We can put this story under the same heading as the one above: "Racism, bigotry and ignorance are alive and well in 2019." I wonder if these kids were given extra credit if they performed in blackface or did impersonations of Stepin Fetchit.
South Carolina fifth-graders told to pick cotton, sing slave song on field trip
USA TODAY, Feb 24 2019
Students at an elementary school in Greenville, South Carolina were told to pick cotton and sing a slave song as part of a class field trip during Black History Month. Cell phone video provided to Fox 46 Charlotte shows fifth-graders from Ebenezer Avenue Elementary picking cotton while being instructed to sing, "I like it when you fill the sack. I like it when you don't talk back. Make money for me."
"I think it's making a mockery," Jessica Blanchard, whose 10-year-old son attended the field trip, told the station. "A mockery of slavery. A mockery of what our people went through." The students were on a field trip to the Carroll School, which was built in 1929 for African-Americans and now serves as a teaching center for fifth-graders to learn about the effects of the Great Depression.
The TV station reported that parents signed permission slips that mentioned cotton picking as part of a history lesson on the Great Depression. A representative from the Rock Hill School District told ABC News the field trip was a "unique learning opportunity." The district issued a statement saying the songs sung were not intended "to sound like or in any way be a 'slave song' as it has been characterized."
State Rep. John King, D-Rock Hill, said, "Something has gone terribly wrong when slavery is treated as a game, when children leave a field trip with the impression that a mockery can be made of their ancestors' oppression. When we portray a sugar-coated version of history, one of happily picking cotton and singing songs, then we miss an opportunity to teach the truth."
South Carolina Fifth-graders told to pick cotton, sing slave song on field trip
