1619?

by Sasha Turner

Sasha Turner is Associate Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of Contested Bodies: Pregnancy, Childrearing, and Slavery in Jamaica (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017). Follow her on Twitter @drsashaturner.

We are living in a “memory boom” he says. From Charleston to New York, the national mall and university halls, on land and at sea, we’ve been busy. Taking down and putting up. And taking down and putting up. Again. Monuments and memorials.

Remember they say. Remember. The accomplishments, the foundings, the triumphs (abolition not slavery).

Remember they say. Remember. The founding fathers (never founding mothers).

But whose memory?

“They ask me to remember
But they want me to remember their memories
And I keep on remembering
Mine”

Remember we say. Remember. The genocides. The wars. The crimes against humanity. Remember we say. “You stole us. You sold us. You owe us.”

Remember we say. Remember.

What do I remember about 1619?

“I remember on the slave ship how they brutalize the very soul.”

Read entire article at Black Perspectives