When Tensions Make History

The state standards for history in the eighth grade curriculum include a concept of the Constitution, understanding of it, and civic engagement. The challenge, professor of history Derrick D. McKisick said on Thursday evening, is putting this topic and other aspects of the country’s pre-Civil War history in the proper context.

“You have to add context in order for history to make sense,” said McKisick, who teaches at Fairfield University and led a discussion at the . “You can’t talk about African-American history without talking about American history, because it’s the tension between those two themes that created the history.”

McKisick’s presentation, “The Road to Redemption: Resistance and the Underground Railroad,” included discussion about the lack of the word “slavery” within the Constitution. McKisick said the moral question of slavery was never at stake, but rather how the practice would impact the new government. As such, references included a designation where five slaves would count as three people in determining a state’s seats in the House of Representatives and a provision that a “person held to service or labor” would have to be returned to their owner if they escaped.

McKisick said history can be analyzed from political, economical, and social perspectives and put in a local, state, or national level of context. He said anti-slavery movements had a wide range of political opinion, from Henry Clay’s American Colonization Society—a group advocating the relocation of free blacks to Africa—to William Lloyd Garrison, a radical abolitionist who supported immediate emancipation.

Learning objectives for students of American history should include the definitions of slavery and freedom, the importance of slave resistance, how such resistance related to the Underground Railroad, and how multiple narratives can be derived from primary sources. In an exercise at the end of the presentation, McKisick asked groups to analyze a packet of primary source material and create a narrative based on one of the three perspectives. The documents included such items as an ad for a slave boy taken out by Benedict Arnold, President Abraham Lincoln’s “A House Divided” speech, and a map of Underground Railroad sites in Connecticut.

McKisick said such historical documents have remained important through time, and that their meaning can be interpreted in numerous different ways.

“Just because someone read it from one perspective doesn’t mean it’s the only perspective,” he said.

The presentation was co-sponsored by the Kente Cultural Center, Africana faculty at , and the National Council for Black Studies Grant.