I am almost 65 years old and have lived most of my life in the area of Virginia where the first enslaved Africans arrived. One thing that is tragic , among many, is that Africans were stripped of their names and languages. I am not aware of any other people who entered this country and had assume someone else’s name. Some people indigenous to this continent, lost their names also. Between absent and poor documentation of census, birth, death and marriage records of Africans and early African Americans it’s extremely difficult to trace my roots. Through Ancestry DNA , I am very fortunate to connect and communicate with one very distant relative in West Africa. Is my last name the same as hers? I will never know.
Ms. TC Gray
Chesapeake VA
Sent from my iPhone
> On Aug 16, 2023, at 1:37 PM, Lois M. Leveen <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Kirk Johnson makes an excellent point about the implicit assumption that kidnapped Africans lacked skills — as well as literacy, culture, religion, etc. — a wrong assumption we have inherited from the enslavers’ justifications of their own brutality (as biographers of Phillis Wheatley now note, perhaps the reason she “achieved” literacy in English so quickly after being enslaved in Boston was because she was already literate when stolen from her family and home).
>
> When I was in graduate school many years ago, I came across a very clever and snarky cultural critic who noted that although American corporations were happy to use happy slave stereotypes of “Aunt Jemima” to sell pancake mix and “Uncle Ben” to sell rice, no corporation had used Nat Turner to sell hunting knives. This reminds us to consider which “skills” the Florida curriculum intends to highlight. Enslaved people planned and executed armed insurrections throughout the period of legal slavery. What a skill set THAT took! Can we anticipate the Social Studies curriculum that will cover it?
>
> -Lois
>
> Lois Leveen, PhD
> Portland OR 97214
> [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> she/her/hers
>
> Latest article: Imperfect Justice in the Imperfect Archive: Uncovering Extrajudicial Black Resistance in Richmond’s Civil War Court Records <https://www.journalofthecivilwarera.org/2023/02/imperfect-justice-in-the-imperfect-archive-uncovering-extrajudicial-black-resistance-in-richmonds-civil-war-court-records/ <https://www.journalofthecivilwarera.org/2023/02/imperfect-justice-in-the-imperfect-archive-uncovering-extrajudicial-black-resistance-in-richmonds-civil-war-court-records/>>
>
>
>> On Aug 15, 2023, at 8:24 AM, Johnson, Kirk N. <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>>
>> I think there's another layer of racism/bigotry embedded in the "enslaved persons acquired valuable skills in slavery" discourse that gets overlooked (understandably, given the callousness of the sentiment)--the implicit assumption that back in Africa, those skills were unattainable. I'd wager that a lot of the people making these comments are quite ignorant of how widespread metalworking was in West African societies, for example.
>>
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