Visualizing Our Histories, Our Stories — Part 2

THE PRICE OF INNOCENCE

 

 

Pouring over lists of nameless numbers while researching enslavers in my lineage, I’ve occasionally found myself temporarily distracted, inured by abstraction to the real harm and horror done to the human beings the glyphs represent.  I’ve also experienced a deeper, visceral understanding of reality as I did when I connected with an ancestor through meditation and art.  

During a meditative body practice from Resmaa Menakem’s  My Grandmother’s Hands I invited an ancestor to visit me.  I was stunned to suddenly find myself standing in the corner of a dark barn.  In the center of the room, coiled like a snake, was a large whip, its braided overlapping brown and black leather strips feathering out into long lashes.  My body froze, filled with horror, but I could not look away.  I knew what it was and what it was used for, but I did not want to know. A large man stood silently in the shadows waiting for me to speak. Frozen, mute, I did not want to talk to him, confront him.  Like so many of my ancestresses, I did not want to acknowledge the terror and horror surrounding me so I was silent.  I was pretty sure this was a Fort ancestor from Alabama.  I had recently typed my fourth great-grandmother’s name into Google and read with wonder and horror the blog of a Black woman, a cousin with whom I share a fifth great grandfather, detailing our family history of enslavement and rape.  My lips were sealed and I was frozen in front of him.  

To move the stuck numbness I went to art and through the creative process of making a collage was able to express, acknowledge, and feel the unthinkable, the unspeakable.  Connecting my body through the pastels onto the paper the whip emerged as I laid down the layers of braided brown and black, urgently tracing the lengths of the lashes with my fingers, pressing down hard, smearing the colors.  Waves of emotion, fear, horror, grief swept through me as tears streamed down my face.  I urgently searched magazines to find images and the first one, a Black woman appearing to rise out of an ocean or river, a hand reaching out of the water, seemed to choose me.  Then another female image came to me, brown, beautiful, eyes staring directly at me, challenging me to be witness.   Another black woman, every pore of her body expressing grief.  Then my hand chose a man, formally dressed, rigid, inscrutable, unless you could read the potential violence lurking just beneath the surface.  I knew this man and others like him. His gaze was focused on the angelic little white girl, who, I understood, was the protagonist in the scene.  Adorable Shirley Temple hair, sweetly dressed, playing music to please and sooth her approving father.  She was always good, always innocent, gaze averted from the whip, the terror, the destruction all around her.  But the whip could come down at any time on anyone.  

There is much to be explored about this collage but for now it expresses for me a brutal reality; patriarchal white supremacy and the innocence (of real and potential violence) which holds it in place and creates a mass psychosis of denial in white people.  It also links that violence to the bodies and ancestors of Black women, showing the beauty, power, and grace of women who have endured violence to their bodies, while resisting and rising against all odds. 

The collage work took me into a deeper understanding of myself, of what sometimes stands in my way.  There are layers which still surprise me, where I still want to be the “good girl”, not make waves, not stir the pot.  It’s beyond the personal. I realize all my life I’ve felt the potential eruption of violence from challenged white supremacy in my bones.  Don’t poke the bear.  It will be all right. Smooth it over. He’s just drunk.  We can fix it, it will pass, it will change. Just ignore it. As I’m becoming more aware of the numbness that has to accompany my denial of the reality in front of me, I’m seeing the cost on innocence is too high for everyone.  

I keep the collage on the wall in front of me so I can’t ignore it, flanked by a visual representation of the 8 generations of enslavers in the Fort lineage and a map tracing this line of settler colonizers from 17th century Virginia into the 21st century California.  So I can’t forget what I’m really seeing. So I can give voice to what must change.
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— Dianne Jenett
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FILLING IN TRUTHS AND FACING BLANK SPACES

 

Make a collage “about” my family history and my research journey. “What in the world would that look like?” 

I started off with a big blank piece of paper and a lot of colored markers. What first came to me was the contrast between the glowing, sometimes worshipful stories about  my enslaver ancestors’ accomplishments and contributions to the founding and development of the British colony in North America that became the United States, and the impact and ripple effects of the deeds they committed. Those ancestors were described as heroes, geniuses, great men of courage and vision. When I was younger, no one talked about their failings, character flaws and criminal behavior, other than a few humorous anecdotes about foibles. No one looked at the connection between their political positions and choices and the realities conquest, dispossession, genocide, enslavement, dehumanization and family destruction required to enact the policies and decisions. It was as if there was nothing ugly to consider.

So I made a list of the accomplishments and another list of the harms inflicted by those accomplishments. The side-by-side lists feel like truths finally shown, with equal weight. They  feel like the skeleton for a set of essays or a book. They point to much more to explore.

Next my mind’s eye began to see a map and the countries, continents and islands situated in the Atlantic world. Where in this world did the people who make up or who were affected by my extended and linked families come from? Scanning the Atlantic shores, I can name the political entities in Europe – England, Scotland, Wales, France. I cannot name either political units or groups of people in Africa, but half my extended family’s roots are there. There is a painful void where I hope one day we can fill in “Mandinka” or “Igbo” or “Akan” and all the other ancestral peoples. 

No one in the European American family talks about the indigenous people of the Caribbean islands who were dispossessed, enslaved, and killed off by the greed for sugar profits in at least one line of European ancestors. So, for the first time, I put them in the picture, the Kalinago and the Taino. 

Also for the first time, I wrote in “Mattaponi,” the name of the people in the Virginia colony’s Tidewater country from whom my tenth great grandmother came. We name her famous name, but we do not talk about her people. We do not talk about our distant indigenous roots. We do not mourn the harm our European colonizing ancestors inflicted on her people, the original keepers of that land.

The collage became a picture full of first mentions, full of sadness, full of harms done, full of hints at the accomplished Black and brown groups and individuals whose names, histories and peoples we are linked to but do not know.
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— Prinny Anderson
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My “collage” was more of an embroidery project because embroidery keeps me sane.

I used a quote from the novella “The Deep” by Rivers Solomon  “Forgetting is not the same as healing.”

One of my big struggles with my ancestral enslavers is their complete denial of humanity.

This piece is all about that struggle and my own personal apology and acknowledgement of the humans my family wronged.

The hyacinth flowers represent sorrow and apology. The sunflowers represent perseverance and strength.

Now, every time I find the name of an enslaved person in one of my ancestors’ wills I will stitch it on. I’ve stitched about 75% of the names I have so far.

I started this for the BitterSweet project but I think this project may be ongoing and expanding for my lifetime or as long as I can stitch.

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— Clara Batton Smith

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