“You owe me what was always mine” is the title of Briayna Cuffie’s latest blog post on reparations4slavery.com. She is speaking to enslavers whose family records, letters, journals, photos, plantation accounts, etc. contain valuable information about the men, women, and children they enslaved.
“Somewhere between my first maternal ancestor being stolen from her Tikar kin in Cameroon and Charlotte Elbert being sold on the Lafayette,” Cuffie writes, “there was a shift from being Tikar to being Negro. I want to know about the rest.”
Read her entire essay here, and, while you’re at it, read her others as well!
Briayna is a strategist, political advocate, and civil servant specializing in international relations from Annapolis, MD.
Sharing our family histories and documents is the least that descendants of enslavers can do by way of reparative action for the harm done by our ancestors. The Linked Descendants Working Group of Coming to the Table sees this work as a form of healing and taking action.