A Cry of Voices

There was little time to reflect in between museums, some were only open for several hours a day, others certain days of the week. I gathered up my emotions and marched on in my car to the Smith Robertson Museum. I’d gone to the Margaret Walker Museum at the University the day before dedicated to the preservation, interpretation and dissemination of African-American history and culture. Nearly 2000 interviews are for your reading of the archival records of the Black culture, Margaret’s academic and artistic legacy along with the former U.S. secretary of Education. Few rugs are left unturned and yet sitting on a ledge at the University observing the thriving culture of students, their history seems impossible.

 

Why was it that we thought we knew better? Even my numerous trips to Africa to teach, were fraught with moral issues when I arrived and met my 60 teachers exceeding me in so many fields, like ingenuity. I had to teach students reproduction a video, text or experiment, one man simply went into their courtyard and took a flower from a nearby tree and voila. Why were we being asked to be here instead of using local teachers? Yes, coalitions, bridges, finances, the sup de jour yet it is I that learned while in Africa, I was humbled, not them. I recall destroying my entire curriculum after 3 days and starting over with their input.

 

Pam was anxiously awaiting me as I descended the stairs at the Smith Robertson Museum.

“Sorry I wasn’t here when you arrived, there was an incident?

“No problems someone said I could go into the museum. Is there fee I need to pay?

“Don’t worry about it?”

“I would actually like to contribute to the museum it was very good.”

“Sure….”

 

I don’t recall the first question I asked her and what brought on a rush of emotion my eyes couldn’t hide but Pam was a women steeped in history.

“This place has hardened me, it’s okay (my tears) it is hard to comprehend what we do to one another.”

By the end of an hour I was forever indebted to her words. The sadness that had washed over me had context. She began with the slaves.

“They took the biggest, brightest from Africa, and people wonder why that nation is in mourning and behind civilization. When you take leaders, the voice of politics, the logistical men of our tribal villages, and yes even the morose aspects, people are left floundering. Then put into place the colonization of so many African nations for hundreds of years, is it any wonder than when the oppressors left, the African’s did everything wrong. We’d watched another people for so long we forgot who and what we were.”

 

“The African story hasn’t been told. You need to go back prior to slavery. That is African history, what we know, what is told is the story that they were subjected too. A culture where many families’ stories end just walking to the coast, or dying waiting in the bowels of a boat in port. If you were one of the lucky ones that survived the trip, you might have died in trade, while being transported on land, while in the field, at the hands of another man, and no one had a record of any of this. All these stories are not of their making, so that isn’t their history. They are simply the recipients of it.” She reflects for a second and says, “I guess everyone history has those elements of takeover, but not to the extent or the duration of African’s.”

We, me, I don’t have a proper connection to my past. My parents told us where my ancestors came from, but the kids today, the kids committing so much violence in our city, in America, they are disconnected”, as she extends her arms to embrace a continent 8000 miles away lost to the last 16 generations. 400 years is a long time to be hold onto a culture where the message has been watered down, it has less and less meaning with each voice desperate for understanding.

 

Her petite frame remained steadfast as my eyes fixed on hers transposed from present to past.

Life on the plantation was just that. That isn’t a story you pass down, it is a reality you live. Most families were split up in the plantations, so what history is passed on is done so by the whites who imposed hundreds’ of years of our children not playing with toys, not looking up to their role models for acceptance, proficiencies, livelihoods, ambitions, and prospects. Home and field slaves joined forces of despair, hardship, loneliness, brutality………………….but what penetrates deep is the lack of who you are as a person, a people. That is what African’s need to regain.

 

The plantation.

It wasn’t a visit, it was a people sentenced to never have a voice. The plantations are sometimes gloried by both sides as a time period whereby Blacks were sold to individual cotton plantation owners and work for them. What is not told is the generation after generation 400 years of these people’s lives spent at the control of others. Imagine never having a say, never being asked, never speaking out of term, what breaks a man is his spirit. Today police use violence in Canada, yes Canada to break men that they feel information from. They terrorize them, and our federal government has a law that allows them to hold someone without bail or a lawyer for weeks. Have we come that far? The Blacks of the South were not educated. They worked long hours, not sunrise to sunset, when the boss woke us up at 4:30 we got up and worked until far after the sun returned to the earth to rest. Depending on how much cotton we picked, we were either allowed to return to our shack or beaten for not picking enough. Sleep, that word wasn’t in our vocabulary. We laid down for several hours each night as many as 15 people in a 10 square foot room. Our children as soon as they could walk were out in the fields, picking cotton. There was little water, our clothes hung off our bodies tattered, torn and we smelled awful. Day in and day out, on Sunday we were forced to listen to our masters recite the bible, this wasn’t our bible, it was the white mans. So is it any wonder as a people we aren’t as advanced, would your culture be?