Georgia mom speaks out after daughter's field trip simulated a slave auction
Gladese Cleaves, whose nine-year-old daughter participated in a mock slave auction during a field trip, tells Fox News Digital she is fighting back against the attempt to water down history.
A Georgia mom is outraged over an interactive lesson taught during her daughter's field trip to the historic Mable House plantation in the city of Mableton, where third-graders were asked to simulate a slave auction by holding up signs containing dollar amounts equal to the prices of cars – except, in this instance, numbers indicated the value of humans.
"They lined the kids up. They had them to pick cars they wanted to be. So it was like $1,300, $2,000, $2,500, $3,000, and it ranged from like Honda, Acura, Lamborghini, Ferrari. Each kid chose a car, and basically she [the instructor] began to explain to them that they're being sold. Each one of them had a real bill of sale in front of them, and she was explaining to them the cost analogy of them being sold then as a slave child today would be the equivalent of whatever car they were," Gladese Cleaves told Fox News Digital on Monday.
Cleaves said her 9-year-old daughter came home and told her about the field trip by referring to one her friends as a Lamborghini and then referring to herself as a Ferrari. The comments caught her attention, so she called her oldest daughter, who chaperoned the event, to ask what happened.
She then contacted her younger daughter's teacher at W.C. Abney Elementary School via email and spoke with her over the phone.
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Georgia third graders participated in an interactive lesson that simulated a slave auction. (Gladese Cleaves)
"What was crazy is that the teacher, when I called… her response was, ‘I explained to the children that these were nice slave owners,'" Cleaves recalled. "This is exactly what she said to me. She said, ‘I explained to the children that these were nice slave owners because they treated the slave like family.’ I said, 'Don't say it again, Mrs. Westmoreland.' There's no way you could put nice and slave owner in the same sentence. There's no way."
She met with the principal, who, according to FOX 5 Atlanta, told parents the following in a letter:
"The lesson had never been part of the Mable House's curriculum for Abney students prior to that day, nor was it described in the field trip materials or mentioned on the Mable House website," the letter read.
Cleaves said the school's statement addressing the issue and the eventual ban on future trips to the site came after media reached out to the institution.
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Third grade students participate in an activity depicting their value in terms of vehicle prices in a mock slave auction. (Gladese Cleaves)
She argued she has still received no compassion from all fronts, and she believes school officials found the incident justifiable since a Black woman – donning attire synonymous with enslaved people from the antebellum South – had narrated the activity.
Cleaves's primary concern throughout the ordeal, however, was her daughter and how she said the assignment gave her a false narrative about a dark time in history by making slavery appear benign.
"They [the students] left there thinking that slavery was fine and that they clapped and that they danced and that it was a choice and that they could leave any time. That was the narrative that my child left there with on top of being on a chopping auction block," she said.
Cleaves said parents were not previously notified that the field trip would mention slavery and explained that they were told students would engage in arts and crafts while learning about 19th century history.
"The permission slip says nothing about that. It's little stick people in a wagon. So you think they're going to go learn about how corn was made, and they did learn about potato houses the slaves cooked in and that kind of thing, but nothing to the extent of them playing and running around a whipping tree because there's a whipping tree there with marks all over it. None of this were things that we were told," she said.
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Permission slip for the field trip for third graders at W.C. Abney Elementary School in Mableton, Georgia. (Gladese Cleaves)
A photo of the permission slip provided to Fox News Digital mentioned chaperones, lunch plans for students, what children should wear to the trip and expected departure and arrival times.
Cleaves called for diversity, equity and inclusion training to better inform school officials on how to handle such situations, arguing that the teacher – who claimed she was unaware of how the activity would go – should have been better informed.
"What they're saying now is that the teacher didn't know that the narrator was going to do this. Let's give the benefit of the doubt. I believe that she did [know] because she helped paint the narrative of the cost analogy after the narrator spoke, so I'm not buying into any of that," she said.
Cleaves said the most harrowing part of the entire experience was telling her daughter the truth about slavery after the project gave her a false narrative.
"The horrible part of this, all of this outside of my child believing a false narrative, outside of what she's been taught, is watching my child as I had to explain to her in depth why this was wrong and how her civil rights were violated and the truth about slavery. And literally watching the tears and the innocence leave her with exposing the truth at 9 years old because something else was given to her, meaning she would have learned about it, but it would have been in steps."
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Fox News Digital reached out Cobb County PARKS, affiliated with the Mable House, and received the following statement:
"The Mable House is on property leased by Cobb County and managed by Cobb PARKS, but the historic Mable House building and educational programs are operated by a nonprofit called ‘Friends of the Mable House.’ The nonprofit has hosted various groups for many years, and this is the first time the county has been made aware of any complaints. County officials have contacted the group to address this complaint.
"Subsequently, our PARKS department investigated the complaint further and found that no ‘slave auction’ occurred, as many social media posts have indicated. This was an educational program that had been running for many years. The group had only one more field trip presentation planned for this school year, but we have asked them to cancel that as the county works on a plan to be able to monitor the activities of groups who use our facilities."
For News Digital also reached out to Paulding County School District for comment, but did not receive an immediate response.
Fox News' David Rutz contributed to this report.
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