Page 53 - 1619 Project Curriculum

August 18, 2019

⬤ Jan. 1, 1808: The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves goes into effect, banning

the importation of enslaved people from abroad. But more than one million enslaved

people who can be bought and sold are already in the country, and the breaking up
of black families continues.

it, a city called New Orleans. When we shuf-

The whisper run through the quarters like a river swelling to flood. We flat bog, and in the middle of

passed the story to each other in the night in our pallets, in the day over fled into that town of the dead, they put us in pens. Fattened us. Tried to

the well, in the fields as disguise our limps, oiled the pallor of sickness out of our skins, raped us

we pulled at the fallow earth. They ain’t stealing us

from over the water no more. We dreamed of those we was stolen from: our to assess our soft parts, then told us lies about ourselves to make us into

mothers who oiled and braided our hair to our scalps, our fathers who cut easier sells. Was told to answer yes when they asked us if we were mas-

our first staffs, our sisters and brothers who we pinched for tattling on us, ter seamstresses, blacksmiths or lady’s maids. Was told to disavow the

and we felt a cool light wind move through us for one breath. Felt like ease wives we thought we heard calling our names when we first woke in the

to imagine they remained, had not been stolen, would never be. morning, the husbands we imagined lying with us, chest to back, while

That be a foolish thing. We thought this later when the first Georgia the night’s torches burned, the children whose eyelashes we thought we

Man come and roped us. Grabbed a girl on her way for morning water. could still feel on our cheeks when the rain turned to a fine mist while we

Snatched a boy running to the stables. A woman after she left her babies stood in lines outside the pens waiting for our next hell to take legs and

blinking awake in their sack blankets. A man sharpening a hoe. They al- seek us out.

ways came before dawn for us chosen to be sold south. Trade our past lives for new deaths.

We didn’t understand what it would be like, couldn’t think beyond the

panic, the prying, the crying, the begging and the screaming, the endless

screaming from the mouth and beyond. Sounding through the whole

body, breaking the heart with its volume. A blood keen. But the ones that

owned and sold us was deaf to it. Was unfeeling of the tugging the children

did on their fathers’ arms or the glance of a sister’s palm over her sold sis-

ter’s face for the last time. But we was all feeling, all seeing, all hearing, all

smelling: We felt it for the terrible dying it was. Knowed we was walking

out of one life and into another. An afterlife in a burning place.

The farther we marched, the hotter it got. Our skin grew around the

rope. Our muscles melted to nothing. Our fat to bone. The land rolled to a By Jesmyn Ward
Photo illustrations by Jon Key 47