The slave trade in Africans to the “New World” was a central wealth driver in the Americas that was propelled by the investment of bankers from a variety of locales including the banking centers of New York and London. The immense amount of capital funneled into the enterprise of enslaving Africans drastically affected the cultures on 4 continents and measured in modern terms, is striking in its economic and cultural breadth. As Georgetown historian Richard America points out,
American slaves in 1860 eve of the Civil War were worth, as a financial asset, approximately $3.5 billion. That’s just in the U.S. South in the 15 slave states. Approximately 4 million people were worth $3.5 billion. That was the single largest asset in the entire American economy. If you were to try to draw a comparison today, you’d have to think about the greatest of the tech companies. It used to be 40 years ago you’d think of General Motors, the largest companies in the world. (Robertson)
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Measuring the value in dollars is an unfortunate measure of human life only if it is the ultimate measure, but I simply wish to suggest with my project that measuring the wealth in economic terms as a door is simply a door leading to imagining the ultimate wealth of both the slaves who lived and died.
In many ways, the story of the people who died in the middle passage is the central story of the middle passage. The sheer numbers of “perishable” slaves made the overall enterprise trade possible and African lives were lost at high rates at every stage of the process. Internal African wars provided the initial stream of captive Africans to choose from, but the immense markets that emerged provoked slave traders to employ violent tactics to scale slavery to a point that made it profitable. (Beckert) Achieveing this profit entailed an immense loss of life that is often lost in the modern imagination. As historian Peter Lovejoy highlights, the conditions of the slave trade were designed to absorb huge losses of life and horrific conditions.
Conditions onboard ship were usually crowded; sickness was a major problem, killing many of the enslaved and the crews of the slave ships as well, and shortages of food and drinking water were chronic. Misjudgments in rations, weather problems, and slave resistance onboard ships could affect the length of the passage and the conditions of the people onboard (Lovejoy)
The premeditated aspect of the slave trade should provoke the modern mind to an attempt at grasping its logical underpinnings and an imagining of what was lost and the psychological toll it extracted onto the living. Moreover, its violent structure has been repeatedly reflected in subsequent eras of American history (Oshinsky) and is fundamental to the police state that the United States has evolved into as a solution to its descendent slave and immigrant classes. Building memorials to the slave trade can serve as redemptive moments in understanding the basics of economic reality and its intersection with basic definitions of human dignity.
“Doors of Return” is an artistic memorial project commemorates the collective spirit of the souls forced to participate in the slave trade. These were individuals of immense talent and fortitude whose abilities have forged a rich and diverse world and the places I wish to site the project reflect the rich evolution that slavery has indeed proven fundamental to. (Wall Street in New York; Washington, D.C.; as well as Cape Coast, Ghana, Goree Island, Senegal and other locations of “Doors of No Return” in Africa to represent the return in some form of the spirits of Africans that journeyed to Africa and have died outside of restricted notions of slavery, but rather lost their lives in what become an ordinary, but very violent enterprise, the memory of which we now suppress and avoid as a matter of cultural and economic necessity. The memorial will be a video screen set in a metal frame that is set in a boulder-sized rock. The video and audio will depict scenes of the descendents of African American slaves redeeming their lives through excellence or quiet triumph (beating cancer, completing marathons, working in jobs in places that to many have been lost. The visions and sounds of triumph are juxtposed against symbols of violence and death to show an extreme continuum whose breadth should be a functional pivot point for understanding our basic human abilities for compassion and innovation.
Reflection upon slavery must acknowledge the sheer violence that made the undertaking viable and the potential that we must tap into as a modern society with the potential to make logical, reasoned progression from a dark chapter in human history. But what is evident is that humans repeat themselves in ever complex ways. It is my wish that my memorial evoke the very tangible skills these human beings possessed as a portal to encourage our individual and collective imagination to consider the possibility these lives represent. The story of Henrietta Lacks is yet another iteraton of the “value” black lives have even when they are discarded by mainstream racial norms but somehow redeem themselves in the reality lived experience the value Black life had. The legacy of the riches her body created is one that reflects the bittersweet history of slavery and the very real value of exploring it. Juxtaposed with the memory of the slave trade and its primary focus on capital puts the loss of human capital in much clearer perspective and allows the memorial visitor to envision what they feel was lost. What are their expectations for humanity and how does the slave trade represent a loss of that value?
What I feel is important is to suggest to the viewer their own boundaries of a slave’s humanity many of whom had skills that are rare in the modern economy. Technology is a physical reminder of what has been built with the wealth that the slavery system built and the recognition that much of that wealth can’t be measured or retrieved is an important one for western society to reach. Systems of slavery have immense reserves that continue to exist today and that we must strive to productively reflect upon and allow to motivate people of every background to strive for a higher, more peaceful quality of life.
- Beckert, Sven & Seth Rockman. “How Slavery Led to Modern Capitalism: Echoes.” Bloomberg. 24 Jan 2012. Web 3 Nov 2013.
- Lemann, Nicholas. The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How it Changed America. New York: Vintage Books, 1991.
- Lovejoy, Paul E. The “Middle Passage”: The Enforced Migration of Africans across the Atlantic. York University: Toronto, 2005.
- Oshinsky, David M. Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice. New York: The Free Press, 1996.
- Robertson , Nancy, prod. “The Moral and Economic Costs of Slavery .” Prod. Sandra Pinkard. The Diane Rehm Show. NPR: KUAZ, Tucson, AZ, 31 Oct 2013. Web. 3 Nov 2013.
