I am teaching my students about the coming of the American Civil War. Today we read about and discussed the Compromise of 1850 and the attendant Fugitive Slave Law. Considering we are two days out from the murder of Renee Nicole Good and a day out from federal agents having shot two people here in Portland, students made some connections. Of course, some of my students are currently quite frightened by what is happening in our country. Others are seething. I noticed that it was quite easy for them to understand the anger and outrage northern abolitionists must have felt in the 1850s, when their federal government was behaving in such a patently immoral way. Unlike any other year that I have taught this, students are connecting in a unique and powerful way.

You might say events, along with an understanding of the past, are waking them up.