Essential Knowledge in the Florida Slave Controversy

On April 16, 2019, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis visited U.S. Coast Guard Station Marathon to meet with Monroe County and municipality officials. He discussed Hurricane Irma recovery, water quality, and coral restoration. Also in attendance were Lieut. Gov. Jeannette Nunez, Department of Economic Opportunity Director Ken Lawson, Secretary Noah Valenstein of Environmental Protection, and Florida Department of Emergency Management Director Jared Moskowitz. “We have a good plan to achieve a lot on behalf of the folks in the Florida Keys,” DeSantis said. Photos by Kristen Livengood.

Differences in views on the right and left are unlikely to come to terms over Florida’s AP curriculum. NRO’s Rich Lowry, however, reports on the “smoking gun:” evidence of the political motivation driving criticism of Ron DeSantis in the fact that the AP curriculum says more or less exactly the same thing he did, and that, as Lowry writes, it “didn’t generate a peep of protest:”

See it here.

In addition to agricultural work, enslaved people learned specialized trades and worked as painters, carpenters, tailors, musicians, and healers in the North and South. Once free, American Americans used these skills to provide for themselves and others.

Mr. Lowry recommends a book by David Hackett Fischer, African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals. This fascinating publication presents a “sobering and celebratory” exploration of the little-known skills enslaved people brought from different regions of Africa. Fischer dwells on their interaction with colonists of European origins to create new regional cultures in the colonial United States.

The Africans brought with them linguistic skills, novel techniques of animal husbandry and farming, and generations-old ethical principles, among other attributes. This startling history reveals how much our country was shaped by these African influences in its early years, producing a new, distinctly American culture.

Fischer’s multilayered research on the cultural and spiritual beliefs the enslaved people also brought with them adds significantly to the literature on the early republic.

As Fischer notes, Africans “contributed from the beginning to what makes America America.” Despite slavery and racism, they survived and forced America to live up to its values and promises.