Americans have an aversion to history – to stories about the past that make us uncomfortable in the present. We are especially disinclined to engage with histories that deal directly with race and racism, starting with slavery. In this opening session, we will explore the importance of confronting the most painful aspect of America’s past – slavery, and highlight ways to use the Framework for Teaching American Slavery — produced by Learning for Justice, the education arm of the Southern Poverty Law Center — to teach American slavery effectively.

Chattel slavery was not an American invention. It was a global system of involuntary servitude that American colonists and the nation’s founders embraced. At the same time, African people were not always chattel slaves. They were a free people who developed politically-sophisticated, economically-strong and culturally-rich societies on the African continent. This session looks at approaches to teaching American slavery that treat it as a global phenomenon and center the history and humanity of African people, prior to and during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.

Slavery is frequently framed as America’s original sin. It wasn’t. It was America’s origin. It was the economic engine that fueled the growth of the colonies and the birth of the new nation. This session examines the evolution of slavery during the colonial era and tackles approaches to teaching the intersection of slavery and the U.S. Constitution.

Resistance to slavery took many forms, from subtle acts of sabotage and subterfuge to outright rebellion. Teaching Black resistance poses unique challenges, but it is also essential to illuminating Black humanity. Students often ask, “If slavery was so terrible, why didn’t the enslaved resist?” The answer, of course, is that they did, constantly. This session will examine the persistence of Black resistance to the institution of slavery, focusing specifically on freedom seekers — those enslaved persons who risked their lives by attempting to escape bondage.

In a survey of high school students conducted by the Southern Poverty Law Center a few years ago, a majority of respondents failed to identify slavery as the primary cause of the Civil War. This is a legacy of Lost Cause indoctrination. This session takes an honest look at the coming of the Civil War and the role that African Americans played in their own liberation. It will also consider ways to deconstruct the Lost Cause narrative and its white supremacist legacy.

Reconstruction is usually taught as a failed experiment in multiracial democracy. It wasn’t. Reconstruction didn’t fail. Reconstruction was defeated by white southerners – former Confederates and former enslavers – who were determined to reassert control over Black labor. This session explores Reconstruction from the bottom up, shining a spotlight on one of the first communities of freed men and women – Mitchelville on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, and the ways African Americans worked to give meaning to emancipation. This session will also contextualize the myriad obstacles freed men and women faced along the way, from racial terror to disenfranchisement.