Reader Jim Batterson sent me this illustration from the textbook he used in his seventh-grade “Virginia History” class in Newport News, VA. He was about 13 years old at the time. And this is the kind of stuff that people have, for good reason, tried to purge from secondary-school education. Fortunately, this kind of distortion isn’t found in modern textbooks. But look at the picture below: a fanciful depiction of a slave family meeting “the master.” It implies that slavery was a good thing, and everyone was happy.
Here’s what Jim said:
Here in Newport News, I remember that the VA history we got was much like what is discussed briefly in the link with the drawing of a well-dressed slave family arriving to the warm handshake and greeting of his white master. I think the illustration says it all.
I ran across the drawing in a book review last week. Gov Linwood Holton helped get rid of these texts when he was governor in the 70’s; and the introduction of “standards of learning” with broader public input in the late 80’s and 90’s led to vast, though not perfect, improvements in presentations on how non-whites were treated if I recall correctly. Gov Holton, a moderate Republican, was Sen. Tim Kaine’s father in law and sent his kids to desegregated public schools. I thought that you would find the drawing to be of interest…it was taught through the 1960’s!
I was in elementary school only in the sixth grade in Arlington, Virginia, and don’t remember taking any Virginia history, and by the time I returned from Germany and went to school in Arlington for the 11th and 12th grades, they no longer taught Virginia history (it was taught in the 4th, 7th, and 11th grades).
But this drawing gives me the willies. Warm handshakes all around, a well-dressed slave with a hat and valise, and a well turned-out family. Now what are the chances that, after an Atlantic crossing in the hold of a ship, an enslaved person would look like that?
Source: Citation: Virginia: History, Government, Geography. F226 .S5 1957. Special Collections, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA
Original Author: Francis Simkins, Sidman Poole, and Spotswood Hunnicutt, authors
Created: 1957
See the text from the Encyclopedia Virginia below the picture.
From the Encyclopedia Virginia:
A well-dressed Black family is cordially greeted by a white man—presumably their enslaver—in this fanciful illustration above the chapter title,”How the Negroes lived under Slavery.” Given that the family was arriving via a sailing ship, the reality is that they had probably been recently sold at auction, forcibly transported by boat while being closely guarded, and then delivered to their new “owner.” This illustrated page is from Virginia: History, Government, Geography (1957), the state-sanctioned seventh-grade history textbook that was written with the express intention of presenting a Lost Cause view of slavery as a benign institution. The accompanying text claims that slave laws were “not strictly enforced” and that slave masters were kindly, since “they knew the best way to control their slaves was to win their confidence and affection.” The text goes on to portray the lives of the enslaved as being carefree and happy, as they were supposedly free to gather for dancing, singing, and celebrating religious events—and even, on occasion, having the right to own “guns and other weapons.” The brutal, de-humanizing institution of slavery was far from this gentle depiction; yet these sanitized textbooks remained in use in some Virginia schools until the late 1970s.
According to The Virginia History and Textbook Commission, which also reproduces this page, these textbooks were removed from schools only in 1972, a year after I graduated from college in Virginia:
The Virginia National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) opposed the textbooks, and the Virginia Teachers Association (VTA), a Black educators organization, successfully promoted an accurate telling of Black history that led to the adoption of Black history courses throughout the commonwealth beginning in the 1960s. By 1965, educators were widely complaining that the textbooks amounted to propaganda. Nonetheless, in 1966 the State Board of Education extended the use of the textbooks for another six years.
By 1972, of course, schools had been desegregated for 18 years, but there was still de facto segregation based on segregated neighborhoods—and no busing. I remember having black classmates in elementary or junior high schools, and only a few in my high school, Washington-Lee (now renamed) in Arlington, Virginia. And that despite there being plenty of African-Americans in northern Virginia: they simply lived in completely different areas.
As Jim notes, many Virginia kids, weaned on a diet of this kind of segregationist pap, grew up thinking that slavery wasn’t so bad, and, in modern times, that it was natural to have a racial hierarchy, with white people being in positions of power over black people. (I can’t resist adding that Palestinian children grow up with similar kinds of supremacist textbooks, with theirs extolling martyrdom and calling for the death of Jews.)
That illustration and the text is incredible – and used until 1972!
Depending on a local school district’s textbook renewal budget and schedule, could have been well into the late 70’s!
The overt message of the 1970s textbook deserves this true non-Marxist criticism. The book should be in the public library so everyone can see how the old literature worked for themselves.
But what will the Subject Headings be? Perhaps propaganda, or old educational literature, such as The New England Primer (1680-1690 – see Wikipedia – it’s a very interesting and weird religious book but terrible as serious education for kids!)
Subject Heading “correction” is what 2023-2024 President of the American Library Association Emily Drabinski seeks to control as The Politics of Correction in :
The Library Quarterly
Volume 83, Number 2
No. 2 (April 2013), pp. 94-111
Queering the Catalog: Queer Theory and the Politics of Correction
Emily Drabinski
Will that correction be secular, or will it be aligned with certain political objectives? Drabinski has claimed to be Marxist in talks. Is that a misplaced concern?
… I’m sure the book can be cataloged without obeisance to Marxism’s “alchemy of the word” (H. Marcuse, on art and literature, in Counterrevolution and Revolt).
https://www.ala.org/aboutala/presidents-page
OMG.
Yeah! OMG is right! Unbelievable that that was such a short time ago. Seeing this goes a long way towards helping me appreciate today’s sting of our inexcusably recent and lamentable racist history. Really makes me think. I’m dumbfounded. Great learning experience, Jim.
The on-going discussion of UNRWA’s role in the Palestinian children’s education program prompted me to send this to Jerry. The U.S. Civil War was not over in the South (known as the “lost cause”) as I think the 1948 Arab wars with Israel are not over with the UNRWA curriculum…still holding the right of return after all these years and several generations.
Good observation, Jim. Here in the US, the Southern cause has been revealed as never lost , and as we’re seeing in the Middle East today, the “right of return” has been more or less a latent cause of anti-Israel violence since the beginning of the modern state of Israel and has emerged full-blown in the current conflict. Witness statements made by pro-Palestinian protestors in the video linked by Jerry yesterday. The invalidity of Israel was a recurring theme in these statements.
Yes, don’t be concerned about Ms. Drabinski’s political leanings or her views on cataloging. As I’ve stated before, the president of the American Library Association is a largely ceremonial position lasting one year. In this capacity, the president is like a head of state, similar to presidents of some other professional associations or business clubs like Rotary. Ms. Drabinski’s term is up in June of this year.
IRT cataloging and subject headings, the rules and controlled vocabulary are determined by two major professional agencies in the USA, OCLC (https://www.oclc.org/en/dewey.html) and the Library of Congress (https://www.loc.gov/aba/). (Other countries, in particular India, may use other classification systems.) Ms. Drabinski’s views on cataloging would be one among many and with no overriding authority.
That’s good news
[ one more comment only, I hope! ]
If I imagine I was the writer and illustrator of this – as sickening as that is – I seem to perceive that the work would make me feel better about myself.
So I can think about that now when evaluating propaganda – not how I feel (as when enjoying art), but how is it making the creator of the propaganda feel (besides as a tool for total control over thought)?
Ok, thanks. Feel like I need a shower now. Bleccchh.
I recommend “Testimonies concerning Slavery” by the abolitionist Moncure Conway, published in London in 1865, as part of the attempt to let the British see what slavery was like in practice, at a time when many in Britain had been profiting from slavery, bringing cotton to Manchester. Conway brings out the variety of treatment of slaves even in a single area, but even where they were treated well, they knew very well the difference between being a well-treated slave and being free. Even slaves who had been treated well, when they had the chance to run off and join the Union Army, they did so. This includes a slave who had been the property of Conway’s father who had been allowed to travel to Baltimore to visit his wife who was in an insane asylum there.
I went to school in Virginia from 5th grade to 8th in Hampton– we moved to Germany after that. We were taught Virginia history in 7th grade in 1973, but I don’t recall seeing illustrations like these or any discussion of slavery. They must have gotten rid of these textbooks by then. However, I do have colleagues who were born and raised in Virginia who flat out told me that slaves were well treated and happy with their lot. That’s what they were taught as kids and still believe it. Of course they were furious when the confederate statues were removed from Monument Avenue in Richmond.
Hampton was fortunate to have the now late Hunter Andrews as school board chair in the 60’s to lead it through desegregation and could have influenced textbook changes earlier than some other neighboring localities. Hunter later served in the state senate for 37 years including chair of the powerful senate finance committee. He was a strong liberal Democratic voice supporting equality in education for all of his years in public service.
“My, you people sure turn out pretty well considering you’ve been on a slave ship.”
It’s a microaggression, arguably worse than slavery itself.
Heck, my dad was a 50s kid and has no issue saying the idealized views of the time as one of tranquil morality are total BS.
And he’s no snowflake!
I graduated from a rural Virginia high school in 1970 and remember that book very well. It went into excruciating detail about every detail of Virginia history, especially the Civil War. The chapter on slavery was only a few pages and put a happy face on the practice. Nothing about the overcrowded slave ships, whippings or separation of families. Fortunately, my teachers gave us the real story of slavery.
BTW, our schools operated under “freedom of choice” starting in the mid-60s, but due to the segregated town layout and the locations of the schools, very few black children could attend a “white school” and no white kids attended the “black schools”. That meant the schools remained segregated until my senior year of high school (1970) when the school system was consolidated.
>That meant the schools remained segregated until my senior year of high school (1970) when the school system was consolidated.
And what happened then?
If the white kids still lived on one side of the tracks and the black kids on the other, but were free to attend any school they wanted, how did consolidating the schools change things?
When they consolidated the school system, the formerly back high school became the junior high and the white high school became the senior high. A new system of bus routes was created which insured that everyone had transportation. Before consolidation, there were no buses to take black students across town to the white schools. If your parents could not take you to school or you didn’t live within walking distance, the schools may as well had been in another city. The town was literally split into a black half and a white half, with the downtown, a railroad and industrial areas in the middle.
Thank you for taking my serious question seriously. I won’t ask you if it was better or just different, seeing as how you had graduated before you could really tell.
The consolidation of the school system went peacefully, but suddenly, the credentials of several black teachers were called into question. High school teachers who had taught for years were assigned to the elementary or junior high schools. The real reason was that they had been active in the Civil Rights movement and could not be trusted to not bring politics into the classroom. Among them was our social studies teacher who was something of a firebrand during the 60s. He resigned rather than teach elementary school. We also lost a foreign language teacher who was fluent in five languages and had lived and studied in Europe during the late 50s.
I made several white friends, including Ralph and Shirley. They were a couple and artistically inclined, as I was. We planned to attend the art school at Virginia Commonwealth University (then known as Richmond Professional Institute) together. Unfortunately, Shirley became pregnant and she and Ralph got married instead of going to college.
I grew up in (relatively, for the time) progressive Arlington, VA, and went to public schools, graduating in 1969, with my brother one year ahead. I recall that when he was in 4th grade (required VA history, and I think the textbooks were standard throughout the Commonwealth), he proudly showed off his day’s education by telling us at the dinner table that “States’ Rights,” not slavery, was the cause of the Civil War. My liberal parents (Dad, from Brooklyn, was a history major; Mom, from Pennsylvania, went on to get a M.Phil in Political Science and later teaching 12th grade Government at the HS where most of the Black students went) were literally dumbstruck for several seconds. I don’t remember much of the following discussion, but 1 year later, there were those exact words in my 4th grade textbook. I’d guess we were tested on that.
Similar to Doug’s experience, even in Arlington, there was still a degree of segregation through the 60s, mostly based on housing segregation. By drawing the school boundaries a certain way, the wealthy (“country club”) section of North Arlington, along with many middle class neighborhoods, could remain in practically all-white schools despite supposed desegregation and closing of the all-black schools. IIRC, I had 1 black classmate in HS. Looking back, I wonder if she was somehow chosen to be the token, as she was extremely outgoing, friendly, (and likely had a thick skin). I never witnessed or heard anything negative done or said either to her or behind her back, but maybe that reflected the crowd I hung out with. She was popular enough to be elected Senior Class President.
We did have at least 2 black teachers that I can recall (Math and Government), so until the class of ’70 arrived, there were more black teachers than pupils. Hard to imagine what it was like for a black social studies teacher to know and have to (at least pretend to) teach what was in those texts.
Like LB, it was common to hear local folks tell us that slaves were well-treated and happy, at least until Emancipation, as they’d have preferred to stay with their Masters.
That’s quite astonishing and appalling. I was in school in England in the 1970s, and I vividly remember learning about slavery. The teacher showed us the famous drawing of the slave ship Brooks which illustrates how the victims were packed into the hold of the vessel. You can imagine the effect that had on a 12-year-old.
The guy handling the rope looks like Dean Martin…