WASHINGTON ‒ Samaria Helton had learned about Thomas Jefferson in school, but didn’t know the former president had hundreds and hundreds of enslaved people until she recently visited his Monticello plantation in Virginia.
The visit was important in her quest to know more about Black history, she said.
“This is my history,’’ said Helton, a 16-year-old high school junior from Sanford, North Carolina. “I need to learn my history.”
Monticello was one of several stops on a 14-day journey North for Helton and eight other middle and high schoolers in Leadership LINKS Inc., a mentoring program for Black girls and young women. They are learning first-hand about Black history as they visit historic Black churches, former plantations, the national African American museum and other sites that tell that story.
The trip, “The Journey to Freedom,’’ also takes participants through states where abolitionist Harriet Tubman led enslaved people, including herself, on the Underground Railroad to freedom.
