Teaching Kids About Slavery and Jim Crow in the South: A White Parent’s Perspective
The question came from the back seat at a red light. My son pointed at the Confederate statue on the courthouse lawn and said, “Why is that man on a horse?”
I didn’t have a good answer. I had driven past that statue my whole life, and I had never once asked that question out loud.
I grew up in Alabama. In fourth grade, we studied Alabama history from a textbook that called the Civil War the “War Between the States.” The teacher talked about states’ rights and Northern aggression. Slavery came up as a side note, like it was one of many complicated factors instead of the central engine of everything.
I remember my grandfather telling me that his great-granddaddy fought at Vicksburg. “He was a soldier,” he said, “and he did what he had to do.” I pictured a young man in a gray uniform, brave, tired, maybe hungry. I didn’t picture the enslaved people my great-great-grandfather owned, because no one ever said the word “owned.”
That afternoon at the red light, I told my son that the man on the horse was a Confederate soldier. He asked, “Who was he fighting for?”
I said, “The army of the Confederacy. They fought to keep slavery legal.”
He was quiet for a second. Then he said, “That’s bad.”
And I said, “Yes. It was bad. It was a bad cause.”
It felt strange to say out loud. Not because I disagree with it, but because I had never heard anyone around me say it plainly when I was a kid. The adults in my life talked about the South as a place with good manners and bad luck, a place that lost a war it fought for reasons nobody could quite explain.
I don’t think I’m the only white Southerner who carries that vagueness around. The silence is inherited too.
The other day, I was helping my daughter with a school project on Martin Luther King Jr. She was reading a worksheet that said, “After the Civil War, laws were passed to separate people.”
That was all it said. No name for those laws. No clue who they hurt.
I sat down beside her and said, “Those laws were called Jim Crow laws. They made it illegal for Black people and white people to go to the same schools, drink from the same water fountains, or sit in the same parts of theaters and buses. Black people were kept from voting by poll taxes and literacy tests. It wasn’t a small thing. It was a whole system.”
She asked, “Why would anyone make laws like that?”
I said, “Because a lot of white people wanted to keep their power and their money after slavery ended. They wanted to make sure Black people stayed at the bottom.”
She said, “That’s not fair.”
I said, “No. It wasn’t fair.”
That conversation was hard, but not as hard as I expected. I had built up a lot of fear about talking to my kids about race and history, worrying that I wouldn’t get the words right, or that I’d upset them. But kids are ready for hard history long before adults are comfortable saying it.
As a parent and as a volunteer at my children’s school, I’ve learned a few things that have made these conversations easier.
Start with the facts, not with your feelings. When your child asks why a Confederate monument is still standing, don’t begin with “It’s part of our heritage” or “It’s complicated.” Begin with what it actually was. Say, “This monument honors people who fought to keep white people in charge and Black people enslaved. Many Southern towns built these statues decades after the war, not right after. They built them to send a message to Black communities.” You can always add more nuance later, but kids need the truth first.
Use the word “enslaved people” instead of “slaves.” This seems small, but it matters. “Slaves” makes slavery sound like a category of person. “Enslaved people” reminds us they were people who were captured, sold, forced, and held against their will. It makes the crime clearer.
When you don’t know something, say so. Last year I took my daughter to a local plantation site for a field trip. The docent kept saying “the workers” when she talked about the people who picked cotton. At the end, my daughter asked me, “Who were the workers?” I had to tell her that they were enslaved people, and then I had to explain why the docent didn’t say that.
That explanation mattered. “Sometimes people use softer words because the truth is hard to say,” I said. “But we shouldn’t use softer words when we’re talking about people’s lives.”
We don’t need to save these conversations for school or for Black History Month. The impact of slavery and Jim Crow is visible everywhere, if you point it out. In our town, the older Black neighborhoods are near the railroad tracks. The white neighborhoods have bigger lots and more parks. The schools in those neighborhoods get more money from property taxes. That’s not a coincidence. It’s the result of redlining, white flight, and decades of policy that pushed Black families out of neighborhoods and away from opportunity.
When I was a kid, no one taught me that. I thought the city was just organized naturally. But it wasn’t natural. It was built that way by people making choices.
I’ve also had to learn how to listen to my own family without turning every holiday into a history lesson. My grandfather still used the old Lost Cause phrases. “States’ rights.” “The war was about economics.” “We all have a little Indian in us.” I used to grit my teeth and change the subject. Now I ask a question instead of making a point. I’ll say, “What did Great-Granddaddy actually farm before the war?” or “Who worked the cotton?” He doesn’t always answer comfortably, but sometimes he tells a story that’s real. That realness is more useful than a clean argument.
I’m not saying it’s easy. It is not easy to sit in your grandmother’s kitchen and listen to “They were treated better than people think.” It is also not easy to tell your child that the nice-looking plantation house they just visited was paid for by human misery. But the discomfort is not the problem. The problem is when we let discomfort turn into silence.
At school, I’ve seen teachers handle this well and badly. I’ve seen teachers assign a chapter and move on without helping kids think critically about what they read. I’ve also seen teachers use primary sources like a colonial newspaper ad for a runaway enslaved person and ask kids, “What do you think the plantation owner wanted? What do you think the person who ran away wanted?” That simple question makes kids think about perspectives instead of memorizing dates.
Parents can do the same thing at home. If your child reads a story about a historical figure, ask, “Who is missing from this story? What about the people who worked for them? Who is telling the story, and favor does it serve?” You don’t need a teaching degree for that. You just need to ask the question and listen to what your child comes up with.
I don’t know if my kids will remember the specific things I’ve said. They’re still young. But I want them to remember that the history wasn’t a secret in our house. I want them to know that I didn’t turn away from the parts that made me uncomfortable.
The South is still shaped by what happened before us. That doesn’t mean it’s hopeless. It means we can’t pretend we’re starting from scratch. I’m still figuring out how to talk about this with my family, with my neighbors, with the other parents at school. I don’t have a neat ending. I just know that I’m not going to wait until the next red light to say the honest thing out loud.
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