|
African
Burial Ground
By Linda Mayfield-Hayes
In New York City, May of 1991,
construction of a federal building had begun.
As excavators started removing stones,
they dug up a graveyard full of human bones.
Archaeologists were brought in to exhume the graves,
and discovered these were the remains of African slaves.
Slaves that cleared shorelines,
and built New York's first roads,
incurring premature deaths
from carrying crushing workloads.
The information gathered from this discovery,
will help us to secure our place in New York's history.
Listen to the ringing of the old church bell,
as we bid our forefathers, a proper farewell.
African Americans dance in the streets,
to the thunderous sound of pounding drumbeats.
Lifting our voices in a mighty chorus,
we pay tribute to our ancestors before us.
Individual coffins carved by hand,
were fittingly commissioned from the homeland.
Their bones were reburied, their souls finally free,
on the fourth of October 2003.
* * *
* *
DNA: DestiNation Africa
By
Linda Mayfield-Hayes
Let me take you on a ride
We'll travel through time and space
Destination Africa
Birthplace of the human race;
We'll journey back to Africa
To where it all began
Home of the oldest tribe on Earth
Known as the San Bushman;
All aboard the time machine
Otherwise known as our blood
We'll have no trouble getting around
With Y-Chromosomes under the hood;
We're going to trace man's origin
And the clues that will lead the way
Are mutated genetic markers
That are found in men's DNA;
Through Europe, Asia, The Middle East
Our blood trail takes us back
Showing all men paternally related
Be they red, yellow, brown, white or black;
So brothers, stop killing your brothers
Put your weapons down today
For the proof that we're all related
Lies in our DNA.
* * *
* *
|
Linda Diane Mayfield
is the author of
AFROETRY: Afrocentric Poetry that Educates & Motivates.
She is an aspiring
poetess who grew up in the Red Hook housing projects, of
Brooklyn, New York. She graduated from Kingsborough
Community College with an Associate in Applied Science
degree in Data Processing. Linda began writing poetry in
her early teens, but soon abandoned her craft. She
didn't lift her poetic pen again until 2003, almost
forty years later. Today, she is the author of three
collections of poetry including, "Life Is A Roller
Coaster" and "Life Is A Roller Coaster 2". Her websites
are
afroetry.com and.myspace.com/slendah
* * * *
*
The Sacred Remains: American Attitudes Toward Death, 1799-1883
Rest in Peace: A Cultural History of Death and the Funeral Home in
Twentieth-Century America
African American Grief (Death, Dying and Bereavement)
* * * * *
 |
Woman brings buried slaves dignity—25
Feb. 2011—Slaves dead more than two
centuries find a champion in a local
woman.—Known as slaves in life, they
slept unknown for centuries in New York
City. A woman from Albany started a
course that brought them dignity in
death.
Albany native Peggy King-Jorde spoke
at the Albany Civil Rights Institute
Thursday on the reclamation of a massive
“African burial bround” from government
office development.
“There were 10,000 to 20,000
African-Americans buried in New York at
this site from the 17th through the 18th
centuries,” King-Jorde said. “Then it
was forgotten about.” The cemetery sat
on 5 1/2 acres just outside the city
limits starting in the 1700s. Blacks
were not allowed to be buried in the
city limits. By the 18th century, the
slave population in New York had grown
to about 20 percent of the entire city.
Only one city had a higher percentage of
slaves, Charleston, S.C. So when slaves
died, bodies were piled one on top of
the other in graves without markers
until the site was paved over and the
city grew around it. . . .
In
1993, the African Burial Ground was
designated a National Historic Landmark.
In 2003 the unearthed remains were
reburied. . . .King-Jorde credits the
work of the community, activists,
students and ordinary people for
preserving a part of American history.
“It is critical that we know as much as
we can about our African ancestry,”
King-Jorde said. “There is so little
known about slavery on these shores at
that time. That many slaves in New York
City? Who heard of it?”—AlbanyHerald |
The skeleton
above is the only one of more than 400 recovered to
have her arms crossed over her chest. Researchers
want to know why. Adults buried in the cemetery died
in their 30s, on average, although their joints
resembled those of people much older.
The Cultural
Dimensions of Design—The first enslaved Africans
were brought to what is now New York City (then a
Dutch settlement) in 1626. By the 1700s, after the
Duke of York had officially opened up the slave
trade, a substantial slave population—as much as 21
percent of the whole—lived in Manhattan. The place
where these enslaved Africans buried their dead, the
"Negros Burying Ground," as it was derisively known,
was initially located outside the city walls. By the
late 1700s, however, development was already
covering over portions of the graveyard. Eventually,
the burial ground was all but forgotten, its
location preserved to memory only through old city
maps and references in two books, one published in
1827, the other in 1915. . . . Perhaps cultural
amnesia explains why many New Yorkers "were shocked
to learn there were enslaved people--here, in the
North, and in large numbers," King Jorde says. "It
wasn't well chronicled. The cemetery was buried
under buildings in the city. It wasn't important to
other people so its presence was obscured. African
ancestry in this country has historically been
obscured. Places like the African Burial Ground,
places like American Beach, those are the cultural
resources, the tangible reminders that tie our black
community to the important values of our culture."— HarvardMagazine
*
* * * *
 |
Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
|
* *
* * *
|
Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
|
 |
* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
If you like this page consider making a donation
* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
* * * * *
The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
* *
* * *
The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
* * * * *
* *
* * *
update 26 February 2011
|
