I have learned that many of the things I have been taught are true but not accurate; pieces are missing, stories go untold and the historical mosaic is not quite complete. Jacksonville, Florida is an excellent place to visit and fill in huge portions of America's missing history and African American heritage.

A few miles from Greensboro, in Sedalia, is the site of the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum at Historic Palmer Institute. Palmer, the best and most elite black preparatory school in its era, was founded in 1902 by Dr. Hawkins and remained under her leadership for fifty years.

North Carolina’s story is not as simple as those numbers would have you believe. The Quakers of Piedmont North Carolina, many transplanted northerners, were actively engaged in the anti-slavery movement. Levi Coffin, who would become known as

Carter Godwin Woodson was born in Virginia in 1875, the son of former slaves. Poverty drove him to find work in the coal mines of Kentucky until 1895, at which time he began his first formal education.

New Jersey’s stance on the economic importance of the slave trade had been made clear in 1675, when the first slavery related laws, concerning the penalties for transporting or harboring fugitives, were established. The institution flourished through all of the early political changes and by 1726 there were more than 2000 enslaved individuals.