History is philosophy from examples.

--Dionysius of Halicarnassus 307 B.C.E.

The best way history can be understood is for the events of the past to seem
relevant to a person's experiences. History has to be imagined. The only
way anyone can imagine anything is through some frame of reference. It
must be hard, for example, to consider the color blue if one has never seen
the color. Considering the many shades of blue requires experience. In my
classes outside the prison, no two are ever the same, even if they occur on
the same day, on the same topic. As the students interests and experiences
and imaginations vary, so too will class discussions.

Racism is endemic in American society, and the way I have chosen to
combat what I see as a peril to all of us is through education. Therefore, all
of my classes, in whichever historical subject I happen to be talking about,
are thematically suffused with this major topic. In the prison classes I saw
that conversations about racism took on special importance for the men.
Their lives had been tormented because of it. They seemed greatly interested
in trying to understand how racism might have occurred, and which kinds
of attitudes seemed to set up racism in a culture. Their own ultimate analysis
was that it all came down to some people exerting power over others, as
Delloyd had said. The concept that a person of any color could be the object
of racism seemed more difficult to them, based on their own experiences.

So I explained to them the etymology of the word "slave," which is a
pronunciation of "Slav," referring to that group of people whom the Romans
first enslaved. Our discussion ranged across time and space and included

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