A high school teacher in Iowa in the US has been put "on leave" after asking students to "pretend you are a black slave" for a school assignment.
The teacher, whose name was not released, assigned the Iowa City school district online learning programme to different schools, which has since been removed, Iowa City Press-Citizen reported.
The teacher asked students to write four sentences about what they would do if they were a slave who was freed.
![The assignment asked students to "pretend you are a black slave".](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/resizer/v2/ZJJ7LK7ZIIIY5SATUOBR7TBYMM.png?auth=d647cf3bafed86e4eba2145fd939d8206a4a539584ce275650467b8d9665cc43&width=16&height=11&quality=70&smart=true)
"Think very, very carefully about what your life would be like as a slave in 1865," the assignment instructed.