The Film: Interview Transcripts: Loren Schweninger

Loren Schweninger, Professor of History, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, on
slavery’s long shadow
Slavery still casts a shadow in American history, and the attitudes and values among whites toward blacks, in some respects, persists from the last century and from the century before that.  Racial attitudes about black inferiority about blacks who are lesser people, may not be as obvious today, but many of these racial attitudes are still underneath the surface and festering. 

There are many lessons to be learned from expanding our knowledge and trying to understand what went on then.  We can evaluate our values today and evaluate our attitudes toward race today.  The more we understand about slavery, the more we can look at our perceptions of who we are, and where we have been, and where we are going.

Selective memory, like selective history, not only distorts the past, but also fosters misunderstandings about the present.  To confront current attitudes about so called black inferiority, to discard racial stereotypes and stigmas, whites should gain much from understanding the institution of slavery and could gain much from a historical perspective.  The laws and institutions relegating African-Americans to an inferior status and non-citizenship have long since banished, but the ideas about blacks that were part of the historical landscape remain.  Whites would profit greatly by looking back at the institution of slavery and the era of segregation.  By looking back at how and why racial violence was so pervasive, especially in the south, they would profit greatly by trying to comprehend how and why the brutality existed and how and why in later years, the very prominent blacks were brutalized. 

To understand the best of America -- our love of justice and fairness and how the conviction of one individual’s sense of right can suffice to defy the greatest wrongs, as one author wrote – it is also necessary to understand the worst -- the racial hatred, intolerance and cruel and sadistic forms of violence.    

The Race and Slavery
Petitions Project

rebels on the plantation

obstacles and
heart-wrenching decisions

three groups of free blacks

dramatic slave escapes