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 year has someone made complaints about the field trip to the media, dragging it hazily from the archives of my now college-aged friends and my memories. I’ve had conversations about it with many of my former classmates, and for most of us, the initial dominant emotions are hurt and confusion. People are horrified that in my fifty percent African American town, ten- and eleven-year-olds were picking cotton and singing slave songs—and to us it was a fun game. Anyone who says this is wrong has a strong case. However, I believe that the situation is more complicated than it’s being made out to be, and the moral verdict here could be inconclusive. In the second chapter of his autobiography, Frederick Douglass talks about how northerners believed that because the southern slaves sang, they were happy. He says that any slave would know that was not the case. To those in the group, the truth was completely different than what it appeared to be on the outside. It’s easy to apply the phenomenon he describes to the polarizing picture painted by the media. The logical conclusion that comes from reading the Fox News or Atlanta Black Star articles is that the Rock Hill school District (RHSD) is comprised of evil racists who took pleasure in encouraging fifth graders to act like slaves. The actuality is more nuanced and while anger shouldn’t be ruled out, it should be informed. In this essay I intend to apply Douglass’s logic to my experience and temper the fury that comes from the one-sided media portrayal of the field trip.
When mother of one of the children, Jessica Blanchard’s, complaint broke, people reacted furiously to the Carroll School field trip. After getting over the initial shock of it, I was angry myself. None of us former students understood how we could’ve been so utterly misled and taken advantage of. That should have been our first hint that something was amiss, but it was difficult to see past the outrage being spread by most news articles. One example of such a news article is by the Atlanta Black Star and bears the headline: “‘I Like It When You Fill the Sack’: S.C. Elementary School Students Pick Cotton, Sing ‘Slave’ Songs as Part of Class Field Trip”. As if the title isn’t strongly worded enough, the first sentence is immediately biased.
“A South Carolina mother believes a school history lesson went a step too far after her 10-year-old son and his classmates were made to pick cotton and sing “slave songs” during a class field trip during Black History Month.”
Every part of this sentence enforces the narrative that the children were evilly taken advantage of. The use of the word “made” implies either that (1) the children didn’t want to pick cotton and sing, something easily disproven by the excited yells of the children featured in the five-minute video on the field trip, or that (2) they were completely ignorant to what they were doing—meaning they were taken advantage of. There is truth to that if these malleable children were faced with the same instructions to pick cotton today, many of them would say no. That doesn’t change that these news companies are sensationalizing the story to heighten audience reactions. They mention that the trip was during Black History Month to further stoke the flames of outrage they mean to incite. To someone who knows the field trip’s true goal, which is to pass on the oral history of these rural southern African American families, this would be poignant instead of a cause for anger. Newspapers feed off these “outrage politics”. It’s a phenomenon often demonstrated on the social media platform Twitter. Users often get angry just because other people are inciting witch hunts for reasons that may not be deserving. In fact, I first witnessed the half-narrative of this field trip on the website and fell for it myself. The truth is that the Carroll School is meant to preserve the oral history of the early 20th century African American community near my hometown. The many people calling for it to be shut down are actually working against what they should want—an opportunity for the stories of these folk to be preserved and heard.
The news articles sensationalizing the trips to the Carroll School focus only on the cotton-picking and slave song singing, whileignoring the complete picture. They usually neglect to mention what the school actually was and what the purpose of the trip was. They frame the school district’s response that the trip was about the Great Depression as a cop out for the readers to scoff at rather than the literal truth. None of the articles mention that the people who worked at the school were sharecroppers and that the school is preserved by the former students. Instead they use the phrase “slave song” and let their readers draw their own conclusions. Obviously, this leaves readers furious, wondering how the school district could traumatize and belittle their students in such a callous way. Further research reveals that things aren’t that terrible. Built in 1929, the Carroll School was part of Booker T. Washington’s Rosenwald Initiative to educate African Americans in the rural South (The Olde English District). The students who attended the school were the African American children of sharecroppers. Unsurprisingly these families continued to be extorted by unfair contracts and dirty business tactics. This is what they taught us on the field trip. They said that the end of slavery didn’t mean the end of oppression of black people. They didn’t glamorize slavery; slavery wasn’t even the heart of the conversation. They had us pick cotton to give us a glimpse into the lives of the Carroll School students. They couldn’t just force us to work so it was made into a game and we sang songs. No matter where you finally land in regard to the issue, anyone would have to admit that the trip has been made out to be something worse than it actually was. The way newspapers have portrayed it as an act of overt racism is misleading and unfair to the public.
The video about the Carroll School made by Rock Hill school district is heartwarming and tells of the true life of the students that attended the school from 1929-1954. It’s relatable to the fifth graders because many of the students at the school were even younger than them. Right from the beginning (at 0:28) the video shows one of the men who preserves the school leading a fifth-grade class through the slave song I remember singing myself when I was ten. They seem giddy and you can hear as they enthusiastically sing along and try to copy his accent. It’s worth noting that this “slave song” is one he wrote himself, as claimed in a statement by RHSD responding to the backlash towards the Carroll School. The video is interspersed with facts about the school, interviews of the now elderly students, and videos of the fifth-graders on the trip. The singing and cotton-picking don’t look so dark from this angle. You could even call it wholesome when seeing the kids cheer and treat the experience like a game. The preservation, interviews, and field trip all feature kind-looking black grandparents. In the video, they speak honestly about how hard life was for them. They’re telling an oral history of their past. That’s better than learning from a textbook, and it’s more authentic to the subject matter. The school itself serves as a vehicle for oral and physical history of a long-marginalized group. The video serves as a testament to the school’s mission and supports everything the school district restated a year later when faced with accusations of racism.
In the second chapter of his autobiography, Frederick Douglass identifies a common issue among listeners by retelling the confusion he felt upon hearing Northerners interpretation of slave songs. He says, “I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness.” He goes on to vehemently deny this saying “Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears.” Singing only made things temporarily more bearable. It is obvious that people don’t have to be miserable all the time to be considered generally unwell. However, the Northerners missed this because they needed to be in the group to see the full picture and react appropriately. Knowing only half the story will lead to people drawing the wrong conclusions. This is especially true to things overheard. Our field trip seems deplorable if all you hear is that the kids picked cotton and sang slave songs. If you’re in the group that participated in it, you realize that it’s part of the learning activity and is respectful to the teacher’s history. It’s part of the continuation of the oral history of southern African Americans. The whole event celebrates a school that helped to lift disadvantaged, rural, southern black families out of poverty. The trip truly was about the Great Depression. Northern South Carolinians lived off the area’s textile industry and picking cotton was a symptom of that. Just like the way African American farmers were taken advantage of is a symptom of racism and slavery. People in the group know the truth more than outsiders. That’s why northerners that may care about this issue need to take a moment to try to understand the lived experiences of the southerners. Critics of the trip need to try to see the point of view held by the people who were actually on the trip. And lastly, people who went on the trip need to think deeply about the actual lives of the people who attended the Carroll School and how/if that legacy should be celebrated. People who were on the trip know the field trip is not as bad as it seems and could even truthfully be called respectful for the way it gives these families the power to share their story on their own terms, regardless of whether or not you believe the Carroll School was actually the most beneficial it could be to its students.
The side of the story I’ve shared suggests that people shouldn’t 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’t been affected by years of oppression in the same way as my black classmates have. The school’s 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’s 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’t 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’t speak to the perspective of a black student. Luckily, there are hundreds of black students who have been on the trip and wouldn’t 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.
The Carroll School won’t be shut down, and fifth-graders will continue to take field trips to it. However, there will be changes. RHSD has issued a statement saying, “In light of recent concerns regarding parts of the Carroll School field experience, Rock Hill Schools has made some changes to the program that will go into effect immediately. Students will no longer participate in picking cotton as part of the experience. Additionally, the song that was written and sung by an instructor based on his life experiences as an African American during the Great Depression era will no longer be performed.” Whether or not these changes are for the better or worse is up to individual interpretation, though I confess the image of these former Carroll School students being chastised for sharing the events that happened to their ancestors by people outraged about what happened to their ancestors makes me a little sad. However, I’m not part of every group that should get a say here, and my opinion shouldn’t be placed over the opinions of people more deeply affected. And as in Douglass’s story, I could be misinterpreting the events that I heard, even though I was participating in them during that one instance. We likely won’t ever reach a satisfying conclusion on the morality of the field trip I went on. Still, the doesn’t mean the conversation is pointless. In fact, the discomfort it raises indicates just how important it is. When we have these nuanced, cloudy discussions, we come closer to seeing each other’s point of view, which only brings us closer together.
Citations:
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Clydesdale Press, 2018.
Grant, Matthew. “Rock Hill Schools Announce Changes to Controversial Field Trip.” WJZY, FOX 46, 4 Mar. 2019, www.fox46charlotte.com/news/local-news/rock-hill-schools-announce-changes-to-controversial-field-trip.
Kenney, Tanasia. “’I Like It When You Fill the Sack’: S.C. Elementary School Students Pick Cotton, Sing ‘Slave’ Songs as Part of Class Field Trip.” Atlanta Black Star, Atlanta Black Star, 22 Feb. 2019.
MsFluzo. Wade in the Water, YouTube, 19 July 2010, www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg_8L96E3eU.
Report, Palmetto. Rock Hill’s Carroll School Added to National Register of Historic Places, YouTube, 4 Dec. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xTZx3prqJI.
Rock Hill Schools. YouTube, Rock Hill School District, 18 Apr. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZBCPPDpCKg.
“The Carroll (Rosenwald) School.” www.OldeEnglishDistrict.com, The Olde English District.
