Commemorations of our African American history help keep it alive | Opinion

When I think of people like Gov. Ron DeSantis, and others, who are trying to delete or bury the history of African Americans, I am encouraged by the efforts of those like Dr. Marvin Dunn and Dinizulu Gene Tinnie, who fight tirelessly to keep our history alive for future generations.

On Aug. 16, during the heat of the day, the 83-year-old Dunn, a noted retired professor and historian, led a “Teach the Truth” protest march from Booker T. Washington High School in Overtown to the Miami-Dade County School Board, which is about three miles south of the school.

And Tinnie, also a noted historian who has studied the Middle Passage and the African slave trade, encourages the descendants of enslaved African to join him each year on the second Sunday in June at Virginia Key Beach for the annual Sunrise Ancestral Remembrance of the Middle Passage. The event is held to remember the souls who died as they lay bound together in chains in the belly of slave ships on their way to America. Many Africans did not survive the journey and died due to the inhumane way they were treated aboard those ships.

Tinnie doesn’t want us to forget — hence the early-morning annual celebration, where African descendants are encouraged to bring fruits to be placed on a raft made of tree branches and palm leaves. Some attendees also bring flowers, which are laid on the raft along with the fruits. The gesture is a symbol of what the slaves did not have as they lay chained together, on their way to a future of more bondage and certain death by the violence of slavery.

Near the end of the commemoration at Virginia Key, the tallest men in the group of attendees carry the raft as far as they can and then push it out to sea. It is a sad and sacred sight to watch as the waves carry the raft out to deeper waters.

Once while standing on the shoreline watching the ritual, I wondered how many of my ancestors were caught up in the slave trade. I thought of what their contributions would have been to help make America ever greater and this world a better place, had not they been brought to these shores as slaves. It is a blessing, yet sad, to know that neither I nor my children or grandchildren will ever know the depths of the pain the slave trade caused my ancestors as well as all humanity.

According to Tinnie, Aug. 23 was the designated day to commemorate the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition. The day is observed globally.

However, Sunday, Aug. 27, is the day that the remembrance will include Key West and the abolitionists who fought against all odds to rescue and save many Africans from a horrible life of slavery.

According to Tinnie, it was in 1808 that further importation of African captives into the U.S. was outlawed. This was done largely because of the success of the Haitian Revolution, which was mainly fought and won by African-born enslaved laborers. At that time, Key West served as a vital stopover for ships engaged in the coastwide domestic slave trade routes from the Upper to the Lower South.

Although being thrust in the midst of the highly profitable and perverted commerce of trading and selling human beings as though they were livestock, Tinnie said Key Westerners took another route and their city became a haven and refuge for Africans rescued from becoming slaves. It is unknown just how many Africans were saved from being sold on auction blocks into a life of brutality and slavery.

In 1827, the African survivors of the illegal Spanish slave ship Guerrero, which was wrecked just off Key Largo, were rescued by salvors who brought them to Key West.

And in 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, 1,432 Africans aboard three American-owned slave ships bound for Cuba were captured by the U.S. Navy and were also brought to Key West. There their detention for 12 weeks became a national sensation among journalists and curiosity-seekers, and it heightened the debate about slavery in the U. S. Congress.

It was during the Africans’ detention that the citizens of Key West, as well as government officials including U.S. Marshal Fernando Moreno, showed their generosity to the Africans by providing food, clothing and blankets. The people of Key West even built housing for the African refugees.

Even so, Tinnie said, 295 of the rescued Africans, mostly children and youths, never lived to be returned to Africa. They died due to the horrible conditions they endured on the slave ships, and they were buried at the site of the African Cemetery, where Sunday’s observance will be held.

So as the sun sets Sunday (Aug. 27) on the southernmost shores of Key West, about 200 hundred people will gather at Key West African Cemetery at Higgs Beach on Atlantic Boulevard, to not only remember the slave trade that kept millions of Africans in bondage for nearly 250 years, but also to commemorate the lives of the Abolitionists, who fought against slavery.

Tinnie said the International Remembrance has “... particular important in Key West, because of its geographic location as being the nation’s closest point to the major historic human trafficking routes known as the Middle Passage, or so-called transatlantic slave trade to the Americas as the Caribbean.”

“The August 23 date commemorates the beginning of the Haitian Revolution in 1791, to underscore the fact that the primary and most successful Abolitionists were Africans themselves, who inspired powerful and courageous allies throughout the hemisphere and beyond,” Tinnie said.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural organization (UNESCO) declared the international day in 1998, and it was first celebrated in Haiti that year before receiving global recognition.

The commemoration program will include prayers, history-telling, performances, and an open-mic “Village Talk.” It is free and open to the public.

Reach Bea L. Hines at bea.hines@gmail.com