Reading the article "Ex-slaves" (Rob Collins, Feb. 24, 2010, Oklahoma Gazette) brings to mind the tragedy and dereliction of the educational system in the United States.

When I was a boy, I never heard about slaves in school. It was only when my parents would drive our family to Florida for a brief winter vacation that I actually saw with my own eyes "cotton pickers" harvesting cotton with their bare hands in South Carolina and Georgia. And of course, there were the shacks; nothing more than one room small buildings built on short stilts where the "cotton pickers" lived without electricity, running water or toilets.

Occasionally, I saw an outhouse. And this was in the early 1960s. Moreover and most unfortunately, it seems to me that the so called "academic" publishers have chosen to bury the plight of the slaves, and another tragic race, the indigenous people of this country euphemistically named "Native Americans." All of the murder, rape, torture and mayhem otherwise known as genocide that defined the taking of this country were committed in the name of commerce.

No wonder that Gen. George Custer and his men were slaughtered. If someone tried to take my property, rape my wife and sell my child into slavery, I would do everything in my power to prevent it. It's called self-defense and is, as far as I know, legal (for now).

"Gerald E. Dwyer
Oklahoma City

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