by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster
Charles is a Southerner, though he
spent little time there after he was six months old. His mother
preferred Paris and his grandmother, who eventually took over his
raising, was globally minded. Charles is one of the few people I know
who actually took a Grand Tour between High School and college. He
was 16 at the time so his grandfather accompanied him.
A
life-long Episcopalian, Charles earned his PhD at Harvard in
Anthropology and History. From there he became a working archeologist
in MezoAmerica.
Charles
is easy going. He calls me to compare reflections on the Lesson for
each Sunday, as I am also a practicing Episcopalian. But while I
attend in Ashtabula, he generally is in Los Angeles, New Orleans, or
elsewhere in his travels.
In
early October last year he called me to discuss not the lesson but an
announcement for an event of Reconciliation made by the Canon of
Christ Church Cathedral in New Orleans.
The
event for Reconciliation was to focus on celebrating the life of
Martin Luther King, Jr. by apologizing for slavery. Since all of
those involved are now long dead this seemed to me a bit like beating
a dead horse. Then a tsunami of emails with links hit my INBOX.
Charles is a very prolific researcher.
My
family is actually Puritan and were solidly anti-slavery to the
extent they served as a stop on the Underground Railroad.
The
links gave me nightmares for days. From the first hand reports of
merchants and travellers to Africa during the time of slavery I read
stories of rampant cannibalism, human sacrifice, and torture,
routinely accompanying the herding of people captured as a food
source during the then endemic wars.
Some
part of the available 'stock' were reserved for sale to slavers
ending up in South America, the Caribbean and the United States.
Nothing I read bore any resenblence to the scenes from Roots, which
had informed me previously. According to the enormous number of
independent reports this went on throughout the 19th
Century.
Slaves,
able to communicate with slavers, sometimes asked if they were going
to be eaten, relieved when this possibility was negated.
When
Charles and I talked again he said all anthropologists know this but
somehow it has not made it into the general population.
Indeed.
How would you explain this to the children? Reality can be scary.
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