I don't write many diaries, in fact, I believe I've only written one diary but I just had to share this story!
I saw a clip on MSNBC that absolutely fascinated me. The name of it is Priscilla's story and it tells the story on a young African 10 year old girl who was kidnapped and sold into slavery.
...More after the break
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This clip is a MUST WATCH! The descendents of Priscilla are believed to be the only Black family to have written records of their ancestors lives traced all the way back to Sierra Leone.
As Ron Allen
The Martin family knows something about themselves that few if any families will ever learn about their past. They're able to trace their ancestry back hundreds of years to a little girl. Her name was Priscilla. She was 10 years old. Priscilla was kidnapped in Sierra Leone west Africa in 1756, and shipped to Charleston, South Carolina, where she lived her entire life as a slave.
He goes on to explain,
The Martins have never shared their story on national television. It's actually the story of how two American families were brought together by a 10-year-old girl.
NBC News first discovered the story in Sierra Leone, while doing a series of pieces for NBC Nightly News, about Americans trying to make a difference in that desperately poor nation, still struggling with the aftermath of a long brutal civil war.
Our journey took us to a place called Bunce Island. That's where we visited the ruins of one of the most notorious slave trading fortresses the world has ever know, a transit point for tens of thousands of slaves sent to America.
My dad also embarked on a similiar journey. He was able to search our family back into the late 1850s. But that's as far as he was able to trace back because the records stopped. What sparked his interest in tracing our family name back is telling. He tells me that a colleague of his purchased a ring with his families crest on it. My dad says that he went to the store where they make the family crests and the manager promptly told him, "We don't make crests for black people." You have to hear my Dad tell this story but he says just as he was about to get into the guy's face and say some choice words, the manager explained that the reason that they do not is because a majority of African Americans don't have records of our history, we just don't know. He offered to make a crest of our last name now, but what sense would that make? He didn't really want to wear the crest of the white man who had enslaved our family.
Being the person that my dad is, he embarked on a ferocious 3 month journey to find out all he could about our ancestors. Most of my family is from a small town in North Carolina and we actually knew the descendents of the men who owned our family. SO my dad found deeds, titles, receipts of our ancestors being bought and sold as PROPERTY. That still blows my mind to this day, the tide of emotions one feels to know that your great great great great grand parents were regarded as nothing but cattle, property, unHUMAN cannot be described. I love hearing my dad tell this story because it connects me to the past and the strength of my family. My grandmother was one of thirteen, she had eight children; while her mother, my great grandmother was one of fifteen. My great grandmother's father was born into slavery and my dad was able to find the records of his marriage and the birth of this children.
I have to run to class, but thank you for reading this diary, and I hope you check out the clip.
HAPPY BLACK HISTORY MONTH!