This weekend NPR featured an interesting story about one scholar's quest to learn more about his family.
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| Eyre Crowe, Slaves Waiting for Sale, Richmond, Virginia, ca. 1861 |
"Lawrence Jackson went through most of his life not knowing much about his family history," reports Guy Raz. Continues Raz:
So he began a search, armed with only early boyhood memories, for his late grandfather's old home by the railroad tracks in Blairs, Va. Jackson describes his journey in a new book, My Father's Name: A Black Virginia Family after the Civil War.
Shortly after Jackson began a search for his roots, he found out his great-grandfather was a slave.
"If you said to me that my father's grandfather grew up in slavery and actually spent maybe the first 10 or 15 years of his life as human chattel, I wouldn't have been able to take that idea so seriously" . . .
This short segment well illustrates how the past still impacts the present. A course that deals with 19th century US history might make use of stories like this. In addition programs like Henry Louis Gates' African-American Lives uncover the past in a very personal way. What better sense could students get of the significance of history?Shortly after Jackson began a search for his roots, he found out his great-grandfather was a slave.
"If you said to me that my father's grandfather grew up in slavery and actually spent maybe the first 10 or 15 years of his life as human chattel, I wouldn't have been able to take that idea so seriously" . . .
I'll admit, I've never incorporated a genealogy project into the curriculum. Yet, stories like these above make me wonder if it would work.
