Alan Singer, a professor of curriculum and teaching at Hofstra
University, projected a copy of Richard Smith's will onto a screen in
the auditorium of Smithtown High School West. ''I give unto my son
Richard my young Negro boy called Stephen,'' read the document, dated
April 26, 1720. ''I give unto my son Nathaniel my Negro boy called
John.''

Many of the 11th graders who were gathered to hear the morning's
workshop, ''New York's Role in the American Slavery System,'' knew that
Mr. Smith was the founder of Smithtown. What they didn't realize was
that he was also a slave owner. They were also not aware that Tredwell
Avenue, the street leading to Smithtown High School East, was the
location of a farm owned by a slaveholder, Mary Platt Tredwell. Listed
on a 1773 inventory of Tredwell's Smithtown property were 26 slaves.
Frank, a 28-year-old male, was described as being worth 100 English
pounds. ''On the inventory he is worth about the price of a Toyota
Corolla,'' Dr. Singer said.

The lesson Dr. Singer was presenting on a recent morning was part of
''New York and Slavery: Complicity and Resistance,'' a new 286-page
guide for teachers developed in response to 1996 legislation mandating
that the State Board of Regents come up with a human rights curriculum.
The right to food was taught by studying the Great Irish Famine. The
right to life was outlined with a curriculum on the Holocaust. State
education officials figured that the right to freedom could be
illustrated with lessons that showed how sympathetic New Yorkers helped
runaway slaves flee servitude in the South via the underground railroad.
Dr. Singer and Mary K. Carter, an adjunct instructor at Hofstra,
disagreed. They thought that the vision of slavery as a Southern
institution wasn't accurate. ''There is slavery in New York to 1827,''
Dr. Singer said. He proceeded to work with Ms. Carter and a team of 80
teachers to bring New York's role in slavery out of the closet. The
curriculum was awarded the 2005 Social Studies Program of Excellence
Award by the National Council for the Social Studies in November but has
not yet been adopted by the state.

According to the 1698 census, Suffolk County had 2,221 people, 558 of
them enslaved Africans. By 1756 the number of enslaved Africans had
nearly doubled while the total population had grown to 10,290. To
illustrate his point and engage the students, Dr. Singer performed a rap
song. ''Time to learn the truth, our local his-tor-y,'' he sang. ''That
Lon' Islan was the land of sla-ver-y.''

Until the Civil War, he said, New York was ''the center of the illegal
trans-Atlantic slave trade.'' He added that merchants and bankers used
their profits from the slave trade to finance the predecessors to
Citibank, the Long Island Rail Road, Consolidated Edison and Domino
Sugar. ''Slavery ends in the United States in 1865, but the profits from
the slave trade make New York the world's industrial and financial
center and created the society that we have today,'' Dr. Singer said.

Not that the students would be able to confirm that in any textbook.
Dr. Singer said the existence of slavery in New York had ''been erased
from history.'' ''We are trying to restore it,'' he said.

After the program, Kristen Heuschneider, 16, said she was surprised to
learn about New York's role in slavery. ''I always thought it was just
the South,'' Kristen said. ''It feels like everything you have been
taught has been wrong and you have to change it now.''