Sarah Davis Family Ancestry, Slavery, and Reparation by Sarah Davis - 7th Grade Social Studies-US History ( 3-5 day unit) Final Lesson Plan
Lessons
Target Population: The target population for this lesson would be my
advanced section of my 7th Grade Social Studies Class. The general education students could
also adapt to this lesson though some of the readings are more suited to the
reading levels of students of the advanced section (they are generally reading
on grade level). This lesson could easily be adapted to upper level high school
students where there are ties to the curriculum.
Lesson
Intention/Objective: The objective of this lesson is to expose students
to the idea of legacy of both slavery and our own family ancestry. The students will be able to consider
the role of personal action taken to address the wrongs of one’s family line,
such as slaveholding. Students
will be exposed through text and film about the actual workings of the American
slave system. Also students will
consider what they feel might address or improve our country’s national
recognition of slavery by reading and debating the argument over reparations.
Assessment: Students
will write a reflective piece that could also be more in the form of an
argument if desired. The reflective piece should describe their reaction to
what actions they believe can help repair the painful legacy of slavery in the
United States, within this reflection students should consider if they support
or oppose the idea of reparations as an action to address the legacy of
slavery. They should also reflect
on what the role of apology is for those who trace their ancestry to
slaveholding.
Unit Title: Slavery’s Legacy. This does not encompass a whole
unit of student on the Trans Atlantic slave trade, it is just a slice of the
possibilities of the a unit on Slavery.
Grade Level: 7th Grade Social Studies-United States
History (beginnings-Civil War)
Subject/Topic: Family Ancestry, Slavery, and Reparation
Timeframe: 3-5 days (with a larger unit on the Transatlantic
slave trade)
Common Core Standards:
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.6 Identify aspects of a text that reveal an author’s point of
view or purpose (e.g., loaded language, inclusion or avoidance of particular
facts)
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.7 Integrate visual information (e.g., in charts, graphs,
photographs, videos, or maps) with other information in print and digital texts
Lesson 1 Aim:
What does it mean to take personal responsibility for the LEGACY of Slavery?
Warm-up/Do
Now: Thinking about our own family histories. (These could be
given to students on a small Do Now Entrance slip)
1 -One a scale of 1-5 (1 being almost nothing to 5 being a
great deal) Rate how much you know about your own family history and family
ancestors.
2- How far back can you trace your family roots?
3-Would you like to know more about you family’s history? Who
your ancestors are and where they come from? What questions do you have?
Partner
Share Out: Students will
share with a partner to explore their own family story and ideas. Partners will then share out with the
class one idea of their partner.
Whole
Group Share Out: Ask
students to consider the following question:
Imagine
you found out your family history connected to a very evil or horrible event?
How would you feel if you found out your family history had a dark secret?
Would you tell others or keep it a secret?
Chart Out
ideas: Collecting
the various reactions to this
question- Students could also brainstorm what would make a really ugly family
secret (murder, insanity, jail) Then
introduce students to review the aim and inform them the “ugly” secret is
slavery. Also review the
definition of the concept of legacy with students because we will be using this
term.
Legacy:.
Something passed down or handed down from one generation to the next, it’s what
our ancestry has left us with today. What is left or remains. (examples: National Debt, inheritance,
ethnic conflict, religious conflict)
Model/Class
Activity:
Next students will be introduced to one of the families we will
investigate. If desired, teachers
may share with them the reading on the De Wolf Family if the goal is to be more
prepared for the clip. (see attached “Shared Class Read Aloud: The DeWolf
Family” or just share with
students these facts. Imagine your family descendants were the De Wolf’s whom
were wealthy slave traders and plantation owners from Rhode Island whom are at
one point owned over 47 ships and brought over 12,000 slaves to the Americas,
and today may have over half a million descendants from these slaves currently
living today.
Activity:
Active Engagement
Clip Viewing: Students will watch Clip 1 (democracy now). They
will chart out their ideas on the film clip
comparison guide (See attached below). After clip 1 we will discuss the
four questions below.
1). How is this family directly connected to
slavery?
2). What is shocking or unsettling about this
family’s connection and the story you hear?
3). What personal emotions do the participants of
the clip share? Do you feel they are authentic?
4). What different Actions are being taken to repair
the pain of slavery by people involved?
à Shift to Clip 2 (Oprah show)
Now students will compare this story with another example media source that
explores the same idea of a slaveholding ancestor offering an apology. The students will again chart out their
ideas to the 4 questions above.
(This clip is a bit shorter but illustrates again the painfulness of
memory as well as the emotional reaction presented by participants in the
clip).
Student Share Out: Exit Reflection and Discussion: Students practice
sharing and discussion practice.
Discussion techniques are used as students share in a group discussion.
Monitored and graded by teacher. (Speaking and Listening: Part of Class Grade)
à Why might it be difficult for all
participants of these clips to share their story on national television?
à How are these two families approaching the
idea of recognizing publically their family’s direct connection to slavery in a
different way?
à Should we as a country talk more about the
past effects or legacy of slavery? Why or why not? Do you think slavery
created wounds that we still need to repair? If so how do we repair the pain.
Media Clips
Used:
Clip Comparison: DeWolfe Family and Ball Family
DeWolfe
Family Clip
(Democracy Now)
|
Ball
Family Clip
(Oprah Talkshow)
|
|
How is this family directly
connected to slavery?
|
||
What is shocking or unsettling
about this family’s connection and the story you hear?
|
||
What personal emotions do the
participants of the clip share? Do you feel they are authentic?
|
||
What different Actions are being
taken to repair the pain of slavery by people involved?
|
Class Discussion: What do you think?
à Why might it be difficult for all participants of these
clips to share their story on national television?
à How are these two families approaching the idea of
recognizing publically their family’s direct connection to slavery in a
different way?
à Should we as a country talk more about the past effects
or legacy of slavery? Why or why not? Do you think slavery created
wounds that we still need to repair? If so how do we repair the pain?
Shared Class Read Aloud: The DeWolf Family
Katrina Browne, producer/director of our documentary film, Traces of the Trade, is descended from the DeWolf family of Bristol, Rhode Island,
who were the nation’s leading slave traders.
The most important member of this family, James DeWolf
(1764-1837), was a U.S. senator and a wealthy merchant (trader) who became the most successful slave
trader in U.S. history. He was reportedly the second-richest person in the
country when he died. In the 1790s and early 1800s, DeWolf and his brothers
virtually built the economy of Bristol: many of the buildings they funded still
stand, and the stained glass windows at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church bear
DeWolf names to this day. Across the generations, their family has included state
legislators, philanthropists, writers, scholars, and Episcopal bishops and
priests.
The DeWolf family fortune was built in large part on buying and
selling human beings. Over fifty years and three generations, from 1769 to
1820, the DeWolfs brought approximately 12,000 Africans from the west coast of
Africa to auction blocks in Charleston, South Carolina and other southern U.S.
ports; to Havana, Cuba and to other ports in the Caribbean; to their own sugar
plantations in Cuba; and into their own homes. The family maintained slave
plantations in Cuba and James DeWolf invested his slave trade profits in textile (clothing) mills which
used slave-produced cotton. Today, there are as many as half a million living
descendants of the people traded as slaves by the DeWolfs.
Sources: Jay Coughtry, The Notorious Triangle: Rhode Island and the
African Slave Trade, 1700-1807 (Philadelphia: Temple Press, 1981); David Eltis,
Stephen D. Behrendt, David Richardson, and Herbert S. Klein, eds., The
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-ROM (Cambridge, 1999); George
Howe, Mount Hope: A New England Chronicle (New York: Viking Press,
1959); M.A. DeWolfe Howe, Bristol, Rhode Island: A Town Biography
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1930).
Lesson 2: Tracing the Trade
Lesson Objective: In this
lesson students will gather general background on the System of Slavery and
particular the methods of the trade.
They will use technology to design a map that illustrates the connection
between the triangular trade mentioned in the DeWolf family story. Students will work together to read
more about one aspect of the trade routes and share with the class what they
found out. The three group
readings focus on: Ghana, the Northern States, and Cuba, these are the locations
related to the DeWolf storyline.
AIM:
Tracing the Trade, how did Slavery as a Profitable Trade
System work?
Common Core Standards:
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.1
Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary
sources.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.5
Describe how a text presents information (e.g., sequentially, comparatively, causally)
Do Now/Warm-up: Brainstorm what specific areas
of the world are tied to the transatlantic slave trade. (Include on the powerpoint a world map
so students can refer to it as they brainstorm a list of locations). Students will share out their various
answers and we will plot them on the world map.
Shared Reading: Together we will read “The Slave Trade Business” As we read
the selection we can plot out some of the ideas on our world map that is
projected or students could follow along by adding to their own world
maps.
Shared Discussion Questions:
à What products do we see are involved in the trade?
à Using evidence from the text, how is it that families like the DeWolfe
were able to make large sums of money?
àUsing evidence from the text, how was the trade part of the overall
economy? What types of jobs were related to making sure the slave trade worked
well?
Optional Technology
Activity: Student
Mapmaking Activity:
This lesson could also include a student made map that they can refer to
as they continue with their team research. I was able to make an example and found the website made by
national geographic very user friendly and I would predict students would enjoy
using the site, as well as improve their basic geographic skills. The students can plot in the three
locations we are investigating: Rhode Island (Northern States), Ghana (West
Africa), and Cuba (Caribbean). The
program also allows you to connect
the points with lines, which form a triangle. A teacher could also plot the locations together with the
whole class. I have included an
example map attached to this document.
Class Activity: Locating the Trade through text study
Students
will break into three main reading teams or small groups. In their teams they
will receive one reading to focus on investigating: Ghana/Northern States/
Cuba. The lower level readers would receive the Cuba reading because it is
shorter and will be easier for them to annotate. All students
will be given the task of annotating their text and pulling out evidence to
support the aim of understanding more about how the trade actually worked.
Share Out in Teams:
Students will either share out as a whole class and students can collect
more details on their blank maps OR student fishbowls can be made and students
can form mixed groups of three and share with each other.
Exit Reflection:
Students will be instructed to create 4 for future research questions
about the slave trade. They will write these 4 on index cards and hand to
teacher as a form of an exit slip.
MAP
Overview Reading: The Slave
Trade Business Shared Class Reading
Slave
traders like the DeWolfs took part in what is often known as the “Triangle Trade,” which, in the case of
the U.S. trade, included New England, Africa, and slave markets in North
America and the Caribbean. New England traders would send ships loaded with rum
and other goods to the coast of Africa, to trade for enslaved Africans. Those
ships would then take their human cargos across the “Middle Passage” (ocean voyage) to ports in Caribbean islands
or the southern U.S. states. There, they would sell the slaves and often buy
cargos of sugar cane, molasses, and other goods produced with slave labor, to
bring north to markets in New England. Distillers
(alcohol makers) in the northeast would then make rum from the sugar cane,
which in turn could be sold in Africa for more slaves.
The
DeWolf family found many ways to increase their profits from the slave trade.
In Havana, Cuba, their ship captains could sell their cargoes in one of the
largest slave markets in the world. If, however, prices were low when ships
arrived, the captains could send the enslaved Africans to sugar plantations
owned by the DeWolfs, where the slaves would be worked, produced the raw
materials for northern rum distilleries, until prices in the slave market had
risen again.The DeWolfs also used the wealth gained in trading slaves to
creating other related businesses. Members of the DeWolf family eventually
owned a bank, an insurance company, and rum distilleries. Eventually, James
D’Wolf invested in textile
(clothing) mills, where, in an early example of industrialization, cotton grown
on southern slave plantations with inexpensive slave labor was spun into
fabric.
The
slave trade helped to build the growing economies of northern seaports. Slave
traders paid shipbuilders, insurers, blacksmiths, and a wide variety of other
tradesmen, merchants, and farmers. Almost every business and industry in the
region traded or did business with merchants or shippers whose wealth was
generated by slavery. In addition, those who invested in slaving voyages came
from almost all walks of life: while wealthy families such as the DeWolfs were
often significant investors, smaller shares in voyages would be owned by
ordinary tradesmen and artisans, such as blacksmiths, masons, bakers,
rope-makers, painters, and those engaged in various forms of manual labor.
Sources: Jay Coughtry, The
Notorious Triangle: Rhode Island and the African Slave Trade, 1700-1807
(Philadelphia: Temple Press, 1981); David Eltis, Stephen D. Behrendt, David
Richardson, and Herbert S. Klein, eds., The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A
Database on CD-ROM (Cambridge, 1999); Rachel Chernos Lin, “The Rhode Island
Slave-Traders: Butchers, Bakers and Candlestick-Makers,” Slavery and Abolition,
Vol. 23, No. 3 (Dec. 2002), pp. 21-38; James Pope-Hennessy, Sins of the
Fathers: A Study of the Atlantic Slave Traders, 1441-1807 (New York: Barnes
& Noble, 1998); Joanne Pope Melish, Disowning Slavery: Gradual
Emancipation and “Race” in New England, 1780-1860 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 1998).
Focus
Group 1: Ghana and the Slave Trade
Class Reading
When
descendants of the DeWolf slave-trading family of Bristol, Rhode Island retrace the triangle trade of their
ancestors in our documentary, Traces of the Trade,
they visit the European slave forts (military slave
trading castles) of Cape Coast Castle and St. George’s Castle (Elmina). These
sites were chosen because the DeWolf family traded extensively for slaves along
the Gold Coast of West Africa,
and their most common stops were at slave forts in what is now modern-day
Ghana.
In
fact, for almost 150 years, Ghana, on Africa’s west coast, was the center of
the British slave trade. Western traders arrived in ships loaded with
manufactured goods to barter
or trade for slaves. Those who were sold had often been captured in tribal
warfare; some had simply been kidnapped to sell to European slave traders.
Slavery
existed in Africa prior to the transatlantic trade, and in fact the earlier,
trans-Saharan slave trade sent more enslaved Africans east to the Muslim world,
over many centuries, than would be transported west to the Americas. However,
the large-scale organization of European slave trading and the development of massive
plantations (large farms) dependent
on slave labor gave rise to a trade in humans that was staggering in its scale.
Approximately 10 million enslaved people were transported in the transatlantic
slave trade, at rates of up to 100,000 persons per year.
Artifacts
of the trade in Ghana are still visible today — in dozens of forts and castles
built by Europeans between 1482 and 1786. American traders did business at
trading posts run by the British, French, Dutch, Germans, Spanish, Portuguese,
and others, including Cape Coast Castle and Elmina Castle. Many of these sites have been preserved,
and attract thousands of visitors as part of the Slave Route Project of the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). In
addition to preservation efforts, Ghana has also made efforts to encourage
descendants of enslaved Africans to learn more about their history. Descendants
may be eligible for special visas, and the government has instituted programs
to encourage Ghanaians to welcome people from the African Diaspora.
Sources: David Eltis, Stephen D.
Behrendt, David Richardson, and Herbert S. Klein, eds., The Trans-Atlantic
Slave Trade: A Database on CD-ROM (Cambridge, 1999); Roger S. Gocking, The
History of Ghana (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2005); William St.
Clair, The Door of No Return: The History of Cape Coast Castle and the
Atlantic Slave Trade (New York: Blue Bridge, 2007); Hugh Thomas, The
Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440-1870 (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1997)
Focus
Group 2: Northern Involvement in the
Slave Trade Class Reading
The
slave trade in particular was dominated by the northern maritime (sea) industry. Rhode Island alone was responsible for half of all U.S. slave
voyages. The DeWolfs may have been the biggest slavers in U.S. history, but
there were many others involved. Local
townspeople who worked as general merchants (traders), distillers (produce alcohol) and traders who supported
ship-building, warehousing, insurance and other trades and businesses benefited
from the slave trade. It was
common knowledge that one source of this business was the cheap labor and huge profits
could be made from trafficking (selling)
in human beings.
The
North also imported slaves, as well as transporting and selling them in the
south and abroad. While the majority of enslaved Africans arrived in southern
ports–Charleston, South Carolina was the largest market for slave traders,
including the DeWolfs—most large colonial ports served as points of entry, and
Africans were sold in northern ports including Philadelphia, New York, Boston,
and Newport, Rhode Island.
The
southern coastal states from Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia
and Maryland were home to the vast majority of enslaved persons. But there were
slaves in each of the thirteen original colonies, and slavery was legal (allowed) in the north for
over two hundred years. While the northern states gradually began abolishing (ending or outlawing)
slavery by law starting in the 1780s, many northern states did not act against
slavery until well into the 1800’s, and their laws generally provided only for
gradual abolition, allowing slave owners to keep their existing slaves and
often their children. As a result, New Jersey, for instance, still had
thousands of persons legally enslaved in the 1830s, and did not finally abolish
slavery by law until 1846.
In
the south, men, women and children were often forced to work on large
plantations, which could employ the labor of hundreds or even thousands of
enslaved Africans. In the north, farms were smaller and those farmers who owned
slaves would generally have only a small number. However, it was fairly common
during slavery in the north to find one or two slaves in the households of
farmers, merchants, ministers, and others.
Sources:
“Africans in America Part Two: Revolution.” WGBH Interactive. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2narr1.html; David Eltis, Stephen D. Behrendt, David Richardson, and Herbert S.
Klein, eds., The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-ROM (Cambridge,
1999); Joanne Pope Melish, Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and “Race”
in New England, 1780-1860 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998). Focus
Focus
Group 3: Cuba and the Slave Trade Class Reading
In
the 18th and 19th centuries, Cuba was dependent on an economy based on the
sugarcane and coffee crops, and on slaves imported from Africa to work on sugar
and coffee plantations. It is estimated that over 600,000 Africans were taken
from West Africa and shipped to Cuba over three centuries, with tens of
thousands dying during the brutal Atlantic Crossing.
Most
of these people were brought to Cuba between the 1780s and the 1860s, as the
slave population rose from 39,000 to 400,000. Despite the fact that the U.S.
slave trade to Cuba was illegal after 1794, U.S. traders, including the DeWolf
family, frequently made slave voyages to Havana, and profited from their own
Cuban plantations. At the peak of the slave-based economy, enslaved people
comprised nearly one-third of the Cuban population.
There
were a number of anti-slavery
movements (people against
slavery) in the early 1800s, but those were violently suppressed and leaders of
the revolts were executed. Although Britain and the U.S. abolished their slave
trades in 1807 and 1808, and Britain pressured Spain into formally ending the
trade to Cuba in the 1820s, Cuba remained one of the most common destinations
for slave ships through the 1860s. Slavery itself was not abolished in Cuba
until 1886.
Sources: David Eltis, Stephen D.
Behrendt, David Richardson, and Herbert S. Klein, eds., The Trans-Atlantic
Slave Trade: A Database on CD-ROM (Cambridge, 1999); Hugh Thomas, The Slave
Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440-1870 (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1997); Eric Williams, From Columbus to Castro: The History of the
Caribbean, 1492-1969 (New York: Vintage Books, 1970).
Lesson Three: Introducing the Debate
of Reparation
Lesson Objective: In this lesson students will be able to
discuss and learn about the idea of reparations for slavery. The students will need some background
on what reparations means. The
lesson includes using a clip from pbs again discussing the DeWolfe family
story. In this clip the family discusses what reparation means to them. The second main activity for this
lesson is for students to read a PRO/CON scholastic article. This could lead to further students
research on the topic of reparation.
The ultimate goal is to guide students to create an argument about what
can be done to address the painful legacy of slavery. In this argument they
will have to address if they support or oppose the idea of reparations.
Do Now/Warm-Up: Students will analyze the following quote
by the a famous writer from Barbados, George Lamming
There
is a perennial debt to be paid to black people for continuing of enslavement
and degradation. There are those who believe that the matter is over. They are
completely wrong. Actually, there are those among us who believe that the
demand and struggle for justice and restoration to full dignity would take a
generation to win a crusade for reparations.
In unison under concerted strategy....
à What is George asking for? Or Claiming about slavery?
AIM: Do Reparations help repair
the painful legacy of slavery?
Common Core/Standards:
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.8
Distinguish among fact, opinion, and reasoned judgment in a text
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.5
Describe how a text presents information (e.g., sequentially, comparatively,
causally)
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.6
Identify aspects of a text that reveal an author’s point of view or purpose
(e.g., loaded language, inclusion or avoidance of particular facts).
A Review Reparations using
the starting point of the quote. Students will use the context of the quote to
think about what reparations might mean.
Next discuss with students discussing the monetary element as well as
have them generate some question about how reparations would work.
Model: Students will view the clip below. They will view this clip with the
direction to record as many viewpoints about reparations as possible. They will create a WEB notes with
“Views on Reparations” in the center of the Web.
Partner Discuss:
Students will share ideas they jotted down on their webs with the
partner next to them, adding at least 2 ideas that they did not add. They will then share out some of the
common ideas they had on their web.
We will create a class web.
Next divide the class into two even teams or have student
pick a card with either Pro or Con.
Students could also be divided with the partner they are directly
sitting next to.
Classwork Activity:
Students will read the
scholastic article, either by themselves or with a partner. They will make sure to take detailed
notes on a PRO/CON chart.
Including the Claim on top. Students will look for at least four
specific pieces of evidence to back up the Claim of either Supporting or
Opposing Reparations.
Lesson Extensions:
Reparations Class Debate or
Class Written Argument or both. In
addition the article below could serve as a starting point for basic background
information and lead to future student research using websites and further
media sources. Therefore this
could turn into more of a research assignment. Students could prepare their points for the class debate on
index cards and be prepared to share in a class debate in small teams or whole
class.
After the Class Debate students
could decide to take a point of view on reparations and create a written argument. They could like I said use additional
research media sources to write this point of view piece. Students could also write their
argument as a letter to a reparation organization.
F.Y.I: A great clip
I found that works for elementary-middle school students. Includes young
students as main participants as well as the great Cornell West.
Scholastic News: By Adjoa
Aiyetoro, Niger Innis
Should there be
reparations for slavery?
Two views on whether the U.S. should provide compensation for the past
suffering of slaves
CLAIM: SUPPORT Reparations (PRO)
The United States must
acknowledge the horrors of slavery and apologize for it and the government-supported
terror inflicted on African-Americans after slavery.
Reparations are a remedy for a
past wrong. In this context, reparations include acknowledgment of the injury,
an apology for it, and some kind of compensation. Victims of the Nazi Holocaust
and Japanese-Americans interned in camps during World War II have received
reparations. Enslaved Africans were brutalized, raped, killed, forced to work
for free, separated from their families, and denied the right to learn to read
and write. U.S. law allowed all of this.
Conditions for most enslaved Africans were only slightly
better after slavery was abolished. Most were freed with no money. Many could
not find work. For almost 100 years, most African-Americans lived in segregated
communities with poorer services and facilities than white neighborhoods.
Segregation became illegal in the 1960s, yet the vestiges
of slavery continue. Predominantly African-American communities receive fewer
resources than predominantly white communities for schools and hospitals.
Studies show African-Americans are discriminated against in employment,
housing, and education, and often receive harsher punishments than whites for
the same crimes.
Official acknowledgment of and reparations for slavery and
its continuing vestiges will make real the promise of the 13th Amendment and
help heal a racially divided society.
BY: Adjoa A. Aiyetoro
Assistant Professor of Law
University of Arkansas,
Little Rock
CLAIM: AGAINST Reparations (CON)
The idea of reparations for African-Americans was first
suggested in 1829. The latest drive for reparations has been inspired by the
compensation received by Jews and Japanese-Americans for atrocities visited
upon them during World War II.
But today's reparations movement has become a vehicle to
make white people feel guilty, as opposed to achieving justice for the truly
victimized slaves themselves or their direct descendants. To proponents of
reparations, all of white America has come to represent the evils of slavery.
The tragedies of slavery and
segregation (and America's admittedly imperfect resolution of these chapters in
our history) still haunt us all. But the Holocaust and the internment of
Japanese-Americans both of which involved living victims as opposed to
descendants of victims were better suited to resolution with reparations. Despite
the great progress America has made in race relations, there are still large
segments of black America that are alienated from that progress and America's
promise. Worse yet, popular culture and today's civil rights establishment have
created a culture of victimization within black America that paralyzes, not liberates (frees). The reparations movement feeds into this
culture of victimization without providing justice for the real victims.
The greatest tribute that blacks in America today can pay
to the real victims of slavery and segregation is to take advantage of the
opportunities that were not available to those who came before, instead of dwelling
on the injustices of the past.
By Niger Innis
National Spokesman
Congress of Racial Equality
www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/should-there-be-reparations-slavery
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