Only 8 percent of U.S. high school seniors could identify slavery as the central cause of the Civil War, according to a 2017 survey by the Southern Poverty Law Center. And only 32 percent knew slavery was an institution designed to generate profits for slaveholders. Teachers who taught K-12 did better than students on some questions but did not score much higher on others. The concepts' phrasing was tightened for brevity; the full wording can be found in the “Teaching Hard History” report.
Source: Kate Shuster, “Teaching Hard History: American Slavery,” Southern Poverty Law Center, Jan. 31, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/uf9684x4
Data for the graphic are as follows:
| Concept | Percentage of Teachers | Percentage of Students |
| Slavery existed in all European North American colonies. | 53% | 52% |
| Slavery was central to the economy across North America. | 58% | 46% |
| Slavery was protected in U.S. founding documents, and enslavers dominated the federal government from 1787 to 1860. | 52% | 22% |
| Slavery was an institution to create profit for slaveholders and break the enslaved's will. | 71% | 32% |
| Enslaved people resisted efforts to reduce them to commodities. | 60% | 49% |
| Slavery was the central cause of the Civil War. | 64% | 8% |
| Slavery shaped the fundamental beliefs of Americans about race. | 50% | 39% |