On a rainy day in April, Gav Bell entered their 12th-grade American history class to find two long tables pushed together in the center of the room with black fabric hanging down covering all sides. The teacher entered the room and promptly directed students to “get down and crawl under the tables together”. Once Gav and their fellow classmates were in the dark under the tables, squeezing their knees tightly to minimize unwanted physical contact, their teacher began to read them a passage describing conditions on the slaves ships transporting Africans through the middle passage: the voyage which brought over captured Africans to North America to be sold at slave auctions. Gav Bell is my best friend and this was an entry lesson in their highschool class’s unit on slavery.
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