Interfaith Pilgrimage arrives D.C. - Wash. Post 7/14/98
peace through reason (prop1@prop1.org)
Tue, 14 Jul 1998 09:42:44 -0400
Taking a Long Walk on the Slave Road
By John W. Fountain
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 14, 1998; Page B01=20
Drums pounded. The red, black and green African
Liberation flags flapped in the wind. And the procession
of about 60 people flowed down Georgia Avenue in
Northwest Washington yesterday. As they marched, they
offered up silent prayers.
Prayers of forgiveness. Prayers for the souls of Africans
who perished in a different time in a different America,
when blacks were sold as chattel. Prayers for healing.
The Interfaith Pilgrimage of the Middle Passage is being
carried out by about 50 people -- blacks, whites and
Asians -- assembled from various religious, political
and social organizations across the country. It is a
journey that began in May and will lead them down the
Eastern Seaboard, to the deep South and eventually back
to Africa.
"We're collecting the spirits and taking them back home,"
Mariah Richardson, of St. Louis, said yesterday at
Lincoln Park in Southeast Washington, where about 100
people, including the marchers, assembled for an
afternoon prayer service in the sun. Richardson, 38, said
she took a year off from graduate school to take part in
the pilgrimage.
Washington is the latest stop for the group, which plans a
number of prayer vigils across the city this week. One
will be at 10 a.m. today on the Mall. At 7 p.m., the
pilgrims will stage what they call an African Waterside
Ancestral Ceremony in West Potomac Park.
Organizers say that at the root of the pilgrimage is the
effort to "highlight the relationship between the
centuries-old Trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the
conditions of the U.S. and the world today" and to
"retrace the history of slavery by foot and continue by
boat, reversing the direction of the Middle Passage."
"You can't heal the world until you heal yourself," said
Gregory Dean Smith, 46, of Amherst, Mass., who has
been with the group since it began the year-long journey
on Memorial Day. "My rage is directly linked to my
ancestors' " being enslaved.
"I could be like any of these brothers sitting around
poisoning myself to heal the rage," Smith said as he
passed several black men standing around drinking as
the walk from an African American bookstore to the park
in Southeast Washington got underway. "As we heal, I
think we're sending forth a healing for America and our
ancestors. I walk for the ancestors."
Since beginning their journey, Smith and others have
traveled to other Eastern states, including Rhode Island,
Connecticut, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania,
and will eventually tour the deep South, where slavery
flourished. They have toured sites where African slaves
were housed or worked and, in some cases, were
lynched.
"At some point, we have to face the history honestly and
then we can move forward," said Marjani Dele, of
Northeast Washington, who helped organize the
Washington portion of the pilgrimage. "We haven't done
that as a nation."
The group said it chose Washington as a prayer site
because of its relevance to the history of the slave trade
in America.
In Washington's Decatur House in Lafayette Square, for
instance, African slaves were held captive while waiting
to be sold to plantations in the deep South, and their
agonizing screams are said to have often filtered into the
street. Slavery once thrived in Washington, which served
as a port for the "black gold" shipped by the boatload to
Southern states, according to several historical accounts.
"Until 1808 when, by the terms of the Constitution, the
importation of African slaves was outlawed, the volume
of the trade in the District was small," according to an
account by Constance McLaughlin Green in "Washington
Village and Capital 1800-1878." "But when cotton
planters of the deep South could no longer get field
hands from Africa . . . markets for the surplus of Virginia
and Maryland plantation owners expanded. . . .
Gradually the trade in Washington swelled as owners of
the exhausted soil of the surrounding countryside shipped
their one profitable crop to dealers at the Potomac port."
An account in Charles Ewing's "Yesterday's Washington,
D.C." reads, "Slaves were auctioned weekly from the
yard of a house barely a block from the White House,
and the Bowling Saloon on D Street between Eighth and
Ninth advertised in 1856 for 'six colored boys (slaves
preferred) to set up ten-pins.' "
The 50 people who began their journey two months ago
have walked their prayer route for the most part,
averaging about 15 miles a day, organizers said.
Occasionally, they will hop in the vans that carry their
luggage, or a church or community group will organize
transportation. They sometimes sleep overnight in
churches and, on one occasion, in tents, but mostly in
YMCAs or school gymnasiums. Last night, they stayed at
a shelter for the homeless.
Over the next four months, the pilgrims plan to journey
through the Eastern United States. In November, they are
scheduled to travel by boat to the Caribbean, retracing
the path of slave ships, and then travel to Brazil and
western Africa, where they will again take up the
journey by foot. They plan to conclude in Cape Town,
South Africa, next May.
Yesterday, the walkers made their way from the streets
to Lincoln Park in the hot sun. The drums and the
Buddhist priests who are part of the group caught the
attention of people in the neighborhoods, who pointed
and stared.
Arriving at Lincoln Park after about an hour's journey,
the pilgrims stood on the grass between the statues of the
Great Emancipator and Mary McLeod Bethune. They
sang and prayed.
"I do it to get back to myself," said Kathleen Anderson,
of Massachusetts.
And where exactly is that?
"I'll know that when I get back to Africa," she said,
smiling.
Pilgrims Retrace Slave Route
Members of the Interfaith Pilgrimage of the Middle
Passage are spending a year retracing the transatlantic
slave trade route. The trip began on Memorial Day in
Massachussetts and will end in May 1999 in South
Africa. The route they will take:
A look at local events connected to the pilgrimage:
Tuesday
10 a.m.: Procession on the Mall
7p.m.: Waterside ceremony, Hains Point
Wednesday
10 a.m.: Vigil at the World Bank
7 p.m.: Gospel Requiem at Shiloh Baptist Church, 1500
Ninth St. NW
Thursday
10 a.m.: Memorial walk through Arlington National
Cemetery
3 p.m.: Vigil at the Pentagon
For more information, call 202- 543-8050=20
SOURCE: The Interfaith Pilgrimage of the Middle
Passage
=A9 Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
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