Dear Editor,

He ran in the Virginia governor’s race on banning Critical Race Theory in public schools — and Glenn Youngkin won. He said he would ban it, and as one of his first acts he did. Even though Critical Race Theory isn’t even taught there.

What was the big deal in Virginia? Sure a slave state, but there were plenty of those. What went on in Virginia?

Maybe this is it.

In 1808 the young United States of America banned International Slave Trade via Congress. Thomas Jefferson was president at the time. Turns out this wasn’t an act to ban or limit slavery at all. Jefferson had slaves. Jefferson loved slaves. I mean he fathered a lot of children with them, Sally Hemmings being the best known of Jefferson’s desires. Not sure how much he loved these children he fathered, but he did set them free. Albeit after he was dead.

Nor was this an act of kindness because many potential slaves died on the ship voyage over the Atlantic and were tossed overboard like a rancid side of beef.

No, this was an economic decision — for farming. Tobacco had been Virginia’s cash cow but it was being replaced. Not by dairy farms, not by cattle farms, not by horse farms. No. They raised something else. They bred and raised slaves. To the point it was Virginia’s No. 1 source of revenue.

Female slaves in Virginia outnumbered male slaves by 300,000. And they were used to breed. Slave farm owners fornicated regularly with the female slaves – producing their own children they then sold into slavery. But they also were advanced in selective breeding, maintaining a supply of good strong bucks, even importing a prize stud buck to use if they could afford it. Some slave farm owners considered it a mercy doing the act instead of subjecting a slave to one of these “monstrous bucks.”

Many books and films portray slave boats entering a city such as New Orleans, giving the impression they were smugglers from Africa. Not true. They were legal boats. From Richmond or Baltimore, slaves were then sold and dispersed to their owners.

Slave girls were expected to begin breeding at age 13, producing as many children as possible. And when a child could survive without the mother, the child was ripped away and sent South to a life of hardship. No caring mother to train him or her, just the whip.

Of course there were some positives. These women did receive medical care. They were an investment. After all, the farmer does use a veterinarian.

And these women sometimes gained their freedom. One farm would release a slave woman after she produced 15 quality children. Then again, released to what?

I have to say, until a trip to the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, I didn’t know these slave farms existed. I was never taught about them in school.

And thanks to Gov. Youngkin and many like him, today’s kids won’t be taught about them either.

James Spangler, OD,

Warren