Middle Passage Ceremonies and Port Markers Project (MPCPMP)
Remembering Ancestors
The presence and contributions of Africans and their descendants in the United States have been deliberately downplayed and omitted over centuries. Middle Passage Ceremonies and Port Markers Project is committed to challenging and altering that practice
This post continues our Wednesday series that highlights historic Middle Passage/UNESCO Site of Memory markers that have been installed and those locations where a remembrance ceremony was held since MPCPMP incorporated 9 years ago. MPCPMP is/was involved in the planning for the installation of most of these markers (indicated by an * next to the state name), and other organizations are/were responsible for some. New Jersey* As early as 1626, Read More
To whom we say: We must forget, we must move forward. You must forget? Is forgetting the keyword to face the Unreal, the Ugly… A Pain alive in our collective brain… collective cells? Is forgetting sufficient for the bloody reality of the color of my skin? Is forgetting will forget the Un-Real, the Sur-Real of our Bloody wounds… Alive in the Atlantic Ocean Millions of voices Millions of Tears My Read More
My roots are tangled…. A blend of black, white and red, I am labeled Creole, mulatto, mixed, colored in every sense. Enslaved by the ‘one-drop-rule’ But liberated by the truth That all blood is red. Betty Saar In her recently published book, Lose Your Mother, Saidiya Hartman narrates her experiences and thoughts related to finding one’s ethnic roots in Read More
Recently someone wrote that the impact of struggles, challenges, and accomplishments associated with people of African descent over centuries in this land is what has defined and made America great. This idea goes far beyond the “Canary in the Mine” concept published in a previous blog post (December 18, 2011). The attribution is far greater than simply a measure of the national status quo. As a people deliberately and consistently Read More
Recently, we have been bombarded with news of government policies that enforced automatic separation of immigrant children from their parents who were seeking asylum at our Southern border. Defined by federal officials (ICE and Department of Justice) as entering the country illegally, the parents were detained (incarcerated) and the children placed in the “care” of the U.S. Department of Human Services. Although we are told that this practice has stopped, Read More