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Scholar
Quotes
on the Henrietta Marie
A
Slave Ship Speaks:
The Wreck of the Henrietta
Marie
Exhibit
organizers, including a panel of the nation’s
leading African-American scholars, spent more
than three years determining the best way to
present the Henrietta
Marie within a larger historical context. Their impressions of the shipwreck,
its artifacts, and its implications
follow.
“The
story ends in 1700 for this particular ship, but
the story of what the ship represented continues
today. The importance of the Henrietta Marie is that it is an essential part of the recovery
process—the process of recovering the black
experience—symbolically, metaphorically, and
in reality.”
—Dr. Colin Palmer, Professor of
History, CUNY Graduate Center; author of Human
Cargoes
“I
was struck by the weight of the shackles when I
picked them up. I thought about it not so much
in terms of a physical encumbrance, but almost
in metaphoric terms—like feeling the
encumbrance of the historical inequities. I also
thought, metaphorically, ‘look what has
happened with the removal of these
shackles.’”
—Dr. Gwendolyn Robinson, former
Executive Director, DuSable Museum
“The
Henrietta
Marie is considered the world’s biggest
source of tangible objects representing the
early period of the actual trading of enslaved
Africans. When you uncover something like this,
it gives you a sacred trust to be more
aware—and to make as many other people aware
as you can.”
—Dr. Madeleine Burnside, Executive
Director, Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society
“In
studying the Henrietta
Marie and ships like her—and the African
diaspora and the transatlantic slave trade in
general—you really get back to the roots of
just exactly why we have the problems that we
have today. If we can show people that, if we
can illustrate that sort of thing for people,
then perhaps that will create a better
understanding between the races.”
—David Moore,
Head Project Archaeologist Henrietta
Marie Excavation
“These
artifacts have such a sense of immediacy. It’s
not just a matter of reading something in a book
or hearing about it. The shackles would move
almost anybody. You can see
them. That, I think, is important.”
—Dr. James Rawley,
Professor Emeritus of History, University of
Nebraska
“A
lot of blacks don’t want to talk about slavery
because they feel personally ashamed by having
been so debased. A lot of whites don’t want to
talk about it because they feel that they are
the legatees of a vicious thing. If there’s no
vehicle to help them bring it out, they go into
denial because the pain is too much to keep
conscious. This exhibit may furnish an occasion
for continuing to understand—and presumably,
after sufficient understanding, there will be
some healing.”
—Dr. Russell Adams, Chairman,
Department of Afro-American Studies, Howard
University
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