"They Didn't Know"

In August 1619, when the twenty “negroes” stepped off the ship White Lion and saw the British faces, they didn’t know.

As their feet touched Jamestown, Virginia, they didn’t know their lives would never be the same. They didn’t know they would never see their community again.

“A Community of Souls” by Ibram X. Kendi

Tonight, I decided I wanted to read one of the books in my TBR, and I selected Four Hundred Souls, a collection of essays and poems edited by Ibram X. Kendi (author of How to be an Anti-Racist) and Keisha N. Blain (author of Set the World on Fire). The lines quoted above open Kendi’s introductory essay, and three of those words caught my attention and stopped my eyes as they danced across the page.

They didn’t know.

This isn’t a novel concept, of course. When the first Africans were kidnapped and taken from their homeland across the Atlantic, of course they didn’t know what future awaited them. On the surface, it’s self-evident; on the tail end of the so-called Age of Exploration, none who crossed the Atlantic really knew what awaited them in this “new” land. However, it wasn’t in anyone’s wildest dreams that centuries of enslavement, torture, beatings, lynchings, rape, murder, and other forms of subjugation based on skin color alone were the promise of the Americas. And while we, in the twenty-first century, know those are the things that awaited the first kidnapped Africans, they didn’t know.

I spent some time today helping clean out the basement of my friend’s 1880-built house, and as my mind tends to do when I’m in an older structure, I couldn’t help but wonder what people who had walked those floors, cleaned that basement, and lived in that home over the last hundred-plus years had witnessed. What moments of history had been discussed within its walls? Who were the previous residents, and how had they been impacted by history as it was lived? Reconstruction in the United States following the Civil War had ended just a few years prior to when my friend’s house was built; surely the first residents had been aware of, if not directly impacted by, Reconstruction and even possibly slavery. Undoubtedly, everyone who’d ever lived in that house had been aware, too, of the treatment of African Americans since the practice of slavery began on American soil.

But those first twenty or so kidnapped Africans–they didn’t know.

Reading those three words earlier this evening, Black history transformed for me. Instead of being a series of events that happened, involving a series of modern figures like Rosa Parks, Langston Hughes, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Jackie Robinson, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglas, Ona Judge, and other well-known names, it became a history with a beginning. And that beginning had specific people attached to it, involved in its events, however unwillingly so. They didn’t know the horrors that awaited them, nor did they know the centuries of toil that would come before progress was made, before the Emancipation Proclamation, before freedom without equality, and before liberty with equity.

In the summer of 2020, as the Breonna Taylor protests divided not just Louisville, Kentucky, but also my hometown of New Albany, Indiana just across the river, I started reading as much as I could about Black culture, Black politics, and what work remains to be done in America to treat African Americans equally and equitably. I purchased a handful of books, some of which I was quick to read, like Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man by Emmanuel Acho. Others, however, have remained in my to-be-read stack on my shelf, including Four Hundred Souls. As interested as I’ve always been in nearly every historical topic, it wasn’t until I enrolled in this semester’s classes–two of which are about African American history–that I found myself especially interested in Black history. In 2020, I wanted to read as much as I could to educate myself as much as I could so I could engage meaningfully in discussions of current events, like the Black Lives Matter Movement and happenings in my community as they related to Breonna Taylor. Quickly, though, I was overwhelmed by the history. The tragedy. The heinousness of some humans toward other humans.

The fact that some people deny this history altogether.

The ways this history continues to echo the past in the present today.

Since I started this semester’s classes, though, studying African American history from Reconstruction (1865-1877) through the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, I’ve noticed that I’m intrigued by this history in a way I haven’t been before. Rather than wanting to learn this history to be able to conduct myself with greater prowess in conversation, I want to learn this history for so many other reasons.

In part, I want to learn this history because it feels like the right thing to do–this history is an inherent piece of world history. It isn’t taught equally with “white history” and that’s a shame. (I’m typing this as Doechii accepts a Grammy for Best Rap Album of the Year, making history as the third woman to do so since 1989.)

I also want to learn this history because it’s a history made of stories, particularly stories of overcoming obstacles, and that’s my favorite type of history. Stories of survivors and fighters (not in war, but in the name of peace) who changed their community, or even the world, because they led people on a journey to love others more boldly, more kindly.

And after reading Kendi’s introductory essay in Four Hundred Souls tonight, I want to learn this history because I realize now more than ever that this history did have a beginning. There was a time when Africa and its inhabitants weren’t exploited. There was a life, a culture, a history before those first Africans landed in the Americas. Throughout my high school and college education, I was taught about the Triangle Trade Route and slave labor throughout the first century of the United States’ history, and then my education skipped ahead from the days of Jim Crow to the 1960s, then tied it all up in a bow that said, “It’s all better now!” In reality, I know there’s so much more to the story than that…and that’s what I want to learn.

I’m excited to read more of Four Hundred Souls. This book begins with the arrival of Africans from Ndongo in August of 1619, though it’s noteworthy that Africans had already been in the Americas long before 1619, even if that previous date is unknown. Eighty authors wrote for this book, each covering a five-year period from 1619 to 2019, the year my daughter was born and the year before–in my view–racial tensions peaked in a way they hadn’t nationally since the 1960s. I want to read the stories of all the years between 1619 and present-day.

I want to learn more about the years I wasn’t taught, that aren’t taught as readily, and know the stories of these people that history all but forgets.

And you already know I’ll keep you posted on all the things I learn, too. Stay tuned for more.

Until next time,

Olivia