\LET’S TEACH ABOUT SLAVERY, BUT LET’S GET IT RIGHT - Guest Post by Allan Brownfeld

BY ALLAN C.BROWNFELD —————————————————————————————————————————— On both the left and the right we have seen irresponsible partisan rhetoric about how the history of slavery is taught in our schools. Some on the left refer to slavery as America’s “original sin.” The authors of the New York Times 1619 Project argue that the American Revolution was fought in large measure to maintain slavery. This is clearly untrue since the advocates of revolution were strongest in New England, where opposition to slavery was also strongest. Some on the right seek to downplay the evils of slavery. Florida’s new standards on the teaching of black history include a statement that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit,” The idea that slavery somehow benefited its victims has come under widespread criticism. Another of the new Florida “guidelines” includes one that cites examples of“ violence perpetrated against and by African Americans after the Civil War,” arguably suggesting an equivelancy despite the overwhelming prevalence of lynchings, terror and mob violence against black Americans in those years. It was not so long ago that segregation was the law in large parts of the country. When I was in law school, interracial marriage was illegal throughout the South. I lived in Virginia where segregation was strictly enforced. I wrote a law review article about Virginia’s law against interracial marriage, a law which was favorably cited by Hitler when the Nuremburg laws were being written. It was not until 1967, in the case of Loving v. Virginia, that the Supreme Court unanimously found laws against interracial unconstitutional. Those who downplay the evils of racism in our history do the teaching of our history a disservice. Consider the experience of singer Tony Bennett, who recently died at the age of 96. It was Thanksgiving 1945 in Mannheim, Germany when Bennett was part of an occupation force in a conquered city that had been leveled by Allied bombing during World War 11. Bennett unexpectedly met a fellow student and old friend with whom he had sung together a few years earlier in a music group at their high school in New York City. They spent the day together and attended a church service. They then planned to have a Turkey dinner together with other U.S. troops. The problem was that Bennett’s old high school friend was black. A U.S. Army officer blasted the two soldiers with a hate-filled rant for being together in public. In the segregated military of the day, the two men were not allowed to socialize. The punishment for black and white soldiers associating with one another was more severe than for fraternizing with civilians in occupied Germany. In his 1998 autobiography, “The Good Life,” Bennett wrote: “I couldn’t get over the fact that they condemned us for just being friends, and especially while we served our country in wartime. There we were, just two kids happy to see each other , trying to forget for the moment the horror of the war, but for the brass it just came down to the color of our skin.” Later, Tony Bennett would march with the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma, Alabama. We misunderstand the evil of slavery if we view it as America’s “original sin,” as so many now proclaim. Sadly, it has been the way of the world until the 19th century. When the U.S. Constitution was written in 1787, slavery was legal throughout the world, and had been throughout history. The Greco-Roman world, the Old Testament, the teachings of the Apostle Paul and the Theology of the Patristic Fathers all supported the idea of slavery —-and called it a just institution. Our teaching of history, sadly, is so limited that those who proclaim that slavery is, somehow, a uniquely American evil are rarely challenged. But even a brief look at history shows that this is not the case. Slavery played an important part in almost all ancient civilizations. Most people of the ancient world regarded slavery as the natural condition of life, one which could befall anyone at any time. It had no racial component. It has existed almost universally through history among peoples of every level of material culture—-it existed among nomadic pastoralists of Asia, hunting societies of North American Indians and sea people such as the Vikings. The legal codes of Sumer provide documentary evidence that slavery existed there as early as the 4th millennium B.C. Aristotle, in “Politics” (Book 1, Chapter 5) writes: “The lower sort are by nature slaves, and it is better for them as for all inferiors that they should be under the rule of a master.” None of the Greek schools of philosophy called for the emancipation of slaves. The respected British historian of classical slavery, Moses I. Findlay, writes that, “The cities in which individual freedom reached its highest expression —-most obviously Athens—-were cities in which slavery flourished.” At the time of its cultural peak, Athens May have had 115,000 slaves to 43,000 citizens. The same is true of Ancient Rome. Plutarch notes that on a single day in the year 167 B.C., 150,000 slaves were sold in a single market. Race was not necessarily an element in slavery, even when different peoples were involved. The Romans enslaved other Caucasian peoples and some black Africans enslaved other black peoples. Racial differences became closely connected with slavery only when European colonial powers were expanding into world areas whose inhabitants were of different racial groups. Both the Old and New Testaments endorse slavery. In Leviticus (XXV: 39-55) God instructs the Children of Israel to “enslave the heathen and their progeny forever.” In the New Testament, St.Paul urges slaves to obey their masters with full hearts and without equivocation. He wrote, “Slaves, give entire obedience to your earthly masters.” St. Peter orders slaves to obey even unjust orders of their masters: “What credit is there in fortitude when you have done wrong and are beaten for it? But when you have behaved well and suffer for it, your fortitude is a fine thing in the sight of God.” If we taught history properly, it would be understood that slavery was a continuous reality in Western life throughout the entire history which preceded the American Revolution. In England, 10 per cent of the persons enumerated in the Domesday Book (A.D.1086) were slaves, and these could be put to death by their owners with impunity. During the Viking age, Norse merchant sailors sold Russian slaves in Constantinople. Venice grew to prosperity and power partly as a slave-trading republic, which took its human cargo from the Byzantine Empire and sold some of the females for harems of the Moslem world. The Italians organized joint stock companies and a highly organized slave trade. In the Colony of Cyprus they established plantations and by 1300 there were black slaves engaged in working them. By the middle of the 16th century, Lisbon, Portugal had more black slaves than whites. The complex history of slavery seems not to have interested the authors of the New York Times 1619 Project and seems to be of little interest to those designing our school curriculums, as in Florida. Slavery was not an American creation, even in colonial America. From the 1500s to the 1800s.Europeans—-from France, Great Britain, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands—-shipped 10 million slaves from Africa to the Western Hemisphere. Slavery was an extraordinary evil, as were the years of segregation which followed. Let’s teach all of our history, the negative as well as the positive. But let’s get it right! ##