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@mattmcgorry : "John Brown Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights" by David S. Reynolds # The way that we are taught history in the United States, teaches us to be racist. It teaches us how to overvalue the contributions of white people and undervalue the contributions of People of Color. This book is a powerful antidote to the stale history taught in our schools systems that is divorced from the present day systems of oppression and struggles for liberation. # John Brown was a name known widely before the abolition of slavery, but a name that has largely been erased. I, like most of us, learned a false history; that the Civil War was launched by a benevolent Abraham Lincoln and was fought by the North to free enslaved people. In school, I learned barely anything about the resistance of enslaved people. I learned nothing about Nat Turner, who escaped from slavery, and the violent rebellion that he led which struck terror into the hearts of the pro-slavery Southerners, or the ripple effect that this had, including inspiring the white abolitionist, John Brown, to take violent measures in order to strike a deadly blow to the institution of slavery. # It makes sense to me, why we are taught history this way by our mostly white teachers. Believing that the North was "good" and non-racist, while the South was "bad" and racist, allows most white Northerners (present-day liberals) to feel a sense of moral superiority over the white South (present-day conservatives) without actually doing much of anything. If the white South (conservatives) are the ones upholding racism, then we don't have a responsibility in working to see and dismantle it in the our own backyards and our own lives. # The truth is, Abraham Lincoln (like most white abolitionists of the day) had deeply racist beliefs and was PUSHED to an abolitionist stance by abolitionist organizing. Eventually, he came to espouse abolition, but believed that Africans should be sent