News---Elementary School Text States Black Confederates Fought Under Jackson

Virginia 4th-Grade Textbook Criticized Over Claims On Black Confederate Soldiers, Kevin Sieff, Washington Post, October 20, 2010.

A textbook distributed to Virginia fourth-graders says that thousands of African Americans fought for the South during the Civil War -- a claim rejected by most historians but often made by groups seeking to play down slavery's role as a cause of the conflict.

"Thousands of Southern blacks fought in Confederate ranks, including two black battalions under the command Stonewall Jackson."

The passage appears in "Our Virginia: Past and Present," which was distributed in the state's public elementary schools for the first time last month. The author, Joy Masoff, who is not a trained historian but has written several books, said she found the information about black Confederate soldiers primarily through Internet research, which turned up work by members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Scholars are nearly unanimous in calling these accounts of black Confederate soldiers a misrepresentation of history. Virginia education officials, after being told by The Washington Post of the issues related to the textbook, said that the vetting of the book was flawed and that they will contact school districts across the state to caution them against teaching the passage. "Just because a book is approved doesn't mean the Department of Education endorses every sentence," said spokesman Charles Pyle. He also called the book's assertion about black Confederate soldiers "outside mainstream Civil War scholarship."

Masoff defended her work. "As controversial as it is, I stand by what I write," she said. "I am a fairly respected writer." The issues first came to light after College of William & Mary historian Carol Sheriff opened her daughter's copy of "Our Virginia" and saw the reference to black Confederate soldiers. "It's disconcerting that the next generation is being taught history based on an unfounded claim instead of accepted scholarship," Sheriff said. "It concerns me not just as a professional historian but as a parent."

Virginia, which is preparing to mark the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, has long struggled to appropriately commemorate its Confederate past. The debate was reinvigorated this spring, when Gov. Robert F. Mc­Don­nell introduced "Confederate History Month" in Virginia without mentioning slavery's role in the Civil War. He later apologized. The Sons of Confederate Veterans, a group of male descendants of Confederate soldiers based in Columbia, Tenn., has long maintained that substantial numbers of black soldiers fought for the South The group's historian-in-chief, Charles Kelly Barrow, has written the book "Black Confederates."

The Sons of Confederate Veterans also disputes the widely accepted conclusion that the struggle over slavery was the main cause of the Civil War. Instead, the group says, the war was fought "to preserve their homes and livelihood," according to John Sawyer, chief of staff of the Sons of Confederate Veterans' Army of Northern Virginia. He said the group was pleased that a state textbook accepted some of its views.

The state's curriculum requires textbook publishers and educators to explore the role African Americans played in the Confederacy, including their work on plantations and on the sidelines of battle. Those standards have evolved in recent years to make lessons on the Civil War more inclusive in a state that is growing increasingly diverse. When Masoff began work on the textbook, she said she consulted a variety of sources -- history books, experts and the Internet. But when it came to one of the Civil War's most controversial themes -- the role of African Americans in the Confederacy -- she relied primarily on an Internet search.

The book's publisher, Five Ponds Press, based in Weston, Conn., sent a Post reporter three of the links Masoff found on the Internet. Each referred to work by Sons of the Confederate Veterans or others who contend that the fight over slavery was not the main cause of the Civil War.

In its short lesson on the roles that whites, African Americans and Indians played in the Civil War, "Our Virginia" says, "Thousands of Southern blacks fought in the Confederate ranks, including two black battalions under the command of Stonewall Jackson." Masoff said of the assertion: "It's just one sentence. I don't want to ruffle any feathers. If the historians had contacted me and asked me to take it out, I would have." She added that the book was reviewed by a publisher's advisory council of educators and that none of the advisers objected to the textbook's assertion.

Historians from across the country, however, said the sentence about Confederate soldiers was wrong or, at the least, overdrawn. They expressed concerns not only over its accuracy but over the implications of publishing an assertion so closely linked to revisionist Confederate history. "It's more than just an arcane, off-the-wall problem," said David Blight, a professor at Yale University. "This isn't just about the legitimacy of the Confederacy, it's about the legitimacy of the emancipation itself."

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James McPherson of Princeton University said, "These Confederate heritage groups have been making this claim for years as a way of purging their cause of its association with slavery." Masoff said one of her sources was Ervin Jordan, a University of Virginia historian who said he has documented evidence -- in the form of 19th-century newspapers and personal letters -- of some African Americans fighting for the Confederacy. But in an interview, Jordan said the account in the fourth-grade textbook went far beyond what his research can support.

"There's no way of knowing that there were thousands," Jordan said. "And the claim about Jackson is totally false. I don't know where that came from." The book also survived the Education Department's vetting and was ruled "accurate and unbiased" by a committee of content specialists and teachers. Five Ponds Press has published 14 books that are used in the Virginia public school system, all of them written by Masoff. Masoff also wrote Oh Yuck! The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty and Oh Yikes! History's Grossest Moments

Text Source: Washington Post

Author Image: Joy Masoff

News---Richmond's 1810 'A Burial Ground For Negroes' Value Set At $3 Million

Slaves' History Buried in Asphalt, Maria Glod, Washington Post, October 27, 2008.

Barely audible over the whirr of traffic, Duron Chavis offered a prayer as he poured water into the earth at the edge of a parking lot between a train trestle and Interstate 95. "We are here to honor our ancestors," Chavis told a group that encircled him one moonlit night this month. "Unfortunately, African Americans have been separated from our blood. We're disconnected from our languages, disconnected from our culture."

For the almost two dozen people gathered here, this nondescript slice of pavement represents a long-hidden heritage. Beneath the blacktop are the graves of slaves and free blacks from the 18th and 19th centuries. The city gallows once stood nearby, where a slave named Gabriel was hanged for planning a revolt. Everyone agrees that the cemetery will be commemorated. But exactly how to do that has led to debate in a city that was once the capital of the Confederacy and still struggles with those ghosts.

The state's largest school, Virginia Commonwealth University, bought the parking lot this year and has agreed to carve out a piece of it for a public memorial. But a prominent anthropologist at the College of William & Mary, along with many residents, contends that the graves probably extend beyond the strip that the university is donating. They are leading a movement to identify and reclaim the entire site. "We want all of it," said Dieyah Rasheed, who lives in nearby Henrico County. "It is sacred to me as a black woman. My ancestors were buried there. They were the ones who built Richmond. They were the nurses. They were the maids. They were the field croppers. They deserve some honor and respect."

The 250-year-old cemetery, used until about 1816, faded from public memory as the city grew up around it. But several years ago, a local historian stumbled on records of its existence. Gabriel was executed there after a failed 1800 rebellion, and some historians believe he could be buried there. Last year, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) symbolically pardoned Gabriel and said his "quest for freedom was part of a great American legacy." In recent years, the city has made efforts to commemorate the trials and contributions of slaves. The Richmond Slave Trail Commission has created a walking tour from the James River port where slaves arrived, to a slave jail that is being excavated. The trail also includes a slavery reconciliation statue that was unveiled last year.

Still, some African Americans note the proliferation of memorials here to the Confederate past. Monument Avenue honors Confederate leaders such as Robert E. Lee, Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson and J.E.B. Stuart. One exception is a statue of black tennis great Arthur Ashe. The drive to preserve the cemetery gained momentum after VCU bought the three-acre downtown lot for $3 million in February. A few months later, as the university took steps to repave the lot and improve its lighting, a small grass-roots protest raised questions about the project's impact on a place of historical interest. Work was halted to allow the state to delve into the land's history.

In June, the Virginia Department of Historic Resources concluded that much of the old cemetery and the site of the gallows lay under the interstate and that old records don't define the burial ground's limits. It's unclear how large the cemetery was. But some graves are believed to extend past the highway and into the parking lot, under 10 to 15 feet of fill. The department, drawing on the work of a local historian, also considered the possibility that the graveyard's edges could be defined by a label on an 1810 map that notes "Burial Ground for Negroes." VCU, citing that interpretation, has agreed to turn over a 50- by 200-foot piece of the lot, worth about $350,000, to the city for a memorial.

But last month, Michael L. Blakey, director of William and Mary's Institute for Historical Biology, said there was no reason to assume the mapmaker's label encompassed the entire cemetery. Blakey called the estimation of the boundary "implausibly small." He estimated that there could be graves under most, even all, of the parking lot, and recommended digging archaeological trenches, which would not disturb the remains, to determine the cemetery's scope. "If it is important to the community," Blakey said, "there is a way to know the truth about the extent of the burials."

VCU officials said they recognize the site's historical and spiritual importance, and that is why they are ceding land for a memorial. But the only practical option is to use the remainder of the lot for student and staff parking because the university is relying on parking fees to pay for the purchase, said Don Gehring, VCU's vice president for government relations and health policy. "We have reached a consensus that this is the most reasonable way to memorialize the site and recognize its significance and at the same time go forward with our purpose for parking," Gehring said. He said VCU would sell the property -- for the $3 million it is paying -- to anyone who wants to preserve the entire site.

Kathleen Kilpatrick, director of the historic resources department, said her staff reviewed available records and research to study the cemetery. "Nothing short of archaeology will determine the actual boundaries," she said. "But I don't want to lose sight of the larger goal, which is how best to memorialize the site. The issue is where we go from here to get it right, to honor the people there and to educate the public." She said the department has agreed to work with the Slave Trail Commission to raise money to buy the land.

To some in the community, ownership of the land is a much deeper question than who holds the deed. "That land does not belong to Virginia Commonwealth University. It belongs to the black community of this city and this country," Phil Wilayto, a member of the Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality, a community group pushing for preservation, said this month at a community meeting. "If this was George Washington's mother buried here, it wouldn't be a parking lot. It would be a nice grassy area," said Chavis, of Richmond. "Though we have moved forward, with Obama running for president, there are still these issues that are with us."

Richmond's is not the first such cemetery to be rediscovered. Freedmen's Cemetery in Alexandria, which opened in 1864 to bury former slaves, was forgotten for years but is now commemorated with a park. At the African Burial Ground in Lower Manhattan, uncovered in the early 1990s in a construction project, more than 400 skeletons were examined and then reburied at a site that has become a memorial.

Blakey, who was scientific director of the excavation and preservation for the New York burial ground, said the decision to excavate and study the Richmond remains should be the community's. Much of the recorded history of slaves was written by owners who considered them property, not people. But the New York graves, Blakey said, offered a glimpse of humanity. "A story is written in things that were placed in the ground," Blakey said. "There is real reverence. Small things matter: the choice that was made to leave a silver earbob in a child's coffin rather than to keep it and use it for the living. That small act has great meaning."

Doug Egerton, a Le Moyne College history professor and author of a book about Gabriel, said the slave was 24 when he plotted to win freedom for slaves by seizing the capital and taking Governor James Monroe hostage. A furious storm disrupted his plan and the plot was uncovered. Gabriel stood more than six feet, unusually tall for the time, Egerton said, and his remains could be under the lot.

"I think in many ways finding the bodies, learning what we can and placing them back with some kind of dignity and honor would be a real signal that Richmond can come together," Egerton said. He noted that there is a statue of George Washington not far from the graveyard. "There's no reason we can't honor Washington on his pedestal, and a mile away honor these people who also fought for freedom."

Text Source: Slaves History Buried In Asphalt, Washington Post, October 27, 2008

Photo: Michael L. Blakey, a College of William & Mary professor, discusses the site of the burial ground at a community meeting this month in Richmond. Photo by Lisa Billings For The Washington Post.

CWL asks, "Who owned the cemetery in 1810?" and can the chain of ownership be documented to 2008? Also, can't a parking lot at a downtown institution of higher education, where parking with limited/controlled access is nearly non-existent, be viewed as equal access to education for descendants of slaves who are enrolled students?

CWL recommends: African American Cemeteries online

Classics Reprinted---Whistling Dixie: Southern Railroading Before the Rebellion and Black Virginians in Rebel Camps

Travel on Southern Antebellum Railroads, 1828-1860, Eugene Alvarez, University of Alabama Press, illustations, maps, notes, bibliography, index, 240 pp paperback $19.95

The matter-of-fact descriptive title of this interesting little volume on railroading in the pre–Civil War South does not do justice to Alvarez’s coverage of the subject. Along with his full account of trains and train accommodations,
he manages to encompass a number of social, political, and even ideological subjects.

“Here is a carefully researched account of all aspects of railroading—engines, cars, life aboard, perils of the road, stations—with much contemporary
flavor from this boisterous era.”-- Anniston Star

“A charming and informative examination of the early years of railroads. It is also history of the kind I like best: a study not of great events or momentous trends, but of how people lived.” — Jonathan Yardley, Miami Herald

“Excellently and extensively illustrated and can be recommended to all interested in trains and southern social history.” — Journal of Southern History

The Confederate Negro Virginia’s Craftsmen and Military Laborers, 1861–1865, James H. Brewer, University of Alabama Press, 240 pp, illustrtions, notes, bibliography, index, paperback, $29.95.

“Brewer has brought to light creditably the little known contribution of the Virginia Negroes, free and slave, to the Confederacy. In so doing, he corrects a serious historical omission while delivering a telling blow to the destruction of the stereotyped southern Negro during the war. . . . A milestone in the history of the period and essential to any serious study of the Civil War, the Negro, and the South.” — Journal of American History

“Brewer forcefully presents his main theme that the Virginia Negro ‘contributed a sustaining eff ort to the War for Southern Independence and an impressive mass of facts and statistics demonstrates that the Old Dominion’s more than half a million blacks made a vital contribution to the rebel cause. . . . Professor Brewer makes his point effectively and, in the process, adds a new dimension to the measurement of the Confederate war effort. No historian of the Civil War era can afford to ignore this book, which sheds so much new light.” — Journal of Southern History

A Gettysburg College “Top 200 Civil War Books” selection, Mayflower Award Winner for 1970

Source: text from publisher