Lest We Forget: The Passage from Africa into the Twenty-First Century

By Velma Maia Thomas

An intimate look at centuries of black history in America with exclusive accounts, photographs, newspaper reproductions, and other documents.

One of The Root's Favorite Reads of 2019

Presented in three parts—Lest We Forget, Freedom's Children, and We Shall Not Be Moved—this volume brings African American history to vivid and illustrated life. It includes:

Lest We Forget: Based on materials from the nationally acclaimed Black Holocaust Exhibit, Lest We Forget documents the plight of an estimated 100 million Africans, from their rich pre-slavery culture to their enslavement in a foreign land. This collection of stirring historic papers, memoirs, personal effects, and photographs presented alongside moving commentary chronicles the unyielding strength of a people who refused to be broken.

Freedom's Children: Taste the sweetness of freedom and the bitter struggle for equality through the documents that impacted the lives of an entire race. Freedom's Children vividly presents the heart-wrenching and inspiring account of freedmen and freedwomen during Reconstruction and into the twentieth century.

We Shall Not Be Moved: Throughout the twentieth century, African Americans would trouble the waters of America—agitating, challenging, and defying the status quo. We Shall Not Be Moved chronicles the struggles and triumphs of African Americans leading up to and during the Civil Rights Movement. Feel the strength of those entrenched in the fight for justice up through the twenty-first century in an afterword that includes the election of America's first African American president and the beginning of the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

With this richly illustrated book, take an intimate and unforgettable journey through more than four centuries of black history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jan 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9780760363836

Book preview

Lest We Forget: The Passage From Africa Into The Twenty-First Century

Lest We Forget

THE PASSAGE FROM AFRICA INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Velma Maia Thomas

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART ONE:

LEST WE FORGET

THE PASSAGE FROM AFRICA TO SLAVERY AND EMANCIPATION

PART TWO:

FREEDOM’S CHILDREN

THE PASSAGE FROM EMANCIPATION TO THE GREAT MIGRATION

PART THREE:

WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED

THE PASSAGE FROM THE GREAT MIGRATION INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

AFTERWORD

TRANSCRIPTIONS

ENDNOTES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

IMAGE CREDITS

INTRODUCTION

Iam often asked why I developed the Black Holocaust Exhibit and how I conceived of the idea. Relating the pain of my people was never a part of my career plans. I never sat down and said, let me build a collection that speaks to the treatment Africans received under slavery. It was more as though I was being called by the ancestors to tell their stories. Countless instances guided me to this project: documents I hesitated to purchase, I bought; reference books were purchased and forgotten, and then reappeared; people who could offer insight came into my life just when I needed them. These repeated occurrences made me feel that this was a special project, one foretold by the ancestors generations ago. It was a resurrection of the stories that the enslaved wanted to be told, only awaiting a vessel through which they could speak.

Lest We Forget is a tribute to those whose lives are told through the documents you’ve seen and read. It is a tribute to enslaved men and women, bought and sold, whose names appear briefly, jotted down by a slaveholder, then filed away in boxes in dusty archives or copied onto lifeless microfilm. The exhibit and this book give voice to those whose cries and words were silenced—young children torn from their parents, men and women swapped or given as gifts, old people broken and appraised as worthless—acts you may have heard or read about in textbooks, but never fully understood or felt until now, when you hold an actual document in your hands.

View of the coast near Saint Andrew river and the Fort Santo Antonio, 16th century, in Axim—the Dutch Gold Coast. Captured for the Portuguese and later occupied by the British. Drawing by William Smith, 1726.

Some may argue, Why bring up such a painful period in our country’s history? Some may feel that they have no apology to make, as neither they nor their forefathers were slaveholders. Others may feel dredging up tales of Africans in chains humiliates the race. When one speaks openly of slavery, the nation tightens.

Perhaps there is an uneasiness because the attitude that undergirded slavery exists today. Prejudice still looms. America is still a divided nation. America was built on the backs of enslaved Africans; it still suffers internal turmoil because it never righted that wrong, never truly tore down the walls of racism.

There is a subtle, strong power in our words and language. Many historians today use the adjective enslaved instead of the noun slave to describe their position at that time instead of limiting or beholding them to that position. Throughout, depending on the context, we will use both terms wherever most appropriate to not interrupt the conversation.

I hope this book gives those who read it a better understanding of the human drama of slavery and of the human spirit that would not be broken. From 1619 to 1865, Africans in America were enslaved. Today, my people are civic, political, and religious leaders, businessmen, judges, physicians, teachers, artists, inventors, recipients of the Nobel Prize, and more. Such great strides against a continual tide of resistance attest to my people’s remarkable will and to their undying faith in the sovereignty of a higher power. We owe much to our forefathers; their sturdy backs have been the bridges that have brought us thus far. To them we say thank you. Their sacrifices we shall never forget.

—Velma Maia Thomas

Part One

LEST WE FORGET

THE PASSAGE FROM AFRICA TO SLAVERY AND EMANCIPATION

Jack and Abby Landlord, aged one hundred and one hundred and ten years, circa 1868.

Africa Before the Slave Trade

Europeans have long considered Africa to be a strange and mysterious place. Many called it the Dark Continent, but to Africans and the enlightened Europeans who came to know it, Africa was a land kissed by the gods.

Africa is the home of the Nile, the world’s longest river; the Sahara, the world’s largest desert; and Mount Kilimanjaro, one of the world’s highest mountains. It is the home of Egypt and Timbuktu, cradles of civilization, commerce, medicine, mathematics, and knowledge. It is at the birthplace of all life; the land where human life began some four million years ago.

Before the Europeans came, my people were known by their indigenous names. They were the Bambara, the Mende, the Ewe, the Akan, the Kimbundi, the Zulu, the Hausa, and the Teso—just to name a few. Africans called their empires the Songhai, Mali, Katsina, and Kanem-Bornu. Before my people spoke English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish—languages of their European conquerors—they spoke Twi, Fula, Hausa, Shona, and a thousand other African languages.

This was before the invasion of the Europeans. Before Africa was theirs, she belonged to the black man. It was not until the fifteenth century, when European powers entered Africa, first for gold, then for people to enslave, that the face of Africa changed. They called our lands the Gold Coast, the Ivory Coast, the Grain Coast, and soon, the Slave Coast, labeling them according to the riches they could exploit. In 1884, after 200 years of reaping the economic benefits of enslaved African labor, European powers met in Berlin to decide who would control the land, setting the stage for the scramble for Africa. They carved Africa into pieces among themselves, claiming its wealth and exerting their military and political power. It would not be until the 1950s, through armed struggle and resistance, that Africa would again be ruled by Africans.

A 19th-century engraving of an Africa village with huts, from a book titled The World’s Wonders as Seen by the Great Tropical and Polar Explorers, published in London, 1883.

Why should one learn about the changing history of Africa? Because the slave trade and colonialism halted Africa’s growth and development. Africa, the birthplace of mankind, the giver of religion, civilization, and science, the dark continent from which the light of knowledge emerged, is a great land. If you want to know the Africa of our ancestors, look to Africa from the beginning of civilization—the Africa before the arrival of the Portuguese and other foreign invaders.

Map of Africa’s west coast where slave trade thrived, circa 1743.

The Price of Man

It must have been a strange sight: unfamiliar men arriving in tall ships from foreign lands. They came, they said, as friends—to trade for ivory, spices, and gold. They returned a few years later, this time wanting something more: black gold—men, women, and children to work as slaves on the lands they had just colonized.

The fifteenth century found Europe wielding the sword for expansion, capitalism, and the spread of Christianity. Eager to claim souls for the Church, markets for the Crown, and materials for its emerging commercial economy, Europe, led by the Portuguese, sailed for Africa and lands beyond. In 1435 the Portuguese established trading posts along the coast of Senegal. In 1441 the Portuguese sailor Antão Gonçalves returned from Africa with ten Africans. So delighted were the Portuguese with the black ones that subsequent venturers returned with 235 more. In 1455 the pope authorized Portugal to reduce to servitude all infidel people.

Asiento for the Trade. Contracts or agreements (called asientos) were granted for a fee to favored slave traders. Decrees such as this one granted the wholesale enslavement and transport of African people to South America and Spanish colonies. (See here for transcription.)

But it was Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the New World in 1492 and the introduction of sugarcane to the Spanish West Indies that turned slave trading into big business. The great sugar plantations needed cheap labor. At first the Spanish enslaved the native Arawak Indians. When slavery nearly decimated the native population, Spain turned to what it deemed the next best alternative—Africa—where there seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of laborers.

The goods that Africa wanted—beads, linen, iron bars, guns, and gunpowder—and letters of introduction to European slave brokers helped to ensure a profitable voyage. A woman could be purchased for sixty gallons of rum and seven pieces of cloth; a man in his prime for iron bars, two small guns, and gunpowder.

The slave market in Zanzibar, Tanzania, East Africa, in the 19th century. Engraving, published 1878.

However, the trade for men was never easy, nor simple. In the early days, traders sailed from port to port, kidnapping a few Africans and trading for goods until they had enough to make the voyage profitable. They soon abandoned this for more efficient ways of securing captives—hiring African middlemen to raid villages deep in the interior or pitting kings against each other, convincing them to sell their enemies as slaves. To entice Africans, white traders lay before them cloth, beads, rum, iron bars, and guns—lots of guns. Led by greed or the desire to protect themselves, African nations became swept up in the evil trade, eager to sell their foes for goods they wanted and weaponry they believed they needed.

Once captured, the enslaved Africans began the months-long journey from the interior to the coast. Thousands died making the trek, their bleached bones marking the trail for succeeding coffles (caravans of enslaved Africans). Upon arriving at the coastal town, the booty was laid before all to see—men and women stripped, examined, and traded for goods. Those sold were often branded, bound, and herded into slave dungeons where they were held for weeks or even months until there were enough bodies to fill a ship. There, deep inside the fanciful castles built by strangers and fortified by huge cannons, in cave cellars hewn out of massive rock with a sole grate for air and light, the transatlantic trade began.

Slavery existed in Africa (as it did in most civilized societies) before the arrival of the Europeans. Enslaved Africans were often prisoners of war, thieves, and debtors. But the treatment of the enslaved, particularly those who were viewed as servants to a family, was far different and, in general, far more humane than the chattel slavery of the Americas and the Islands. One historian writes, In the African system…slaves, though of inferior status, had certain rights, whilst their owners had definite and often onerous duties towards them. The enslaved were used to till the earth for their owners, and were, in return, fed and clothed. Many of the tribes, notably the Mundingoes, treated their slaves very well; ‘They are remarkably kind to, and careful of their slaves…whom they treat with respect, and whom they will not suffer to be ill-used. This is a forcible lesson from the wild and savage Africans, to the more polished and enlightened Europeans who…treat them (i.e., their slaves) as if they were a lower order of creatures, and abuse them in the most shocking manner!’1

The trade in flesh was an evil that would haunt Africa and her descendants for four hundred years. It disrupted cultures, depopulated the continent, provoked wars, and took from Africa the brightest and the strongest. No doubt those Africans who participated in the trade lived to regret their involvement.

In a letter to the King of Portugal in 1526, King Afonso of the Kongo, an African baptized and educated by white missionaries, wrote:

We cannot reckon how great the damage [of the trade] is, since the merchants were taking every day our natives, sons of the land and the sons of our noblemen and vassals and our relatives.… We beg of Your Highness to help and assist us in the matter, commanding your factors [buying agents] that they should not send either merchants or wares, because it is our will that in these Kingdoms there should not be any trade of slaves nor outlet for them.…2

King Afonso’s plea fell on deaf ears. The trade was underway, and once it began, it would be hundreds of years before it was halted.

Trade beads, used between the 16th and 20th centuries as currency for goods, services, and slaves, were often used to exploit African resources by early Europeans.

Horrors of the Middle Passage

Few can imagine the horrors that awaited my people aboard the slave vessels. The filth, the stench, the loss of life, the disease, the packing of men in spaces so tight that they could neither turn, nor stand, nor squat, nor sit, is beyond human comprehension. Yet such were the conditions that my people were forced to bear during the hellish journey from Africa to the New World—the journey known as the Middle Passage, or Maafa (the massive disaster).

For fifty days or more, my people were forced to live like animals, caged in spaces as tight as coffins. Captains shared two schools of thought. Tight packers herded as many Africans aboard as possible, arguing that the net receipts from sales of the enslaved would offset the number who died on board. Loose packers preferred to give their captives breathing room, trusting that more would survive the journey under sanitary conditions. So great was the profit from the sale of the enslaved that most European captains filled their vessels to the top, adding a second platform, if necessary, barely twenty inches above the heads of those below, to accommodate more.

Crammed in suffocating heat, held fast by chains bolted to the floor, forced to lie in their own waste, breathing air rancid with vomit, disease, and sickness—my people suffered unimaginable horrors. There, amid huge rats that gnawed through wood and flesh, men went mad. There, on the floors covered with blood and excrement, pregnant women gave birth. There, the living awoke, chained to the dead.

The daily routine brought little relief. Meals—horse beans pounded to a pulp and served with slabber sauce, a mixture of flour, palm oil, and water—came twice a day, once if rations ran short. This they washed down with a half or perhaps a full pint of water, the total allotment for the day. Next came the dancing of the slaves—a cruel form of exercise and amusement conducted by slave captains to keep their human cargo in salable condition. The crew played the bagpipe or forced my ancestors to beat out a rhythm as the enslaved Africans, ankles rubbed raw from the friction of the leg irons, were made to jump about.

Slaves in the Cellar of a Slave Boat, c. 1830.

But the few hours above deck ended quickly, and each evening my people again were herded below. Nighttime became a horrible nightmare. The cries of the people rose, with utterances of sorrow that filled the air. An enslaved woman interpreted her people’s lamentations and anguish, describing the noise and their howling as owing to their having dreamt they were in their own country and finding themselves, when awake, in the hold of a slave ship.3

It was this journey that brought millions of my people from Africa to the West Indies, North America, South America, and the countries of Europe. We do not know how

Reviews for Lest We Forget

[rwilliamson_53 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A must have for every school library. This interactive book includes ephemera (freedom papers, bill of sale for a slave, etc), is told in pop-up picture book style. It should not be limited to elementary students. Middle and high school students will find it easy to relate to this book. I can see broad uses for this book including searching for other primary sources to use as extensions or making a similar book for other periods in history. The author is the curator of the Black Holocaust Exhibit in Atlanta. As another reviewer noted hopefully this book shadows a new trend in the teaching of history.

[mrcmyoung · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The history of slavery in America is presented in heart-breaking detail through the use of photographs and other primary source documents. Pop-up and other interactive elements allow the reader to wander through the book as if visiting a museum.