In
grade school, we learned about trade. This was History class where we memorized
dates and places. We learned about wars, as well, not much, just when they were
and who fought and where.
The
teacher placed arrows on a large map in the back of the classroom. Arrows on
the coast of the Carolinas faced east toward England and on these arrows we
wrote cotton and flax.
There
were arrows that directed ships from Africa, and these arrows were placed on a
western coast across the blue ocean on the other side of the world. Spices, we
wrote, and slaves.
This
was all a matter of getting the right things going the right way, spices coming
in, cotton going out. Cotton, flax, tea, molasses and slaves.
How
do you teach children that there was so much more to it than that?
We
learned the words and thought of the ships with their cargoes and some of us, I
suppose, got it right and some wrong.
Then
one day, so much later, we learned about the slave trade and the sadness was
there as well.
And
slaves were no longer words like spices, molasses and tea.
...
written in July 2014
