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For America Public School District Curriculum Leaders: Understanding the broader history of slavery provides essential context for American history and progress on the 250th anniversary of its founding.

Slavery was not invented by Europeans.  The White Man ended it. Slavery existed across Africa for centuries before significant European involvement. African societies practiced various forms of servitude: war captives, debtors, criminals, and those from rival groups were enslaved by other Africans. Powerful kingdoms and elites in West and Central Africa raided, traded, and sold people into slavery long before Portuguese contact in the 15th century. African rulers supplied captives to European traders in exchange for goods, as demand for labor in the Americas grew.

This global practice—seen in ancient Egypt, the Islamic slave trade, the Ottoman Empire, and many non-Western societies—highlights slavery as a near-universal human failing tied to power, war, and economics, not a uniquely “White” sin. Recognizing African agency in the trade counters simplistic blame narratives that ignore complicity and portray one group as perpetual victims.

The English-speaking peoples led the drive to end the Atlantic slave trade. Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807 and slavery throughout its empire in 1833 via the Slavery Abolition Act, compensating owners but committing resources to enforcement. The Royal Navy’s West Africa Squadron intercepted slave ships, freeing tens of thousands at significant cost in lives and treasure. This moral crusade, driven by evangelical Christians, Enlightenment thinkers like Wilberforce, and public opinion, pressured other nations. The U.S. followed, formally banning the trade in 1808 but suffered a Civil War with between what is now “Red States” and what is now, and was then, the Democrat Party.  

In America, the push to end slavery faced strong resistance from the Democratic Party, which dominated the South and defended the institution. Southern Democrats seceded to preserve slavery, sparking the Civil War. Republicans under Lincoln led the fight to preserve the Union and abolish it via the 13th Amendment. Post-war, Democrats in the South imposed Jim Crow laws and opposed civil rights for decades.

Why should African Americans internalize this? It fosters agency and resilience over grievance. Slavery’s horrors were real and brutal, but its end—painfully achieved through Anglo-American sacrifice, war (over 600,000 dead), and persistent activism—shows moral progress within Western, English-speaking civilization. This legacy includes the world’s strongest anti-slavery norms today. Understanding the full story combats division, rejects ahistorical myths, and builds unity on shared humanity and hard-won freedoms rather than inherited blame. It equips communities to focus on present opportunities in the freest, most prosperous society yet created.

If Democrats persist in teaching grievance narratives onto America’s youth through the public school system, they should be prepared for continuation, if not acceleration, of home-schooling and the rise of charter schools that vanquish their hegemony over America’s youth and culture.

William Wilberforce was born on 24 August 1759 in Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, England.