Middle Passage Ceremonies and Port Markers Project (MPCPMP)
Remembering Ancestors
This post continues our Wednesday series that highlights historic Middle Passage/UNESCO Site of Memory markers that have been installed and those locations where a remembrance ceremony was held since MPCPMP incorporated 9 years ago. MPCPMP is/was involved in the planning for the installation of most of these markers (indicated by an * next to the state name), and other organizations are/were responsible for some. Texas* The earliest known person of Read More
FYI: This is the last of our Wednesday series that highlights historic Middle Passage/UNESCO Site of Memory markers that have been installed and those locations where a remembrance ceremony was held since MPCPMP incorporated 9 years ago. MPCPMP is/was involved in the planning for the installation of most of these markers (indicated by an * next to the state name), and other organizations are/were responsible for some. Virginia* National Park Read More
Periodically we respond or address issues that surface from our reading. Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape is a recently published work by Mount Holyoke earth science professor Lauret Savoy that merits attention. Her writing is lyrical and thought-provoking. Geographical landscapes and language related to memory and history are her references as she places those living in the present in a broader historical context. Even the meaning of Read More
We have reached the final month of another year. For the past four years, ours has been a small attempt to redefine and expand the narrative of US American history to include Africans and their descendants as principal and crucial agents in the country’s creation. At times, many in fact, this work has been difficult. MPCPMP repeatedly has found itself in the position of explaining and justifying our mission to people Read More
Summer is cooling into recent memory, but an article in the New York Times Magazine by historian Douglas Egerton provided important background information on Emmanuel AME Church in North Charleston, SC, where nine people were murdered almost three months ago. This church’s history includes Denmark Vesey and the killing of SC state representative Reverend Benjamin Randolph during Reconstruction – both of whom challenged the status quo of slavery and white oppression, Read More
In an address given on August 23, 2015, to an audience gathered at Faneuil Hall in Boston, Massachusetts, for an ancestral remembrance ceremony to commemorate enslaved Africans, Massachusetts State Representative Byron Rushing made a remark that struck a chord – that sanctioned enslavement existed in the United States over a longer period than there has been emancipation. In his speech, Rushing marked 1619 as the starting point, but to be Read More
If I am not who you say I am then you are not who you think you are. Whenever observance for July 4th approaches, historical reflection is appropriate. This year, 2015, has been a time when chickens came home to roost. The racism and prejudice fostered in this nation for centuries have triggered events that we Americans are confronting and hopefully have the will to change. Recently, on the suggestion Read More
All black progress in the United States has begun with confrontation and resistance. This is a basic fact of American life and the only way to understand the current protest focused on police violence. As the black abolitionist Frederick Douglass put it in 1857, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress…. Power concedes nothing without demand.” Abraham Lincoln reluctantly abolished southern slavery to pressure the Confederacy at the Read More
Among people who are part of the Western Hemisphere’s African Diaspora there are certain images that trigger a gut response – the Door of No Return is one. Viewing a framed image of the ocean, many of us require no description or explanation. In some way we simply know, by instinct almost, that the image is a human memory of separation, departure, loss, immense suffering and sorrow. A raised fist Read More
History is as much about what is omitted as what is included. This was seen recently, when Professor Henry Louis Gates and Ben Affleck faced a quandary and by all apparent measures failed to present a complete story. On Sunday, April 19, 2015, news broke that actor Ben Affleck requested a portion of his family’s story not be revealed in the PBS series, Finding Your Roots, aired in 2014. He asked that Read More