Strange Fruit

Greetings, folks! Brenna and I sort of resolved to return to the land of blog once school started, so I thought I’d take a moment and report on this year’s George Washington Book Prize celebration. You might remember that last year’s prize went to Charles Rappleye’s Sons of Providence, which I read over winter break last year. It was pretty interesting, and it started a chain of thought that brought me a summer research project this year, but more on that another day. This year, the prize went to Dr. Marcus Rediker of the University of Pittsburgh for his book The Slave Ship: A Human History. Brenna started reading it, and she’s really enjoying it so far, except that the topic is rather depressing. The title of Rediker’s social history explains it all—the book is about the international slave trade and the experiences of the 12.5 million Africans carried to North America and the various other people involved in the slave trade over four centuries. As Dr. Rediker said at the beginning of his presentation, this isn’t a part of our history that we are comfortable discussing, but “we’ve got to face our past.”

During his talk, Dr. Rediker called the slave trade “a human drama” featuring people of many different cultures and ethnicities who were brought from the interior of Africa, made to endure “humiliating medical inspections,” and directed aboard slave ships, which he called “chambers of horrors.” Because the Africans would cry out as the ship pulled away from the coast, these ships often left port during the night while its cargo was sleeping, leaving the Africans to awake and discover they were in the middle of the ocean. On the other side of the Atlantic, “you could smell a slave ship before you could see it” as a result of the heat, seasickness, and death that took their toll on the ship’s passengers. Dr. Rediker also explained the captains’ use of terror to control the Africans and prevent them from rebelling; he repeated one story that he included early in his book about a woman who was lowered overboard to the sharks that followed the slave ships. When she was removed from the water, her lower half was gone.

One of the most interesting parts of Dr. Rediker’s presentation was his explanation of how Africans resisted aboard slave ships, demonstrating the agency Africans had. Africans engaged in hunger strikes, completed suicide (sometimes en masse), and attempted insurrection (although insurrections were not often successful). Africans also, in Dr. Rediker’s view, showed creativity as they built new cultures, new communities, and new languages during the voyage across the Atlantic, and these mark the slave ships as the start of African-American culture. Bethel AME Church, which is located a block south of our campus, provided a beautiful venue for the lecture, and as a part of the presentation, a woman named Karen Somerville performed songs that described different elements of the slave ship experience. One of these songs mourned the Africans’ departure from Africa and the fact that they were a long way from home, another was a later song about lynching called “Strange Fruit” that they used to highlight the experience of the woman dangling above the sharks, and the final song celebrated the end of slavery and the humiliations of the auction block but lamented and honored the thousands that perished over the course of the slave trade.

After the talk, Brenna and I went to the dedication of the Patrick Henry Fellow’s residence and then to the reception at the Hynson-Ringgold House. The dedication was exciting, especially when Adam Goodheart (director of the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience) brought out a large 18th century sword and used it to open a bottle of champagne (a moment I watched from next to/in a nearby bush to escape the splash zone, as Brenna and I had been right in the front talking with Dr. Miller and his friend, who teaches at the College of William and Mary), and between the dedication and the reception, we were able to catch up with several of our professors. Like last year, there was a public conversation with Adam Goodheart and Dr. Rediker, but Brenna and I both had class, so we weren’t able to attend (which is a shame now that I’m looking back at my notes and the questions I had written down). Nevertheless, a good time was had by all, and I’m going to have to read The Slave Ship over winter break.

Until next time (to quote The Phantom of the Opera), I remain your obedient servant, Ten Page.