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Presented by the Zinn Education Project
A Collaboration between Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change
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Missing from Presidents' Day: The People
They Enslaved
By Clarence Lusane
Program director for Comparative and Regional Studies at American University
 | | A romanticized image of work at Mt. Vernon. Image: Library of Congress. |
Schools across the country are adorned with posters of the 44 U.S. presidents and the years they served in office. U.S. history textbooks describe the accomplishments and challenges of the major presidential administrations ----George Washington had the Revolutionary War, Abraham Lincoln the Civil War, Teddy Roosevelt the Spanish-American War, and so on. Children's books put students on a first-name basis with the presidents, engaging readers with stories of their dogs in the Rose Garden or childhood escapades. Washington, D.C.'s Smithsonian Institution welcomes visitors to an exhibit of the first ladies' gowns and White House furnishings.
Nowhere in all this information is there any mention of the fact that more than one in four U.S. presidents were involved in human trafficking and slavery. These presidents bought, sold, and bred enslaved people for profit. Of the 12 presidents who were enslavers, more than half kept people in bondage at the White House. Continue reading.
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Related resources at the Zinn Education Project website
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. In this role play, students become members of the American Anti-Slavery Society, facing many of the real challenges to ending slavery.
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Teaching Activity. By Bob Peterson. How a 5th grade teacher and his students conducted research to answer the question: "Which presidents owned people?" Also available in Spanish.
|  | Constitution Role Play: Whose "More Perfect Union" and The Constitutional Convention: Who Really Won?
Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. A role play on the issues involved with the framing of the Constitution. An elementary school adaptation also available. |  |
Book - Non-fiction. By Clarence Lusane. 2010.
The untold story of African Americans in the White House from the 18th century to the present, including the presidents who held people in bondage.
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New from Rethinking Schools
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Second Edition, New and Expanded
Edited by Wayne Au. 2014. 418 pages.
Rethinking Multicultural Education moves beyond a simplistic focus on heroes and holidays to demonstrate a powerful vision of anti-racist, social justice education.
Practical, rich in story, and analytically sharp, Rethinking Multicultural Education reclaims multicultural education as part of a larger struggle for justice and against racism, colonization, and cultural oppression-in schools and society. Read more. |
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