Critical Reflections on 1619: Educators as truthtellers about slavery in America by Rhoda Nanre Nafziger

Four hundred years ago last August, the first ship bringing enslaved African people landed on the shores of the colony of Virginia. It was a critical juncture in the historical timeline of the land that was to become the United States of America (Hannah-Jones, 2019). For four centuries, slavery has been part of the dark side of the history of America, a tremor that reverberates through every sphere of society, a troubled legacy that haunts our schools and public institutions till this very day. Despite this, the history of slavery is sparsely brushed over in history education in schools (Heim, 2018; SLPC, 2018), and its relegation as a topic of less relevance may be reinforcing racism and preventing the necessary processes needed to heal the very wounds that slavery created.

In August 2019, the New York Times journalist Nicole Hannah Jones (2019), featured a special issue on slavery, accompanied by online content and a podcast, called the 1619 Project (NYT, 2019). It documents America’s sordid history of slavery, and how the institution of slavery, and those it subjugated, laid the foundation of what America is today. The commemoration of the first enslaved peoples being brought to American shores should be a time for educators to pause with their students and reflect on how slavery has impacted our society, and for education administrators and policymakers to consider how slavery’s legacy has impacted education.

In 2018, the Southern Poverty Leadership Center (2018) released a stunning report on young Americans’ knowledge of the history of slavery in the United States. The study found that only 8% of high school seniors could identify slavery as a cause of the civil war and, two-thirds of the students did not know a constitutional amendment was needed to end slavery.  The study also found that while many teachers wanted to teach slavery, they found the resources available to them inadequate and that state standards failed to set high expectations for the teaching of slavery. It highlights a glaring deficiency in history education in addressing the causes, reality and implication of the slave trade in America.

In this article, I argue that the legacy of slavery and racism in education make imperative the need for teaching the history of slavery through the framework of Critical Race Theory in K-12 school in the United States. I highlight some of the challenges educators face in teaching about slavery and share some resources for educators and parents to use in teaching the ‘hard history’ of slavery to children (SLPC, 2018).

The legacy of slavery and race in education

Inequalities in American education surrounding race have been extensively documented (Kozol, 1992, 2005; Darling-Hammond, 2007). The legacy of slavery is unquestionably evident in the relentless disparities in access to quality education which disproportionately affects descendants of enslaved Africans (Bertocci and Dimico, 2012; Reece & O’Connell, 2016).  While the role of racism in educational disparities are recognized (Ladson-Billings, 2005; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 2016; Leonardo, 2013), direct connections to slavery are rarely acknowledged. However, recent research shows how slavery and inequality in education are invariably linked (Bertocci and Dimico, 2012, 2014).

Teaching about slavery continues to be a difficult terrain for educators (Sleeter, 1993; Brown 2014). Disturbing revelations of racist lessons on slavery have highlighted the need for increased scrutiny of the way slavery is being taught in classrooms today (Heim, 2018). In a series in the Washington Post, Joe Heim highlights how teaching about slavery has been a ‘failed proposition’ in American schools as teachers feel ill-prepared and textbooks provide inadequate materials. However, the failure to teach this pertinent history highlights a deeper problem of providing culturally relevant education to our children.

Systematic inequality in schools can be reinforced by teachers who maintain dominant racial ideologies through the way they address issues in the classroom. (Picower, 2009). In a reflection on teaching African American culture and history in early childhood classrooms, Boutte and Stickland (2008) noted that many white teachers continue to view children through ‘the lens of European American children’ (p. 131) and thus fail to see the value of African American culture. They noted that if teachers fail to counter the status quo in classrooms, they will inevitably be reinforcing invisible or negative imagery of people from the African Diaspora (Boutte & Sitckland, 2008, p. 136). Leonardo and Hunter (2007) found that racist ideologies abound in the classroom and produce bias and assumptions embedded in unjust social relations which are the products of the legacy of slavery.

Writers of history textbooks have often grappled with how to adapt the history of the world for the audience of children (Zembylas & Kambani, 2012). However, if history education remains silent on the hard issues such as slavery and the genocide of the indigenous peoples in the Americas, how will children truly understand that the inequalities of today are rooted in the injustices of our past? In silencing the truth about slavery, we are committing an injustice against our students and ourselves.

By refusing to deal with the dark sides of history, we are telling half-truths and ill preparing students for critical perspectives in their futures where they have the ability to carry out investigations to find their own truths.

The teaching about slavery has gone so terribly wrong in so many ways, that it is time that we reflect on a revised perspective on teaching slavery. Perhaps, if we can teach the hardest parts of our past using critical pedagogies, it will open a pathway for delving into race in our present day. Teaching children about slavery is an important way for them to understand the history of race and racial relations. It is important to move beyond specific heroes, heroines and events, for example focusing on the underground railroad and the end of slavery rather than the stories of enslaved persons. While difficult, we cannot ignore the dark history of slavery and fast forward to the civil rights movement and the March on Washington. There is often an attempt to whitewash or sugarcoat history to make it a more palatable pill to swallow (Peterson, 2008).  It is important to for teachers to move past the difficulties of discussing a painful past, by turning it into an opportunity for constructive dialogue about implications for the present and the future.

How can we teach slavery?

In her pioneering work on the use of Critical Race Theory in education, Gloria Ladson-Billings gives guidance on the need to analyze how racism plays out in education policy and practice.  The rich work of Critical Race Theorists in education (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 2016; Solórzano and Yosso, 2001) provides a useful framework to understand the place of slavery in history education in K-12 education.  The practice of counter-storytelling (Soloranzo and Yosso, 2002) provides alternative approaches for teaching history through the use of stories, such as highlighting the stories of enslaved persons, not smoothing over or denying their realities or giving praise to selected heroes alone. Critical Race Theory and its corresponding Critical Race Pedagogy (Lynn, 1999) suggest the use of emancipatory pedagogies that unsettle the acceptance of racism in education and working to disrupt its manifestations in the classroom and beyond.

Rather than shy away from teaching the hard history of racism, embracing the truths about history can serve as a critical teaching tool that enables students to understand the complexities of racism and race relations in the United States and beyond. There is an increasingly vast array of teaching tools and websites offering ways to teach difficult history. Websites such as Teaching Tolerance and Facing History Facing Ourselves offer useful classroom materials and guides for teachers to teach about slavery and African American history using critical perspectives and pedagogy.

Conclusion: Teachers as critical truthtellers

Teaching the hard truth about slavery enables teachers and students to investigate the roots of inequalities in our society and can be a pathway for them to address these problems (Heim, 2018). We can learn how to teach about slavery from Black parents who have racially socialized their children to cope with the challenges of living in a racialized society. We can also learn from the rich array of materials being developed by critical educators and curriculum developers, who have made it their duty to provide materials to teach the difficult topics of history. Teaching the truth about slavery opens the doors for educators to become truthtellers, and creates a climate in the classroom that allows for an investigation of past injustices to address current social problems, making room for social change.

In examining how we teach about slavery and difficult topics in history, it is important to realize that history education means different things to different people. For some, it is a history of the victor, and for others, a history of the vanquished. For European descendent Americans, the history of America may be an intriguing story of how their ancestors triumphed against the British imperialists. But for Afro descendants and Indigenous Americans, American history is a dark and daunting tale of how their ancestors were enslaved and terrorized, massacred and killed off by disease and destitution. History education must embrace the dark and troubling aspects of American history to encourage dialogue, critical thinking and inquiry by students of all ages.

At this critical juncture in American history, it is time that we integrate Critical Race theory and critical pedagogies into history education and continue to interrogate how our deeply held belief systems are directly related to our understanding of history.  Relearning history is critical to reconceptualizing what it means to be an American citizen in the age of fear and condescension. An aversion to rehashing the demons of our past may alienate us from seeking justice in our present. If we are to move forward as a just and equitable society, we must learn to open the locked closets and trunks and have honest conversations about slavery.

Resources for teaching about slavery

Teaching Hard History

https://www.splcenter.org/20180131/teaching-hard-history

Teaching Hard History – Guide for K-12 and professional development

https://www.tolerance.org/frameworks/teaching-hard-history/american-slavery

Teaching Tolerance

www.tolerance.org

Facing History, Facing Ourselves

https://www.facinghistory.org/

Slavery and the Making of America

https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/slavery/teachers/index.html

Rhoda Nanre Nafziger is an Affiliate Faculty in Education Policy Studies, the College of Education, Penn State University. Her research explores historical consciousness, identity and civic engagement in Africana youth. Her recent studies examine how children and youth in Africa and the African Diaspora understand and interpret history, as well as how history education of Black youth is a contested terrain in need of reform. Her work also examines educational reforms and how transnational and national actors collaborate to impact education policy in Africa with a focus on Nigeria.

(Bio updated on June 22, 2021).

References

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