Schools

Ann's Choice Invites Hatboro-Horsham Students for Civil War Presentation

Residents of the retirement community were joined by students from Hatboro-Horsham High School to get a glimpse of life for blacks during the 19th Century, as described by local historian Joe Becton.

Joe Becton has stories. Lots of stories. He can barely get through his lunch on this Friday afternoon without telling more stories from the Civil War era. 

Becton, a renowned local historian and member of the 3rd U.S. Colored Infantry Regiment Civil War re-enactors, had just spent the last hour on the stage of the multimedia room in Ann's Choice, regaling and entertaining an audience that included residents of the retirement community and students from Hatboro-Horsham High School.

Dressed in Civil War period clothing, Becton's program, entitled Blacks in America: The Civil War, Civil Rights and Beyond, described the tensions between the North and the South in the run up to the war and the difficulty of life for even the freed slaves. He peppered his presentation with harmonica playing and classic folk songs like "O Susannah" and encouraged audience participation and packed as much history into 60 minutes as possible.

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The bombastic performance would be enough to exhaust any other person, but Becton had no intention of slowing down when he joined a roundtable, lunchtime conversation with the seven students from Hatboro-Horsham. Becton sat down with his sandwich and started up again, talking about how Eli Whitney's cotton gin made cotton a more viable crop and the importance of understanding history.

"History is what defines us today," said Becton. "When we talk about freedom, it's not the same today as what freedom was back then."

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The high school students spent their day off from school to attend the presentation as part of the "Seniors Helping Seniors" program that began in the fall when some of the teenagers helped Ann's Choice residents learn more about social media. Now, the tables were turned for the tech-savvy Hatboro-Horsham students as they got a different perspective on history.

"It was a really interesting presentation," said Michael Brown, a junior at Hatboro-Horsham. "He broke up the talk with songs and music, which made it more entertaining."


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