Retracing Our Paths - Remembering Our Origins
Photo by Muffin Creatives
H O M E
By Sterling M. Hawkins, MSW, LCSW-C, LICSW
“The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.” —Maya Angelou
Where we are free, we feel safe. When we are safe, we feel known. Where we are known, we call that place home.
From the late 1800s, enslaved people began sharing their stories of captivity. Some of these stories were shared from person to person and from one plantation to another. Some of the first-person accounts would survive several generations. These verbal accounts would be told by the grandchildren of enslaved people who were no longer enslaved but free.
I was surprised to learn how many of these oral histories exist. They provide a glimpse of what today seems unimaginable and remotely foreign until my mind flashes back to the images of young immigrant children and their parents being paraded through containment camps and separated by US Customs and Border Patrol Officers and caged like animals in 2019.
A parent is someone known to a child. Therefore, the child’s only reflection of home is the parent in a foreign land. I remember in grade school reading about a dark period in Germany’s history when, from 1933 to 1941, entire Jewish communities consisting of mothers, fathers, children, and their relatives were herded like cattle into railway box cars and carried to their deaths at several concentration camps throughout Germany and Poland.
I’m reminded of the Trail of Tears when, over twenty years (1830-1850), approximately one hundred thousand Indigenous people were forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands in the southeastern United States and relocated onto government reservations known as “Indian Territory”. Many, due to the conditions of their surrender, did not survive the trip. But would die homeless en route to a wasteland void of fertility.
These examples are each different and speak to other aspects of dispossession. At best, each involves what is inhumane and traumatic; at its worst, extermination and death.
The Transatlantic Slave trade from the early 1500s to the mid-1800s was a great evil. Millions of Africans were kidnapped and forced onto European and American ships and trafficked across the Atlantic Ocean to be enslaved, abused, and forever separated from their homes, families, and cultures. Being extracted from their homes was only the beginning of the suffering they would face.
The following is a narrative from the National Humanities Center’s Vol. I 1500 -1865 titled “Capture: Selections from the Narratives of Former Slaves.” The Center is a private non-profit institute dedicated to education and public engagement that interprets the human experience. The subject is identified and archived only as “Aunt Adeline” in WPA (Works Projects Administration) records. The narrative was submitted by a man identified as John Brown, who was enslaved in Alabama and interviewed in Oklahoma in 1937.
One day a big ship stopped off the shore and the natives hid in the brush along the beach. Grandmother was there. The ship men sent a little boat to the shore and scattered bright things and trinkets on the beach. The natives were curious. Grandmother said everybody made a rush for them things soon as the boat left. The trinkets was fewer than the peoples. Next day the white folks scatter some more. There was another scramble. The natives was feeling less scared, and the next day some of them walked up the gangplank to get things off the plank and off the deck. The deck was covered with things like they’d found on the beach. Two-three hundred natives on the ship when they feel it move. They rush to the side, but the plank was gone. Just dropped in the water when the ship moved away. Folks on the beach started crying and shouting. The ones on the boat was wild with fear. Grandmother was one of them who got fooled, and she say the last thing seen of that place was the natives running up and down the beach waving their arms and shouting like they was mad. They boat men come up from below where they had been hiding and drive the slaves down in the bottom and keep them quiet with whips and clubs. (National Humanities Center n.d.)
Another account contained in Volume I under the same title is credited to a man by the name identified as Luke Dixon who was enslaved in Virginia and interviewed in Arkansas in 1937.
Ma lived to be a 103 years old. Pa died in 1905 and was 105 years old. I used to set on Grandma’s lap, and she told me about how they used to catch people in Africa. They herded them up like cattle and put them in stalls and brought them on the ship and sold them. She said some they captured they left bound till they come back and sometimes they never went back to get them. They died. They had room in the stalls on the boat to set down or lie down. They put several together. Put the men to themselves and the women to themselves. When they sold Grandma and Grandpa at a fishing dock in New Port, VA., they had their feet bound down and their hands crossed, up on a platform. They sold Grandma’s daughter to somebody in Texas. She cried and begged to let them be together. They didn’t pay no ‘tenshion to her. She couldn’t talk but she made them know she didn’t want to be parted. Six years after slavery they got together. (National Humanities Center n.d.)
We learn from these two accounts that Africans who were abducted from their native land were no longer safe, and not able to question their captors. On the contrary, they would be questioned by all those who exercised authority over them. They would be wounded and maimed. Many did not survive the horrific conditions onboard these ships. The ones that did were forever changed by their experiences.
They would have to learn a new language and endure harsh climates and conditions of enslavement to survive. Those fortunate enough to have access to their children for any duration would have to prepare them physically and psychologically for such a time of separation.
The psychological impact on any culture or group having to adapt to unsafe environments and conditions is that they will quickly learn to interpret any and every encounter with suspicion. Over time, the adult mind will be unable to differentiate people and or places that are safe from those that are not. The adult mind will begin to function solely to protect itself and the body it inhabits. While some may continue to show kindness toward those in similar circumstances, many will not. Being subject to sale and transport at a moment’s notice prevented them from developing strong emotional bonds. I was struck by how white ship captains, and their crews were able to force other Africans to inflict harm on their own people. They were forced to do so. But over time, I imagine many of these enslaved people who were forced to turn on their kinsmen were given limited autonomy in return for their loyalty. And these African oppressors were simply able to eat and live to see another day.
The memory of home would dissipate more quickly for those entering adulthood. Like smoke from a woodfire and the heat from dying embers, young captives would not experience the dissociation felt by men and women who were much older. For their (older captives), loss of home would be more painful and inextricably bound to their identity and way of life.
In the second narrative by Luke Dixon, we are told that the mother and daughter who were separated after their transatlantic voyage and sold at auction were eventually reunited. This was a rare occurrence but one that many enslaved relatives held onto. The hope of seeing their loved ones again was a small flame that would not easily be extinguished.
The casualties of enslaved peoples would be felt not only by them but also by those left behind. Those who remained in Africa. Those left behind were the old and the very young. Children whose parents were captured would inevitably become orphans, and their welfare became the responsibility of the adult community.
Most persons who live in a heightened state of insecurity usually develop anxiety and depression. These symptoms may lead further to post-traumatic stress that results in suicidal or homicidal tendencies. People who live in this perpetual state of depression or anxiety cannot fully exercise their roles and responsibilities within any sense of normalcy. Children raised in environments where there are no physical ties to home or property or where familial bonds are weak and non-existent go on to experience physical health problems as well. Cardiac, dermatological, and gastrointestinal issues are common among persons who are forced exiles.
According to Resmaa Menakem in his book My Grandmother's Hands, unhealed trauma can become part of someone’s personality. “As it is passed on and compounded through our bodies, it often becomes the family norm. If it gets transmitted and compounded through multiple families and generations, it can turn into a culture”. (Menakem, 2017, p. 54)
Generational trauma involves understanding that every emotion we process is a burden our ancestors could not address. By learning to identify, feel, and release these burdens, we learn to break the cycle so that future generations who follow won’t have to endure the same pain.
Clinicians working with individuals who have experienced the trauma of forced migration and those unable to re-patriate or re-connect with their homeland (including their biological family) must ask themselves: What cultural resources will be supportive of their being able to cope and mitigate the damage caused by forced migration. The literature suggests that homes are strengthened and established through first generations of communities and churches.
Persons who have experienced forced migration react and adapt to their new homeland differently. The Descendants of Africa and the Americas (Latin, Central, and South) must examine what has been lost historically. The homes and communities they inhabit are very different from those of their ancestors.
Therapists and community workers who understand the importance of preserving one’s culture will engage in practices that promote healing and counteract trauma associated with violence and acquisition. The mental health community must work to secure safe places where education and emotional connections can flourish without fear. We must work to secure for them what we have obtained for ourselves—a place called home.
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References:
Accounts of Slave Capture in Africa, Freedom, African American Identity: Vol. I, 1500-1865, Primary Resources in U.S. History and Literature, Toolbox Library, National Humanities Center. (n.d.). https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai/freedom/text6/text6read.htm
Menakem, R. (2017) My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies.