OPINION: Historical truth matters

While I was at the gym last week, a man came up to me and asked if I’d heard about critical race theory being taught in our schools. Before I had a chance to reply, he went on to say that students are being taught that all white people are racist. Being a retired teacher, I assured him that wasn’t true. Critical race theory’s goal is to tell a more truthful history of slavery in America and the impact slavery had — and continues to have — on Black citizens. I thought a history lesson might help him, and others who have heard misinformation about critical race theory, understand the role of slavery in our society.

Americans have struggled with coming to terms with slavery since 1619. Owning human beings, to do with as they wished, was legal and accepted until 1865, with the passage of the 13th Amendment. Black Americans were edited out of most history books by way of omission.

Although our Constitution declares, “All men are created equal,” in 1776, that excluded slaves, women and Indigenous peoples. Four of our first five U.S. presidents were slave owners who acquired their wealth from slave labor.

Attitudes toward slavery were changing by the 18th century. Many voices around the world were raised against the immorality of the slave trade. This led to a ban on the importation of slaves to America in 1808. Spain outlawed slavery in 1811 and Britain in 1833. But the ban had little impact on slavery in America. Cotton was the cash crop in the South, and slaves were needed to work the fields.

The rational for slavery was embedded in law in 1857, when Chief Justice Roger B. Taney handed down the infamous Dred Scott decision. It denied Scott’s right to sue for freedom on the grounds he was a Negro, an inferior being in the eyes of the law, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations. It became the rationale for “white supremacy.”

Pointing out the evils of slavery, abolitionists in the northern states tried to persuade southern states to end the practice, but they responded by declaring that slavery was a states’ rights issue; they had the right to own slaves. Unwilling to free their slaves, the southern states one by one seceded from the Union, leading to the Civil War.

In 1865, after the bloody four-year Civil War, Abraham Lincoln signed the 13th Amendment, banning slavery in America. Lincoln hoped the Civil War wasn’t in vain, that liberty and union would be the end of slavery. In his second inaugural address, he was conciliatory toward the South, stating, “With malice toward none, with charity for all.” At war’s end, he allowed Confederate soldiers to take their horses and guns home.

The idea that slavery was morally wrong didn’t sit well in the South. At war’s end, the South lay in ruin. White landowners lost half their wealth when four million slaves were freed, and they were angry and resentful. The Negroes had freedom but little else, and they were frightened and without resources. In hopes of easing their transition, Abraham Lincoln created the Freedman’s Bureau to educate, feed, clothe and provide basic necessities for Negroes and whites. He hoped that collective suffering would be followed by mutual forgiveness, but the divide was too great.

Southerners recast the Civil War as a conflict over states’ rights, not slavery, and denied the legitimacy of their defeat. Southern generals became heroes in the South and Confederate flags were flown with pride.

The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1869, granting citizenship upon Negroes, women and children born to immigrants (but not Indigenous peoples). During Reconstruction, between 1865 and 1877, African Americans flocked to schools and ran for office. Congress placed the South under military rule against the wishes of President Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s successor, who was a vocal racist. Johnson said, “This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I’m President, it will be governed by white people.”

The 14th Amendment was supposed to guarantee fair treatment for freedmen, but did little to change the hearts of most Southerners. The Southern state governments established during Reconstruction were dominated by former Confederate leaders. Six months after the end of the war, Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest commanded the Ku Klux Klan, an organization formed to terrorized black freemen. Between 1865 and 1870, more than 2,000 blacks were lynched with impunity. State legislatures in the South began to implement “Black Codes,” designed to enforce white supremacy by restricting equal pay for Negroes and banning then from sitting on a jury, buying a gun or purchasing land.

In 1869, Congress passed the 15th Amendment to prevent states from denying voting rights based on race, color or earlier conditions of servitude. But when the federal troops were withdrawn from the South in 1877, white southerners stripped Blacks of voting rights by enacting onerous requirements.

In 1896, segregation of the races replaced slavery and became enshrined in law with the Supreme Court’s landmark case of Plessy vs. Ferguson. The Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation was legal in their “separate but equal” ruling. Schools, hospitals, courts and bushiness were separate, but never equal. It wasn’t overturned until 1954, in Brown vs. the Topeka Board of Education, when Chief Justice Earl Warren’s court reversed the ruling.

When racism is embedded in law and custom it becomes normalized. George Wallace, governor of Alabama, tried to stop students from entering the University of Alabama in 1963, stating, “I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever.”

It wasn’t until passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which made it illegal to discriminate on the bases of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, that things began to change. It took another 55 years for the state of Mississippi to remove the Confederate logo from its flag and replace it with magnolias. We have made progress, but we still have a ways to go.

We all have an obligation to research factual historical material on slavery in America so we can make an informed decision about the teaching of critical race theory.

Millie Spezialy is a retired teacher, author and illustrator. She lives in Anchorage.

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