Some Slaves Cited by Florida as Beneficiaries Weren't Slaves

The day after approving a new requirement that middle school students be taught that some enslaved people learned skills to their personal benefit, Florida's Board of Education issued a statement in its defense. The board listed the names of 16 historical figures it said were helped by the "highly specialized trades" they learned while enslaved, calling this point "factual and well documented." The Tampa Bay Times dug into the matter, finding that historic sources account for some of those 16 lives quite differently. For starters, several of those people were never enslaved. Others indeed acquired skills but not while they were enslaved.

"They just threw out a bunch of names to make it seem like something good came of (slavery)," said Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, who contested having Booker T. Washington on the list. Washington was freed when he was 9, then went on to work in mines and as a houseboy. Tuskegee University, which Washington founded in 1881, said he later went to school. The board has James Forten as a shoemaker born into slavery in 1766 who escaped in 1784. The Museum of the American Revolution, on the other hand, calls Forten a Black entrepreneur born to free parents. He served on privateer ships during the Revolutionary War and became a wealthy sailmaker.

Lewis Latimer is listed as a blacksmith born into slavery in 1848 and freed in 1852. The Lewis Latimer House Museum says he was a self-educated inventor born to formerly enslaved parents. He helped to develop the telephone and incandescent lighting. The Times has other examples. The education department said it's standing by its 16 names, which it said were provided by Frances Presley Rice, a member of the board's workgroup on the policy and one of the signees on the statement. The board provided the names of two books it consulted: Encyclopedia of African American History 1619-1895, published in 2006, and The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution, published in 1895. (More Florida stories.)