Pain and Promise

     This semester I'm taking a Colonial America class. It's kind of the best thing ever. My professor, who we fondly refer to as Kyle, but only when he's not around...and only I do that, so we actually refer to him as Professor, because I really shouldn't be calling him Kyle... Well, he's great. He is honestly one of the best teachers I've ever had, and he knows his stuff. We've been learning about all of the silly Europeans and all of their silly fights and wars and such, but this week, we're learning about slavery.
     The book that we've been assigned to read is Strange New Land by Peter Wood. It essentially covers the history of slavery, from the 1600's until just after the Revolutionary War. Apart from teaching me about slavery, however, it has taught me about life, and human beings. Isn't that crazy how school can do that?
     In the book, Wood discusses the "pain and promise that is the African-American journey in America." (Wood, xiii) I really, really love that phrase. A lot of the time we look at history through dark glasses - we look at the doom and gloom, the death and pain and suffering, the people who lived lives that we would consider unfulfilled. There is so much more than that. There is so much beauty to be found, even in the darkest times. For example, Wood tells the story of a slave named Violate. Violate was born in the colonies, and was bought by a man named Amos Fortune, who freed and married her. On her gravestone, this epitaph was written:

Sacred

to the memory of

Violate

by sale the slave of Amos Fortune

by marriage his wife

by her fidelity his friend and solace

she died his widow

Sept. 13, 1802

(Wood, xiv)

     I don't see much sorrow in that. Yes, there is some. I am in no way excusing the horror that is that ownership of human beings, nor am I saying that horrible things don't happen in the world. All I'm saying is that horrible things aren't the only kinds of things that happen. Wood says this later on: 

     "For each marked grave, such as [Violate's], there are hundreds, even thousands of unmarked graves like those placed outside the palisade [a wall built in New York City in the colonial era to protect the settlers - all peoples of color were buried in a graveyard outside of the wall]... We can never bring back these African-American forebears from the colonial past, but we can work to remove at last the fences that have separated and hidden them for so long. In a sense, their weary bones and their proud spirits rest under all the huge buildings in the strange new land called America." (Wood, xv)

     This is history! History is not meant to heap guilt and blame, to bore, or to memorize useless dates. In my opinion, history is a message of hope. History is the tale of those who came before us - their triumphs and miserable failures, and how we can make our world a better place with the help of their example. What was the point in recording their lives, if not for us to learn from them?

Wood, Peter H.. Strange New Land: Africans in Colonial America. Oxford, [UK: Oxford University Press, 2003. Print.