Author: Dorothy Randall Gray, MSc, Interfaith
Minister
Publication:
Date:
She gave this speech at World Congress for
the Preservation of Religious Diversity, Delhi, 2001
I come to you this evening as Dorothy Randall
Gray, but in fact, I don't know my real family name, the name of my lineage.
That name was stolen from me 400 years ago when my people were stolen out
of Africa. They were sold into slavery in America, "the land of the free
and the home of the brave."
My name was taken from me when my ancestors
were forbidden to utter its sound or pass it on to their children. When Christopher
Columbus invaded the shores of America in 1492, he brought with him diseases
that would kill over 70% of the Native American people within three years.
Whole tribes disappeared from the face of the earth. Columbus also brought
sugar cane.
Within a few years the monstrous demand for
this crop would call for the blood, bones and sweat of millions of slaves
to keep it fed. In order to supply cheap labor to tend these fields, slave
traders came to our African villages, stole us from our homes, put is in shackles.
They threw men, women and children into the bowels of foul smelling ships
and packed us together like the fingers of a fist. We would lay there naked
in that darkened hold for weeks at a time on the treacherous journey from
Africa to America know as the Middle Passage. Many of us perished during that
crossing. Those who died along the way were simply dumped overboard like garbage.
It is estimated that over 75 million Africans lost their lives during the
Middle Passage. We call it the Africa Holocaust.
In the name of their Christian god, the slave
owners reasoned that Africans needed to be brought to America so they could
be civilized. African slaves were considered savges in need of conversion.
We were considered property, not people, and as such we could be bought and
sold as easily as you could purchase a horse or a sow.
We were often branded like cattle and chosen
for our breeding capabilities. We were placed on auction blocks and sold to
the highest bidder. Whole families, sons and daughters were sold off to different
plantations, never to see each other again. The practice of slavery continued
for 360 years and brought over 50 million slaves to the United States. But
the decimation of our lives and families were not enough for the slave owners.
They wanted nothing less than the complete destruction of our ancestors. Thus,
we were forbidden to speak our own language.
Africans who came from the same tribes or
regions were separated from each other. They were placed among other Africans
who spoke entirely different tongues. And so, in order to communicate at all,
we were forced to use English, the language of our oppressor. Our sacred ceremonies
were called "pagan rituals" and we were forbidden to practice them.
We were not allowed to do our dances or sing the songs of out country. They
took away our music and gave us their hymns. We were forbidden to play drums
so they gave us bibles and the promise of a wonderful life in the next world.
We were forbidden to honor our families.
At any time of the day or night the slave
master could come into our cabins, take away our mothers, daughters and sisters,
and repeatedly force them into sexual acts. Men who fought to defend their
families were considered troublemakers. They were beaten, sold away from their
families, then shipped to another southern state, or to Jamaica or Barbados.
The ones who perpetrated this travesty are
also the ancestors of those Americans who self-righteously tout "family
values." We were forbidden to use our own names. Instead we had to take
on the last names of the people who owned us. I say I am a Black woman but
there is no country called Black. If I want to return to my roots, what soil
do I bend down and kiss? What customs and traditions can I pass on to my children?
What national anthem do I sing and what foods can I claim as my own? Who am
I without a flag, without a motherland or a mother tongue?
My culture, my religion, my ancestors, traditions,
customs, stolen, suppressed, violated, vilified, denied, destroyed - that
is what I call terrorism. I know that the spirit of my ancestors still whispers
inside me, and I know that they are with me. I stand here as the daughter
of the strongest of the strong, a descendent of those who survived the middle
passage, who made it through the storms of oppression and degradation, and
still managed to shine.
