The more we peel the layers of a topic, the deeper we penetrate, and the more confused we become.
This is the conundrum of many themes, but none more so than the tragedy of human slavery. In the United States, slavery pulses like a raw nerve because its lingering effects exist today, right in our faces. This rawness, this immediacy makes slavery difficult to examine with a clear eye.
Years ago, historians and educators only touched on slavery as a cursory issue to other themes—the American Revolution or the Civil War, for example. If it was examined at all, it was with the soulful eye of a guilty conscience: 400 years of kidnapping, bondage, hard labor and cruel mistreatment.
None of this is in dispute, nor is the overall evil of slavery. Yet it has only been recently that classrooms have the ability to put a human face on the slavery issue.
The more we peel the layers of a topic, the deeper we penetrate, and the more confused we become.
This is the conundrum of many themes, but none more so than the tragedy of human slavery. In the United States, slavery pulses like a raw nerve because its lingering effects exist today, right in our faces. This rawness, this immediacy makes slavery difficult to examine with a clear eye.
Years ago, historians and educators only touched on slavery as a cursory issue to other themes—the American Revolution or the Civil War, for example. If it was examined at all, it was with the soulful eye of a guilty conscience: 400 years of kidnapping, bondage, hard labor and cruel mistreatment.
None of this is in dispute, nor is the overall evil of slavery. Yet it has only been recently that classrooms have the ability to put a human face on the slavery issue. Many Thousand Gone: African Americans from Slavery to Freedom by Virginia Hamilton, while not a definitive history, offers an excellent collection of narratives, letters and primary sources that deal with slavery in North America through to Reconstruction.
The narratives of enslaved Africans used to be the exclusive business of academia. Even in most classrooms today, we hear the most prominent success stories, such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. Hamilton offers to young readers the exploits of others like Douglass and Tubman who have rich stories to tell. Each tale tells of individuals or groups which add layer upon layer of detail to the narrative of American slavery.
Gabriel Prosser, for example, led an unsuccessful slave revolt in Virginia in 1800 and was hanged for his efforts. Tice Davids led an escape in 1831–the same year Nat Turner led his famous slave uprising–that coined the term “underground road”, later to be modernized as “underground railroad.” Olaudah Equiano, an African prince sold into slavery in the 18th Century, bought his freedom and became an important early abolitionist with his best-selling account of his live in bondage. It was probably the first time whites in Europe and America bought so many volumes penned by an author of color.
There are even moments of humor and laughter among the dark stories. Henry “Box” Brown, for instance, decided to mail himself away from his master disguised in a wooden mail crate. His story almost reads like a Three Stooges short, as he is bounced around his box by the wagon rides from Virginia to Philadelphia, where he finally gained his freedom. It seems so funny until you realize how deadly serious the stakes were for runaways.
Two areas of special importance addressed in Hamilton’s work are the horrors of the Middle Passage and the Canadian role in slavery. The Middle Passage, the harrowing kidnap and voyage from Africa to the slave markets in Brazil, the Caribbean and North America are given fresh voices from previously unknown sources. Besides Equiano, one of the earlier stories is of a young African boy who winds up in a bad situation and gets sold to a Dutch slaver–showing how something as innocuous as bad luck can have devastating circumstances.
I, for one, am particularly pleased that Hamilton did not let Canada off the hook when it came to slavery in the British dominions. For decades, Canada has lorded its role as the terminus of the Underground Railroad for enslaved Africans fleeing the United States. Its own issues with slavery have been kept in the dark until now. Remember that the British Empire did not outlaw the slave trade until 1807, and slavery itself was not abolished until 1833, when the monetary needs of the great sugar planters in the Caribbean colonies were met. British North America had a full two centuries of experience with slavery, and several stories–including accounts of runaways–show that slavery was indeed alive and well in present-day Canada.
This makes a wonderful narrative account for a classroom. In the pictures and facts about the period, the study of slavery can often be as brutal as the institution itself. These accounts make for magnificent storytelling, which can accent any social studies lesson. More importantly, Hamilton’s work adds flesh and blood to a tragic era of our history.
That flesh and blood, no matter how confusing or jarring it may seem, is the essence of this story.
Mr. D's Neighborhood 
Mr. D’s History Bookshelf # 2 – Everybody’s Revolution
The American Revolution is unlike any popular movement in world history. First, it is among the few popular insurrections where moderate forces were able to calm more radical elements in society for the betterment of the people and the country. Second, it was also one of the few to actually succeed.
Yet in the multicultural classroom of today, minority and immigrant students often feel a profound disconnect with the War of Independence. This is due to the way it is traditionally presented–a pageant of battles, victories, crowned heads of Europe, slaveowning bigwigs in Virginia and Puritan hotheads in Massachusetts. Notice something missing? Everybody else. What about African Americans, women, immigrant groups, children, and Native Americans…don’t they have a place in this story? It’s no wonder that today’s student sees our history as remote, elitist and irrelevant.
Thomas Fleming, the author of 1997’s Liberty! The American Revolution, makes an important contribution to this discussion with 2006’s Everybody’s Revolution. Fleming’s first book for young readers is an essential text for the multicultural classroom. Perhaps for the first time, Fleming highlights other heroes of the Revolution–many with names and skin tones familiar to your students.
Like many students, Fleming begins his work with anecdotes of his struggles with American history. He, too, did not see a place for his people, the Irish, in this story mostly told through the eyes of wealthy men of mostly English ancestry. According to Fleming, the United States was not a homogenous nation in 1776–immigrants, blacks, women, Native Americans all lived in an often uneasy mix. It is this mix he attempts to portray in this work.
Fleming’s research has shed light not only to those men and women who fought our country’s struggle, but also on the complex cultural makeup of the United States as a whole. From Scots-Irish like Patrick Henry, to French Huguenots like John Jay, to Germans such as Thomas Herkimer and Peter Muhlenberg, Italians like Francesco Vigo, Jews like Haym Solomon and even Spanish like Bernardo de Galvaez, Fleming shows the motley mix of peoples that all joined in the struggle for independence.
African Americans, both slave and free, are covered in their own fight for freedom, both for themselves and for their country. Women, and especially young people, are also profiled with extraordinary acts of courage. Along with familiar faces such as Crispus Attucks, Peter Salem and Molly Pitcher are characters even more compelling. Some of these include James Armistead, who spied on the British while posing as their slave, Sybil Ludington, who staged a daring midnight ride to warn the citizens of Danbury, Connecticut of a British attack, and the mysterious “Agent 13”, a New York woman who acted as a spy for the Americans while posing as a society lady.
One of the areas that is probably the weakest is Fleming’s treatment of Native Americans. This is not entirely his fault. Most Native American nations simply did not join the American cause for fear of losing more land to colonial settlement. The British had always provided a protective alternative. Most of the individual native leaders, such as Joseph Brant, fought for the British side. The Oneida and Tuscarora nations, as well as the Stockbridge nation in Massachusetts, did join the Revolution, but it is not entirely clear why. We do know that the Oneida/Tuscarora secession from the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) confederacy basically destroyed them as a viable force in North America.
In all, however, Everybody’s Revolution is a necessary addition to any American history classroom, especially in schools with large minority and immigrant populations. The great thing about this country is that immigrants can adopt American history as their own. Unlike other countries, that often shun immigrants as outsiders to their “glorious past,” the assimilation process of U.S. public education requires immigrant students to buy into the ideals and myths of American society. Much of this process involves the absorption of American history.
With Fleming’s work, this process can continue into the 21st century. The American Revolution is truly EVERYBODY’S revolution.
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Tagged as American History, American Revolution, Bernardo de Galvaez, Book Review, Children's books, Civil Rights, Commentary, Crispus Attucks, Cultural Literacy, Curriculum, Education, Everybody's Revolution, Haym Solomon, History, James Armistead, John Jay, Joseph Brant, Liberty! The American Revolution, Media, Molly Pitcher, Opinion, Patrick Henry, Peter Salem, Publishing, Social studies, Sybil Ludington, Teachers, Thomas Fleming, Thomas Herkimer