“The Civil War was not fought over slavery. Because most white people did not own slaves.” Fresh from a high school U.S. history class, my son explained this to me one evening in 1999. This was how history was being taught in Peabody High School at the dawn of the 21st century.
This, of course, is nonsense. The vice president of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, explained that the new Confederate Constitution “has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions — African slavery… This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.”
He added, “the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition.”
That thinking resonated through Confederate states. In Mississippi, they explained, “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world.”
Texans clarified in relation to the Confederate states, “The African race had no agency in their establishment….They were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.”
The Black Lives Matter movement brought a reckoning with United States history and white supremacy. As to be expected, what is best described as the new Confederacy is in full-throated counter-revolution.
This is the heart of the foolish panic over “critical race theory,” a catchall phrase that has come to include anything that teaches about white supremacy and race, even equity audits and social and emotional learning. It is being systematically manufactured and exploited by the Republican Party.
The founding United States Constitution allowed Southern slaveholders disproportionate representation in Congress because they owned human property — slaves — who counted as three/fifths of a man.
The Declaration of Independence itself made clear that the control of Black slaves and the further seizure of lands from “merciless Indian savages” was a part of the dispute with King George.
It stated, “He has incited domestic insurrections amongst us,” referencing the anti-slavery movement in England which the colonies feared would inspire slave rebellions.
The line — “He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States” — references the attempt to stop the further seizure of native lands west of the Appalachians.
Our schools should have taught us about the violent insurrection that overthrew the elected government of Wilmington North Carolina in 1898. The Fusionists Party of the period, made up of poor Black and white farmers, had elected those Wilmington officials on a platform of debt relief, free education, and equal rights for African Americans, all issues at the center of national debate in 2022.
If more of us knew all of our history, perhaps the warnings of the January 6 insurrection by Confederate flag-waving thugs would have been heard.
The complaint that an honest examination of our history “makes white children uncomfortable” or “feel guilty” is just foolishness.
Conflicting narratives is what makes the study of history interesting to students and they can be taught respectfully.
There are inspirational thinkers and heroes and heroines aplenty for all our children to learn about and to look up to: The Fusionists; or John Brown, who was a hero to the shoe workers in pre-Civil War Lynn; or the legendary Lynn abolitionist Frederick Douglass; or the fiery Lynn abolitionist Abby Kelley, about whom Douglas stated, “The abolitionists movement was a peculiarly women’s movement,” proclaiming Kelley was “without a rival” and “the most successful of us all.”
Buried in Pine Hill Cemetery is General Alonzo Draper, who led the Great Lynn Shoe Strike in 1860, then signed up to fight slavery and ultimately led some of the first Black troops in the Union Army.
Other inspirations include the Mineworkers Union, which amended its bylaws to expel any members of the Ku Klux Klan at the height of Klan power in the 1920s.
More fundamentally, if the truth is indeed uncomfortable, is it no longer the truth? Must it be concealed with lies?
Our history has been white-washed. A true accounting can only help us understand where we are today and lay the basis for progress. It is nothing to fear, it is something to welcome and celebrate.
This is not a drill. Right-wing censors and Proud Boy goons have broken up school committee meetings; demanded that books talking about race be purged from school libraries, and that teachers and administrators be fired for including these elements of U.S. history.
Police and even the FBI have been called in to break up fights instigated by nationally-funded thought police and armed groups. The superintendent of schools in Whitfield, Texas was suspended and his contract was not renewed after complaints about “critical race theory, social-emotional learning and equity — whatever you want to label it.”
Black principals have been threatened for allowing discussion of race in their school in Newton. We need to stand up for our school board members, administrators and teachers.
We create our future in the shadow of our past. If we want to defend and expand our democracy, we cannot afford to reverse the steps currently being taken toward a rigorous, righteous examination of how we got here. We certainly cannot allow ourselves to be intimidated by loudmouth fools.
Jeff Crosby is a Lynn resident, a former head of the North Shore Labor Council, and currently the executive director of the New Lynn Coalition. He also taught labor history at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
