Harsh reality

Suzie Harrison

Toni Flores’ fifth-grade students listened quietly as the teacher

read from a book about slavery, perhaps conjuring images of what life

was like during the slave period.

The story was true, a story about a girl who was living in America

during slavery who came across a sign that read Negro Auction Today.

She wrote a letter to her friend telling of her emotions and

feelings about a scene she had witnessed -- seeing two men with their

hands clasped together before they were put on the auction block,

clearly family, being torn apart. They were sold to two different

slave owners, taken two separate ways, never to see each other again.

“It’s a true story,” Flores said. “Think of what it would be like

and how your world would be changed.”

The Top of the World Elementary School students gasped and

seemingly couldn’t believe that the books that Flores read from could

have ever been true. She read several books to her students and gave

detailsof what it would be like to be a slave.

She showed a picture of a slave being captured on the Gold Coast

of Africa with the person being put into chains.

“This way they could easily handle you,” Flores said. “They were

put in chains and their arms where chained to a log.”

The students responded with a collective “whoa” of disbelief.

Flores handed out a worksheet diagraming a slave ship and how the

slaves were shipped as cargo. Thousands of bodies were shown stacked

tightly head to toe, shackled with little room to breathe.

“This section shows the 1786 stowing of slaves,” Flores said.

“Look at it carefully. Look at the floor, at all their heads, they

made shelves like a bookshelf through the entire ship.”

One student remarked that it looked like they were all bunched up

in one place. Another student pointed to how many people there were

stuffed in together.

The teacher said that they were going to re-enact what it might

have been like and had the entire class lay on the floor feet to

head, every other person and made sure they were stuck together as

closely as possible.

“The life of a slave was really hard,” Rouzbeh Kazemian, 10, said.

“I thought it would be a lot easier, but when you pretend to

experience it, it’s a lot tougher.”

She also said the finer details of them being shackled for most of

the day, that the shelves of people above would have to go the

bathroom, as they lay there and how it would trickle down from shelf

to shelf.

“Try to feel what these people might have felt, though we’re not

going to feel anything near,” Flores said. “This is as much room as

you would have. Your right hand would be bolted to a handcuff to the

floor.”

The students were amazed and complained, yelling out “ouch” as

they heard the details about the three to four months they had do

endure as they were shipped across the ocean to the unknown without

their families.

“Once a day, if you were quiet and cooperative, they would take

you out of your shelf and put you on deck with chains,” Flores said.

“At this point, they would find out who had died and throw them

overboard.”

Flores said that they would crack a whip at their feet and make

them dance and maybe give them a bowl of food and a drink of water

before they were chained down for another 24 hours.

“I’ve learned that black people shouldn’t be treated like this.

They’re people just like everyone else,” Chase Van Petegem, 10, said.

Flores also took the class through the process of the slaves being

auctioned and handed out cotton complete with all its dirt and seeds

and had the class experience how hard that was.

“These people did a lot of work, a lot harder than people would

think,” Alexis Huntley, 10, said. “They had to be brave. All the kids

would lose their family and don’t get to see them again. That’s

really hard.”

Before the bell rang for lunch, Flores mused that they would have

to have their cotton completely done before they could have lunch.

She said that for slaves, it was a privilege to eat.