A trip to U.S. slavery’s 1619 birthplace leaves Black students feeling empowered
Fort Monroe, where slaves were first brought to the U.S. colonies, served the Union in Confederate territory. Now a teacher uses it to bolster education of slavery.
HAMPTON, Va. — Justice Alexander, a senior at Granby High School in Norfolk, Virginia, felt something come over him as the bus carrying 21 of his classmates entered the grounds of Fort Monroe on the Chesapeake Bay.
Sure, Alexander knew the facts of the place: Four centuries ago, in 1619, a ship called the White Lion crossed the Atlantic Ocean from central Africa with “twenty and odd” souls. Aboard that ship were the first enslaved Africans torn from their homes arriving in what was then called Point Comfort, in the Virginia colony.
But Alexander’s feelings were overwhelming, even if only briefly.
When the bus rolled onto the property, Alexander, 18, said, “it was like …” He made a sound that intimated discomfort. “I felt it. I felt it. It was just a little off. It was kind of surreal, knowing enslaved people got off boats here. It hit me.”
Justice Alexander, a student at Granby High School, on the bus headed to Fort Monroe on Jan. 11.Kyna Uwaeme for NBC NewsAlexander and his bus full of Advanced Placement African American studies classmates embarked on a field trip that, by its very nature, would be controversial in many high schools across the country. Visiting the site that signifies the beginning of generations of chattel slavery in the U.S., and talking about the impacts of systematic enslavement could even violate some states’ educational policies. But that is why Edwin Allison, the teacher behind this trip, knows taking his students to this site is crucial to their education.
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