#2 Slavery

Wow! What to say about this afternoons lecture. It was definitely an eye opener and I feel that it gave me some good ways to approach the topic of slavery. I have always been leery of how to approach the subject of slavery in my classroom. I teach in a school where approximately 35% of my students are African American. To top it off it is at the elementary level. I have never wanted to embarrass my students or make them feel bad when discussing this subject. I feel that the way Dr. Finkelman introduced the subject today was great. He lead in with the beginning of slavery and how it wasn’t just the Africans that were captured and taken as slaves, but many different groups of people in many different places over the course of history as we know it.

I also thought it very interesting that his discussion directly tied into one of the articles I read for my assignment, about the Civil War, Kansas, and African Americans. I did feel though that what he said and what the article said were conflicting. Dr. Finkelman felt that Kansans wanted slaves to be free because of the moral issue surrounding it. The article felt that the abolitionists in Kansas were a small minority and that most Kansans were against slavery only because they were small Kansas farms that could not compete with the large plantations with lots of slave labor. This gave me two different views on the same topic and made me stop and think. I can’t say that I feel one was right or wrong, but probably a mixture of both. I would love to learn more on this topic.