Three years ago we all had a discussion about the 1619 Project, which was a subject focusing on the slave trade that first occurred some 400 years ago and the effects it had on the world view and the future creation of the so-called “peculiar institution”. The project was actually a long-formed journalism endeavor developed by Nicole Hannah-Jones, which refrained America’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of African Americans at the very center of the United States.
In late August of 1619 over 20 to 30 enslaved Africans were taken from Africa and brought to Point Comfort in Virginia and were traded for mostly supplies and so for. Starting from 1619 and beyond we ask the question on why slavery was even started or even on why did one group of people feel that they had the right to take another group of people from their homeland thinking that they don’t have any feelings at all? The question that is also asked is what was the main purpose of carrying out such a cold and vile act in the world and what point was there? What went through the minds of the slavers and the enslaved when all this happened and the minds and thoughts collided when it came to the rights and wrongs of what happened and who and what benefited?
I now pose a psychological question (and two additional questions) : In spite of 1619 what can a person take away from what they learned from the past and explain in the present and what effects it would have in the future? The first question would be asked by the enslaved: Why was I taken from my land and why is this happening? Second question from the slave captor: Am I doing this to gain a profit for myself and to benefit my country’s wealth or am I committing the ultimate sin against God by wrongfully taking someone from their homeland just to help create an institution that is unjust but will earn profits and help grow MY country? These two opposite questions run into each other head on not because they are common sense questions but because they both tie into one issue: slavery and illegal bondage toward a people who were living in peace in their own land. A whole lot has occurred after that August afternoon in 1619 and it forever changed the landscape of the difference between slavery and freedom, not only physically but mentally and emotionally as well for both parties.
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