Florida schools should not be trying to put any positive spin on slavery

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is under fire for newly released “benchmark” standards for teaching African American history in Florida schools. The particular objectionable item in the list of benchmarks involves teaching middle-schoolers that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” 

This “personal benefit” benchmark clearly misrepresents the reality of Black enslavement. For although slaves did indeed learn skills, the benefits accrued only to their owners.

This was illustrated in a two-day slave auction that occurred in Savannah, Ga., in 1859 — one of the largest ever held in the South. The slaves put on the block belonged to Pierce Butler, who needed to monetize more than 400 Black men, women and children in order to satisfy his impatient creditors.

Some of the enslaved had been taught skills that owners needed for running a plantation. They included coopers, carpenters, shoemakers and blacksmiths. But the only one who realized a personal benefit from their skills was Pierce Butler — first as the plantation owner and then as the seller at the auction.

A Northern journalist who attended the auction wrote of the skilled slaves that “their knowledge of these various trades sold in some cases for nearly as much as the man — that is, a man without a trade, who would be valued at $900, would readily bring $1,600 or $1,700 if he was a passable blacksmith or cooper.”

The enslaved were housed during the auction in horse sheds, where prospective buyers could inspect, prod and poke the merchandise. During the auction, bidders demanded that the auctioneer strip a pregnant Black woman naked. “What’s the fault of the gal? Ain’t she sound? Pull off her rags and let us see her.”

Thirty babies, one just a few days old, went on the block and sold for around $100 each as long-term investments, because their value to the buyers would presumably increase each year until they became adults.

And note that this auction was actually more humane than others, because the babies were sold with their mothers. When the auction ended, young couples were torn from each other’s arms and some slaves began the journey to the killing fields of the rice plantations farther south. Butler earned $300,000 from the auction.

So, just how is a Florida teacher supposed to comply with the personal benefit benchmark, without misrepresenting the topic of slavery?

In fact, just by describing the Butler slave auction, a teacher might violate the Stop Woke Act that DeSantis signed into law in 2022. That law prohibits schools from teaching that a person “bears personal responsibility for and must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress over actions committed in the past by members of the same race, gender, or national origin.” 

Given the vagueness of the Stop Woke Act, a teacher who merely describes this auction could conceivably be sued by some student’s parents, even if the teacher doesn’t directly suggest that anyone in the class should feel personal responsibility. In the hands of the right plaintiff’s lawyer, students’ understandable discomfort at hearing about such an atrocity as this auction could land teachers in court.

And of course, the very possibility could chill classroom discussion of slavery. Is that what DeSantis intended in his campaign to establish that he has more anti-woke credentials than anyone else?

Black enslavement had no redeeming or mitigating features. Those who drafted this personal benefit benchmark not only are wrong but also risk spreading historical illiteracy, making it impossible to explain to students what was actually done to enslaved Black people in the U.S.

Slavery was an unalloyed evil and a moral catastrophe. This reality is essential to teaching the American story in all its glories and failures.

Gregory J. Wallance was a federal prosecutor in the Carter and Reagan administrations and a member of the ABSCAM prosecution team, which convicted a U.S. senator and six representatives of bribery. He is the author of “Two Men Before the Storm: Arba Crane’s Recollection of Dred Scott and the Supreme Court Case That Started the Civil War.” His newest book, “Into Siberia: George Kennan’s Epic Journey Through the Brutal, Frozen Heart of Russia,” is due out in December.