In Florida, Harris Condemns Slavery Lesson

DeSantis says Democrats are lying
By Bob Cronin,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 21, 2023 5:30 PM CDT
Harris Goes to Florida to Address Slavery Lesson
Vice President Kamala Harris takes part in an event in New Orleans on June 30.   (Sophia Germer/The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate via AP)

Vice President Kamala Harris went to Florida on Friday to denounce the state's new educational standards that mandate teaching middle school students that some Black people benefited from being enslaved. "It is not only misleading, it is false and pushing propaganda—pushing propaganda on our children," Harris said in a speech in Jacksonville, NPR reports. Glossing over or forgetting historical crimes isn't the answer, said the first Black person to be vice president. "We will be better if we remember," she said, per the AP. "We will be stronger if we remember."

Harris did not mention Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose policies are behind the state Board of Education's new policy. But earlier in the day, anticipating Harris' speech, he named her. "Democrats like Kamala Harris have to lie about Florida's educational standards to cover for their agenda of indoctrinating students and pushing sexual topics onto children," DeSantis posted on Facebook. In her speech, per ABC News, Harris said: "When we send our children to school as parents, we want to know that they're being taught the truth," adding, "It is a reasonable expectation that our children will not be misled."

Before speaking at the historic Ritz Theatre in Jacksonville, Harris met with area leaders, teachers, civil rights activists, and people in an overflow room, per the Florida Times-Union. She reminded those packing the theater that enslaved people endured torture, the separation of their families, and other abuse. "How is it that anyone could suggest in the midst of these atrocities that there was any benefit to being subjected to this level of dehumanization," she said. (More Kamala Harris stories.)

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