E Pluribus: Where to start - All in from the beginning

Changing curriculum to tell a more inclusive story begins with vulnerability. Any transformation begins by admitting all that we don't know.
History education is the story of humanity - not the mass of humanity but the experiences of individual humans. It is irresponsible and unethical to look at a diagram of the transatlantic triangle trade and discuss human beings as a trade commodity. An inquiry can start there but it must be only a beginning.
In my eighth grade classroom we start our inquiry with data - the journeys of slave ships and the massive amount of humans stolen from Africa pouring into South America, the Caribbean and North America. Then we look at those ship manifests - at the names, the gender, the ages and the countries of origin. Who were these people? 
Geography is the next step. Africa is a continent, not a country. This one essential fact is a starting point that leads us to explore rich cultures, history, and traditions in addition to physical features.

Context is absolutely essential to history. So beginning with the humans and all they were stolen from, we can investigate slavery on the North American continent. 
We focus on the stories of 8 individuals to understand in what ways they triumphed over slavery. I challenge students to dig into the humanity of each individual to tell their story and understand the perspective using primary sources whenever possible.

Part of that humanity is love. Marriage for enslaved people was illegal but that doesn't mean marriage and partnership did not exist. As an educator who strives to create a brave space I want to model vulnerability and admit that I need to do more work to include nonbinary stories and to not center the narrative on cis-gendered couples. At this point in time we focus on understanding how these individuals, with the support of their partners or motivated by separation from a partners, triumphed over slavery or did not. 
We come across perilous questions when students suggest that "Phillis Wheatly's life wasn't that bad. Her owners treated her well and she wasn't beaten." 
I've found that the best answer for these kinds of apologies for enslavement, however unintentional, is to return to basic human rights: Phillis was kidnapped from her home in West Africa, survived being treated like cargo and was OWNED by another human being for the rest of her life. She was a human being and she was treated like property. She had no freedom to make choices about where to go and what to do and how to live her life because her humanity was denied by her owners.

Simple truths are the foundation of learning. Start with humanity and you can't go wrong. Constantly return to humanity and you build empathy. I believe it unethical to ask students to empathize with someone who owned slaves. We analyze the context that made slavery economical and the ways our government allowed slavery to continue and expand for hundreds of years.

These 16 names are a minuscule fraction of the people who were enslaved in the western hemisphere. We need to say their names. Their lives mattered and still matter today.
Harriet Tubman and Nelson Davis
Caroline Quarrls and Allen Watkins
Phillis Wheatly and John Peters
Solomon Northrup and Ann Hampton Northrup
Robert Smalls and Hannah Jones
Dred and Harriet Scott
​Frederick and Ann Douglass
Joshua Glover and Ann Glover
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artwork: "Many Hands" by Dawline-Jane Oni-Eseleh available at amplifier.org