Month: February 2019

By Tanisha Ford

“For the past year or so, I’ve been tinkering with a short essay on my earliest encounters with the Ku Klux Klan and the ways in which Klan violence is intimately linked to my childhood and my earliest understandings of myself as black x girl. You see, I grew up just a 2-hour car ride from southern Indiana Klan country.

I didn’t have any plans to publish this essay. . . . it was more of a writing exercise, #wannaBauthor and all.

But the photograph of Virginia governor Ralph Northam dressed in blackface (he’s now claiming it’s not him) alongside a person wearing a Klan hood + robe pierced my spirit. The image symbolizes a long history of racial terror in the United States. So much so that I cannot ever see impersonating the Klan or dressing in blackface as  simply youthful self-expression. It’s racist. full stop.”

In the two appeals for secession from William Harris and Stephen Hale there was clearly a concerted effort to put forward two separate arguments, one that appealed to upper-class slave owners and one that appealed to lower-class southern whites.

The first appeal, the one targeted towards the upper-class, was focused mainly upon the political and economic benefits that slaves provided. The essence of this appeal is as follows: not only were slaves a source of free-labor that the southern economy relied upon but slaves had also become a source of political power with the advent of laws such as the Three-Fifths Compromise.

The second appeal is the concern of this blog post. It was an appeal that relied upon inaccurate characterizations of Republican policy and Northern views on slavery. These came on page 85 and 98 respectively, when both authors  inaccurately portrayed Republicans (and Northerners) as proponents of racial equality. The purpose of this was to play upon the fears of poor southern whites and make them believe that social, political, and economic equality would soon occur and threaten their way of life. Arguments made to convince poor southern whites reflect the importance of racial attitudes to the continuation of slavery as an institution in the South. As a result, the racial anxiety fueled support of the institution of slavery among those who would have benefited from its non-existence.

In summary, the two primary documents found in Apostles of Disunion showed that often racially charged arguments were used to increase support for the institution of slavery among poor southern whites. In a sense elites, who likely ascribed to ideas of scientific racism themselves, appealed to the racially tinged  ‘common sense’ of poor southern whites with the intent to stoke racially fueled fears that led to their support for the institution of slavery.  These two primary documents helped to make this clear.

Throughout high school I had always seen Abe Lincoln as a hero because of his fight in freeing slaves. But after reading this letter my idea of this president has completely changed. Although we talked about this in class on 2/4/19, I was still shocked to read that his main focus was just saving the Union. His words, “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that” (A. Lincoln). This clearly shows that it did not matter to him what happened to the slaves, his main focus was saving the Union and preserving its ideas. There was no focus on the thoughts, feelings, or morality of the slaves. They were still indeed seen as property, not human. After reading this I will no longer see him as a hero although he had a major role in freeing the slaves within the United States. I will simply see him as another individual that made their decision based on what would be best for themselves and the people who held the same beliefs as them.

3 Ways to Improve Education about Slavery in the U.S.

When it comes to teaching students about slavery in the United States, teachers often stumble through the topic. In the worst cases, they use poorly conceived lessons that end up inflaming students, parents and communities about a subject that is already difficult to deal with because of the inhumanity involved.

For instance, in 2018 a Bronx middle school teacher “shocked and traumatized” her social studies class when she had black students lie on the floor, then “stepped on their backs to show them what slavery felt like.”

In 2012 in Georgia, a third-grade teacher resigned after an investigation found the teacher and three others had assigned math homework with word problems about slavery, such as, “If Frederick got two beatings each day, how many beatings did he get in one week?”