White Guilt & Remembrance

June 17, 8:00 a.m.

Last night I watched a pbs documentary called ENSLAVED, narrated by Samuel L. Jackeson. A team of archaeologists, divers, historians searched for the sunken wreck of the ship the London, which crashed on the rocks of a bay in England. In the raging storm, The Captain refused the help of the watermen of the local village who went out in boats to help steer him into the harbor. It is surmised that he didn't want them to see the evil of which he was guilty. He had already been hauled to court but released for torturing African captives on his ship.

The sailors and the Captain got off the ship and to shore but they left the hundreds of African captives chained below decks to drown in the frigid storm waters.

A local man spoke of finding things from time to time, once some fingers and part of a skull eroding out of the cliff face, some bits of iron, a shackle.

During the show, Samuel Jackson travels to Africa and visits an artist in Ghana which was where the majority of enslaved people were kept and put on the ships for the transatlantic Slave trade. Kwame Akoto-Bamfo makes clay sculpture portraits of local people whose faces he finds interesting and he has several projects incorporating these heads, one is a field of heads around a tree, the sheer number of the hundreds he has created and placed there begin to give you a glimpse into the enormity of this movement of human individuals. In another the heads are just visible in water, which reminded me of the ship in the earlier part of the documentary and those drowned people.

Towards the end of the film, they talked to John Lewis the great Civil Rights Leader and he said that we must not "sweep this under the carpet" We owe it to the oeople who suffered this history to remember. I try to do that out of respect on holidays that remind us such us the upcoming one - Juneteenth.

Perhaps it would be more correct to say that what I experience when I am reminded of the deep horrors of this historical event, is more discouragement and despair at the inhumanity and the heartless cruelty that some men are capable of inflicting on others. I don't feel guilt, just sadness and pity.

Along with John Lewis, I personally feel obligated to acknowledge the suffering of others both those who were enslaved and murdered and those who died to end the atrocity by fighting in the Civil War.

This Saturday, June 20, a re-enactment Civil War Regiment (the 12th) will be encamped on our Woodbury Friends Meeting House grounds. There was some controversy over hosting this event because of the committment of Quakers to Peace, but I felt from the start that we must acknowledge and respect the sacrifice of so many who died to save their fellow human beings from this crime of enslavement and human trafficking and to stop it from spreading. Unlike my fellow Quakers, although I wish war were never again necessary, I think there have been times when we have had to stop and fight. The Civil War was necessary to stop the enslavement of African people and to rescue them and World War 2 was necessary to stop Adolf Hitler and the nazi War Machine which was murdering on an industrial scale. Many Quakers also felt the need to sacrifice and serve because to allow this to continue was unthinkable. Of course, I do wish men would advance and find better ways of resolving disputes and also would divest themselves of the avarice that causes them to steal land and resources from others and to exploit both animals and people.

As long as we hold the hope, it is a light to follow. This Juneteenth let us all honor the memory of the suffering of our fellow American citizens and their African families in this shameful period of American history and also the memory of the men and women who struggled and sacrificed to end it. Let's celebrate freedom and goodness and the joy that kept the souls of the people alive until they could be free.

Happy Juneteenth!

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