Agricultural workers from Africa

I’m about half way through William T. Hagan’s history entitled American Indians.  Although the first edition dates to 1964, the book has been revised and updated and is considered one of the best one-volume works on Native American history.  It is written in everyday language, but it is a difficult book to read.  What a record of deception, greed, violence, and genocide.  About 20 miles east of where I live is the Sullivan Trail.  It is a road that follows the path Sullivan took when he led an expedition to drive out the Indians from much of eastern Pennsylvania, burning homes and tearing down the stone houses of peaceful Indians.  His expedition was not really war; it was murder.

The historical record of many countries, including the U.S., is a tale that often includes horrific incidents and behaviors.  The idea of people like DeSantis that you can ignore atrocities because it makes students uncomfortable means you won’t really be teaching history.  

In 2015 the Texas State Board of Education and publisher McGraw-Hill Education came out with an approved textbook that told how the transatlantic slave trade brought “millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations.”  I don’t know what to even call that, but it is definitely not history.