Silhouettes: Issue of Black & White America

The voyage itself was a nightmare beyond recognition, lasting weeks or even months. People were chained, restrained, and packed like human cargo, sometimes stacked in successive levels. Cargo holds were dark, air deprived and stagnant, with temperatures reaching well into the triple digits. Africans who often spoke different tribal languages were unable to communicate and lay languishing in collective human waste. There were the incessant and pitiful cries of children separated from their parents with destinations unknown. Later, slave boat captains, in an attempt to improve their net worth, would learn to improve the overall appearance of their most precious cargo (much like fattening cattle prior to slaughter.) They would force feed Africans, utilizing mechanical devices to aid them in their efforts. These poor unfortunates were frequently roused above deck, chained together and forced to exercise in an attempt to thwart off the effects of atrophy. Occasionally despondent blacks would jump overboard in desperate attempts at suicide, often dragging those attached by chain with them (Norton, et al. 2001, p. 74). In some instances they were devoured by sharks often to the delight of white crews and deck hands. Prior to arrival on the North American side, these human commodities were systematically cleaned and prepared for sale as hair was colored, teeth painted and skin oiled in order to extenuate muscle tone. In every way these practices mimicked patterns used by horse traders making African chattel slavery commensurate with that of the handling of livestock. In an original book in my possession entitled Cabinet of Freedom published in 1836 by the British government, which was at that time holding hearings regarding abandoning the slave trade, numerous testimonies given before Parliament are recounted that provide a most poignant depiction of the atrocities espoused within that industry. One slave ship captain in particular named Frazer was accused of holding hot coals to the mouth of a slave who refused to eat. Another captain forced the separation of a ten-month-old baby from his African mother. When the infant would not respond to forced feeding the captain ordered the child’s foot to be dipped in hot oil, whereby the skin and nails of the baby began to peel off (Clarkson, 1836). Still the baby did not respond, and within approximately one hour, the infant died. To add insult to injury, the grieving mother was forced to take her lifeless offspring and dispose of him into the depths of the ocean. Another poignant depiction was found in the testimony of a river boat captain on the African river Namibia, who had previously told his pilot that he needed a cabin boy to act as his personal assistant. Shortly thereafter, the pilot steered the vessel to a nearby dock where two young African boys were selling vegetables. Believing them to be about the right age for the above duty, the pilot proceeded to kidnap the two youths, who presumably never again saw their families (Clarkson, 1836). To me one of the most embarrassing aspects of teaching African American history to an overwhelming black student body was addressing the familial structure of that particular community. A structure that for much of the twentieth century was either nonexistent or sorely lacking, particularly when contrasted to white middle class America during the same period. For much of that timeframe, the saving grace of African American families could be found in two separate entities: the Church, and in African American women in general. The Church historically taught African Americans the skills necessary to survive in a predominantly white and ever increasingly capitalistic American society. Many of the prerequisite skills necessary for success were not to be found in the recently freed black masses after their wholesale emancipation of 1865. The fundamentals necessary for the survival of the race were to be found in the Church. It was here, blacks would learn to read, write and run their own affairs devoid largely of white interference. However, the Church afforded blacks the greatest autonomy and latitude, and what little wealth that could be mustered often went into its propagation and proliferation. In some regions such as South Carolina, where the estimated number of African American Methodist Ministers in 1877 exceeded perhaps 1,000, churches and their influence in the black community increased exponentially. As one African American of the period put it, “preachin’ and shouting sometimes lasted all day” (Norton, et al., 2001, p. 434). Furthermore, skills such as organizing, construction and matters of finance were simultaneously gleaned, and therefore throughout much of black America’s short history of freedom, its existence has and continues to be centered around the church, as it has provided hope, structure and has ultimately and historically emerged as its saving grace. Similarly, the African American female has emerged as a steadfast source of inspiration for generations of blacks. Since the Civil War to the present day, black women have often found themselves acting as head of the household. Even in the realm of the classroom, this historical phenomenon often held true as numerous female students were in fact, more often than not, found to be head of their respective households. Historically, it appears the African American male has emerged at times as intransigent, malcontent and sometimes altogether disinterested in the long-term progress or affairs of the family structure. Nowhere was this more evident than in the recent event touted as “The Million Man March,” designed to be reflective of the more progressive views of the contemporary African American male. The march, which received an abundant degree of media attention and scrutiny, was blueprinted to attract in excess of one million black males, who were to demonstrate and reaffirm their new found values in commitment, and in support of more stable familial patterns and to coalesce in the nation’s capital in order to emphasize this espoused and renewed commitment. The march, in fact, proved to be a relative failure as the anticipated numbers never manifested. (The National Park Service estimated that 400,000 people marched that day.) (McKenna, 2009, para. 29) The March was illustrative of more profound and deeply-rooted problems that have both historically, and in a contemporary context, continue today to plague and tug at the social fabric of the African American community. Black males have suffered through generations of discrimination, underemployment, and incarceration. It has even been further advocated that a black man’s supposed physical endowment and voracious sexual appetite has propelled him to pursue that in which he excels, further disrupting and disabling existing family patterns. In this unstable environment, the cycle is repeated from generation to generation, as successive generations do not have effective and appropriate black male role models to emulate (Griffith, 1961, p. 90-91). As I glanced looking outward at the student body my eyes scanning left and right I discerned that the students were dispersed throughout the lecture room in an apparent random order, and in no way reflective of racial lines. To this very day I do not know whether this was affected through premeditated design or on some unconscious level. Irrespective of whatever the catalyst was, it was probably made possible by a conscious attempt at least in part to be receptive or understanding of another point of view and to educate oneself to perspectives other than one’s own. This in no way is meant to suggest that the students wished to hold me in a warm and sustained embrace, or that we would sing “kumbaya” in unison, but rather that they understood from my own openness, and willingness to examine the African American experience, that a mutual comprehension was therefore possible and so too was progress.