I've know about "Box" Brown most of my adult life. You're right its a story that should be in every public and private school. And depicted across TV, computer and movie screens.

Lately, I've run across a few black people who say they are tired of "slavery stories." I pity them. The terrifying history that our forebears were forced to live never gets "old." Their pain and suffering must always be top of mind for all of us. After all, had they not endured the rapes, murders, whippings, torture, etc., none of us would be here. I've read that many, many slaves were simply worked to death --from childhood until they dropped dead of old age in the fields--if they made it to old age. I've read that they were worked so hard and for so long that their muscles often snapped and separated from their bones.

As my own mother (who "chopped cotton") in Arkansas and Missouri in the '30s and '40s for pennies per pound) used to say, "How they done us..."