Brown Article & African Burial Ground

The Brown reading was a very interesting one. It focused on the concepts of authority, applying fear, and rituals. In this time period in Jamaica, the slaves were killing themselves more and more often because they thought death was better than being a slave, as well as their belief of reincarnation in their hometown with their youth renewed. To prevent slaves from killing themselves, slave owners would fix the heads of dead slaves onto poles and prove to the other slaves that this belief of reincarnation was false. “How is he in his homeland when his head is still right here with us?”, the slave owners would ask the slaves. This was their way to manipulate the slaves and it did work for a while.
Slaves soon enough developed their own rituals and cultures and beliefs about the afterlife, and they would gather together and talk about it. They had magical practices, such as obeah. Obeah men were able to treat disease or manipulate human behavior. The white men feared that this practice could inevitably result in the slaves revolting and directing political action.
This article relates to the African Burial Ground exhibit because the exhibit was about the Africans that came together to talk about cultural rituals and their beliefs. The colonial law banned African funerals during this time period, but they would still find a way to get together and bury their dead respectfully within their culture.
In the outside portion of the exhibit, there was something called the Circle of the Diaspora, which had symbols engraved in the wall. These symbols were from the different African cultures, which goes to show that they were able to establish their own culture and practices while being enslaved.