How did a statue provide more "nuance" to your education? Are you under the impression that a sculpture somehow guarantees accuracy or breadth of education? Here in the US we have thousands of such statues and "grander" commemorations as well. Is that a voucher for the sum quality of our history education?
>> It is easy to focus on what terrible times slaves had - 'wasn't it terrible' - but the more interesting stories and the bigger picture are elsewhere. For starters, it was not the slaves that freed themselves (Haiti being an exception), the campaign was a Quaker thing, an understanding that God would not have thought it right
Your Quaker example is one of the most basic factoids of slavery history. I was taught it in elementary school. It is also a small part of the story that is largely based in religious moral glorification, a major theme in European revisionist slavery history. And do you have an example of a curriculum where it is taught that "slaves freed themselves?" I have never once in my life heard this theory postulated, perhaps it is not as common as you imply? Also, what do you mean by "more interesting stories"? To whom exactly? Perhaps a modifier that indicates --TO YOU-- would be appropriate here?
Have you really been exposed to the tremendous corpus of truly horrifying artifacts, down to paperwork, that came out of the slave trade era? Having been educated in academically-rigorous inner-city public schools, I challenge your schooling in this area, because you seem very blithe about the overwhelming ratio of horror vs. "it-wasn't-so-bad-compared-to-indentured-servitude". Have you really seen the layouts of the most common British and Dutch intercontinental slave ships? Do you know the voyage mortality rate and the way the bodies were disposed of (or left to decompose while attached to other, alive humans)? We are talking hundreds of thousands of recorded cases by the slavers themselves here. And these are just the most common examples. Why is minimization of these facts important to you, in favor of political history? Are the two really mutually exclusive?
As to the rest, why you would go on about all this in the commentary regarding a well-executed website about first-hand accounts of American slave experiences? Does your school's statue and some vague academic factoids somehow invalidate these accounts?
In conculsion, is this really an appropriate place to point out that there is more to the history of slavery than atrocity? Is that fact not entirely self-evident to anyone of HN's mean-intelligence level? What has the contribution to the matter at hand been here?