an emphasis on disciplinary literacy in its College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards (NCSS, 2013a).

            Emphasizing disciplinary literacy means social studies teachers need to give careful thought and consideration in designing learning experiences to develop their students’ historical, civic, economic, and geographic thinking skills (NCSS, 2013a). For some, this will mean redefining their classroom practices. Incorporating disciplinary literacy practices is complicated by the fact that many students are not reading on grade level.

Our intervention is centered on using trade books focusing on civil rights activists that address the racial discrimination Black Americans faced immediately after the U.S. Civil War. Students read excerpts of the trade books and additional sources as a whole class and in groups. They utilized these texts to answer analysis prompts where they used evidence to support their arguments. In this article, we share both our intervention and the successes from the project.

Culturally responsive teaching

The demographics in U.S. public schools have dramatically changed in the 21st century. White majorities in schools have given way to student populations that are more diverse. This is due in part to immigration patterns to the United States. With the changing demographics in the United States, social studies teachers need to reconsider how they design classroom instruction. One approach is to incorporate culturally responsive teaching, which is defined by Geneva Gay (2000) as “using the cultural knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference, and performance styles of ethnically diverse student to make learning encounters more relevant to and effective for them” (pg. 29). Additionally, culturally responsive teaching emphasizes the need for high expectations and academic achievement for culturally diverse students, which reflects the empowered school culture described by Banks (2019). 

Gay (2000) calls for teachers to scaffold and connect ethnically and culturally diverse students with the curriculum of the varied academic subjects. Doing so helps teachers to achieve the transformative approach to multicultural education described by Banks (2019). In the transformative approach, “the structure of the curriculum is changed to enable students to view concepts, issues, events, and themes from the perspective of diverse ethnic and cultural groups” (Banks, 2019, p. 64). If social studies teachers are to move beyond the additive and contributions approaches to multicultural education, it is necessary to consider how to incorporate the experiences and viewpoints of minorities beyond a single month in the year (King & Brown, 2014). In the social studies, this would entail using a variety of resources to authentically represent different groups’ values and perspectives throughout the curriculum. Texts that reflect students’ cultures act as mirrors. This allows students to see themselves in their U.S. history curriculum (Bishop, 1990).

There are several key components of culturally responsive teaching for social studies teachers to consider. Effective instruction in the social studies includes primary and secondary sources that allow students to analyze different groups’ perspectives and beliefs about historical and contemporary issues. Doing so provides students with the information to develop a nuanced understanding of an issue and helps to prepare them to work with people from different backgrounds in our pluralistic democratic society (Banks, 2019; Gay, 1994). By focusing on their culture through reading assignments, students can also analyze and critique historical and contemporary power structures in U.S. society and thus equip them with the knowledge to take civic action to address social, cultural, economic, and political inequities (Ochoa-Becker, 1996). One of the approaches to addressing ethnic and cultural diversity in the classroom identified by Gay (2000) is the use of trade books as instructional tools.

Using trade books in the social studies

            The term trade book refers to books, other than textbooks, that are available in retail establishments. Trade books include informational texts, picture books, and graphic novels (McGowan & Guzzetti, 1991). Not only are trade books more engaging than the typical social studies textbook, but they are also better written (Palmer & Stewart, 1997). Trade books highlight individuals and events frequently excluded from traditional textbooks (Chick, 2008). Trade books are not shallow in content and difficult to read (Berkeley et al., 2016; Tracy, 2003).

Trade books enable teachers to focus on a specific individual or event in depth. Diverse perspectives can be accessed by using several trade books in a curated text set about a specific event or time (Palmer & Stewart, 1997). The diversity of available trade books, in content, format, and readability, offers teachers an opportunity to select texts that best match their students’ reading and learning needs (Liang, 2002; Saul & Dieckman, 2005).

For social studies teachers, trade books offer students a chance to step into a new time or place (Beck & McKeown, 1991) to meet lesser-known historical figures and make emotional connections to the events depicted (Chisholm et al., 2017). It is through this emotional connection that trade books can be used as tools to develop students’ historical empathy skills, which is the effort to better understand historical figures, their actions, decisions, and lived experiences (Endacott & Brooks, 2013). Trade books also offer social studies teachers a way to teach disciplinary literacy by requiring students to analyze for perspective, bias, and purpose (Shanahan & Shanahan 2008).

            As mentioned previously, in culturally responsive pedagogy, teachers employ varied sources that celebrate the history and lived experiences of the culturally diverse students in the classroom. Trade books are an excellent way to do this. For students of color, historical figures who look like them are often portrayed as victims, with little agency and impact on U.S. history (King, 2020). This is not the mirror we want our students to see. To counter this image, teachers should use texts that present people of color impacting their world. This is the framework we utilized to design our study.

Project background and setting

We designed a year-long project for the 2021-2022 academic year in which a sixth-grade teacher would use trade books to thematically teach the concept of civil rights in the United States from Reconstruction to the present. We envisioned thematic teaching to be the examination of a specific concept, in this case civil rights, while still teaching U.S. history chronologically. Thus, the thematic teaching approach was embedded into the existing content taught in the grade level. We chose to focus on the civil rights theme because we wanted students to recognize that the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s did not exist in a vacuum. There were events, individuals, and groups who strove for civil rights long before Dr. King.

We determined that trade books would be an effective way to address this theme, as there are books written for young people that address all of the eras of U.S. history. Many of them highlight the struggles and achievements of culturally diverse individuals. To identify high quality trade books aligned with the sixth-grade curriculum and the civil rights theme, we first referred to the NCSS Notable Trade Book lists. All trade books were read, evaluated with regard to both project goals and text quality, and were agreed upon by the two researchers and the teacher.

The thematic teaching through our project was conducted at the Academy (a pseudonym), a new public charter school located in a medium-size city in the Southern United States. At the time of this project, there is only a sixth-grade class of 100 students at the time of our project. The Academy’s mission statement is clearly aligned with the principles of culturally responsive teaching. The school mission is socially justice oriented, seeking to empower their students to be agents of change.

Black students represent 93% of the Academy’s sixth grade class. The remaining 7% include students who identify as Latinx, white, and Asian. The social studies teacher, Ms. Edwards (a pseudonym), identifies as a white female and has more than ten years of experience teaching social studies in both middle school and high school settings. We should acknowledge that both researchers identify as white, one a white male and the other a white female.

            The learning activities were co-constructed with the participating teacher. The three of us crafted an instructional plan that was both reflective of content that addressed the state standards, incorporated the selected trade book, reflected both the school’s mission, and the teacher’s understanding of the students’ learning needs. We helped the teacher monitor student work and aided with instruction, when requested. Based on the fact that the students’ completed work when we were present did not greatly differ from their work when we were not in the classroom, we posit that our participation in class instruction had little impact on the students’ performance.

Intervention

This paper explores the results of the first two eras addressed in curriculum: Reconstruction and the Progressive Era. The trade books chosen for these units included Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s (2019) Dark Sky Rising: Reconstruction and the Dawn of Jim Crow and Walter Dean Myers and Bonnie Christensen’s (2008) Ida B. Wells: Let the Truth Be Told. Dark Sky Rising, a non-fiction chapter book, is written for the young adolescent reader and contains numerous primary sources embedded into the narrative. It explores the rise and fall of African American civil liberties during the Reconstruction era. Ida B. Wells: Let the Truth Be Told (Myers & Christensen, 2008) is a 2009 NCSS Notable Trade Book. It is a picture biography of Ida B. Wells’s life and includes her childhood, education, work as a journalist and suffragette, as well as her efforts fighting the lynching of Black Americans.

We used the trade books as anchor texts in the two units. In the Reconstruction unit, Dark Sky Rising (Gates, Jr., 2019). was used to explore literacy tests, poll tax, Plessy v. Ferguson, and Jim Crow segregation laws designed to keep African Americans second-class citizens in the latter 1800s. During the second unit, students read the trade book Ida B. Wells (Myers & Christensen, 2008) and watched videos about Wells to examine how violence was used as a tool to maintain white hegemony in the South.

Excerpts from Dark Sky Rising (Gates Jr., 2019) were used due to the book’s length. A whole class read-aloud strategy was used for both Dark Sky Rising (Gates Jr., 2019) and Ida B. Wells (Myers & Christensen, 2008). Students also did partner readings of sections from both trade books. They worked together to complete tasks that required them to synthesize information found in the trade books to explain how policies were created to disenfranchise African Americans and how violence was used to maintain these social inequalities.

Findings

There was evidence that two years’ worth of disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the students’ literacy skills. It was apparent in the interactions between the teacher and students that there was also a discrepancy between expectations in the middle school and the elementary school. Students were initially resistant to reading informational texts, synthesizing information, and writing to convey their understanding. Over the course of the year, the students’ resistance was reduced, and their work reflected improved literacy skills.

It was clear that they were not used to completing tasks like the ones assigned. Their written responses were short and rarely in complete sentences (see Figure 1):

Figure 1: Student Example 1, Impact of Plessy vs. Ferguson

Despite the brevity of the students’ answers, the majority of students’ responses were correct, indicating that they were able to successfully read the trade books and articulate responses to questions focusing on the obstacles African Americans faced.

There were encouraging signs from the first two handouts that with simple modeling from the teacher and researchers, some of the students included references from the trade book and primary sources to support their arguments. Students would add the page number where they found their answers to the questions (See Figure 2):

Figure 2: Student Example 2, Impact of Poll Taxes and Literacy Tests

By the end of the first two units, almost all students were consistently using evidence from sources to support their arguments, and they were doing so in complete sentences. Additionally, students made subtle thematic arguments regarding how different civil rights activists worked to address racial discrimination.

One other item of note was that in addition to strengthening students’ disciplinary literacy and historical thinking skills, they also started to discuss historical figures in three dimensional terms. Often, middle school students see historical figures as dead characters who lacked hopes and dreams (Clabough et al., 2017). These students started talking about the historical figures, Frederick Douglass from the first project and Ida B. Wells from the second project, in three dimensional terms in the second unit’s summative assessment. That assignment tasked students with drawing a Janus figure for Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells while also answering questions about these two individuals’ backgrounds and advocacies. The trade books and resources selected through the first two units were designed to highlight how and why both historical figures advocated for civil rights.

The students’ writing showed tremendous progress within the course of a month. Most were writing in complete sentences by the end of the Janus figure activity (See Figure 3):

Figure 3: Student Example 3, Janus Figure Assessment

 The majority of the students cited evidence at the end of the sentences from the trade books and the resources used. The students consistently wrote about Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells in three dimensional terms by capturing events in their childhood and family life, as well as their values and beliefs about civil rights issues.

Thematic vs. chronological teaching

            When social studies teachers talk about thematic teaching, they often speak of a dichotomy between chronological instruction and thematic instruction (Turan, 2020). Our work in this project suggests a different approach, one where teachers do not have to sacrifice chronological teaching to embrace thematic instruction. The units highlighted in this project were taught in a chronological order. However, they both included a focus on the struggle for African American civil rights, using the selected trade books as anchor texts. As demonstrated in their Janus figures, the students were able to make thematic connections between the two individuals. The theme was not diluted by teaching the units chronologically, and the chronology of the content was not lost in examining a theme. This project demonstrates that, at least in thematic teaching, you can have your cake and eat it too.

Trade books in middle grades social studies

            Social studies education has long embraced using trade books as instructional tools. There are quite a few articles describing the potential benefits of using trade books in the middle grades social studies class (Clabough & Sheffield, 2022; Wilkins et al., 2008). However, there is little research within the last twenty years that outlines how these potential benefits play out in the middle school classroom.

We found in our work at the Academy that using the trade books was an effective method to engage students in disciplinary literacy. The students demonstrated the ability to gather information from sources and draw informed and supported conclusions. They also began to employ historical empathy, a highly complex skill, with regard to the African American leaders studied in the Reconstruction and Progressive Era units. The results from this project indicate that the articles extolling the potential benefits of trade books in the social studies classroom were well-founded.

Culturally responsive trade books in social studies

Students need opportunities to explore their culture in meaningful ways (Gay, 2000). The exploration of culturally responsive trade books offers students a way to empathize with varied groups’ lived experiences, which is also an important aspect of historical empathy (Endacott & Brooks, 2013). Additionally, drawing on trade books that address diverse cultures helps to cultivate an inclusive learning environment that values all students.

The sixth-grade students were actively engaged in our project through class discussions during read alouds and group work analyzing trade books and supplementary sources. The content being explored focused on African Americans’ lived experiences with racial discrimination. Students were able to see how historical figures analyzed public policies and took civic action, thus demonstrating for the students the practical necessity of being able to complete complex reading tasks. Finally, students gained the skills needed as future democratic citizens to take civic action as change agents to address social injustices (NCSS, 2013b).

Conclusion

            During our time with the students at the Academy, the importance of starting small with building students’ disciplinary literacy skills and giving them space to grow became increasingly obvious. Within a month, the students went from writing sentence fragment responses in the first two tasks to consistently articulating their answers in complete sentences with references to support their arguments. This transformation was accomplished from support and modeling by the teacher and researchers. The exploration of culturally responsive trade books also allowed the students’ historical empathy skills to be strengthened as they could articulate historical figures’ values, beliefs, and advocacies. Social studies teachers need to strive for students to engage in disciplinary literacy in order to examine the experiences and achievements of marginalized groups and to explore complex topics within the U.S. history curriculum. Avoid the assumption that just because students are not reading on grade level, or struggle with writing, that they cannot engage in historical analysis. The students’ growth and engagement with the content that we observed in the first month of school suggests that with the right support, students can successfully grapple with complex historical content.

References

Banks, J. (2019). An introduction to multicultural education (6th ed.). Pearson.

Beck, I. L., & McKeown, M.G. (1991). Research directions: Social studies texts are hard to understanding: Mediating some of the difficulties. Language Arts, 68(6), 482-490.

Berkeley, S., King-Sears, M.E., Vilbas, J., & Conklin, S. (2016). Textbook characteristics that support or thwart comprehension: The current state of social studies texts. Reading and Writing Quarterly, 32(3), 247-272.

Bishop, R.S. (1990). Windows and mirrors: Children’s books and parallel cultures. In K. Holmes (Ed.), Perspectives on teaching and assessing language arts (pp. 83-92). Illinois Association of Teachers of English.

Chick, K.A. (2008). Teaching women’s history through literature: Standards-based lesson plans for grades K-12. NCSS.

Chisholm, J.S., Shelton, A.L., & Sheffield, C.C. (2017). Mediating emotive empathy with informational text: Three students’ think-aloud protocols of Gettysburg: The Graphic Novel. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 61(3), 289-298.

Clabough, J., & Sheffield, C. (2022). An unspeakable act: Disciplinary literacy, racial literacy, and the Tulsa Race Massacre. Research Issues in Contemporary Education, 7(3), 67-103.

Clabough, J., Turner, T., & Carano, K. (2017). When the lion roars everyone listens: Scary good middle school social studies. Association for Middle Level Education.

Endacott, J., & Brooks, S. (2013). An updated theoretical practical model for promoting historical empathy. Social Studies Research and Practice, 8(1), 41-58.

Gates Jr., H.L. (2019). Dark sky rising: Reconstruction and the dawn of Jim Crow. Scholastic Focus.

Gay, G. (1994). At the essence of learning: Multicultural education. Kappa Delta Pi.

Gay, G. (2000). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice. Teachers College Press.

King, L.J. (2020). Black history is not American history: Toward a framework of Black historical consciousness. Social Education, 84(6), 335-341.

King, L.J., & Brown, K. (2014). Once a year to be black: Fighting against typical Black History Month Pedagogies. The Negro Educational Review, 65(1-4), 23-43.

Liang, L.A. (2002). On the shelves of the local library: High-interest, easy reading trade books for struggling middle and high school readers. Preventing School Failure, 46(4), 183-188.

McGowan, T., & Guzzetti, B. (1991). Promoting social studies understanding through literature-based instruction. The Social Studies, 82(1), 16.

Myers, W.D., & Christensen, B. (2008). Ida B. Wells: Let the truth be told. Amistad.

NCSS. (2013a). The College, Career, and Civic Life Framework for Social Studies State Standards: Guidance for enhancing the rigor of K-12 civics, economics, geography, and history. Author.

NCSS. (2013b). Revitalizing civic learning in our schools. Retrieved from https://www.socialstudies.org/position-statements/revitalizing-civic-learning-our-schools

Ochoa-Becker, A. (1996). Building a rationale for issues centered education. In R. Evans & D.W. Saxe (Eds.), Handbook on teaching social issues (pp. 6–13). NCSS.

Palmer, R.G., & Stewart, R.A. (1997). Nonfiction trade books in content area instruction: Realities and potential. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 40(8), 630-641.

Saul, E.W., & Dieckman, D. (2005). Choosing and using information trade books. Theory and Research into Practice, 40(4), 502-513.

Shanahan, T., & Shanahan, C. (2008). Teaching disciplinary literacy to adolescents: Rethinking content-area literacy. Harvard Educational Review, 78(1), 40-59.

Tracy, J. (2003). Racing through history. Journal of Education, 184(2), 63-68.

Turan, B. (2020). Thematic vs. chronological history teaching debate: A social media research. Journal of Education and Learning, 9(1), 205-216.

Wilkins, K.H., Sheffield, C.C., Ford, M.B. & Cruz, B.C. (2008). Images of struggle and triumph: Using picture books to teach about the civil rights movement in the secondary classroom. Social Education, 72(4), 177-180.

50 Years Ago, “Anti-Woke” Crusaders Came for My Grandfather

50 Years Ago, “Anti-Woke” Crusaders Came for My Grandfather

Max Jacobs

Reprinted from History News Network

On April 22nd, 2022, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed House Bill 7 (popularly called the “Stop WOKE” Act). Christopher Rufo then took to the podium. After praising the Governor and the bill, Rufo denounced Critical Race Theory (CRT) in schools on three points: CRT segregates students based on race, teaches white heterosexual males that they are fundamentally oppressive, and paints America as a place where racial minorities have no possibility of success. 

While the bogeyman of CRT is a new iteration, Rufo’s objections fit into the long history of the politics of American education. Like his predecessors, Rufo misrepresents ideas critical of conservative hegemony in order to maintain it. “I am quite intentionally,” Rufo tweeted, “redefining what ‘critical race theory’ means in the public mind, expanding it as a catchall for the new orthodoxy. People won’t read Derrick Bell, but when their kid is labeled an ‘oppressor’ in first grade, that’s now CRT.”  But if the public does read Bell, they will see the fallacious humbug Rufo has concocted. “America offers something real for black people,” Bell writes in Silent Covenants, “…the pragmatic approach that we must follow is simply to take a hard-eyed view of racism as it is, and of our subordinate role in it. We must realize with our slave forebears that the struggle for freedom is, at bottom, a manifestation of our humanity that survives and grows stronger through resistance to oppression even if we never overcome that oppression.” Rufo’s deliberate obfuscation of CRT furthers the American lost cause of white resentment. Attaching the politics of education to the politics of whiteness places Rufo’s actions within a longer historical pattern.

In 1972, Search for Freedom: America and Its People came up for review at a public hearing in Texas for statewide textbook adoption. Noted Texan conservatives Mel and Norma Gabler derided the fifth-grade social studies text for several reasons. First, they alleged, it questioned American values and patriotism. Second, it encouraged civil disobedience. Third, it championed Robin Hood economics (taxing the rich and giving to the poor). Fourth, it committed blasphemy for comparing the ideas of Thoreau, Gandhi, and King with those attributed to Jesus in the Gospels. Fifth, it glorified Andy Warhol and, worst of all, only mentioned George Washington in passing but devoted six-and-a-half pages to Marilyn Monroe. After the hearing, the Texas legislators agreed with the Gablers’ objections and effectively banned the textbook from Texas classrooms. Because of Texas’s outsized role in textbook adoption, the textbook did not make it into any other classrooms.

            William Jay Jacobs, my grandfather, wrote the book. My personal connection to this history helps me see how Rufo carries the Gablers’ legacy into the twenty-first century. Acting as guardians of the American republic, Rufo and the Gablers turn complex ideas into soundbites and use those soundbites to make claims about radical indoctrination in schools. They portray this indoctrination as so dangerous that censorship is the only possible solution. The Gablers and Rufo, in their way, share Plato’s conviction that “the young are not able to distinguish what is and what is not…for which reason, maybe, we should do our utmost that the first stories that they hear should be composed as to bring the fairest lessons of virtue to their ears.” Should any story question or contradict the conservative virtues the Gablers and Rufo hold so dear, “it becomes [their] task, then, it seems, if [they] are able, to select which and what kind of natures are suited for the guardianship of a state.”

In a modern democracy, though, which “lessons of virtue” and who “select[s] which and what kind of natures” should be taught to the young are open for public debate. The Gablers and Rufo have therefore worked to manipulate ideas, and how the public perceives those ideas, to justify both conservative curricula and their roles as legitimate guardians of the common-sense virtures of the American republic.  

After the 1972 Search for Freedom hearings, as the right questioned the left’s patriotism and labeled any dissent as anti-American, the Gablers took to the press, seeding sensational soundbites. Headlines shouted: “The Sexy Textbook!” and “More MM than GW!” Mel and Norma then headed to “The Phil Donahue Show” and “60 Minutes” with my grandfather’s textbook in hand. Proclaiming themselves as neutral textbook evaluators, they held the book up to the screen and claimed that my grandfather had swapped Marilyn Monroe for Martha Washington as mother of our country. But as my grandfather wrote in a retort, “‘Marilyn’ made for a good laugh. Yet what better contemporary symbol have we of the potential for barrenness in the American dream when, stripped of its inherent idealism, it is reduced to a mindless groping for money and fame? The Marilyn Monroe sketch raised questions for young readers about mass “spectatorism” and the commercial packaging of human vulnerabilities. It illustrated that not every story beginning with “Once upon a time” necessarily will end with the hero (or heroine) living ‘happily ever after.’”

Rather than juxtaposing the moral of my grandfather’s story with their objection, the Gablers simply skipped over my grandfather’s critical rendition of the American dream and turned it instead into made-for-TV moral panic. They used live television to warn the American public that dangerous ideas were in their textbooks. The Gablers posture—as common-sense Americans shocked by outrageous lessons—spoke to conservative Americans and encouraged them to join their effort to prevent subversive ideas from entering classrooms.

Before Rufo spoke on the podium with DeSantis, he began his crusade on Fox News with Tucker Carlson. On live television, Rufo claimed that CRT “has pervaded every institution in the federal government.” He further proclaimed, “I’ve discovered… that critical race theory has become in essence the default ideology of the federal bureaucracy and is now being weaponized against the American people.” With a captivated, frown-eyed Carlson watching, Rufo explicated findings from three “investigations” that purported to “show the kind of depth of this critical race theory occult indoctrination and the danger and destruction it can wreak.” First, he presented snippets from a seminar led by Howard Ross, who asked treasury department employees “to accept their white privilege…and accept all of the baggage that comes with this reducible essence of whiteness.” Second, Rufo described a weekly seminar on intersectionality held by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which aimed “to determine whether you are an oppressor or oppressed.” Third, Rufo detailed a “three-day re-education camp,” sponsored by the Sandia National Laboratories, to “deconstruct their white male culture and actually force them to write letters of apology to women and people of color.”

Rufo ended his diatribe with a call to action: “conservatives need to wake up that this is an existential threat to the United States…I call on the president to immediately issue this executive order and stamp out this destructive divisive pseudoscientific ideology at its root.” With his hyperbolic language, his tying CRT to anything that criticized the power of white American males, and his call for conservatives to “wake up” to defeat an “existential threat,” Rufo put his telegraphed approach to work.

The Carlson interview aired on the first of September; by the 4th a memo was sent by the Trump administration stating, “…according to press reports, employees across the Executive Branch have been required to attend trainings where they are told that ‘virtually all White people contribute to racism or where they are required to say that they ‘benefit from racism’.”

Extracting CRT from the halls of academia and claiming to find its pernicious presence across all federal agencies, Rufo and Carlson brewed moral panic to transform CRT into an existential bogeyman who was coming to destroy white America.

In both cases, the Gablers and Rufo used television to gain support for their cause. They turned critical ideas of American society into a demon that must be slayed. By inflating distant employee training sessions and fifth-grade social studies textbooks into a vast anti-white, anti-American conspiracy, they encouraged viewers to see schools as a nearby battle front, they could, and must, fight on.

In an article titled “Ideological Book Banning is Rampant Nationally,” published in the Washington Post on October 16th, 1983, Alison Muscatine reported the following: “‘Our children are totally controlled,’ said Norma Gabler, displaying a social studies textbook that devotes six pages to Marilyn Monroe but that makes only three references to George Washington. ‘Can you imagine a sex symbol being given more time than the father of our country? I don’t think it’s fair that our children be subjected to this kind of information. They are being totally indoctrinated to one philosophy.’”

To try to fight the alleged indoctrination, the Gablers created the Educational Research Analysts—an explicitly Christian conservative organization–to review, revise, and censor any textbook that ran counter to their vision of what American children should be taught. In their attempt to guard the American child from subversive stories, the Gablers claimed children were being “totally indoctrinated to one philosophy.” Their censorious actions, however, did more to indoctrinate American children to one way of seeing the world than did my grandfather’s parable on Marilyn Monroe. Citing indoctrination, the Gablers justified their censorship to preserve their version of America as the only legitimate story American children should read.   

Although Rufo himself has not censored textbooks, his actions led to legislation that did. The Florida Department of Education published a press release labeled “Florida Rejects Publishers’ Attempts to Indoctrinate Students.” In 5,895 pages, the department details two reasons for rejecting 41 percent of the textbooks that were reviewed. The textbooks either followed Common Core Standards (which the Florida Department of Education rejects), or the textbooks included CRT (defined, of course, in Rufo’s expansive terms). Like the Gablers, the Florida textbook evaluators assume controversial ideas in a text will indoctrinate the children reading them. Again, the Gablers and Rufo posture as guardians standing against a radical activist agenda, not as censors. They both throw their hands up, sit, and watch as other citizens act upon their calls to censor ideas. And when others call them censorious zealots, they simply dodge the charges by claiming they themselves did not censor ideas, even though their actions clearly encouraged others to do so.

In an exposé on the Gablers, Mel details how they understand this guardianship. “‘When they eliminate good books and put garbage in, they are the censors,’ he said. ‘All we do is point it out’.” Because they only reported the textbooks to the Texas Education Agency, the Gablers did not see themselves as censors. Semantically, they may be right. Practically, however, the Gablers’ actions effectively “canceled” certain ideas. Forget merit; for the Gablers, an idea should only be taught if it fits into an understanding of “good books” that happens to coincide with their conservative worldview. The good books argument is akin to the argument Plato’s Socrates makes in the Republic. Namely, those who have the power and guard the republic are the rightful persons to decide which stories and thereby which virtues the future guardians should learn. The problem is, however, neither the Gablers nor any other single entity in a modern democratic state has the sole right to decide what the next generation ought to know.

On Twitter, Rufo evoked this exact line of reasoning. He wrote, “there are no ‘book bans’ in America. Authors have a First Amendment right to publish whatever they want, but public libraries and schools are not obligated to subsidize them. Voters get to decide which texts—and ultimately, which values—public institutions transmit to children.” Rufo is right, to a point. The voters do make those decisions but do so, presumably, by understanding good faith arguments on both sides of an issue. But Rufo’s sensationalized, bad faith reporting—which turned CRT into something it is wholly not—prevents voters, especially children, from seeing both sides of the issue and forming their own opinion. Positioning himself as defender of America, Rufo’s reporting turns progressive ideas into anti-American rhetoric to excite the conservative base to enact censorship.

Let me be clear, the difference between the Gablers and Rufo is one of degree, not kind. The Gablers aimed at textbooks while Rufo aims at a broad and diffuse set of ideas and practices that are now dubbed “wokeness.” The Gablers raised hell at textbook adoption meetings while Rufo raises hell on the internet. Both position themselves as protectors against supposedly subversive ideas. Both (along with Plato), however, fall into the same faulty assumption. Critical or not, ideas do not simply transmit to children. Children, like adults, can reason. Thus, children–not just books, not just ideas–shape how they understand the world they live in. 

In his response editorial, my grandfather leaves us with a prescient insight: “Meanwhile, it’s comforting to know that the issue of book banning continues to generate controversy. It means that at least someone, somewhere, still takes the written word seriously as a means of influencing the minds of young people.”

Holocaust Museum & Center for Tolerance and Education – Rockland Community College

Holocaust Museum & Center for Tolerance and Education

Rockland Community College

You can find the Holocaust Museum and Center for Tolerance and Education at Rockland Community College through this link.

Legislation (A.472C /S.121B) will help ensure that New York schools are properly educating students on the Holocaust. The legislation directs the New York State Education Department to determine whether school districts across the state have met education requirements on instruction of the Holocaust, which have been required by law since 1994.It will also require NYSED to identify how non-compliant schools will close gaps in knowledge of the Holocaust in schools.

The Holocaust Museum & Center for Tolerance and Education is proud to offer a multitude of programs for Elementary School, Middle School and High School audiences as well as Professional Development for Faculty. We teach on topics ranging from the Holocaust to Genocide Studies, to Tolerance and Diversity. We customize our programs to suit the needs of your students, staff, and faculty. Our Education Department works with you to produce events and resources that will impact your school for years to come. We will help your school achieve the mandates by our New York Governor on Holocaust Education.

Program offerings

Moral courage professional development

Led by our Director of Education, teacher training seminars provide introductory guidance and resources on best practices for teaching the Holocaust and Genocide (Grades 6-12) and the importance of Tolerance and Diversity (Grades K-5). We also offer more in-depth seminars for teachers who wish to explore new approaches and materials to support Holocaust and Genocide education for their students.

Anti-bias & sensitivity training

Our Anti-Bias & Sensitivity Training helps faculty and staff combat hate and intolerance personally, professionally, and publically. Our Director of Education and Historian in Residence offers customizable seminars that draw upon the history of the Holocaust to teach the lessons of tolerance, individual responsibility, and moral courage in the workplace as well as out in our communities. Please contact our Director of Education and Historian in Residence Linda Suss today to discuss how we can support the important work you do educating our community’s young people.

Better Together workshops for teachers, administration and coaches

Antisemitism and racism are two facets of the disease of hatred. All forms of oppression that target individuals based on their identity share an equally distressing aim of creating a hierarchy ranking of the value of human life. We at HMCTE know that this is a categorically false and damaging way to understand the world. In our eyes, all people share the same inherent dignity, worthiness, and rights – no matter who they are or where they come from. If we only examine one facet of hatred, be it antisemitism, racism, sexism, ablism, ageism, or any other type of discrimination, we are ignoring the intersectionality or overlapping forces of hatred. Where one type of discrimination exists, others will come to thrive, too. That’s why we know that it is our duty to stand up for all people and to work together to create a more just and inclusive society for everyone.

Holocaust education for students at the museum 

Our theme for the 2022-23 school year was “Combating Hate and Propaganda.” Together we will help young people understand the historical context of building cultures of hate through propaganda and misinformation campaigns. We will explore this topic through the history of the Holocaust and other genocides and we will apply critical thinking to how we consume media today. Programs on Moral Courage are available, as well as other topics currently under development. In order to accommodate your school’s preference on programming and dates, we are already booking for the coming school year. Whether you are interested in a tour of our permanent exhibit, the Rockland County African American history exhibit, or other educational programs, we encourage you to reach out now to ensure a meaningful visit with your students next year.

Resilience exhibit in your school

Host our traveling exhibit on Resilience during the Holocaust at your school. Students will have the opportunity to engage with a little discussed perspective of this history: one of individual choices, struggle, and hope. Through the exhibit and accompanying activities, Resilience connects the history of the Holocaust to each of us on a personal level and inspires students to consider how they, too, can become resilient and show moral courage in the face of injustice.