Black students told to act like slaves

WAXHAW, N.C., Nov. 6 (UPI) -- Parents and teachers at a North Carolina school are protesting a history lesson that involved African-American students pretending to be slaves.

Teachers at Rea View Elementary in Waxhaw said they are planning to write leaders at the Latta Plantation about a lesson during a Wednesday field trip that involved an African-American tour guide instructing black students to pretend to be slaves while their white classmates looked on, WSOC-TV, Charlotte, reported Friday.

Parents said the three students chosen by tour guide Ian Campbell wore bags used to gather cotton while mimicking cotton picking.

"I am very enthusiastic about getting kids to think about how people did things in 1860, 1861 -- even before that period," said Campbell, who added he has been a historian for 15 years.

"I was trying to be historically correct not politically correct," he said.

Kojo Nantambu, president of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg National Asssociation for the Advancement of Colored People, criticized the lesson.

"There is a lingering pain, a lingering bitterness, a lingering insecurity and a lingering sense of inhumanity since slavery. Because that's still there, you want to be more sensitive than politically correct or historically correct," he said.