{"id":1268,"date":"2019-03-22T17:49:20","date_gmt":"2019-03-22T17:49:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wri-101k-s19.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/?p=1268"},"modified":"2019-04-16T19:27:36","modified_gmt":"2019-04-16T19:27:36","slug":"in-defense-of-the-carroll-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wri-101k-s19.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/writing-project-2-voice-in-its-cultural-contexts-and-consequences\/in-defense-of-the-carroll-school\/","title":{"rendered":"In Defense of the Carroll School"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">All fifth graders in my school district have taken\nfield trips to the Carroll School for over a decade now. We would see the\npreserved school building, learn about the lives of sharecroppers during the\nGreat Depression, eat school lunches like they did, and then pick cotton and\nsing songs in the field. Only this year has someone made complaints about the\nfield trip to the media, dragging it hazily from the archives of my now college-aged\nfriends and my memories. I\u2019ve had conversations about it with many of my former\nclassmates, and for most of us, the initial dominant emotions are hurt and\nconfusion. People are horrified that in my fifty percent African American town,\nten- and eleven-year-olds were picking cotton and singing slave songs\u2014and to us\nit was a fun game. Anyone who says this is wrong has a strong case. However, I\nbelieve that the situation is more complicated than it\u2019s being made out to be, and\nthe moral verdict here could be inconclusive. In the second chapter of his\nautobiography, Frederick Douglass talks about how northerners believed that\nbecause the southern slaves sang, they were happy. He says that any slave would\nknow that was not the case. To those in the group, the truth was completely\ndifferent than what it appeared to be on the outside. It\u2019s easy to apply the\nphenomenon he describes to the polarizing picture painted by the media. The\nlogical conclusion that comes from reading the Fox News or <em>Atlanta Black Star<\/em> articles is that the Rock Hill school District\n(RHSD) is comprised of evil racists who took pleasure in encouraging fifth\ngraders to act like slaves. The actuality is more nuanced and while anger\nshouldn\u2019t be ruled out, it should be informed. In this essay I intend to apply\nDouglass\u2019s logic to my experience and temper the fury that comes from the\none-sided media portrayal of the field trip. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When mother of one of the children, Jessica\nBlanchard\u2019s, complaint broke, people reacted furiously to the Carroll School\nfield trip. After getting over the initial shock of it, I was angry myself.\nNone of us former students understood how we could\u2019ve been so utterly misled\nand taken advantage of. That should have been our first hint that something was\namiss, but it was difficult to see past the outrage being spread by most news\narticles. One example of such a news article is by the <em>Atlanta Black Star<\/em> and bears the headline: \u201c\u2018I Like It When You\nFill the Sack\u2019: S.C. Elementary School Students Pick Cotton, Sing \u2018Slave\u2019 Songs\nas Part of Class Field Trip\u201d. As if the title isn\u2019t strongly worded enough, the\nfirst sentence is immediately biased. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cA South Carolina mother believes a school history\nlesson went a step too far after her 10-year-old son and his classmates were\nmade to pick cotton and sing \u201cslave songs\u201d during a class field trip during\nBlack History Month.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Every part of this sentence enforces the narrative\nthat the children were evilly taken advantage of. The use of the word \u201cmade\u201d\nimplies either that (1) the children didn\u2019t want to pick cotton and sing,\nsomething easily disproven by the excited yells of the children featured in the\nfive-minute video on the field trip, or that (2) they were completely ignorant\nto what they were doing\u2014meaning they were taken advantage of. There is truth to\nthat if these malleable children were faced with the same instructions to pick\ncotton today, many of them would say no. That doesn\u2019t change that these news\ncompanies are sensationalizing the story to heighten audience reactions. They\nmention that the trip was during Black History Month to further stoke the\nflames of outrage they mean to incite. To someone who knows the field trip\u2019s\ntrue goal, which is to pass on the oral history of these rural southern African\nAmerican families, this would be poignant instead of a cause for anger. Newspapers\nfeed off these \u201coutrage politics\u201d. It\u2019s a phenomenon often demonstrated on the\nsocial media platform Twitter. Users often get angry just because other people\nare inciting witch hunts for reasons that may not be deserving. In fact, I first\nwitnessed the half-narrative of this field trip on the website and fell for it\nmyself. The truth is that the Carroll School is meant to preserve the oral\nhistory of the early 20<sup>th<\/sup> century African American community near my\nhometown. The many people calling for it to be shut down are actually working\nagainst what they should want\u2014an opportunity for the stories of these folk to\nbe preserved and heard. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The news articles sensationalizing the trips to the\nCarroll School focus only on the cotton-picking and slave song singing, whileignoring the complete picture. They\nusually neglect to mention what the school actually was and what the purpose of\nthe trip was. They frame the school district\u2019s response that the trip was about\nthe Great Depression as a cop out for the readers to scoff at rather than the\nliteral truth. None of the articles mention that the people who worked at the school\nwere sharecroppers and that the school is preserved by the former students.\nInstead they use the phrase \u201cslave song\u201d and let their readers draw their own\nconclusions. Obviously, this leaves readers furious, wondering how the school\ndistrict could traumatize and belittle their students in such a callous way.\nFurther research reveals that things aren\u2019t that terrible. Built in 1929, the\nCarroll School was part of Booker T. Washington\u2019s Rosenwald Initiative to\neducate African Americans in the rural South (The Olde English District). The\nstudents who attended the school were the African American children of\nsharecroppers. Unsurprisingly these families continued to be extorted by unfair\ncontracts and dirty business tactics. This is what they taught us on the field\ntrip. They said that the end of slavery didn\u2019t mean the end of oppression of\nblack people. They didn\u2019t glamorize slavery; slavery wasn\u2019t even the heart of\nthe conversation. They had us pick cotton to give us a glimpse into the lives\nof the Carroll School students. They couldn\u2019t just force us to work so it was\nmade into a game and we sang songs. No matter where you finally land in regard\nto the issue, anyone would have to admit that the trip has been made out to be\nsomething worse than it actually was. The way newspapers have portrayed it as\nan act of overt racism is misleading and unfair to the public. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Carroll School (RHSD Original Feature)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8ZBCPPDpCKg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The video about the Carroll School made by Rock Hill school\ndistrict is heartwarming and tells of the true life of the students that\nattended the school from 1929-1954. It\u2019s relatable to the fifth graders because\nmany of the students at the school were even younger than them. Right from the\nbeginning (at 0:28) the video shows one of the men who preserves the school\nleading a fifth-grade class through the slave song I remember singing myself\nwhen I was ten. They seem giddy and you can hear as they enthusiastically sing\nalong and try to copy his accent. It\u2019s worth noting that this \u201cslave song\u201d is\none he wrote himself, as claimed in a statement by RHSD responding to the\nbacklash towards the Carroll School. The video is interspersed with facts about\nthe school, interviews of the now elderly students, and videos of the fifth-graders\non the trip. The singing and cotton-picking don\u2019t look so dark from this angle.\nYou could even call it wholesome when seeing the kids cheer and treat the\nexperience like a game. The preservation, interviews, and field trip all\nfeature kind-looking black grandparents. In the video, they speak honestly\nabout how hard life was for them. They\u2019re telling an oral history of their\npast. That\u2019s better than learning from a textbook, and it\u2019s more authentic to\nthe subject matter. The school itself serves as a vehicle for oral and physical\nhistory of a long-marginalized group. The video serves as a testament to the\nschool\u2019s mission and supports everything the school district restated a year\nlater when faced with accusations of racism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the second chapter of his autobiography, Frederick\nDouglass identifies a common issue among listeners by retelling the confusion\nhe felt upon hearing Northerners interpretation of slave songs. He says, \u201cI\nhave often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons\nwho could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment\nand happiness.\u201d He goes on to vehemently deny this saying \u201cSlaves sing most\nwhen they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his\nheart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its\ntears.\u201d Singing only made things temporarily more bearable. It is obvious that\npeople don\u2019t have to be miserable all the time to be considered generally\nunwell. However, the Northerners missed this because they needed to be in the\ngroup to see the full picture and react appropriately. Knowing only half the\nstory will lead to people drawing the wrong conclusions. This is especially true\nto things overheard. Our field trip seems deplorable if all you hear is that\nthe kids picked cotton and sang slave songs. If you\u2019re in the group that\nparticipated in it, you realize that it\u2019s part of the learning activity and is\nrespectful to the teacher\u2019s history. It\u2019s part of the continuation of the oral\nhistory of southern African Americans. The whole event celebrates a school that\nhelped to lift disadvantaged, rural, southern black families out of poverty.\nThe trip truly was about the Great Depression. Northern South Carolinians lived\noff the area\u2019s textile industry and picking cotton was a symptom of that. Just\nlike the way African American farmers were taken advantage of is a symptom of\nracism and slavery. People in the group know the truth more than outsiders. That\u2019s\nwhy northerners that may care about this issue need to take a moment to try to understand\nthe lived experiences of the southerners. Critics of the trip need to try to\nsee the point of view held by the people who were actually on the trip. And lastly,\npeople who went on the trip need to think deeply about the actual lives of the\npeople who attended the Carroll School and how\/if that legacy should be celebrated.\nPeople who were on the trip know the field trip is not as bad as it seems and\ncould even truthfully be called respectful for the way it gives these families\nthe power to share their story on their own terms, regardless of whether or not\nyou believe the Carroll School was actually the most beneficial it could be to\nits students. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The side of the story I\u2019ve shared suggests that people shouldn\u2019t be so outraged. So why are they? In one part it is due to the narrative of half-truths pushed by media, but there must be more. However, as a white woman, I haven\u2019t been affected by years of oppression in the same way as my black classmates have. The school\u2019s creation by Booker T. Washington in 1929 crystallized the larger issues surrounding the path which African American social and economic advancement was to take. Washington was willing to sacrifice economic equality for social and economic independence. He wanted African Americans to work blue collar jobs and believed they would slowly gain the respect of white folk by pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. W. E. B. Du Bois, the first African American to earn a PhD from Harvard, disagreed. Du Bois believed that the key to advancement lay in education which would lead to economic advancement and political enfranchisement. The Carroll School taught trade skills to young black men and women, which allowed them to make a living in the areas where they were raised without obtaining higher education. Du Bois would argue that it benefitted industry at the expense of complete education. So, while the school is an important part of oral history and was better than nothing for the African American families in York County, people who favor Du Bois\u2019s logic see it as a continuation of the systematic disfranchisement of African Americans. For this reason, they could place the value of moving away from such structures over the value of the oral history associated with it. Furthermore, the action of cotton-picking is a huge reminder to anyone not modernly associated with the cotton industry of the terrible things that happened to black people in the U.S. for decades during and after slavery. This would be especially true of black people. People must be in-group to be able to see the truth about certain issues. Despite growing up in a largely African American school district, I have white privilege that allows me to live differently and often more easily than my black classmates. I can\u2019t sit here and firmly put down the anger of Jessica Blanchard, who is part of a group I am not and therefore sees and hears things differently than I do. In the interviews Blanchard has done, she seems truly devastated that her child participated in the field trip. If she were to explain, in the scope of the Carroll School being a way to pass on oral traditions, why the exercises done there were wrong, I would absolutely want to hear that. Because I was a student on the field trip, I can speak to my perspective, but I can\u2019t speak to the perspective of a black student. Luckily, there are hundreds of black students who have been on the trip and wouldn\u2019t be too difficult to contact if people truly want to know their experiences. With that being said, outrage is definitely permissible in this circumstance, but it should be informed. What is being circulated by the media right now is not informed and is, in fact, deliberately misleading. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Rock Hill&#039;s Carroll School added to National Register of Historic Places\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-xTZx3prqJI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><figcaption>Clearly there are other people who think that the Carroll School should be preserved.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Carroll School won\u2019t be shut down, and\nfifth-graders will continue to take field trips to it. However, there will be\nchanges. RHSD has issued a statement saying, \u201cIn light of recent concerns\nregarding parts of the Carroll School field experience, Rock Hill Schools has\nmade some changes to the program that will go into effect immediately. Students\nwill no longer participate in picking cotton as part of the experience.\nAdditionally, the song that was written and sung by an instructor based on his\nlife experiences as an African American during the Great Depression era will no\nlonger be performed.\u201d Whether or not these changes are for the better or worse\nis up to individual interpretation, though I confess the image of these former\nCarroll School students being chastised for sharing the events that happened to\ntheir ancestors by people outraged about what happened to their ancestors makes\nme a little sad. However, I\u2019m not part of every group that should get a say\nhere, and my opinion shouldn\u2019t be placed over the opinions of people more\ndeeply affected. And as in Douglass\u2019s story, I could be misinterpreting the\nevents that I heard, even though I was participating in them during that one\ninstance. We likely won\u2019t ever reach a satisfying conclusion on the morality of\nthe field trip I went on. Still, the doesn\u2019t mean the conversation is\npointless. In fact, the discomfort it raises indicates just how important it\nis. When we have these nuanced, cloudy discussions, we come closer to seeing\neach other\u2019s point of view, which only brings us closer together. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Citations: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Douglass,\nFrederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Clydesdale Press, 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Grant,\nMatthew. \u201cRock Hill Schools Announce Changes to Controversial Field Trip.\u201d\nWJZY, FOX 46, 4 Mar. 2019, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fox46charlotte.com\/news\/local-news\/rock-hill-schools-announce-changes-to-controversial-field-trip\">www.fox46charlotte.com\/news\/local-news\/rock-hill-schools-announce-changes-to-controversial-field-trip<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kenney, Tanasia. \u201c&#8217;I Like It When You Fill the Sack&#8217;: S.C. Elementary School Students Pick Cotton, Sing &#8216;Slave&#8217; Songs as Part of Class Field Trip.\u201d Atlanta Black Star, Atlanta Black Star, 22 Feb. 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\n\nMsFluzo.&nbsp;<em>Wade in the Water<\/em>, YouTube, 19 July 2010, www.youtube.com\/watch?v=vg_8L96E3eU.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\n\nReport, Palmetto.&nbsp;<em>Rock Hill&#8217;s Carroll School Added to National Register of Historic Places<\/em>, YouTube, 4 Dec. 2018, www.youtube.com\/watch?v=-xTZx3prqJI.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Rock\nHill Schools. YouTube, Rock Hill School District, 18 Apr. 2017, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=8ZBCPPDpCKg\">www.youtube.com\/watch?v=8ZBCPPDpCKg<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;\u201cThe Carroll (Rosenwald) School.\u201d www.OldeEnglishDistrict.com,\nThe Olde English District.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>All fifth graders in my school district have taken field trips to the Carroll School for over a decade now. We would see the preserved school building, learn about the lives of sharecroppers during the Great Depression, eat school lunches like they did, and then pick cotton and sing songs in the field. Only this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-writing-project-2-voice-in-its-cultural-contexts-and-consequences","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wri-101k-s19.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wri-101k-s19.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wri-101k-s19.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wri-101k-s19.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wri-101k-s19.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1268"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.wri-101k-s19.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1840,"href":"https:\/\/www.wri-101k-s19.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268\/revisions\/1840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wri-101k-s19.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wri-101k-s19.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wri-101k-s19.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}