Hello Fay - I have followed you. The modern Confederacy was after me all last week on Twitter (X) and many were citing these reports of slaves who "gained skills." I told them there was nothing ever good about slavery ever. Any time I cover anything related to white supremacy or Black Americans there is one or more of these all-anonymous accounts ready to refute what I say. Their current tactic is to call anyone who says anything good about Black Americans or who denies the oppressive and flat-out insane actions such as you have documented here - a "racist."

I guess my favorite recent episode in addition to the attacks by the anonymous, hooded Sons of the New South (they called me a 'Yankee' - ha! - I told them there is a whole half of the country West of the Rockies and my family settled there - to get away from them!) was the guy who wanted to tell me that Buffalo Bill Cody was a great man and did not make $5/head shooting buffalo off the back of a train to the point they almost went extinct - he helpfully added that "Indians" were too ignorant to deserve to "survive."

There's been a whole conversation on Authors Guild discussion boards about libraries and how they could "erase" history by throwing older books away. In this case, these "Educators" are trying to - well I had the same experience as you. I had absolutely NO IDEA of the true history until I was an adult. When you learn it that way, it is deeply disillusioning. We cannot let these brutal, monstrous people do this.