And we have full records of our pre-war sins. There’s a controversy on in my generation about whether it’s appropriate to trace the family tree of the other group of people with my surname, the descendants of three enslaved families who lived on the old landgrant in eastern N.C. I really wonder what we’d say if we traced that history – hey, sorry about that thing my ancestors did to your ancestors? I don’t imagine anyone would be _glad_ to know that history, and I also can’t imagine it would be better to forget it.

My next question then is: so therefore what? White people can’t take the rap for it here?
It’s not hard to set the record straight on that. Sure, intra black slavery occurred between rival clans.
However, not at ALL on the scale here in America. And white traders NEVER waited for caches of human chattel to be determined by Africans.
They STOLE Africans and captured them PRECISELY because the market didn’t restrict access FROM other blacks.
Nor was there any concern for the conditions aboard the trader’s ships. Eventually slaves were THE hottest commodity worldwide.

For Britain to stop the practice, a little know phenom aboard ship was for traders to throw blacks overboard and claim insurance settlements for them.
In the early 1850′s a ship that did this, did so close to the shores of their destination and hundreds of bodies washed ashore, horrifying the public of the barbarity of this practice and ending England’s participation in slave trading (not holding) forever.

ROOTS was significant because the break between indigenous religions, family and culture was completed through extreme brutality, not just geographical location.
For Alex Haley to find a cultural link, and name of an African ancestor was tremendous in meaning.

A white, North Carolina filmmaker named Mackay Alston did a documentary called “Family Name”. It depicted his journey in trying to find a biological connection between his family, and the many blacks in his home town that bore the same surname.
Ultimately, he found none. But his effort as a white man to do so, was remarkable.
These days, for whites to find family DNA within a black family member doesn’t carry the same implications it might have during another period in our history.
But the profound implication from the Al Sharpton/Thurmond revelation, is the pain and loss of original cultural identity and the sacrifice of such an important and powerful part of who we are as individuals.
Sharpton knows his family name, isn’t really theirs.
It’s an extension of an outrage forced on them.
And that his forebears were indeed owned people, who struggled mightily, to just live and bear future generations, not knowing how long the legacy of slavery would last.
I don’t admire Sharpton for several previous misdeeds.
But on this, I think millions of blacks can share this revelation and what it means.

I do remember slave day in both junior and senior high though, where the underclassman got to buy the seniors and spend the day humiliating us. I would hope that tradition is dead and buried by now.

I wish they broadcast Roots again. I’d plant both my kids in front of the TV for it.