So christian green is a newspaper journalist, the author of the Devils Half Acre the untold story of how one woman liberated the south, the most notorious slave jail, and the New York Times bestseller of some things must something must be done about Prince Edward county, which receives a library of virginia literary award for nonfiction and the peoples choice award and for two decades, greene has worked for several newspapers, including the boston globe, the san diego uniontribune, the Richmond Times dispatch. And greene also holds a masters in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy school. She currently resides in richmond, virginia, with her two daughters and ben raines is an Award Winning environmental journalist, filmmaker and charter captain who lives in fairhope, alabama. Range is the author of the last slave ship the true story of how the clotilde was found, her descendants and extraordinaire ari reckoning and raines wrote and directed the underwater forest. An Award Winning film explores a 70,000 year old Cypress Forest found off the gulf coast and wrote and produced the pbs documentary americas amazon the mobile tents for delta and raines earlier work saving americas amazon the threat to our nations most biodiverse river system speaks to the environmental diversity about them as aquatic systems. So thank you for joining us today. Thank you so much, danielle, for being here. Well get started. So both of your works sit at the intersection of yourself and domestic slave trade. How did you develop these projects . What drew you to following mary lincolns life and legacy and to begin searching for the goodwill that. Thank you so much, all of you, for being here. And thanks to cspan for being here. And i just want to say thank you so much to the other organizers of this amazing festival. Its just been a wonderful weekend and such a great introduction to authors and new books and music. And im just very appreciative to be hosted here in nashville and to be able to attend such a neat event to. I was working as a reporter in richmond, virginia. Im from virginia and i had just moved back after being gone for. After college, i became a reporter and was a reporter around the country. And i had just moved back after having two kids and going to grad school in boston. I wanted to be closer to my family and i was also working on my first book, which was about my hometown. Something must be done about or accounting, but i thought i should take a reporting job at that time so that i could get to know richmond better. Probably because my kids were so young, it was like easier to be at work as a reporter than home to toddlers. So one day the richmond reporter was out covering Something Else and my editor asked me to cover the story of this african Burial Ground that activists were asking to be preserved. They were claiming that this part of the city, this plot, was a Burial Ground and it was actually covered in a parking lot that the State University of Virginia Commonwealth University was using as a parking lot. And so i really didnt know anything about like that Burial Ground or the area where the Burial Ground was located, which was a slave trading district in richmond. I knew that richmond was, you know, a slave trading town, but i knew very little about the history. And so i was just doing a little background reading before i went to this assignment. And i came across an article on the Smithsonian Magazine from 2008 about an archeology article dig there had been done and had located the remains or the, i guess, the foundation of what was called lumpkin jail also known as the Devils Half Acre and it was a slave jail that had been run by the slave trader named Robert Lumpkin. And i didnt know what slave jails were and i didnt know really about slave traders. And so i was really interested in this story of this jail that was considered one of the most brutal slave jails in america. But there was a couple of sentences in the story that really stuck with me. And the story described mary lumpkin as the mother of robert lincolns children and as an enslaved woman who had been, quote, chosen as his wife or im sorry, not chosen as i quote, acted as his wife. And although i didnt know that much about the slave trade, i knew that enslaved people, black people, couldnt marry whites at that time in virginia. And so i thought, what does that mean . Acting as someones wife . And there are a couple of other sentences that said that she had educated the children and that they had been freed and that she had turned this jail into a school for free. Black men after the civil war. And it had eventually become or had been the foundation of Virginia Union university, one of the first historically black colleges and universities in america. So that story stayed with me while i worked on and i sold the penn state county book, and i wrote it and when i turned that book in my thoughts returned to mary lumpkin again. And so she had she really just stayed with me during that time. I tried to send her away because she didnt provide any documents she had very you know, i was like, you kind of have to you know, he wanted me to write this book so bad, but she really stayed with me. And i thought because of the way that i was taught the history of enslavement in virginia, i thought her story was just different than any story of an enslaved person i had known, especially an enslaved woman. And i thought that her story well, because it was intentionally a race, deserved to be there, to be told, you know, deserved to be widely known. So thats kind of what drew me to the story. So my involvement with the clotilda, which was the last ship to bring enslaved people to the United States, started with a phone call from a former colleague at the newspaper i was working at who had since moved on and was managing the Hunting Department at Bass Pro Shops and he called me up and said, i think you should look for the clotilda. And i said, is it missing. I didnt know the story. I knew, you know, in mobile you drive around and theres a mural of the clotilda and you know, its the last ship that brought enslaved people into the country. But i didnt understand the nuance that it came in in 1860 and it had been illegal to bring enslaved people in to the country since 1808. But this illegal trade kept going. And so the clotilda was the last ship to come in before the civil war. So my friend, the Bass Pro Shop scott tells me this story and that when the ship arrived, they hid it, they burned it to disappear it because the federal agents were already looking for it, because the guy who paid for the whole trip had been blabbing, the whole time the ship sailed to africa. So . So they burned the ship the night it came in. And people have been looking for it for the next hundred and 60 years. So my friend tells me to look for it. And i said, thats ridiculous. Its like looking for buried pirate treasure. Theres no way im going to find it. But he knew i had made a documentary and written a book about the big swamp, where the ship was burned, which i named americas amazon. Its actually the mobile tents on delta and so we get off the phone and i sit down at the computer and typed in clotilda and i read all the history thats available on the internet. Before i got up, i had ordered all the relevant history books that involve the clotilda, and i started my research right then. And you know, if you read the book, youll discover i found the wrong ship first, which was something of an international embarrassment. But i went on and persisted and managed to find the right ship. But thats when i really began to understand the clotilda, because the people who came on it started a community in alabama called africa town thats still there today. They actually bought land from their former enslavers. They built a school for the kids because White Alabama wouldnt build them one. They built a church and this community persisted. And so, you know what i came to realize about the clotilda was this is sort of the origin story for the african diaspora, and thats what makes it so important. I mention that they came in at 1860. Well, by that time, on the eve of the civil war, almost no enslaved people in the United States had been born in africa. They had not experienced the Middle Passage. They didnt know what life in africa was like. They hadnt experienced all those aspects. And so the stories of all the people prior to them, you know, from the 1600s up to 1808 had been lost because no one was recording them. So the story of these people on this ship, because they came so late, was very well documented. Beginning at the end of the civil war. You know, there were newspaper articles about the clotilda starting in 1860 when it came in and this went on. The man who brought the ship in was was treated as a swashbuckling hero for having done this. He was interviewed dozens of times until he died in 1892 by things like the New York Times and harpers bazaar. But every time they would come interview him, they would go interview the africans. And so the africans became very famous. The last one who started africa town, cudjoe lewis, who was the subject of Zora Neale Hurston, spoke. He lived until 1935, so he was interviewed dozens of times. As were about ten of his fellow shipmates for a book that came out in 1940, which is what attracted Zora Neale Hurston. So from the mouths of the people on the ship, we have what their lives were like before they were captured. We have what african slave raids were like. We have what the Middle Passage was like. We have what their time as enslaved people was like and then their time living in, you know, reconstruction south in the jim crow era. Theres no record like it in the global history of enslavement. And so their story becomes a proxy for everyone whose ancestors arrived here in a hold of a ship who cant know, you know, their histories begin at the plantation. There are people were enslaved on and so this tells them you know, it speaks to the longing and the heartache the enslaved people who were brought here had their fears for what had happened to their families left behind or sent other places. It encapsulates the whole story in a way nothing else can, you know and so we have these hundred and ten voices from the past speaking for 12 Million People. And that brings us to our next question, really well. So, ben, your work speaks to joel know hurstons bear when it came out 2018 sylvia do dream of africa of alabama in 2009 Natalie Robertson is the last slave ship clotilda in the making of africa down to 2008. How does your work further deepen the conversations with these scholars have started well. So you know, when when Natalie Robertson started her work as a ph. D. Student, the clotilda story was just a footnote in history. And then sylvia and juice book, both excellent books. She actually managed to trace through things that the africans said in all these interviews and things that american born blacks witnessed and described in other interviews, she managed to trace the people on the clotilda back to individual villages in africa and figure out different regions and tribes and customs and so, you know, i came in and found the ship which is the other leg of this story. You know, we have the histories preserved by those women, and now we have the ship, you know, the vessel that brought these people here. And so that that was a big connection and step. And what i tried to do was kind of synthesize these earlier works. And i went to africa as part of the book and research there and found something that really surprised me. We have this new movie, the woman king, out right now with viola davis. Its based on the people who captured the people on the clotilda. And i have not seen the movie yet. I need to see it. But these were wicked. This was perhaps one of the most brutal regimes in world history. And you can see that there today in benin. So the diamond empires who captured the people on the clotilda and today the diamonds are the modern day fawn tribe in benin are the dominant ethnic group. But all the tribes they captured were also in modern day benin. And so you can tell in in benin, looking at people on the street by facial scarification that things what tribe they were in whether they were the capturing tribe, the diamonds or one of the dozens of tribes, the diamonds enslaved. And its leading to a rift in the country thats been building for hundreds of years. Theyre very worried about a genocide like rwanda, which was just a tribal resentment gone awry. And so the government there is actually doing something similar. What were working on here with reconciliation, you know, that part of that is reparations and all that thats going on there where the government is trying to confront this history and pull it all together. So, you know, one of the things the clotilda story shows is these hurts are generational, the legacy of this ship is haunting three groups of people still to this day, you know, the mayor family, the villains of the story who paid for the clotilda to go to africa. They still wont speak publicly about their involvement in any way because theyre embarrassed of what their ancestors did and theyre hiding from, you know, owning up to that. I interviewed people in africa down who had spent generations denying they were connected to the clotilda africans because that was, you know, they had been sort of brainwashed through tarzan movies and society to believe it was bad to be connected to anything. Africa. And then in africa, the people there are hiding in some measure were from this legacy because of their involvement in sending fellow africans abroad. And so you know, sometimes the only way these kind of things can get brought to light is literally to bring the big, hulking husk of this ship to light and make people confront it and their involvement. To that end, i will say the ship for years after i found it is still buried in the mud in an alabama swamp, which is totally inappropriate. This is an internationally historic artifact that should be dug up. The state of alabama should be chastised and taken to task for not having done really anything so far to move the ball. Theyve done very basic, preliminary archeology. So, you know, i would appeal to the nation. This is one of only 13 slave ships ever found. Its the only one ever found that participated in the american trade. And it tells the story of these hundred and ten people in a way nothing else can. So it should be on display in a World Class Museum in africa town. The community of these people followed and you know, whatever we need to do to get alabama out of the way, lets do it. And i say that as a native son. Can i can i play off of that . So the story of mary lumpkin is also buried in plain sight, right . I was telling you about the archeological dig that dug up lumpkin jail. Well, they had to dig 15 feet in order to to find those remains. But the foundation of pumpkins jail property, half of it is under interstate 95. And the other half is in this little green patch surrounded by a parking lot like state parking lots. And richmond and the dig was in 2008. And guess what . They they covered it up because they had to protect it from the elements. So it was once there was once a creek running through there. And so water was pouring into the site and it was winter and it was in danger of freezing. So they covered it back up to protect it. And i remember, though, these words stuck with me. The arc archeologist who found it said he thought hed come back a year later, you know, to have them doing some kind of amazing work, to display this, to the public so that people could walk where mary lumpkin walked and they could walk where thousands of enslaved people walked before or after sale to the lower south and it still is buried today. You know, its still surrounded by parking lots. And there are just three little metal markers that tell the story of lincolns jail and of mary lumpkin and a few other, you know, little markers around town that tell the story of the domestic slave trade out of richmond. But richmond was the second biggest slave trading city next to new orleans. You know, we shipped an 1840, virginia shipped half of all interstate trade trades were made from virginia. So half of all people going to the lower south came from virginia. But yet and we had this amazing, you know, archeological find, there are very few slave trading sites left in america. You know, if you go looking for slavery, museums, places that tell the story of enslavement through inside peoples eyes, there are none that that really there are very few that still exist. And this is one of them. And to think that richmond, you know, really hasnt made much progress in trying to tell this story, its its very similar to what you said. Theyve made some steps. They preserved some of the land around lumpkin jail that was part of the larger slave trade there. There were other lots of other slave jails there, but its still covered up, you know, and im like, i going even be alive when this, like, you know, when the story finally gets told in the form of the museum, at the very least, there needs to be a memorial that tells the story. And i id love to see a museum so that rich richmond, which you know, is known for celebrating confederate generals with all its monuments, could be known for for being a truth telling city, for being a city that like that told the truth and all of its, you know, and all the tragedy. But that this rich history of so many people who are impacted by the trade there. Absolutely. So putting those to those stories, the narrative of confederate excellence in your mind . Yeah. Is it better . I guess so. Putting the stories of confederate excellence in conversation with the kind of humanity of enslavement, experience of enslavement would be an important part of understanding as americans, this american legacy. Yeah, thats what they asked me for. But i have a question for you, christian. So in your prolog you note that throughout American History and slave women have in tripoli marginalizes angela davis frames rendered invisible by their gender, their race or their class. So that in many ways only the stories of the truly exceptional woman whove escaped slavery have been well documented that we didnt learn about subsequently. So what is mary lincolns life and journey reveal about the liberatory experiences of enslaved black women and their claim for freedom, and also their claim for physical space . Yeah, i mean, ill just start by saying like the only the only one that i really remember learning about as a child and maybe this is true for you, too, is Harriet Tubman right . And what of her story is amazing. Shes an amazing person of course. But if you think about her story, its such a masculine story. Right. And so im like, oh, who told the stories . The white men write her story. She has a pistol. Shes wading through swamps. Shes sleeping under bushes. Shes successfully, you know, fleeing enslavement and then coming back for more. Like what a masculine story. I think of all the enslaved women who couldnt, could not, would not leave their children right. I mean, so the story of escape is not really the story of enslaved women in america. So that so, yes, its exceptional and really doesnt. Is it representative . I think the other enslaved women in our mind become like a monolith of of all the other stories that we hear right. I dont i do think that mary lumpkin story is exceptional. I mean, there it was commonplace for enslavers and slave traders to choose an enslaved woman to have children with. But because she was provided for by him, you know, she ended up inheriting his slave jail. Her story is exceptional in that way. But i also think that her story can be very represent ative of this selfdoubting emanation that enslaved women had. I mean, she used what resources she had to negotiate with Robert Lumpkin so that she could educate her children and free her children and provide for her children. Right. So we know through the story of one of her descendants that she told Robert Lumpkin, you can do what you want with me, but quote, these children have to be free. So we know that she negotiated to provide for them by 1856, the two eldest children who were daughters. So she had five children with Robert Lumpkin that survived. And the two eldest were were daughters and younger. Three were sons. In 1856, they went to ipswich, massachusetts, to attend a seminary. So they were in massachusetts, so they were essentially free, which means that her children got almost a decade head start on freedom, right, than other enslaved people. So that but she was very successful in that way. And she also ensure that they were educated. I dont think those daughters ever came back to richmond. I think they went straight from richmond to philadelphia where while they were in school, she was able to buy a home in her own name while enslaved in virginia. She was able to buy a home in her name in philadelphia and when the girls completed two years of school, which was considered adequate at the time, they went to philadelphia and the two oldest boys went to philadelphia. They lived with another formerly enslaved woman who had been forced to have the children of her enslaver but had been freed at his death. So those four lived with this woman and then mary lumpkin made her way there with her youngest, who was a baby or toddler. By 1860. So she was sheltered in philadelphia for the entirety of the civil war. And then for whatever reason, she went back to richmond, to Robert Lumpkin. In 1865, at the end of the war, probably because she needed resources and it would have been difficult to understand that that he wouldnt have it after the civil war because all the people he enslaved were gone and that property was worth very little. But she and she had inheritance from him. She she inherited everything he had, including that jail. And while it didnt end up being a great resource to pay for things, i mean, many enslaved women who did have some resources provided to them by their enslavers couldnt afford the basic taxes to pay for those properties. And they lost the properties because of something as simple as that. But in her case, she was able to make a mark by renting that building to a white preacher from the north who wanted to start a school for black freemen and a school that eventually became what is now known today as Virginia Union university. So i see her story. Well, you know, really special in some ways because she was provided for by Robert Lumpkin. I see other parts of it as being very representative, you know, of what enslaved woman wanted. They always wanted an education. They always wanted freedom. You know, and they wanted to provide for their children just as as we all do. So this is for both of you, this whole question. How do you see both of your projects as successful endeavors to claim space and reveal more about the live realities of enslaved people . Well, you know, with the last slave ship, what it can do in addition to what does for the larger community, by sharing the stories of these people that that represents so many, it can rescue africa town. You know, the community started by the people on the clotilda, which was thriving. It became a magnet in the south for africanamericans who were newly in freed because the people on the clotilda had only been enslaved for five years. And so they came from families in africa that owned land owned businesses, traded. There were commercial fishermen, commercial furniture makers, you know, all within the people on the clotilda. So their community had this kind of, you know, launch and it was by 1912, the fourth Largest Community in the United States governed by africanamericans, which is remarkable. And thats what drew, you know, Zora Neale Hurston and Booker T Washington and these people to the community. So that ascendance continued up through the 1950s and sixties where we see africa town has grown from the 30 original people to 12,000 people and it sits about two miles from downtown mobile, but it had grocery stores, pharmacies, movie theaters, restaurants, everything a Thriving Community would have multiple churches, and then the state of alabama and the city of mobile started the destruction of africa town, which involved heavy industry and probably one of the most important blows was the creation of a road right through the heart of africa, down to get Hazardous Waste off of interstate ten, going through downtown mobile. And they put it through the heart of africa town. And so when they built the road, which you can go drive on today, it was a two lane road. Its now a six lane highway. And they this is almost hard to believe. But in 1992, they destroyed all of the cabins that the founders of africa town built for each other. You know, they took turns, they bought the land together, and then they took turns building each other, houses the descent of kojo lewis were living in his house in 1992 when they were kicked out to pave it under to build this road. And the house wasnt even in the foot pad footprint of the roadbed. If it were still on the spot it standing on it would be up against the road. But they just took this opportunity to wipe out these cabins built in 1870. And so that enabled more in this industry to come, and it divided the community in half. So i mentioned all the businesses today. African town doesnt have a single business in the community. The population is down to 2000 people and huge swaths of the land in africa town that had houses on them were owned by the mayor family beginning when the africans built the town, the mayor started taking the land they owned surrounding it and building shotgun houses. So they had built about 500 houses in the community. And in 1968, Timothy Meyers grandson announced in a newspaper interview that he was tearing all the houses down because the city of mobile was finally giving africa town water and sewer service. Now, this is 1968 mobile, two miles away, which it incorporated africa town had had Water Service since about 1915. So 1968, he says. Well, the africans wouldnt know how to use it. You know, the people in africa wouldnt know how to use a bathtub if you gave them one. They probably just store food in it. And so he tore down 500 houses, which if you think of all the families living in those houses, that one blow removed thousands of people from africa town. And so the community has been totally destroyed. And part of the vision for the ship and im working with the Clotilda Descendants Association and the African Heritage foundation and other groups in africa down. Theres a vision to create a museum there. There was a Housing Project on 42 acres in africa town that was land stolen from the residents. And to build this Housing Project, which became a crime infested, you know, blight was finally closed in 2010. It was condemned. And so the whole place has been raised now. So theres a 42 acre site in the heart of africa town, and we proposed building a giant museum there to put the ship on display and then using the rest of the 42 acres to create new commercial space. So the people in africa, africa town can run businesses to take advantage of the notoriety of of whats happened in their community. Also, theres talk of building a theater for a black Theater Company in the town and some housing to replace all the lost housing. So thats kind of the the vision Going Forward. And i love the idea of the ship being the vehicle, you know, that brought these people to america. But now the vehicle that can bring their descendants out of the poverty that was inflicted on them in classic environmental racism. And what you talk about in richmond, you go all around america from baltimore to l. A. And you find heavy industry sitting on top of historically black communities that have been marginalized and destroyed. So to think there was a city in the, you know, eighties that had 12,000 people and now doesnt even have a circle k really tells you how dramatic the fall has been and and how powerful the the resurrection could be. I got so caught up in his answer, i forgot what the question was. Did you repeat for me . Absolutely. So how do you see your projects as a successful endeavors to claim space and reveal more about the lived realities and humanity of enslaved people . I mean, i think that we have similar goals for for what we want to happen in our communities. So ill speak to something slightly different. Because i talked about, you know, my desire for a memorial and museum to to tell the story more widely and bring people in. But i, i want the story of enslaved women to be told. And i think, you know, i didnt create this. I dont know if you cartagena, but i didnt create this kind of story. Im you know, im im in a path of a few other people who are starting to tell these stories of inside women, even when we dont know everything about their lives. You know, theres a real pushback like, oh, you cant tell the story because you dont know. Mary lumpkin thought, you know, you dont know how she felt about the relationship. You dont have this and that about her life. And i really push back to that because i think, well, we know that like these stories were intentionally erased and we know that white men were the people who chose which stories got to be told. And thats why so many enslaved women stories werent told. And so i think we have to be really intentional about telling these stories so that you dont just have the exception in our stories, right . So that we can like, know more broadly what enslavement looks like, particularly for women. I mean, for example, i spent some time because i didnt know much about what her early life looked like. I know she was born in 1832 in virginia, so likely born, enslaved. I think because she was considered a light skinned woman and described as fair skinned. Its you know, its possible that her mother was also in a similar situation and that her mother, that mary lumpkin, was born to an enslaved mother and either her and her mothers enslaver or a relative of her mothers enslaver or an overseer. Right. We know that that she had her first child with Robert Lumpkin in 1845 at the age of 13. We know that he owned a or he possessed a child. In 1840 when mary lumpkin would have been eight. Its possible that mary lumpkin is that that eight year old . We dont know if mary lumpkin was purchased alone away from her family, if she was stolen, if she was purchased with a family member, her mother or a sister or something we just dont know. And so, you know, because these stories work well to be told and sort of chronological is the primary thread i really wanted to imagine more what that her life might have looked like at that time. And so i turned to the Works Progress administration, which was a federal agency that finally decided in the 1930s to preserve the stories of enslaved people and if you havent spent any time reading the Works Progress administration and interviews with enslaved people, its a really wonderful way to learn firsthand what the experiences of, say, people were. I mean, theyre not perfect because a lot of times the interview workers, were not well trained about how to interview. Many of them were white and so didnt really understand what they were asking, but theyre still really revelatory. And for me and i looked at those stories from several different states, moses, i dont know if all Southern States have them, but i read them on several different Southern States and you can find them online by just googling that or your like. For example, every year virginia has them in their archives. And for me, that was the thing that changed my mind most about the story. And i feel like we had moments, you know, during the research was some of those interviews as well. Yeah, its like you have this moment where youre like, okay, marys experience was really terrible, but like it was common because i could see it. And these interviews where they didnt really want to talk about you know, the sexual abuse and the violence inflicted on them. But they but it, you know, came up in the interviews and so i feel like my goal is to make telling these stories, like, more commonplace and to be okay with the gaps, you know, to be comfortable sitting with some of the space and the story, you know, for the common good of knowing more about one enslaved womens lives were like so that we can have a wider swath of stories so we can understand more about how the experiences were similar and how they were different. Well said. So that leads us to talk a little bit more about the institution of slavery itself. So how do you see your projects helping to shed light on the human cost of the institution of slavery and its broader impacts on the and social landscape of america in present day . So how do we think about bringing it forward in terms of this legacy . And we can see this particularly throughout africa generally, this environmental degradation, but it also starts in africa. You know, one of the things that is lost in the story of enslavement, the cost in africa, well hear about the 12 Million People who were enslaved. But what i doing this book was about the tens of millions of people who were killed to get those 12 Million People. You know, we have firsthand accounts thanks to Zora Neale Hurston when she interviewed kojo lewis of what the slaving raids like and when they came to these villages, they killed everyone who wasnt between who was at the age that they wanted. So if you were younger than 12 and older than about 25 or 30, they killed you. And so, you know, the humans left behind these ghost towns all around them. And that was one of the most powerful things. You know, for me to come to terms with and thats this woman king movie, you know, lightly touches on that, im told. But, you know, that cost to the continent of these tens of millions of peoples and whole cultures that were wiped out, you know, kudrows village was destroyed. Everyone was either taken or killed. And it was a large market town, you know, a fortified with a walled compound. So to me, thats one of the really important things that we have to reckon with, not just what happened to the people who were brought here, but what you know, our activities as the United States, a nation that did slavery and but also england and, you know, spain and portugal and holland. What their legacy is in terms of what is owed back for having done this. One of the things that a lot of africans i met talked about was how if they had been to america how they felt shunned by american black arts because they would say to him, point blank, youre the people sold us. And so, you know, that is a really powerful thing to me. You know, the idea of reconciliation is is is most powerful thing Going Forward to bring these, you know, everybody back together at the table. Theres plenty of blame to go around from the africans who who enslaved people to the europeans and americans who enslaved people. And i think we have to start wrestling with that aspect of it before we can get any further. You know, this Critical Race Theory argument thats going on, were talking about history and, you know, to go forward and be hiding that History Today with the internet, its just absurd. That is not the direction of where Society Needs to go. And its the opposite direction of getting past the sins of the past legislature doesnt understand that. Well, no, and nor does ours. In alabama. In fact, i have written op eds and, you know, prominent places like the l. A. Times and stuff saying theyre holding the clotilda hostage through Critical Race Theory. Thats why the state hasnt done anything to dig it up, because theyre trying to suppress the history once again and so, you know, thats what i was trying to do here is on the suppress as much of the history as i could because its incredible. You know, when we hear about weve all heard about how all these cultural things, art and music, etc. , came to america in the bodies of enslaved people. And we see that in real time with the clotilda people because they were interviewed so often and because we have interviews, the americans who watched them, you know, we see their music coming in. We see religion coming in. You know, vote on voodoo that and even food and of the most graphic examples, theres a tv show called high on the hog on netflix, which is wonderful. The First Episode is about benin, where everybody on the cloak tilde came from. The African Women in mobile, starting in about 1870, became very famous for their food, and they would travel to the factory around town. There was a gunpowder factory, a shingle factory, etc. At lunchtime, feed the workmen and what they sold was stew. They called it stew and they were really famous for their stews. Well, benin, you know, okra and black eyed peas come from beneath. In benin, the word for okra is gumbo. These women were making gumbo. And you can go to benin today and eat something that is remarked early, like, well, if you were able to find good gumbo in america. But but, you know, cajun food basically came from beneath is the thrust. So so we see that in these people, you know, so the cultural debts and all that anyway, thats thats i dont know if i question that again so you know it was amazing i guess ill you you because the domestic slave trade that Robert Lumpkin participated in became became so prominent because the Transatlantic Slave Trade was banned in 1808. Okay so the down river or domestic slave trade already existed. That was something i found surprising. Doing this work that it was like it was, you know, a really profound network already. But the need for the domestic slave trade was vital after. After 1808. And the demand for workers was only growing in the lower south for cotton and sugar. And so virginians in particular, you know, only ownership of enslaved was worth a lot of money to them. Right. One thing that we havent talked about today that i think is really important to the story and to my book in particular is the family separation that resulted from this. I know in virginia. Enslavers like to portray themselves as benevolent. I mean, its like still happens today. This is part of whats a big problem with Critical Race Theory. Weve worked so hard to get beyond this idea of the benevolent enslaver and now were just not going to teach about slavery at all. We cant even get past the benevolence and slavery in virginia. But they acted like, oh, its not us that separates enslaved people. Its its the trader. So the trader was portrayed as pure evil and they were evil, but the enslavers were just as much at fault because they would be like, we would never sell the people enslaved. No, they would. All it took was like one expense, like a daughters wedding or someone going to college or the death of the, you know, the primary enslaver meant that all the slave people were separated, divided amongst their children, and so they were separated from their own families. Right. And this this family separation is a huge part of the american story. The american trauma, because mothers were taken from their children, husbands were separated from their wives, children were taken from both parents. Right. And thats a trauma that will never be repaired. And, you know, after the civil war, so many of those people, most people never found their family again. And thats something when you read the Works Progress administration that just came home to me that i wasnt taught right. And so i feel strongly about this teaching. Like we can really understand whats happening in america so much more clearly. If we if we read the words of enslaved people, if it works. I was just thinking like, if High School Students just spent an hour open to any part of one of these works, Progress Administration interviewed and spent an hour reading their the way they viewed slavery would completely change. So for me, its the generation no harm. You know we were talking about like you were talking about the years between when the slave trade, the Transatlantic Slave Trade ended and the clotilda was brought. I mean, thats 50 years, which is what, two generations, right . So this was like multiple generations or multiple generations of slave traders in richmond of slave jail owners. Thats how long the domestic slave trade was separating people from their family members and i think for me, its like the story of 2 Million Girls and women and what was done to them. Like her story is not unique. Like the the abuse, the sexual abuse and the violence, you know, perpetrated against them. Its not the only story. Right. But its a its something we really need to grasp in a way that hasnt been taught to us, has been really glossed over, at least in the way virginia history is taught. Absolutely. I mean, come back to a point that ben mentioned earlier, that its the importance of confronting americas involvement, complicity in the selling consumption, commodification of human bodies in some form. So how do you see your works, your agency, your effort through talking about publishing as a way to actively confront this history, this trauma, this background . Well, one of the things that was important to me was to try and help africa down, come back, having learned what it was, and because it would help in a larger scale. So you know, the africans built a school in 1875, i for their kids and it ended up being ultimately burned down a number of times. And then they ended up getting one of the rosenwald grants, which was the ceo of sears, who did one of the greatest philanthropic efforts. He built 5000 schools in the south for four black kids. And the africa town school is one of the only ones still in the country in operation of those schools. But, you know, the community with with the loss of its tax base and all that has really been falling apart. And the school is actually one of the pillars in the community, the Alumni Association of kids, who are educated there during the heyday in the fifties and sixties, is one of the most active forces trying to rescue africa towns. So you know, we i did a go fund me and we raised enough money to buy 300 copies of the book to give to the school, which was enough for every student and teacher. And i was hoping that effort would grow, you know, and we would get more schools involved. But i was pretty happy to have gotten that to them because its their story and they dont know it because so much of it has been lost. One of the tragedies in American History for African American communities is their history so often has been lost and hidden from them intentionally, even sometimes by themselves. And that was one of the really poignant things was hearing, you know, the president of the Clotilda Descendants Association, a guy named darren patterson, hes a 60 year old man. He did not know he was a descendant of the africans until his mother died because she hid it from him. And said he was a direct descendant. His great aunt, eva, who he saw at family gatherings weekly in the community, was one of the last kids born to one of the africans and his mother told him all his life, dont anything. And he says shes crazy. Shes not african and neither are you, which is a really powerful thing when you know his mother knew full well that she was a direct descendant, but she he what he says is she didnt want us to think about where we came from. She wanted to think about where we were going. But what a legacy to have lost and had hidden for so long. And then you expand that nationally to all the stories that may have been hidden from from, you know, kids by wellmeaning parents and things. So recovering that history is is a really, you know, important step, not just for the africanAmerican Community, but for the American Community at large to kind of realize the contributions and and societal wrongs, you know, that that have been heaped on top of many immigrant communities, but especially this forced immigrant community that get it because it has Everything Else else. Well, ill do a quick answer. While anybody who has questions makes their way to the microphone, because we only have a few minutes to take questions. Unfortunately, im just the ill just say that, you know, i am the same way. I want to shine a light on the history and i like i dont want black americans to be the only one who own this history. This is all of our history. And i want white people to feel an ownership of this. And a desire to preserve the site. I dont know if i was zoning out in the end. He mentioned it, but im trying to figure out how to. How did she inherit the slave jail . I mean, that was that opposed or challenged . Not that i have found, but he left a will. But he did not name her as i mean, some people have claimed that she was his wife. I think thats because churches were involved. You know, and the seminary was involved. Right. But she he referred as i think was my woman. But he named the five children like first middle and last names in the will and claimed them as his and hers, but left her all of that. And i think it wasnt challenged because it was a legal document. And he i mean, he had written that well in 1865. Hmm hmm. And that was somewhat common. I mean, people left things. They freed enslaved people on their death and stuff like that and them property and other enslaved women who were chose. And so the nice word i use were chosen by these slave traders or enslavers also received what they were left in. And a question about the clotilda did they didnt make several voyages carrying slaves. No, the clotilda was a one off as a as a slave ship. It was basically an 18 wheeler of the day. It was built five years before it went to africa. Many of the histories youll read say that it was purpose built for this, but it wasnt. Timothy meyer picked it because his next door neighbor was the owner of it and it was the fastest ship in town. And he knew his next door neighbor like him, was wanting to thumb his nose that the government, they had invested in another guy, i wont go into him, but he was trying to take over a Central American country to turn it into a slave state. And they gave him a ship to to to pursue that. So thank you. Good afternoon. I wanted to say thank you for your excavation work. Im very critically important. The question that im left with is, though, how do we move white people . How do we move people . Pass this idea of the mentality of slavery and that the educational tourism and capital tourism of sites like this or ones that youre trying to build and actually funnel money and resources towards the justice and healing of these communities. Like really giving money financially, help people restore some of these broken ties in the families and and things that people are dealing with. Because i dont i think museums and memorials are beautiful. They havent served us in the ways that are actually generative and help us get past just like people feeling sad. So i just have curiosity around where this book moves us towards really opening up some of those deeper conversations. Well, i think youre exactly right about museums and stuff, but i think weve seen kind of a new model in montgomery with the legacy museum, and its a really experience that i think you leave youve confronted a lot when you leave and you know i think thats the path forward as a piece. You mentioned sentimentality and i think thats been the historical model so far. You, the africanAmerican History museum in d. C. Is is a step in the right. Whitney plantation in louisiana is senators the enslaved person. But i think youre right. Like ive been thinking about that recently, too. A couple people raised that idea with me of like, so what . What does this like, slavery, tourism really do for black people . And i think we need to really wrestle with that. Like while i think agree its really important to preserve these histories and tell these stories. Youre right, there is more that needs to be done to provide for black people who and whos inherited this trauma and you know the generate generational harms of slavery. I think thats not something that i have adequately thought about yet. You know, but were in a moment where, you know, thats kind of happening. You know, my son, hes 26. He went to Public School in alabama. And he always says to me that racism stuff, thats your generation. And, you know, my grandmothers generation, thats not us. And i see that in his friends and his his world around him as he grew up. You know, and in alabama, thats so so i feel like incremental progress has been going along. And now maybe we can start churning a little faster and harder and, you know, shedding light is always the way forward, like with stories like that. And you know, he understands that its not over. But but his point, i think, was, you know, we have a whole different mindset than you grew up with. Yeah. And my kids are teenagers. They have a whole different mindset than your son. So while that is progress, we arent we arent doing to provide for black people in this country. And i think thats a great question you raised and something ill spend a lot more time thinking about and exploring what what we could do rather than just create museums. We have a lot of poorly educated white people who who also could benefit from, you know, some some redirection. So many. Im a therapist, so im thinking about this from a psychological perspective. And i think one of the things that that happening now and has been has been as you guys open up our eyes and as the riots open up our eyes and black people standing up for themselves open up our eyes is that were dealing with the shadow of america. And its not its its throughout all kinds of things. This dealing with native americans, the whole process. And one of the things that i see is im looking at this is that what happened in germany with all the horrible things that happened over there, theyve begun to wake up. And they did it shortly after the war when they began to let us, which stay in darkness day and all the the things happened, never got buried. And they looked at that consciously and they said, we did that. And i when i think about an individual healing, like for, for example, some somebody whos a drug abuse or substance abuser, what they have to do is confront their pasts. And thats thats what were talking about is confronting the past here. And i just wanted to make that statement. Thank you so much. Thank you all for coming. Some questions. So with us today, first, we have congressman
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