Back in the early, halcyon 1970s, the U.S. ambassador from Benin, formerly known as "Dahomey," West Africa, apologized to an assembly of black activists and scholars at Cramton Auditorium, Howard University, for his country's culpability in the African slave trade. He was attired in regal robes and spoke beautiful French, which was translated into English by his translator. His appearance and apology was unforgettable to me.
Benin's ambassador's apology came back to mind to me today, while reading Zora Neale Hurston 's autobiography, DUST TRACKS IN THE ROAD (1944, 1995). She wrote:
"One bit of research I did jointly for the 'Journal of Negro History' and Columbia university, was in Mobile, Alabama. There I went to talk to Cudjoe Lewis....
"He arrived on the last load of slaves run into the United States and was the only Negro alive that came over on a slave ship. It happened in 1859 just when the fighting between the South and the Abolitionists was moving toward the Civil War....
"He told me in detail of the circumstances in Africa that brought about his slavery here. How the powerful Kingdom of Dahomey, finding the slave trade so profitable, had abandoned farming, hunting and all else to capture slaves to stock the barracoons on the beach at Dmydah to sell to the slavers who came from across the ocean. How quarrels were manufactured by the King of Dahomey with more peaceful agricultural nations in striking distance of Dahomey in Nigeria and Gold Coast; how they were assaulted, completely wiped off the map, their names never to appear again, except when they were named in boastful chant before the King at one of his 'customs' when his glory was being sung. The able-bodied who were captured were marched to Abomey, the capital city of Dahomey and displayed to the King, then put into a barracoon to await a buyer. The too old, the too young, the injured in battle were instantly beheaded and their heads smoked and carried back to the King. He paid off on heads, dead or alive. The skulls of the slaughtered were not wasted either. The King had his famous Palace of Skulls. The Palace gates had a massive of skull-heads. The wall surrounding the grounds were built of skull-heads. You see, the Kings of Dahomey were truly great and mighty and a lot of skulls were bound to come out of their ambitions. While it looked awesome to him and his warriors, the sight must have been gruesome and crude to western eyes....
"One thing impressed me strongly from this three months of association with Cudjoe Lewis. The white people had held my people in slavery here in America. They had bought us, it is true and exploited us. But the inescapable fact that stuck in my craw, was : my people had sold me and the white people had bought me. That did away with the folklore I had been brought up on--that the white people had gone to Africa, waved a red handkerchief at the Africans and lured them aboard a ship and sailed away. I know that civilized money stirred up African greed. That wars between tribes were often stirred up by white traders to provide more slaves in the barracoons and all of that. But, if the African princes had been as pure and as innocent as I would like to think, it could not have happened. No, my own people had butchered and killed, exterminated whole nations and torn families apart, for a profit before the strangers got their chance at a cut. It was a sobering thought. What is more, all that this Cudjoe told me was verified from other historical sources. It impressed upon me the universal nature of greed and glory. Lack of power and opportunity passes off too often as virtue ....
"Cudjoe 's eyes were full of tears and memory of fear, when he told me of the assault on his city and its capture . He said that his nation, the Takkoi, lived 'three sleeps' from Dahomey. The attack came at dawn as the Takkoi were getting out of bed to go to their fields outside the city. A whooping horde of the famed Dahomean women warriors burst through the main gate, seized the people as they fled from their houses and beheaded victims with one stroke of their big swords.
"'Oh, oh ! I runnee this way to that gate, but they there. I runnee to another one, but they there, too. All eight gates they there. Them women, they very strong . I nineteen years old, but they too strong for me. They take me and tie me. I don't know where my people at. I never see them no more.'"
P.164-166, DUST TRACKS ON A ROAD, by Zora Neale Hurston (1995)