Student Court Room Content
My students are all sitting in their desks in the morning completing their first tasks of the day. The morning announcements come on and the concluding line rings out: “With Liberty and Justice for All”.39 Many of my students no longer stand for these words, because these words do not stand for them. Justice has in fact, not been served to many of the ethnic groups living in the United States. It is a well-known fact, however unacknowledged or disregarded, that racial progress and reform were not achieved through willingness, nor were they done on moral principle.40 “Americans have rarely reformed racially oppressive practices simply because it was the right thing to do”.41 It is a fact that is often denied, as much as overlooked, and that action creates a skewed and inaccurate picture of American History for our students. “Racial progress has often been an unintended consequence of other developments.”42It is vitally important that our students learn not just about their ancestry to uncover their identity, but all the events after their ancestors that led to their existence and more specifically the state of their existence in relation to American History. This is a very difficult task however, as there are many textbooks that not only skew historical events regarding slavery, but in fact try to cover up, the fact that slaves were brought to the United States as slaves against their will.43 In 2015, a high school student named Cody Burren found a caption in his textbook that states that Black Americans were once workers who immigrated here with Europeans to do agricultural work.44 This is not only a blatant disregard for the history of an ethnic group of people; it is a tragic understatement and show of indifference to print things like this for our students to learn from, as we know full-well this information is not the truth. If we do not believe our students believe the truth. What do we believe they deserve?
Debate Content Approach
It is a clear call to action then that not only are we undertaking a task that is to write something into reality that is being misprinted, but to keep what we write from being misconstrued and re-written in the future. The best way to accomplish this is to let our students be part of the process of uncovering their identity and writing their history. For students to be a part of this process, it requires that teachers become fully invested and involved in the truth. It equally requires teachers to view and analyze history through the lens of truth for themselves, for others and for the people who have been hurt and mistreated, since this country’s inception. This is the foundation, upon which change is built. I have, since coming to this realization, devoted much of my time to understanding the scope of American History through the lens of African American people, and other ethnic groups. It will be best following the ancestry opening unit for my students, and for us, to start at the beginning of American History.
Debate Topics and Questions
The Debate topics and corresponding questions are as follows: The French and Indian War 1754, Debate: Native American allies of the French v. Non-allies of the French Perspective, The American Revolution and The Revolutionary War 1765; Debate: American Indians in the War, African Americans in the War; The Declaration of Independence 1776, Debate: “All Men are Created Equal?”; The Signing of the Constitution the Federalist Papers and The Constitutional Convention 1788, Debate: Federalist 10, 54 and the Constitution-Were they written for everyone?; Westward Expansion and The Louisiana Purchase 1790, Debate: Explorers-Heroes or Thieves?; The Missouri Compromise 1820, Debate: Slave in Free State vs. Freed in North; The Indian Removal Act and The Trail of Tears 1830, Debate: Adoptive Baby Girl; Nat Turner's Rebellion 1831, Debate: Violence vs. Non-violence; The Fugitive Slave Act 1850, Debate: Fight or Flight; Dred Scott 1857, Debate: Constitutional Review; John Brown's Raid 1859, Debate: Progress or Regression; The Civil War 1861, Debate: Did it aid in Ending Slavery? (Reconstruction); Jim Crow 1865, Debate: Violence vs. Non-Violence Revisited (Confronting Regression); The Reconstruction Act 1867, Debate: Reconstruction Failed or Succeeded? The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments and the Emancipation Proclamation 1865-1870, Debate: To End Slavery or Appease the South? (A Look at Lincoln); Plessy v. Ferguson 1896, Debate: Separate but Equal-Is it freedom if it’s forced? ; The World Wars 1930, Debate: Should African Americans have fought in the World Wars?; Brown v. Board 1954, Debate: Separate but Equal-Is it freedom if it’s forced?; The Civil Rights Movement 1960, Debate: Separate but Equal-Is it freedom if it’s forced?; Malcom vs. Martin 1964, Debate: Separate or Forced Equal (Competing Ideologies).
Approach to Content Examples
The students will begin their exploration of the history in the Americas at its origins. Between the year 1500 and 1900s, an estimated 12 million slaves were taken from their homes on the resource and culture rich continent of Africa to the United States to be forced to labor over the land that the Europeans in fact stole from others.45 This was arguably the greatest identity genocide as of those 12 million slaves, only 10 million made it to the U.S. and by the 1800s only a stifling six percent of that original number had made it to North America and survived.46 This is the crux of the American foundation that is uncomfortable, which is the fact that people were either viewed as property or an inconvenient obstacles, and land was often stolen, much like people.
The Revolutionary War
Fast-forward through the settling of the colonies and their unhappiness with Britain to the American Revolution and the Revolutionary War of 1765. There were roughly fifteen-thousand enslaved African Americans that were either required to or willingly fought for the British or the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.47 This is just one of the many rarely discussed yet crucial topics of American History. Slaves were a means to win many wars.48 Many Native Americans lost their homes and tribal lands during the War.49 After the Revolutionary War, North America began to claim independence from the British. The signing of the constitution and the authorship of the Federalist papers were both pivotal points in American History, but not for African Americans. These documents signified a free nation that they lived in but were not a part of. The rights and regulations were not written with African American people, Native Americans, or women in mind. The line in the declaration that states: “All Men are Created Equal”,50 was referring to all white men being created equal and certainly not the women. This truth is glaring as we look at the events following the signing of these original documents and can plainly see that African American people were in fact not seen as equal in any way and any freedoms, they attained had to be forcibly taken instead of freely given.51
The Missouri Compromise and the Fugitive Slave Act
Shortly following this era, the settlers of the United States began expanding their ventures west and taking more of the previously owned Native American Territories, and the Louisiana Purchase was made at fifteen-million dollars that expanded the United States twice over.52 Following the expansion of the United States territories, the Missouri Compromise arose. This was a compromise that was made purely for peace-keeping reasons as the founders were trying to form a Union: “Most northerners who supported restricting the spread of slavery did not wish to abolish it in the South, nor did they endorse racial equality.”53 The Missouri Compromise split the states so that there were some slave states, and some free states. Following this blatant act of resistance for equality or human rights, another came around the corner. The Fugitive Slave Act was an effort yet again to keep people enslaved and oppressed due to pushback and other significant events. The Fugitive Slave Act “criminalized the obstruction of fugitive slave renditions.”54 The Dred Scott v. Sandford case was one that outlined the blatant lack of power congress had at the time, as the ruling: “Invalidated the Missouri Compromise on the ground that congress lacked the power to bar slavery from federal territories.”55
The Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation
The Civil War was a tipping point in American History, and it was evidence for many things. It was evidence that people cared more about protecting the Union than anything else. The south was ready to secede from the Union and President Lincoln stated: “What I do about slavery, I do because I believe it helps save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.56 So as the civil war was fought over the union, with slavery being a disputed matter, even slaves began to fight in the civil war and were viewed as contraband. The Reconstruction Era is largely reflected by the opinion that the Civil War was one of America’s greatest failures.57 This is largely because no sooner did Reconstruction start, when white supremacists began to under-mine it, to the degree that it largely did not occur and turned into a lie. At the end of the Reconstruction Era, African American people were working for white sharecroppers again.58
“In 1876, Rutherford B. Hayes was declared the winner of a controversial presidential campaign which he had lost in all probability; In order to gain Southern support for his claim, Hayes agreed to officially end Reconstruction.”59
Lincoln slowly inched his way through the Amendments and finally to the Emancipation Proclamation. In 1862 the first draft of the Emancipation was accepted.60 This Emancipation would eventually serve its purpose. This proclamation eventually freed around 4 million slaves.61 Although at this time it was clear that freedom still was not freely but reluctantly given, if not forcibly taken. Once the Emancipation had been passed, white Americans still found many ways to keep African Americans separate throughout all the Civil Rights Movement.
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