On Tuesday, November 1st, I visited the African Burial Ground National Exhibit. I found the exhibit to be very interesting in part because of the information about the bodies and coffins recovered and the lives these slaves led, but also because of some of the interactive displays. In the center of the room there were statues of what an African funeral would have looked like. To one side, there was a timeline of the events that took place and to the other was a diagram of the excavated burial ground and images of the recovered bodies. As you walked further in, pictures and information on the walls highlighted the brutality slaves had to endure and how they overcame these circumstances and continued to flourish. In New York, after the Revolutionary War, there were many freed slaves who fought beside the British and the colonists. These Africans tried to create a better life for themselves by learning to read and write. Eventually, the Gradual Emancipation Law was passed which began the process of freeing men, women, and children.
Connecting this to the Brown reading, Brown speaks of the oppression and horrors that occurred. As slaves were being imported from Africa, some would commit suicide by jumping over board. They would rather die than live a life of enslavement. Slave owners asserted their power by taking advantage of the enslaved’s beliefs of the dead and spiritual life. They used dead bodies to mark their territories and symbolize their power. However this had an inadvertent effect as it also reinforced the “influence of slaves who were willing to resist or to rise up and strike their masters.”
