The history of our country contains both wonderful, heroic saintly moments and equally horrific, sinful acts of aggression and oppression. In order to become a more perfect union of multiple cultures, we need to know our whole history. These two anniversary events give us the opportunity to learn parts of history that have been ignored, misrepresented, or told incompletely.

Author Phyllis Brown Tells The Story

Author Phyllis Brown is one of many authors telling us a more complete version of the history behind the United States of today. She’s telling some of our history in a three-volume historical novel series, The Legacy of the Gold Banded Box. The series focuses on a special treasure a young West African girl named Folayan receives from her mother and passes on to her descendants. Folayan was born in Ghana in 1780, into the Kwantuni family, a family of traveling merchants. As the age of capturing Africans to enslave and sell in the New World is coming to an end, she grows to maturity. She hopes she’ll soon know what it is to be in love and live with the man she loves. However, in her culture her father will determine who she marries.

Though she lives in the shadows of slaveholding castles and forts, Folayan focuses on becoming a diligent, prosperous Fanti woman, living up to her name which means, “One who walks in dignity.” Meanwhile, Kwabena, her father, plans for his only daughter to prosper, in spite of the constant threat of danger from predators routinely coming with empty ships with holds they intend to fill with new captives.

Folayan’s Promise – First in Series of Three

In the series’ first book, Folayan’s Promise, Brown gives readers the background of Folayan’s family history across the continent and the start of the slave industry, with focus on this girl coming of age and being wary of the lingering slave industry in Ghana. The second book traces Folayan’s life enslaved on a plantation in America. The third book follows the trail of Folayan’s descendants up to the 21^st Century. The theme running through all three books is how, in the midst of horrific circumstances, betrayal, capture, friendship with other captives and the mistress on the plantation, Folayan remained determined to maintain the dignity instilled in her by her family and village.

Brown decided she had to write about this topic so her students, her own children, and all children who are heirs of this ugly chapter of history, might realize they need not be ashamed to descend from people who were captured. What their ancestors managed to survive and overcome is cause to be proud of them and determined to persevere through their own challenges. Initially Brown focused her teaching career on students who struggled with reading; then taught High School English for 25 years, before retiring after more than 30 years in the classroom.

She says she was a senior in college before she learned about the Black National Anthem, Lift Every Voice and Sing. “I was helping my roommate pack up some music and saw it in a drawer. I was 21 years old and that was the first time I ever heard of it. I decided then that I would do all I could to teach my future students about our African American heritage.

Teaching the Whole Truth

“From the moment I first learned there was a Black National Anthem, I decided I didn’t want anyone to not know about this. That inspired me to teach my students the song and teach other important aspects of African American history. I think a lot of America’s problems are because we never really went through therapy as a country. We had about ten years of progress after the Civil War; then the fear of the night riders terrorized people.”

When she returned to the classroom after staying home to raise her own children, she had an epiphany one day while reading to a group of second graders. “I read them a story about George Washington Carver. When I finished one little boy pumped his fist up and down and told me, ‘Those slaves were stupid. I’d never let anyone do that to me!’ I knew I had to keep teaching my students about the history of what’s really happened among the African Americans in this country.”

“Young people need to know this, but they don’t learn it from their parents, because the parents don’t know this history. There has always been slavery, long before it came to Africa. As in Europe and Asia, African slavery shared the same reasons for a person to be enslaved – for stealing or murdering, or because they were prisoners of war, or debtors, or criminals that had to work off a restitution. Sometimes they were indentured servants that had to work off a financial hardship when their own family couldn’t take care of them.

The big difference between indentured servants, who could work off their debts, and enslaved Africans was skin color and laws in this land that made them “now and forever slaves.” Their skin color made them identifiable, so they could not escape easily as could their European counterparts. Enslaving people because of their color is part of our national heritage and we need to look back to see what happened and realize how this has been affecting us, so that we can finally arrive at a healthy and happy situation.”

Phyllis Brown is doing her part in writing and publishing the historical fiction series about Folayan. We can do our part by educating ourselves about the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of our history. Four-hundred-year anniversaries are a good time to acknowledge the not-so-beautiful parts of our collective history, so we can learn from them and move on to a brighter future for everyone. We cannot overcome problems we until we acknowledge they exist.

Thank you for taking time to read about author Phyllis Brown’s books that tell a part of American history we haven’t always taught our children. I hope you found this interesting and inspiring. If so, please take another minute to forward this to a friend. If you got this from a friend, you can have your very own subscription by signing up at up at HowWiseThen. I’m currently giving away a list of books I recommend for the book lovers in your life.

Learn more about Phyllis Brown and her books  here.

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The following year, in November 1620, English Mayflower anchored near modern Provincetown for a month before sailing across the Cape Cod Bay. There about a hundred English settlers got to work establishing Plymouth Plantation. Twenty of them were religious refugees who came as indentured servants, indebted to the financial backers in England who paid for their voyages. Another twenty were servants to other passengers who came, not as religious refugees, but as speculators hoping to make their fortune in resource-rich North America. Those indentured to English financiers agreed to work for seven years and then be free to benefit from their labor in the new settlement. All of them were White and those who lived through the horrific first year generally went on to prosper and do well for themselves and future generations. I descend from two of them.

Different Starts; Different Results

The obvious differences were that one group was Black. The other was White. One group came from Europe. The other from Africa. One group arrived at an already-established, albeit floundering, English colony. The other came to a place left empty by a plague that swept through the area  few years ahead of their arrival. The English indentured servants chose to sell their labor in exchange for passage to a new opportunity. The Africans were captured and brought against their will to a place they didn’t choose. The combination of these differences set up an unjust system from the earliest days of what has evolved into the United States.

It would take two centuries, a Civil War, and many more decades of struggle before the Black descendants of those first Africans began to make much economic progress. One theory regarding that chapter of history suggests the Africans sold in the Virginia Colony were initially considered indentured servants, even if they did come as captives against their will. If that was the case, they too could eventually earn their freedom. Whether this was the case or not, any chance to eventually secure their freedom vanished quickly.

The Future Is Sealed

A 1640 verdict against three servant escapees clearly documents the discrimination played out by the White settlers against the Black new arrivals. The two White escapees were subjected to lashes with their terms of indentured servant-hood extended several years. The Black escape was severely whipped and told, “You will serve for the rest of your life,” according to historian William Wiggins. Wiggins considers that difference in punishment a milepost in transitioning toward institutional slavery of Black people. Time after time we witness such inequality in the modern court systems.

Norfolk State University history professor Cassandra Newby-Alexander suggests racial discrimination can be traced back to the arrival of these first Africans. A few years later the Virginia Colony’s census simply listed the Africans as “other.” In an article in the National Parks Conservation Magazine, she is quoted saying, “America became a black and white society at that point.”

Uneven Genealogical Data

The amount of genealogical data available from that period varies greatly between White early North Americans and Black ones. The documentation about the passengers on the Mayflower and their descendants fills shelves in public and private libraries and is readily available via internet searches. Additionally, several of the Mayflower descendant families formed their own societies dedicated to adding to what is already known and introducing long lost cousins to one another. I’ll be attending such a family reunion next year as part of the 400^th anniversary of the arrival of the Mayflower.

However, historians and genealogists aren’t confident that even the presence of the Black earliest arrivals, was accurately documented for future curious descendants. It is likely the first African arrivals had more children than the two listed in the early census. Most historians consider tracing one’s lineage to the original Africans a mission impossible. However, modern DNA testing may turn that situation into a mission possible scenario over time. Professional Kathryn Knight discovered her husband is a descendant of Margaret Cornish, who Knight thinks arrived on the White Lion. She’s started a data base for DNA profiles from others who suspect they may also be related to these first Africans.

White Privilege and Racism Are Real

I’ve spent may pleasant hours delving into my late reference librarian mother’s detailed notes about our family’s connection to the Mayflower. As I become more aware of the great information gap for those who descend from the White Lion, I am reminded – again – that White privilege permeates every aspect of society. Being White isn’t anything I earned or requested, but it makes my experience in the 21^st Century very different from non-White people. Professor Ibram Kendi, director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University, points out, “It’s not enough not to be racist. One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an antiracist.” Read more about his views in this Washington Post article or his book, “How to Be an Antiracist,”

As we observe our country’s two major 400-year-old historical events, now is a good time to reflect on our country’s separate, but definitely not equal, past. We need to learn about and from the past so that we can do better for all people from this day forward.

If you’d like to learn more, I suggest two sources. One is the article in the National Park Conservation Magazine which talks about the work going on at Fort Monroe in Hampton, VA. Some of the information for this blog came from that article. https://www.npca.org/articles/2280-a-momentous-arrival.

Another good source is Folayan’s Promise, a new novel by a writing colleague of mine, Phyllis Brown. Her book is available at https://phyllisjbrown.com. It traces the fate of Folayan, a daughter of over sixty generations of traveling African merchants as she comes of age in Ghana.

Thank you for stopping by to read about these two important anniversaries. If you got this blog from a friend, you can get your own FREE subscription at HowWiseThen. Given that hurricanes and others sorts of disasters appear to be the new normal, I’ve put together a list Disaster Response Tips. It’s yours for the downloading.

Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures. It’ll be available September 2020, in honor of the 400th anniversary of the famous voyage and the continent-changing events that followed. I’ve started a list of people to notify when it’s available. You can sign up to get on the list at HowWiseThen.

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Most images of mothers we see in advertising, movies, and publications reflect middle class standards of living. Though a mother may have her challenges; she also has resources and people to help her. That is not the motherhood experience for millions of women in our global village. Some bear babies they did not intend to have, but were pressured – or worse, raped – into having. Other women very much wanted their babies, but live in such desperate conditions they are tricked into selling one child into human trafficking to provide for other children.

Unscrupulous human trafficking dealers tell desperately poor parents lies about seeing great potential in a child. They offer to pay the family to compensate  for the loss of this child’s contribution in the family economy. Then they claim they will get the child a good education and a promising career. Within hours that child starts a life or horror as a victim of human trafficking.

Modern Slavery

Hagar International formed twenty-four years ago to address this blight within the human community. An estimated 40.3 Million people were trapped in modern slavery in 2016. One in four victims of human trafficking are children. The victims are exploited in domestic work, construction and agriculture, or forced to work as sex slaves.

Slavery is alive and thriving today. Rather than being moved across oceans in ship holds, modern slaves are transported by trucks, or even planes. Then they work in squalid conditions for people who often treat them with horrific cruelty while making money off their bodies and labor.

Human Trafficking Destroy Lives

Today Hagar International supports 1,200 women and children victims of such trafficking in Afghanistan, Cambodia and Vietnam. Executive Director Mike Nowlin has a Master of Science in Social Administration from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. That, combined with his Bachelor Degree in Psychology & Sociology, certification in Global Mental Health and Recovery from Harvard University, and certification in Human Services Management from Ohio State University, give him a broad background to tackle this plight on society.

Human trafficking continues to destroy lives of millions of vulnerable people for a variety of factors, such as desperate poverty, cultural attitudes about the value of women and children, greed on the part of those who buy and sell people to pad their own pockets, and unrestrained impulses that drive people to engage in depravity of the most sordid degree imaginable.

Some Good News

Yet, there is good news. Hagar International and many other non-profit organizations help those who have been victimized. Yeang is one success story. Poverty led her parents to send her to live with her grandparents. An uncle, who also lived with her grandparents,   felt free to rape her for years. When Yeang finally told her parents what was happening, her father’s solution was to have her marry the uncle, to preserve the family’s reputation. Her grandparents didn’t approve, thinking she was too young to be useful as a wife. Eventually they heard about Hagar International. Today she teaches at an international school and hopes one day to be the principle at the school.

We can be part of the solution by paying attention to what we buy as consumers. In our complex global community it’s nearly impossible to know the source of everything we consume. However, we can do a little research and do what we can to avoid supporting places that use slave labor to provide goods and services. We can buy fare trade certified goods when possible to ensure fair wages and working conditions. These sites provide information about what we’re supporting when we spend money:

• US Department of Labor’s list
• Betterworldshopper.org
• www.ethical.org.au/theguide
• Slaveryfootprint.org.
  

For more information visit Hagar USA

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