Day 14. Wow.

Just thoughts.

Only 13 to go. So quickly it went, and I feel we haven't got near to the heart of the matter. ANY matter. So much to learn we don't know!!

The parallel experiences and expressions of the legacies of being slavery based societies simply will not quit revealing themselves. I just read the Barbados Advocate story covering the Emancipation Day Walk and saw this: "During the programme held at the Bussa Statue, there was a call made for the Newton Slave Burial Ground, located close to the site of the former slave village, to be dedicated as a national ancestral burial ground."

Another slavery era Burial Ground! Ok, I know that doesn't sound like a DISCOVERY, because there must have been graveyards at every era, however...my research project is a comparative examination of public history practices in three post-slavery/postcolonial cities and I promised myself an open mind as I approached this program in Barbados (the first plantation-based economy in the British colonies, including Virginia). But the parallels won't stop. Confederates on Monument Avenue = Horatio Lord Nelson on National Heroes Square = General Louis Archinard in Segou. Burial grounds in Shockoe Bottom and on Shockoe Hill in Richmond, a martyrs* Burial Ground across from Segou's Mairie, and now Newton Slave Burial Ground in Barbados. Found some interesting journal articles from the 2009-1010 period on Segou and the re-erection of the Archinard statue which was intentionally and enthusiastically taken down when Mali claimed independence, but later when an autocratic president announced his decision to take the statue from Segou for installation in Bamako as part of the country's national narrative, Segoviens protested vehemently and successfully prevented its removal. Their goal was not to put it back up; it stayed in the dark of a municipal building's basement (no desire to revere a colonial monster, nor capitulate to neo-colonial pressures). Their principal objection was the president's process which they considered representative of his approach to governance in general.

* In Bambara leaders from the region lured in with promises of peace talks (remember a similar episode from the film Braveheart?) were slaughtered by Archinard's forces and buried in a mass grave. I was very happy to see that the act of re-installing the statue of Archinard was so directly challenged at the time, as illustrated by this editorial.

This week our itinerary is filled with field trips. I believe Newton Plantation is one of the spots, so I hope to post more about that cemetery.