surviving history

i just watched a documentary on slave narratives. in the 1930s, 300,000 slaves (out of about 4 million freed on april 9th, 1865 when the confederates surrendered) survived. as part of the goverment programs to put people to work during the Depression, workers were sent out to record the ex-slaves' narratives about slavery. there was a list of topics to bring up, but mostly they just recorded people's memories as best they could, exactly as people spoke them, in the vernacular and everything. in the documentary, actors performed slave narratives, supplemented by photos and records and re-enactments of the era.

the stories were funny and brutal and scary and sad and all very, very matter-of-fact because this is just how things were, which was in a way the hardest part.

afterwards, the professor asked if we had questions or comments. at first there was silence in the room, the kind of stunned silence that exists when a group of people have just witnessed something very upsetting and now must process it together.

"How do I make it okay? What do you tell yourself after something like that? How do you get past the anger?" - meredith, asking the questions most of us were thinking

"Personally, I try to keep the past in the past. We need to learn about slave relationships so we can recognize what free ones will be like when they happen. I appreciate the agency I have over my life much more now. When I was your age, I didn’t want to study slavery, because we were getting the master’s version. So now I appreciate that we can study the voices of slaves. When I was your age, I studied free slaves. It means I have no excuse. I would think, frederick douglas would steal books to learn to read, and I’m at princeton, falling asleep in the library? Some of these slaves, even the ones in the 30s telling their stories, told them at risk of their lives. These people lived so long to be free, and they remained hungry once they were free. they said, at least under slavery we ate. how far have we come, really? Their slave narratives are the only ones from an entire history of slavery, thousands of years throughout the world. and they risked their lives to tell the story. I think the stories are important. All over the world, wherever the empire went, millions of people were slaughtered. That’s history." - komozi, the professor

"I try to live my life as a way to honor my ancestors. You can’t erase what you’re the product of. You can’t erase the memories in your blood. But you can use your anger. You can move forward now. I try to offer up what I can do as a legacy of their strength. I try to be strong for them, as they were strong for me. i live my life as an offering to them." - jasmine

"Yes, it’s hard to live knowing you’re a product of the rape and the theft. It’s how you use your anger now, how you live this life, that can make a difference." - rocio (ro-see-oh)

that concept - being the product of rape and theft and repression - is . . . the word horrifying doesn't do it justice. accepting that as one's history is nearly impossible. I feel empty. And sad. And drained. How do you survive the brutality of history? How do you carry this knowledge inside you? How do I, as an outsider, process this part of history? What is my place in it?

Things like tonight make me think, I have to write. Now. This is what drives me and makes me think, I need to learn more, now, forever, I will never know enough. It’s the stories these people tell, how can you turn away from that? How can you face these pictures and these misdeeds and not care? Why aren’t we telling these stories? How can we make it fair? What can we do about history?

I want to ask how I’m supposed to react, but it’s too trite. But I don’t know, as a student of history, what to do about this. I don’t know how to deal with the knowledge I now have, the knowledge I am constantly working to acquire. I hold it within me but I can’t touch it. First I have to mourn it. It’s weird, but every time I learn a new genocide, I have to mourn. I wonder if it will ever get old, if the sight of a dead body will ever not make me flinch. I clutch desperately at my reactions, as proof of my humanity, searching the same old feelings for new answers. But it’s the same – basic empathy for the brutality of the facts (from Nanking to East Timor to Tennessee, two hundred years ago, ten years ago, sixty years ago), deep sadness, bewilderment. But I have yet to find a satisfactory way to channel it, this sadness and disbelief and grief. I do not know yet what my contribution should be. I have no one to offer my life to, nothing to which I can pay homage. I am a homeless child of history. What good do my tears (and I’ve shed many) do the dead?

i wonder if it will ever get easier to learn about the awful things people have done to each other. it hasn't yet, and i know a lot of awful things.