Slavery and Blacks in History textbooks

The long-standing history textbooks constitutean important pedagogical instrument, mainly for students of public schools, who often have themas the main material for consultation. The goal of this study is to assess how slavery and Blacks were portrayed in textbooks of secondary education in the early 1980s. To this end, a research was conducted on Brazilian history textbooks used in secondary schools in order to assess the way their authors addressed the topic. Subsequently, these textbooks were compared with those used today. It was found that, just after three decades, there have been profound changes in the contents related to slavery and Blacks in history textbooks. The new theoretical-methodological approaches to slavery and the implementation of public policies (National Textbook Program, and laws No. 10,639 of January 9th, 2003 and No. 11,635 of March 10th, 2008) are considered responsible for those changes.