INTRODUCTION
I am often asked why I developed the Black Holocaust Exhibit and how I conceived of the idea. Relating the pain of my people was never a part of my “career” plans. I never sat down and said, “let me build a collection that speaks to the treatment Africans received under slavery.” It was more as though I was being called by the ancestors to tell their stories. Countless instances guided me to this project: documents I hesitated to purchase, I bought; reference books were purchased and forgotten, and then reappeared; people who could offer insight came into my life just when I needed them. These repeated occurrences made me feel that this was a special project, one foretold by the ancestors generations ago. It was a resurrection of the stories that the enslaved wanted to be told, only awaiting a vessel through which they could speak.
Lest We Forget is a tribute to those whose lives are told through the documents you’ve seen and read. It is a tribute to enslaved men and women, bought and sold, whose names appear briefly, jotted down by a slaveholder, then filed away in boxes in dusty archives or copied onto lifeless microfilm. The exhibit and this book give voice to those whose cries and words were silenced—young children torn from their parents, men and women swapped or given as gifts, old people broken and appraised as worthless—acts you may have heard or read about in textbooks, but never fully understood or felt until now, when you hold an actual document in your hands.
View of the coast near Saint Andrew river and the Fort Santo Antonio, 16th century, in Axim—the Dutch Gold Coast. Captured for the Portuguese and later occupied by the British. Drawing by William Smith, 1726.
Some may argue, “Why bring up such a painful period in our country’s history?” Some may feel that they have no apology to make, as neither they nor their forefathers were slaveholders. Others may feel dredging up tales of Africans in chains humiliates the race. When one speaks openly of slavery, the nation tightens.
Perhaps there is an uneasiness because the attitude that undergirded slavery exists today. Prejudice still looms. America is still a divided nation. America was built on the backs of enslaved Africans; it still suffers internal turmoil because it never righted that wrong, never truly tore down the walls of racism.
There is a subtle, strong power in our words and language. Many historians today use the adjective “enslaved” instead of the noun “slave” to describe their position at that time instead of limiting or beholding them to that position. Throughout, depending on the context, we will use both terms wherever most appropriate to not interrupt the conversation.
I hope this book gives those who read it a better understanding of the human drama of slavery and of the human spirit that would not be broken. From 1619 to 1865, Africans in America were enslaved. Today, my people are civic, political, and religious leaders, businessmen, judges, physicians, teachers, artists, inventors, recipients of the Nobel Prize, and more. Such great strides against a continual tide of resistance attest to my people’s remarkable will and to their undying faith in the sovereignty of a higher power. We owe much to our forefathers; their sturdy backs have been the bridges that have brought us thus far. To them we say thank you. Their sacrifices we shall never forget.
—Velma Maia Thomas