Dynamic Africa

wrivol:

“Congo Square is in the vicinity of a spot which the Houma Indians used before the arrival of the French for celebrating their annual corn harvest and was considered sacred ground. The gathering of enslaved African vendors in Congo Square originate as early as the 1740’s during Louisiana’s French Colonial period and continued during the Spanish Colonial era as one of the city’s public markets.
By 1803, Congo Square has become famous for the gathering of enslaved Africans and free people of color who drummed, danced, sang and traded on Sunday afternoons. By 1819, these gatherings numbered as many as 500 to 600 people.
Among the famous dances were the Bamboula, the Calinda and the Congo. These African cultural expressions gradually developed into Mardi Indian traditions, the 2nd line, and eventually New Orleans Jazz and Rhythm and Blues.”

“Congo Square is in the vicinity of a spot which the Houma Indians used before the arrival of the French for celebrating their annual corn harvest and was considered sacred ground. The gathering of enslaved African vendors in Congo Square originate as early as the 1740’s during Louisiana’s French Colonial period and continued during the Spanish Colonial era as one of the city’s public markets.

By 1803, Congo Square has become famous for the gathering of enslaved Africans and free people of color who drummed, danced, sang and traded on Sunday afternoons. By 1819, these gatherings numbered as many as 500 to 600 people.

Among the famous dances were the Bamboula, the Calinda and the Congo. These African cultural expressions gradually developed into Mardi Indian traditions, the 2nd line, and eventually New Orleans Jazz and Rhythm and Blues.”

b-sama:

AFRICAN INDEPENDENCE

African Independence is a feature-length documentary covering the history of the African continent since enslavement and colonization by Europeans.

The film highlights the birth and realization of and the problems confronted by the movement to win independence in Africa.

The story is told through the voices of freedom fighters and leaders who achieved independence and justice for Africans.

It seeks to enlighten and provide audiences with African insights into the continent’s past, present and future through the lens of four watershed events: World War II, the end of colonialism, the Cold War and the era of African republics.

On my ‘to watch’ list.

White American Writer Joe Mozingo Traces, Discovers & Chronicles His African Ancestry

“I always had kind of a longing to understand the history of the place I lived in, and I think that kind of came from the fact that I had no family history that I knew of. … Then when people started asking me my name … I kept wondering, how is it that we don’t actually know where this name came from?”

“I met a professor, who was Sherrie Mazingo, and she was black, and she had done a lot more research than I had on our genealogy, and had been to a family reunion in North Carolina. [She] came back with the news that the name was African, and that we all descended from the same person, and he was, in her words, a ‘Bantu warrior.’ My uncle, out of nowhere, said we did in fact come from Virginia, where this slave had landed.”

“There was the period in Virginia, that I had never known about, where free blacks and poor whites were mixing and even getting married.”

“We think he landed when he was about 11 years old, near Jamestown, and basically when these Africans arrived, you know they figured they wouldn’t live more than a couple of years — there was no reason to have a lifelong slave — so they treated them as indentured servants.

“Edward appears to have had a contract with his master to work a certain amount of time.”

“There was this brief period when Edward did well, and then the rich classes really wanted to put the squeeze on the poor to create this system of slavery, which really marginalized the poor whites and the free people of color. Their fates went downhill really fast; they were suddenly out of money. One of them even re-indentured himself to pay off some debt.

“They basically started leaving the area, and that was the time they could reinvent themselves. Those that were light-skinned enough could say they were white, and wherever they landed they came up with a new myth. You know, people said they were French Huguenots, Portuguese — anything but African.”

(cont. reading)

ancestral-voices:

Africa: A Voyage of Discovery with Basil Davidson Ep 5 - The Bible and The Gun

‘We wonder why in the 21st Century the continent of Africa remains such a troubled area of the world. We can attribute many of the problems to not only European and American colonialism, but also to the long shadow of identity, language and cultural destruction caused by religious missionaries’.

In this documentary Basil Davidson discusses the Eurocentric Christianization of African which was inexplicably linked to European colonialism.

Below is commentary from a review of this documentary episode

Waves of Christian missionaries came to Africa. Most missionaries felt that they were serving an elevated race, trying to help a downtrodden race. They came to Africa expecting to help horrible people. Most missionaries were biased and discriminatory before they left their homes. There were a few that disagreed. Bishop Toser of the University’s mission questioned the idea that the differences between the European and African civilizations. He said that whether a culture is civilized or not is not dependent on their outward circumstance. The number of railroads and phonographs does not measure the superiority of a civilization, according to this Bishop.

The missionaries did not have easy acceptance in Africa. Many died of disease contrary to the popular belief that tribes boiled missionaries in large pots over fires. The practices of some missionaries, like their discrimination, is horrible. Some missionaries used force to get converts. Some had people flogged or threatened flogging in order to convert them. There were missionaries strongly for and against flogging in the conversion of Africans to the Christian beliefs. The missionaries saw that some spiritual beliefs had to be destroyed before the Africans would believe any of the Christian doctrines. Missionaries generalized this and thought that they had to destroy all African spiritual beliefs and culture. Missionaries insulted the African traditions frequently, in an effort to instill the Christian ideas in Africans. Davidson included a portion of a missionary video from the 1960’s. The juju, a person who is looked to much like a priest, is openly insulted and humiliated is the video. This hostility is much like the original method of destroying the old culture to replace it with the new ideas of Europe. The reaction of Africans is that some rejoice in renouncing their beliefs and some question their identity. To many missionaries, this mission of converting an inferior race is the climax of all Christian missions. It is sad that these people believed that they were doing the right thing.

I’m still trying to understand how and why he called those that were not captured into slavery as ‘the lucky ones’. Lucky? Are we really going to divide West African populations on either side of the Atlantic into terms that disgustingly over-simplify the impact of slavery - both during and after this portion of history?

And then he called Livingstone ‘remarkable’ and ‘the best-loved European’ to ever set foot on the continent. That’s taking things way too far.

Nevertheless, despite the sometimes disturbing Eurocentric and Westernized bias in this documentary, it contains a lot of crucial information on the pivotal roles missionaries played in destroying subduing the minds and behaviors of African societies into adopting lifestyles set out by European colonists.

(via diasporicroots)

militarismus:

Images of women slaves in North Africa

1 & 2 - A woman being examined by her “handlers”

3 & 4 - “The House of the Frog. The girl is offered for hire or for sale.”

5 - A nude woman in a courtyard

6 - “Nomads and their slave girls.”

melanatedcontributions:

Gaspar Yanga

When students learn about slavery in school, a lot of them often ask this question: “Why didn’t they fight back?” It’s a question that often remains unanswered because lesson plans don’t always address the grittier elements of history, particularly the slave trade.

But they did fight back. And one of them, Gaspar Yanga, changed history forever.

Often referred to as the “first liberator of the Americas,” Yanga was a leader of a slave rebellion in Mexico during the early period of Spanish colonial rule around 1570. By the year 1609, the large number of escaped slaves had reduced much of rural Mexico to desperation, especially in the mountains in the state of Veracruz.

Taking refuge in the difficult terrain of the highlands, Yanga and his people built a small maroon colony, or “Palenque”—a community of runaway slaves living on mountaintops. The colony grew for more than 30 years, partially surviving by capturing caravans bringing goods to Veracruz. In 1609, the Spanish colonial government decided to try to regain control of the territory.

Spanish troops, numbering around 550, set out from Puebla in January 1609. The maroons facing them were an irregular force of 100 fighters with some type of firearm and 400 more with primitive weapons such as stones, machetes, and bows and arrows. These maroon troops were led by Francisco de la Matosa, an Angolan. Yanga—who was quite old by this time—decided to use his troops’ superior knowledge of the terrain to resist the Spaniards. His goal was to cause the Spaniards enough pain to draw them to the negotiating table.

Upon the approach of the Spanish troops, Yanga sent terms of peace, including an area of self-rule. The Spaniards refused the terms and the two groups fought a battle that lasted for many years. Finally, unable to win indefinitely, the Spaniards agreed to give Yanga’s followers their freedom in exchange for ending the constant raids in the area and gain their help in tracking down other escaped slaves.

Additional conditions were also met, including:

1. Upon surrender, Yanga and his people would receive a farm as well as the right of self-government;
2. Only Franciscan priests would tend to the people; and
3. Yanga’s family would be granted the right of rule.

In 1618, the treaty was signed, and by 1630, the town of San Lorenzo de los Negros de Cerralvo was established. The town name of “San Lorenzo de los Negros” was officially changed to Yanga, Veracruz in 1956. This town of more than 20,000 people remains under the name of Yanga today.

» Contributed by Raymond Ward, DuSable Museum of African American History.

afrodiaspores:

Frédéric/Federico Mialhe (who lived in Cuba from 1838 to 1854), ”Dia de Reyes” (also known as “Twelfth Day Festival, or “Day of the Kings”), ca. 1851

In nineteenth-century Cuba, people of African descent were organized in cabildos-associations related to African “nations” or ethnic groups. During the Day of the Kings on January 6 (Epiphany), authorities granted the cabildos permission to celebrate on the streets.

Permitting slaves certain days of fiesta was a way for the slave-owners to keep up a sense of morale or at least keep rebellion at bay, but this fiesta was highly significant because the owners declared their slaves free for the day. Each ethnic group of slaves would choose a king, and then each group would parade down the street, demanding money from the crowd, the government officials, and the houses they passed. Their costumes—imitating liturgical colors, white elites’ formal dress, or devils—were meant not just “to reenact African ritual practices but to astonish and even to frighten.”

The Brazilian Baracoon, built in the 1840s and held up to 40 slaves at a time in Badagry, Lagos State.

This ancient town of Badagry was founded around l425 A.D. Before its existence, people lived along the Coast of Gberefu and this area later gave birth to the town of Badagry. It is the second largest commercial town in Lagos State, located an hour from Lagos and half-hour from the Republic of Benin. The town of Badagry is bordered on the south by the Gulf of Guinea and surrounded by creeks, islands and a lake. The ancient town served mainly the Oyo Empire, which was comprised of Yoruba and Ogu people. Today, the Aworis and Egun are mainly the people who reside in the town of Badagry as well as in Ogun State in Nigeria and in the neighbouring Republic of Benin.

The name originated from the fact that the people of Badagry’s means of livelihood are farming, fishing and salt making due to the availability of trees and presence of ocean water respectively. The natives believed that Badagry was founded by a famous farmer called Agbedeh who maintained a farm which became popular it was named after him. The word Greme meant farm in Ogu language and a visit to Agbedeh’s farm brought about the word and Agbedegreme and its usage meaning Agbedeh’s farm. It was then coined to Agbadagari by the Yoruba inhabitants and later corrupted to Badagry by the European slave merchants before the end of the seventeenth century.

Badagry is majorly recognised for its slave trade by the foreigners.

The trade began in 1440 with Prince Henry, the navigator of Portugal. By 1593, 12,000 slaves had been sold to labour markets in Italy and Spain. One horse was traded for 25-30 slaves in the 1440s and the value of African slaves rose from six to eight slaves per horse. By the 16th century, there were over 32,000 slaves in Portugal.

Along the line, Seriki Faremi Williams, an African slave appealed a bargain with his buyers. He agreed to supply slaves to the foreigners in exchange for his freedom. The Nigerian, specifically of the Yoruba tribe to be exact, got his wish and was immediately set free to begin business. He returned to Badagry and built the Brazillian Baracoon with the mission to transport as much slaves as possible. He raided villages and captured their natives and sold them to the middlemen who eventually re-sold them as slaves to European slave merchants.

The baracoons were small rooms where up to 40 slaves were kept, all in upright position for days before they were shipped across the lagoon via the point of no return into the waiting ships. The group of houses, now mostly residential, were all at one point or the other used to keep slaves waiting to be transported. Vlekete square, founded in 1510, was known to be the slave market in Badagry.

The slave merchants began to work on his intelligence and that of African Leaders involved and enticed them with material gifts. Slaves were then exchanged for merchandises as little as whisky, tobacco, rum, cuppino glass, canons, iron bars, brass, woollen, cotton, linen, silk, beads, guns, gun powder amongst others. Because they knew it was of paramount importance to these natives.

Historically speaking, Badagry was the first and last port of call. When the ships arrive to pick these slaves, they would be brought out from the hole in which they were put and taken to a place called ‘The Point of No Return’. This process involved the crossing of slaves through the ocean that links the Badagry port to this point. When the slaves have been crossed over, they would walk about 20miles to the point.

In between, they would each approach a coven where they would drink from a well that contained a silver shiny liquid claimed to be water and recite a verse. This initiation would wipe out there memory so as to avoid foreknowledge of their whereabouts. The curator further explained that these slaves immediately loose their memory and do not regain it until they reach their final destination. Only the strong ones make it to the New World and maybe luckily, back.

(x)

“The Whipping on the back of the fugitive slave named Gordon”

(via wahaladey)

Arrival at Mora. The capital of Mandara. From Narrative of travels and discoveries in Northern and Central Africa, in the years 1822, 1823, and 1824. Vol I & II (published 1826).

The Mandara Kingdom (sometimes called Wandala) was a West African kingdom in the Mandara Mountains of what is today Cameroon. The Mandarawa people are descended from the kingdom’s inhabitants.
Tradition states that Mandara was founded shortly before 1500 by a female ruler named Soukda and a non-Mandarawa hunter named Gaya. The kingdom was first referred to by Fra Mauro (in 1459) and Leo Africanus (in 1526); the provenance of its name remains uncertain.
For the kingdom’s first century of history, its rulers warred with neighbouring groups in an effort to expand their territories.
After conquering the Dulo (or Duolo) and establishing the capital at Dulo c. 1580, the dynasty of Sankre, a war leader, began. When the Dulo made an attempt to seize the throne, the Bornu kingdom supported the claim of Aldawa Nanda, a member of Sankre’s house. Emperor Idris Alaoma of Borno personally installed Nanda as king in 1614. Bornu thus attained an influential position over Mandara.
Mai Bukar Aji, the 25th king, made Mandara a sultanate c. 1715, which it would remain for nearly two hundred years. Muslim visitors converted Bukar to Islam, and the Islamicisation of the kingdom would continue for most of the next century. The kingdom experienced a golden age of sorts under Bukar and his successor, Bukar Guiana (1773-1828). Around 1781, the Mandara defeated the kingdom of Borno in a major battle, further expanding their control in the region. At the peak of her power at the turn of the century, Mandara received tribute from some 15 chiefdoms. However, the kingdom faced a setback in 1809, when Modibo Adama, a Fulanidisciple of Usman dan Fodio, led a jihad against Mandara. Adama briefly seized Dulo, though the Mandara counterattack soon drove him from the kingdom’s borders. Adama’s defeat prompted Borno to ally with Mandara once again against the Fulani invaders.
Upon the death of ruler Bukai Dgjiama, Mandara’s non-Muslim tributaries rose up, and the Fulani attacked once more. By 1850, Borno could not pass up the opportunity to attack the weakened kingdom. This renewed conflict began to sap the kingdom’s strength, paving the way for the invasion of Muhammad Ahmad’s forces in the 1880s. In 1895 or 1896, Muhammad Ahmad’s army destroyed Dulo, marking a further decline in Mandara power. However, the kingdom continued to exist, repelling continual Fulani raids until it finally fell to them in 1893.
English explorer Dixon Denham accompanied a slave-raiding expedition from Borno into the Mandara kingdom in February 1823; though he barely escaped with his life following the raiders’ defeat, he brought back one of the first European accounts of the kingdom. In 1902, the kingdom was conquered by Germany, passing then to France in 1918. In 1960, the Mandara kingdom became a part of newly-independent Cameroon.

Arrival at Mora. The capital of Mandara. From Narrative of travels and discoveries in Northern and Central Africa, in the years 1822, 1823, and 1824. Vol I & II (published 1826).

The Mandara Kingdom (sometimes called Wandala) was a West African kingdom in the Mandara Mountains of what is today Cameroon. The Mandarawa people are descended from the kingdom’s inhabitants.

Tradition states that Mandara was founded shortly before 1500 by a female ruler named Soukda and a non-Mandarawa hunter named Gaya. The kingdom was first referred to by Fra Mauro (in 1459) and Leo Africanus (in 1526); the provenance of its name remains uncertain.

For the kingdom’s first century of history, its rulers warred with neighbouring groups in an effort to expand their territories.

After conquering the Dulo (or Duolo) and establishing the capital at Dulo c. 1580, the dynasty of Sankre, a war leader, began. When the Dulo made an attempt to seize the throne, the Bornu kingdom supported the claim of Aldawa Nanda, a member of Sankre’s house. Emperor Idris Alaoma of Borno personally installed Nanda as king in 1614. Bornu thus attained an influential position over Mandara.

Mai Bukar Aji, the 25th king, made Mandara a sultanate c. 1715, which it would remain for nearly two hundred years. Muslim visitors converted Bukar to Islam, and the Islamicisation of the kingdom would continue for most of the next century. The kingdom experienced a golden age of sorts under Bukar and his successor, Bukar Guiana (1773-1828). Around 1781, the Mandara defeated the kingdom of Borno in a major battle, further expanding their control in the region. At the peak of her power at the turn of the century, Mandara received tribute from some 15 chiefdoms. However, the kingdom faced a setback in 1809, when Modibo Adama, a Fulanidisciple of Usman dan Fodio, led a jihad against Mandara. Adama briefly seized Dulo, though the Mandara counterattack soon drove him from the kingdom’s borders. Adama’s defeat prompted Borno to ally with Mandara once again against the Fulani invaders.

Upon the death of ruler Bukai Dgjiama, Mandara’s non-Muslim tributaries rose up, and the Fulani attacked once more. By 1850, Borno could not pass up the opportunity to attack the weakened kingdom. This renewed conflict began to sap the kingdom’s strength, paving the way for the invasion of Muhammad Ahmad’s forces in the 1880s. In 1895 or 1896, Muhammad Ahmad’s army destroyed Dulo, marking a further decline in Mandara power. However, the kingdom continued to exist, repelling continual Fulani raids until it finally fell to them in 1893.

English explorer Dixon Denham accompanied a slave-raiding expedition from Borno into the Mandara kingdom in February 1823; though he barely escaped with his life following the raiders’ defeat, he brought back one of the first European accounts of the kingdom. In 1902, the kingdom was conquered by Germany, passing then to France in 1918. In 1960, the Mandara kingdom became a part of newly-independent Cameroon.

We Did Not Sell Each Other Into Slavery

aphoticoccurrences:

Article here

The single most effective White propaganda assertion that continues to make it very difficult for us to reconstruct the African social systems of mutual trust broken down by U.S. Slavery is the statement, unqualified, that, “We sold each other into slavery.” Most of us have accepted this statement as true at its face value. It implies that parents sold their children into slavery to Whites, husbands sold their wives, even brothers and sisters selling each other to the Whites. It continues to perpetuate a particularly sinister effluvium of Black character. But deep down in the Black gut, somewhere beneath all the barbecue ribs, gin and whitewashed religions, we know that we are not like this.
This singular short tart claim, that “We sold each other into slavery”, has maintained in a state of continual flux our historical basis for Black-on-Black self love and mutual cooperation at the level of Class. Even if it is true (without further clarification) that we sold each other into slavery, this should not absolve Whites of their responsibility in our subjugation. We will deal with Africa if need be.

The period from the beginning of the TransAtlantic African Slave so-called Trade (1500) to the demarcation of Africa into colonies in the late 1800s is one of the most documented periods in World History. Yet, with the exception of the renegade African slave raider Tippu Tip of the Congo (Muslim name, Hamed bin Muhammad bin Juna al-Marjebi) who was collaborating with the White Arabs (also called Red Arabs) there is little documentation of independent African slave raiding. By independent is meant that there were no credible threats, intoxicants or use of force by Whites to force or deceive the African into slave raiding or slave trading and that the raider himself was not enslaved to Whites at the time of slave raiding or “trading”. Trade implies human-to-human mutuality without force. This was certainly not the general scenario for the TransAtlantic so-called Trade in African slaves. Indeed, it was the Portuguese who initiated the European phase of slave raiding in Africa by attacking a sleeping village in 1444 and carting away the survivors to work for free in Europe.

Even the case of Tippu Tip may well fall into a category that we might call the consequences of forced cultural assimilation via White (or Red) Arab Conquest over Africa. Tippu Tip s father was a White (or Red) Arab slave raider, his mother an unmixed African slave. Tip was born out of violence, the rape of an African woman. It is said that Tip, a “mulatto”, was merciless to Africans.

The first act against Africa by Whites was an unilateral act of war, announced or unannounced. There were no African Kings or Queens in any of the European countries nor in the U.S. when ships set sail for Africa to capture slaves for profit. Whites had already decided to raid for slaves. They didn’t need our agreement on that. Hence, there was no mutuality in the original act. The African so-called slave “trade” was a demand-driven market out of Europe and America, not a supply-driven market out of Africa. We did not seek to sell captives to the Whites as an original act. Hollywood’s favorite is showing Blacks capturing Blacks into slavery, as if this was the only way capture occurred. There are a number of ways in which capture occurred. Let’s dig a little deeper into this issue.

Chancellor Williams, in his classic work, The Destruction of Black Civilization, explains that after the over land passage of African trade had been cut off at the Nile Delta by the White Arabs in about 1675 B.C. (the Hyksos), the Egyptian/African economy was thrown into a recession.

[Gonna highlight a comment from the linked article:

[Trigger Warning: rape]

Just because Blacks sold other Blacks into slavery, does not mean that Whites are less culpable. Blame is not quantifiable and just because your friend rapes a little girl does not excuse you from doing so. Beware Whites evading ethics.]

excellent point on the use of the word “trade”…

By 1680, you see the beginning of the changes. What had happened - and this is a complicated story - was that colonial leaders had to deal with Bacon and that rebellion. The British sent a fleet of three ships and by the time they got to Virginia, there were 8,000 poor men rebelling who had burned down Jamestown - blacks, whites, mulattos. And it was quite clear that this kind of unity and solidarity among the poor was dangerous.

After that, they began to pass laws, very gradually. They passed laws that gave Europeans privileges while they increasingly enslaved Africans. They passed a number of laws that prevented blacks, Indians, and mulattos from owning firearms, for example. Everybody had firearms. Everybody in Virginia still has firearms!

Then there was another change: There was a decline in the number of European servants coming to the New World. At the same time, there was an increase in the ships bringing Africans to the New World. By the 1690s or so, the English themselves had outfitted their ships to bring Africans back from the continent, and this is the first time that they had had direct connections.

But the Africans also had something else. They had skills which neither the Indians nor the Irish had. The Africans brought here were farmers. They knew how to farm semi-tropical crops. They knew how to build houses. They were brick makers, for example. They were carpenters and calabash carvers and rope makers and leather workers. They were metal workers. They were people who knew how to smelt ore and get iron out of it. They had so many skills that we don’t often recognize. But the colony leaders certainly recognized that. And they certainly gave high value to those slaves who had those skills.

After 1690 things begin to change. All of the Europeans become identified as “white.” And Africans take on a different kind of identity. They are not only heathens, but they are people who are perceived as vulnerable to being enslaved. And that’s a major point. Africans were vulnerable because it became part of the consciousness that they had no rights as Englishmen. Even the poorest Englishman knew that he had some rights. But once a planter owns a few Africans, the idea that the Africans had no rights that they had to recognize became very clear. And that’s why they were vulnerable to being enslaved, and kept in slavery. The laws that were passed after that all tended to diminish the rights of African people. But between 1690 and 1735, even those Africans who had been free and who had been there for many generations, had their rights taken away from them.

Once you magnify the difference between the slaves and the free, then it was possible to create a society in which the slaves were little better than animals. They were thought of as animals. And the more you think of slaves as animals, the more you justify keeping them as slaves.

After a while, slavery became identified with Africans. Blackness and slavery went together in the popular mind. And this is why we can say that race is a product of the popular mind, because it was this consciousness that blackness and slavery were bound together, that gave people the idea that Africans were a different kind of people.

Think of the early 17th century planter who wrote to the trustees of his company and he said, “Please don’t send us any more Irishmen. Send us some Africans, because the Africans are civilized and the Irish are not.” But 100 years later, the Africans become increasingly brutalized. They become increasingly homogenized into a category called “savages.” And all the attributes of savagery which the English had once given to the Irish, now they are giving to the Africans.

Why were Africans the slaves of choice?

Audrey Smedley is a professor of anthropology at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is author of Race in North America: Origins of a Worldview.

(via howtobeterrell)

(via nocturnalphantasmagoria)

A Zombie Is a Slave Forever →

fuckyeahlatinamericanhistory:

The creatures aren’t just Halloween characters; they originated in the brutal sugar plantations of Haiti.

(via fylatinamericanhistory)

fuckyeahlatinamericanhistory:

El Señor de los Milagros (The Lord of Miracles), an image of the crucifixion said to be painted by an enslaved Afro-Peruvian man during the seventeenth century, gained fame when it survived a devastating earthquake which struck Lima a century later, on October 28, 1746. A copy of the painting is paraded through the streets of Lima every year on the anniversary of the earthquake.

(via fylatinamericanhistory)

blackfilm:

Sankofa (in full)

Directed by Haile Gerima, this story follows Mona, a contemporary American model on a film shoot in Ghana. She has a session at Elmina Castle, which she does not know was historically used for the Atlantic skave trade. There she encounters a mysterious old man, Sankofa, played by Kofi Ghanaba, the renowned Ghanaian musician.

Mona is transported to the past where, as a house servant named Shola on a plantation in the south of the United States, she suffers abuse by her slave masters. Nunu, an African-born field hand, and Shango, a West Indian lover of Shola, resist and rebel against the slave system. (Shango is named after a Yoruba god.) Nunu comes into conflict with her own mixed-race son; fathered by a white man, he has been made a head slave. Inspired by Nunu and Shango’s determination to defy the system, Shola joins them in fighting back against her masters.

After her trials, Shola returns to the present as Mona, deeply aware of her African roots.