Awareness Wednesday :: It's Black History Month

Black History Month - Mormon Women for Ethical Government

It’s Black History Month. I am a white woman. My family made a living from the sale of other human beings. I am the fourth-great-granddaughter of one of the captains of the slave ship Iris.

The Iris made eight voyages between 1783 and 1800 across what is known as the Middle Passage. It carried goods from Liverpool, England, to trade for human cargo in West Africa; delivered enslaved Africans for sale in the West Indies; and then returned to England, filled with cotton (among other things) picked by the hands of the enslaved.

On Monday, September 3, 1798, my grandfather directed the crew of the Iris to load the ship with the cargo they would be carrying from Bonny (now part of Nigeria) to Kingston, Jamaica. They filled the bottom of the ship with 420 Africans — women, men, and children of the Igbo people — who were insured for £45 a person. The people who found themselves enslaved were often prisoners captured in tribal warfare, those accused of petty crimes, or people kidnapped by African traders. As the crew loaded the ship, they likely would have inspected each African for disease, shaved their heads, and stripped them of all their belongings and their clothing.

A list bearing the names of the crew members of the Iris survives to this day, but there is no list of the names of the Igbo people who were compelled to board the Iris that day. It is no accident that their names have been lost to time — it was intentional. It was effective for enslavers to strip the enslaved of their identity, dignity, and sense of belonging. Dehumanization made for more manageable workers.

Along with the human cargo, they loaded 13,695 yams and a supply of rice, carefully accounted for, that would serve as food for the enslaved. In fact, the status of these commodities was reported daily in the ship log. The enslaved were not always. The Africans would typically receive one to two meals a day. Those who refused to eat would have likely been force fed.

On September 14 the Iris’s ship log reports, “Slaves complaining.” Conditions for the enslaved on a slave ship were appalling. Most often the African men would be shackled in pairs. A majority of their time was spent lying in cramped quarters in the bottom of the ship, with some respite (weather permitting) on deck for air and sometimes forced exercise. Women and children, usually left unshackled and kept in separate quarters from the men, were often allowed more movement but were also susceptible to harassment and assault from the crew. The slave quarters were poorly ventilated, hot and unsanitary, and diseases such as measles, smallpox, influenza, scurvy, and dysentery ran rampant on these ships.

Six Africans died on this voyage of the Iris — their bodies “buried” in the waters of the Atlantic. The first male African died on September 21 of “vermicular feavour.” (As near as I can tell, this may refer to an illness due to infection of some sort of parasitic worm.) Several other people were ill. On October 6, a female African died of a “fever” and was lowered into a watery grave. On October 11, another male died, but there is no indication of what killed him. Some of the enslaved grew dangerously ill. The log indicates there was probable sea sickness due to the weather, and some eye infections among the captives. The deaths of one other female and one male African are recorded on October 26 and 27, respectively. There is no date given for the sixth African who is reported to have died on this journey. The names and histories of these men and women (and perhaps children) accompanied them to their grave — lost forever in the waves.

The Iris arrived at its destination, Kingston, Jamaica, on November 4, where the 414 Africans were turned over to the custody of the merchant company responsible for selling them. The crew of the Iris returned home to England.

The Iris left Liverpool again in July of 1799 for West Africa. After several months of delays, the ship’s log records leaving the area of Loango (part of modern Congo) around June 19, 1800. Shipping registers show that 419 African captives were brought aboard this time, insured at £50 per person. The log is much less detailed for this trip, but we know that 409 Africans arrived alive in Kingston. A letter from Liverpool before the journey expresses the hope that the company would receive £60-75 per person.

It is estimated that somewhere between 12 and 13 million Africans were captured and transported to the New World. Roughly two million didn’t survive the voyage across the sea. Some enslaved people had been brought to North America as early as 1526, but by the end of the 17th century, slavery was sanctioned by the English government. And though slavery was the most hotly contested subject in the formation of the government of our nation, the Constitution of the United States allowed for its continuance. Many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution “owned” slaves themselves, including Thomas Jeffferson, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington. Of the nine U.S. presidents who kept enslaved people, only Washington ever freed them. Although the British and U.S. governments discontinued the transatlantic slave trade in the first decade of the 19th century, smuggling continued. The last known slave ship to reach U.S. shores was the Clotilde, which smuggled Africans into Mobile, Alabama, in 1859.

Our country was built upon a foundation of unpaid labor and the lost lives, land, and heritage of black and native persons. Many of our most treasured buildings, including Monticello, Mount Vernon, the U.S. Capitol building, and even the White House, were built by enslaved laborers. Toni Morrison summed up the issue well when she said, “If you can only be tall because somebody is on their knees, then you have a serious problem. And my feeling is: White people have a very, very serious problem, and they should start thinking about what they can do about it.”

Which brings me back to my family. Some of the children and grandchildren of my captain grandfather joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in England and immigrated to the U.S. to join the saints. The Church, as you may know, has a complicated history regarding race, and recently disavowed some of the problematic views and actions of the past. This family (including my great-great-grandfather, who would become a prominent leader in the church) carried with them some of their inherited views on race.

In the 154 years since the end of the slave trade, the attitudes on race of the members of my family have slowly changed. My great-great-grandfather believed the death penalty should be exacted on interracial couples and their children. And while some of his posterity still held remnants of the discriminatory teachings, one of his grandsons helped establish the church in Ghana and Nigeria after the priesthood ban was lifted — learning to love the people.

And though I learned some of the teachings the Church has since disavowed as a child, my parents took us to Kenya to be among the people. They taught us that the world doesn’t owe us anything. My father, who passed away 23 years ago, was on the board of a humanitarian group overseeing Kenyan expeditions. His first grandson was born before he died, and my father chose to be called “Babu” — Swahili for grandfather. My nephew, fifth-great-grandchild of the captain, is serving a mission in Ivory Coast. His companion is Congolese.

I know more now, and realize that even some of these efforts to grow are imperfect. My family is still learning, and I have made, and will probably continue to make mistakes. It has taken us 200 years to come this far. How can we speed up this process? What I want to do, and hopefully teach my children to do, is listen to and learn from the stories of our black and brown siblings.

The Church has stated, “God created the many diverse races and ethnicities and esteems them all equally. As the Book of Mormon puts it, ‘all are alike unto God.’” The ideas of white supremacy and racial hierarchy are not based on truth. We are supposed to be seekers of truth. They are based on lies that slave traders propagated to maintain their dignity while committing unspeakable crimes against others. These ideas allowed them to justify their actions and their governments to legalize these crimes.

Many of the lies they told still follow us and continue to shape the lives and deaths of black people in America. I am a white woman. It is Black History Month. It is time to get uncomfortable. It is time to listen.

Read our other Black History Month posts here.