Souls of Passage

<v Dr. Cornel West>When you actually touch those chains, you cannot, but we dedicate yourself to that progress and to the breakthrough. <v Narrator>On exhibit at Spirit Square. <v Speaker 3>It is especially importa nt for the South and for Charlotte. <v Narrator>Symbols of suffering and survival. <v Corey Malcom>Really, the shackles do tell that story t he most clearly, the loudest. <v Narrator>From an 18th century shipwreck. <v Rep. Maxine Waters>I give myself permission to be angry. <v Narrator>Provide hope for healing. <v Rep. Mel Watt>I think a lot of strength we draw from this very soil and from this very village and just looking out over the water that that our forefathers sailed over. <v Narrator>The Carolina coast once a major entry point for people coming to the new world. Some got to these shores in search of a better life and others arrived against their will. Hello and welcome to Souls Passage. I'm Steve Crumb. It was a brutal business, the trade of human cargo. And now we know more about the horrible conditions that existed to see through a very powerful and chilling exhibit titled A Slave Ship Speaks The Wreck of the Henrietta Marie. It is more than artifacts. It is a challenge to q uestion ourselves what we believe and how we judge others by connecting with the past. Iron artifacts once holding Africans bound for slavery are often overpowering to touch. Not only are these shackles painful to absorb, but so are the other pieces, words and images that make up the Henrietta Marie slave ship exhibit. Feeling, seeing and imagining all boggle the mind.

<v Speaker 6>So if we forget our past, it will happen to us again. So I feel that we can never forget this and I'm not quite sure we can forgive.

<v Narrator>A new voyage is underway. This one on land. I t is a cross-country tour lasting four years and docking in more than a dozen cities. Detroit's Museum of African-American History was the first to showcase the traveling display. Native customs, dances of African traditions and prayers for ancestors lost to a tragic trade. <v Narrator>Provided a spiritual and somber backdrop at the second stop, Chicago's Du Sable Museum. <v Carl Perrin>A slave is a subject. Believe me, Black people and white people, a lot of them will just as soon forget, you know. But unfortunately, it's such a big part of our history, you know, that we can forget it, but we have to understand it, you kno w, and not seek closure on it, you know. But what we have to understand, it has to be some atonement know and we need to move on. <v Narrator>One challenge to our understanding comes from the Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society in Key West, Florida. It is the home base f or the Henrietta Marie exhibit.

<v Madeline Burnside>When you hold a pair of shackles in your hand. It's not like trying to read a book. You know, you're holding evidence of an actual person's life and how the slave trade affected a real person and. You have to think about it deeply. <v Angus Konstam>By displaying the artifacts, it suddenly brings things home to people and and especially when you get small children sized ones that only like a toddler could they could actually fit right a toddlers like not on adults ranging up to quite large ones. <v Corey Malcom>Really. The shackles do tell that story the most clearly the loudest. But I think what we've learned the most is how these people were really just treated as a commodity. <v David Moore>We created or developed the exhibition on the Henrietta Marie, to answer a lot of the questions that people have concerning race relations, you know, why? Why are relations like they are today. I think the hereditary and understanding exactly what she was and how she operated gives us some insight into just exactly how society was back in those days and perhaps gives us a little better understanding of why things are the way they are today and hopefully bring about a little better understanding.

<v Madeline Burnside>Although we don't know the names of the Africans on the Henrietta, if you can touch the same objects they touch, you know, you're you're halfway there. <v Eugene Niles>Knowing how many slaves have passed to come through the Middle Passage. It's got to be the tip of the iceberg. It's got to be. But there was never before, I don't think before this exhibit, there's never really an interest. I mean, the Henrietta Marie was found as an accident looking for the Atocha <v Narrator>in 1972, 35 miles off the coast of Key West at New Ground Reef, famed treasure hunter Mel Fisher stumbled on to the site while looking for the Atocha, a Spanish treasure ship. The Henrietta Marie is the only sunken slave vessel in the Western Hemisphere identified by name. <v Angus Konstam>For the Henrietta Marie, we have the bell, we have the name. We know a bit about the crew in the voyages, but there is so much information that's just not there. But it's still about the biggest, most intact source of information tying the archeological material with the written evidence. It's the biggest caucus of knowledge we have about a slave vessel of that time.

<v Narrator>It was originally operated by the French, captured by the British and named after Henrietta Marie, wife of English, King Charles the second. The ship's bell, wears the inscription, 1699. One year later, she would go down after unloading one hundred ninety slaves in Port Royal, Jamaica. The crew of 20 did not survive. Three centuries later, the relics removed from the ocean floor have become a shrine of sorts, one that probes past conditions. <v Dr. Cornel West>I think it speaks to us on a deep level that it actually brings to the fore, brings to the surface a number of visceral feelings, because our history is in us. It's not just of us. <v Narrator>Rioting erupted in the streets of Los Angeles during 1992 following a verdict in the first trial involving police officers who were acquitted in the Rodney King beating case, the Watts Labor Community Action Center was one of the charred casualties from the street violence. Four years after being destroyed by flames, there was now a new center and a new spirit. It is the third stop on the current Henrietta Marie odyssey.

<v Terry Watkins>It provides a healing, if at least a feeling of of of some healing taking place for people to really have an understanding of what the slave trade was about and what the Africans went through that got here. <v Narrator>Some call the ship a vessel of learning and a vehicle of understanding. Weapons, eating utensils and pewter tankards all tell us how the crew lived. Symbols of confinement and a replica of a tiny wooden hull point to the environment. The majority of passengers endured facial expressions ask the obvious how, why and what it took for African forefathers and mothers to endure such atrocities. The pictures and objects having a profound impact on the common visitor and even one of Capitol Hill's best known faces. <v Rep. Maxine Waters>What I feel may not be what people will embrace, but I think it's all right to feel anger. I think it's all right to feel as if you must be committed to working harder for justice and equality. And I think out of righteous anger comes action. And I must say, I give myself permission to be angry.

<v Narrator>While the Henrietta Marie never kissed the Carolina coast, what the ship stood for is immersed in the depths of Southern history. <v Sis Kaplan>I think it is especially important for the South and for Charlotte, and I honestly believe that this will be a great help for this community in understanding some more and facing some more of its history. Controversial, yes, but there are very few things that many of us do that are very meaningful, that don't have some controversy connected to it. <v Narrator>Controversy unfolded in North Carolina's largest city when several museums said no to the exhibition. Scheduling conflicts and philosophical differences are two reasons why local institutions turned thumbs down. But Charlotte Spirit Square is taking a gutsy step by developing a community wide program, its title From Enslavement to Empowerment.

<v Dawn Womack>Despite the emotional pain that some will feel when viewing this exhibition, this project's purpose is to be a teaching and a thinking tool. This program will incorporate the arts, literature, history as a way to inspire a community wide self-examination, understanding, appreciation and celebration of African and African-American culture and history dated before slavery to well into the brink of the 21st century. <v Narrator>Cutting deeply in the hearts and minds of many is this simple fact. When the Henrietta Marie comes to Charlotte and will be the first time the traveling exhibit will be showcased in a state where slavery was legal. As we'll find later, there are still many tangible signs, places and other remnants of the slave trade in the Carolinas and beyond. <v Rep. Mel Watt>I get a little concerned when I hear people talk about how controversial this exhibit is. And I keep getting reminded that if we ignore the history that's back there, then we don't learn the lessons and we tend to have the potential of repeating that history.

<v Narrator>Several months before Congressman Mel Watt experienced that history while leading a trade delegation to Ghana during 1995. He also visited two of Africa's oldest slave holding fortresses. Cape Coast and Elmina castles were places of imprisonment and ironically, also ports of call for the Henrietta Marie. Both are hundreds of years old, with their dark, dank dungeon still intact, places where many visitors come to grips with parts of their culture. <v Rep. Mel Watt>I think a lot of strength we draw from this very soul and from this very village and just looking out over the water that that our forefathers sailed over.

<v Rep. Mel Watt>These are the people who know what it's going to take, what it takes to be a docent. <v Narrator>Back across the Atlantic, there is a deep thirst to satisfy cultural curiosity, perhaps that's why more than 400 volunteers have signed up to lend a hand on the slave ship gets to North Carolina's Queen City. <v Karen Owens>There are a lot of things that we think we know about history that we may have been not taught correctly. And this give me a chance to firsthand to rethink some of that. I want to get a firsthand account of history as relates to slavery and all that is about Africa and how it's affecting African-Americans today. <v Tempe Durham>They have a big plantation and raised corn, wheat, cotton and tobacco. About one hundred three years has done passed over this white hair of mine. I've been here. I mean, I've been here. I had two children that was born in bondage. I was worth a heap to Master George because I had so many children. We had all the heat we wanted while the War was shooting those guns, we had chickens, geese, meat, peas, flower meal and things like that all the time. But we didn't have no sugar and coffee. We used parched corn for coffee and came Elias's for sweetening. <v Narrator>After Columbus and before the Mayflower, Africans came to North America the year 16, 19, the place, Jamestown, Virginia, the arrival of a Dutch ship marked a decisive turning point in the development of a new continent. Historians say about 20 Negroes disembarked in the following decades. South Carolina's founding fathers adopted slavery. It would later be the law of the land in North Carolina too.

<v Dr. John Hope Franklin>South Carolina had an excellent port there for the slave trade. This was one of the centers of the slave trade, whereas the slave trade is such that is the foreign slave trade. Never was, never was of any great consequence in North Carolina. You see, many of the slaves who came into the port of Charleston were then sold to slaveholders, many of whom were in North Carolina. <v Narrator>For North Carolina colleges have honored him as historian of the century and John Hope Franklin's book From Slavery to Freedom Will soon turned 50. It's now on the seventh edition. The classic has been heralded as the definitive essay on the Black experience in America.

<v Dr. John Hope Franklin>If you think of the number of works that have been printed, published in the last 50 years on slavery. In general, slavery in North and South Carolina, we've learned a great deal about the institution of slavery, about the way it operated. <v Narrator>That's the ?inaudible? Not far from Franklin's home in Durham at Duke University. Visitors to the campus library were exposed to a collection of special papers titled Third Person, First Person. <v Marion Hirsch>Under these documents is that story of strength and of humanity. And and we wanted to tell those two stories together. It tells us that they worked, that they got sick, that they ran away, that they were a vital force, and that they had relationships with their masters, both good and bad. And I think that when you talk about groups that it's very easy to not think about them as individuals and seen lists of people with names where you know who their parents were and who their children were. <v Narrator>We learn about mothers and children from plantation birth records.

<v Marion Hirsch>Elijah, son of Suki, Sam, son of Trainor, David, son of Betty. Let the daughter of Jemima. Lydia, a daughter of Arena. <v Narrator>Read a woman's heartfelt words about losing a daughter who was up for sale. <v Marion Hirsch>And boss says as he wishes to know whether he will sell her or at least that he can buy her and he wishes and answer as soon as he can get one. <v Narrator>And hear the horror stories of those regarded as chattel. <v Marion Hirsch>When I left Randolph, I went to Rockingham and stayed there for five weeks and then I left there and went to Richmond, Virginia, to be sold. And I stayed there three days and was bought by a man by the name of Grover and brought to Georgia. And he kept me there about nine months and being a slave trader sold me to a man by the name of Rymes, and he sold me to a man by the name of Lester, and he is owed me for four years and says that he will keep me till death. <v Narrator>Census figures from 1860 reveal that North Carolina held over 300000 enslaved Blacks at the time, it was more than one third of the state's residents. Buildings involved with this commerce of cruelty still stand today. Memories are alive. And Fayetteville, North Carolina, the market house, once an outlet for selling slaves, has undergone a recent facelift. But city officials did not ignore what used to happen right in the center of town in Charleston, the old auction house is now a tourist stop. <v Tour guide>For a while before that, it was something called Ryan's Auction Mart. And that is where, among other things, they auctioned off slaves in Charleston. This was one of the biggest ports for the slave trade on the East Coast. And a lot of slaves went right through there.

<v Narrator>Slaves in this state during 1850, outnumbered whites by more than 100000. And historians have agreed that a significant number of Africans coming into the U.S. entered through the ports of South Carolina. <v Sherman Pyatt>I would estimate that there were approximately 40 percent of Africans that were brought from Africa through the ports of South Carolina, particularly in the Charleston area. <v Robert Smalls>You have to understand that the primary age for the importation of Africans that were imported here from Africa were between the ages of 12 and twenty one. And it was several reasons for that one. That is, they had a better chance of surviving that kind of an ordeal. And another reason was the fact that if they got them that young, they had a longer work life. <v Elaine Nichols>A number of the people who were chosen as slaves came from what was known as the Windward Coast or the rice coast of Africa because of their skills in cultivating rice. And those skills were very significant to South Carolina's economy, in fact, helped to save the economy during the 17th, 18th century and made a number of planters quite wealthy.

<v Narrator>Growing rice is one skill they offered working the land. They also produced other crops as well, away from the plantations. Laborers provided help in the Carolina gold rush during the 19th century, and their knowhow was also found in the building of many cities. <v Elaine Nichols>That were used and probably all of the building crafts and the majority of the artisans were carpenters, in fact. <v Dr. Annette Brock>When you look around the city, the ironworks, the wonderful wrought iron and a lot of that was produced during the institution of slavery during the period of slavery. <v Narrator>Time has faded many objects. But from the Palmetto State, a stitch quilt made by slave represents 19th century handiwork. Discharge papers from Marble County, South Carolina, for a slave named Dudley shows one of the earliest signs of freedom. But this metal cart worn by those in bondage is one of the many items demonstrating blatant hardship.

<v Sherman Pyatt>These bracelets, as far as we can determine, were used to purposes. Some were actually bent and placed on the arms of a male or a female slave. Sometimes they would have inscriptions on them, almost like an identification tag stating that this was either John Brown's property along with that line. And in some cases you would find that both of the braces could have been placed on both the wrist and a chain looped around in case there was a runaway. <v Narrator>Many of the historic images and artifacts are kept in a special collection at the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia, a woven whip as a reminder of controlling messages. But the most blatant stigmas of that time are these badges called slave tags, mandatory for slaves to wear away from the plantation the valuable tags, which are also in several private collections, the tale of slave skill, the year and what city they lived in. <v Elaine Nichols>When I think about those slave tags, it is clear to me that those are tracking records. It was a way of keeping up with the slave who was hired out to make sure that he was going where he was supposed to be going.

<v Narrator>Other tangible connections to this commerce of human cargo are not difficult to find. Walk into any county courthouse across the Carolinas and chances are likely that a long paper trail exists just naming names of slave holding families. Bills of sale. Tax records. And even wills failing to provide freedom as a final gift. In many instances, people were sent to new owners when slave masters died from the pages of newspapers, notices for running advertisements of auctions and the steady demand for plantation products, all handmade goods like footwear and blankets got top billing. Those who put forth the effort never shared in the profits. <v Dr. John Hope Franklin>Slave could not acquire anything and he could not dispose of anything. They've had no legal standing, you see.

<v Narrator>No legal standing because of a rigid set of rules aimed at people of color commonly referred to as Black codes or slave codes, the laws designed by state legislatures also targeted free Blacks. <v Sherman Pyatt>They were basically designed to keep control over that large population, of course, of Africans that you had in this country at that particular period of time, the ?inaudible? From the area of not having any rights. <v Dr. John Hope Franklin>So you had laws against the movement of slaves, more laws against the movement of free Blacks, laws against the teaching of slaves to read and write, laws against the teaching of free Blacks, to read and write laws regarding the assembling of free Blacks or of slaves. No slave, no slave, no group of slaves. More than four or five could be together unless a white person was present. You see. <v Dr. Annette Brock>Free persons of color were very restricted. They had to have passes. There were certain trades they could engage in. There were certain trades they could not engage in. They were severely limited in their coming and going. Of course, they were certainly better than being in absolute chattel bondage as the slave. But still, it wasn't freedom at its best.

<v Narrator>Codes in the Carolinas. Also, some people of color couldn't either own firearms or alcohol or preach the word of God. Some chose the path of defiance. <v Dr. Dan Morrill>And this is a place that is truly sacred soil, because beneath this grass, surrounded by this marker, are the bones of slaves. <v Narrator>This small, fenced off patch of grass is twenty minutes north of Charlotte, outside of Huntsville. It is near what used to be the McCoy plantation. <v Dr. Dan Morrill>The children of the slave owner, Mr. McCoy. Are reaching back and saying something of thanks to some slaves that were very special to the men and using that term of endearment, which was commonly used at that time, you know, Uncle Jim and Uncle Charles and Uncle Jim's wife, Lizzie, and their family. <v Narrator>According to Dr. Dan Morrill of the Mecklenburg Historic Properties Commission, this is the only place in the Charlotte area recognizing those who lived and died in bondage.

<v Dr. Dan Morrill>But you also have to look to the slaves. And unfortunately, there is not a single building remaining in Mecklenburg County that a slave lived living. So we come to a place like this. <v W.L. Bost>I remember when they put them on the block to sell them, the ones between 18 and 30 always bring the most money. The auctioneer stand off and at a distance and cry them off as they stand on the block. I can hear his voice as long as I live. When they sold, many of the poor mothers beg the speculators to sell them with their husbands, but the speculators only take what they want. If you wasn't in your proper place when the patrollers come, they last you to you was black and blue. The woman got 15 and the men got 30. And that's what being without a pass. If a Negro did anything worse, he was taken to jail and put in the whipping post. Plenty of colored women have children by the white man. Then they take the same children they have and make slaves out of them. I know folks think books tell the truth, but they sure don't. Us poor Negroes had to take it all. <v Narrator>Reenactments of former slave castles can help fill the gaps of missing history and lend perspective on the agony that was carried out from this coast for several centuries.

<v Justice Hanaku Akuffo>Africans took Black Africans did sell their fellow Africans, but the pain and cost of it is done. The development of Africa as we see it now, so we can see we are still suffering from the effects of what our ancestors did to our own brothers and sisters three hundred years ago. <v Narrator>From ports of exit in West Africa, the unpredictable journey to a new world could take anywhere between six and 12 weeks. Survival was a quality of the strongest, since there was no way to escape the suffering of the so-called Middle Passage. <v Dr. Annette Brock>The Middle Passage is, I guess, the best description of man's inhumanity to man that I can pin or visualize. <v Dr. John Hope Franklin>The suffering that's done in the Middle Passage, the absence of any sanitation, the disease, how it would sweep through a slave ship and sometimes wipe out most of the population on the slip of that ship, that sort of thing. We've known that for a long time. <v Dr. Cornel West>But those who didn't make it went on to sacrifice so much and to love so deeply that we could be here.

<v Narrator>Tell me about this one here. <v Tom Feelings>Now, of course, the women were raped and then about two or three pictures dealing with that, of course, also showing men who were trying to African men who were trying to stop this. <v Narrator>Columbia, South Carolina artist Tom Feelings guides us through the riveting true life ordeal on the pages of a recently released book titled The Middle Passage White Ships Black Cargo. <v Tom Feelings>I think that is very important to know the truth. And not to blot out the truth. I knew the first picture in the book would be life affirming and the last picture in the book would be life affirming, that is a strong Black force moving into a port and then survive. My problem with getting through the middle, which is all the pain, was what I had to try to do is with my skills, is hold on to you to tell a story in such a way that even though it was painful, you still wanted to hear the whole story. <v Narrator>The images are telling truthful and took 20 years to complete.

<v Tom Feelings>I had seen this image used over and over and over again in the textbooks, in books dealing with the Middle Passage. It's a diagram of the ship. But these were real people. These were real people. And so what I did was to take that same image and include this figure of an African. In chain to humanize this thing. <v Narrator>A New York Times review says it is a book for careful study and discussion and that the agony of the deaths ships is powerfully conveyed. Feelings is hoping his graphic interpretation of 64 sketches overwhelm the senses. <v Tom Feelings>I think the story has always been in the back of our minds, what I've tried to do is to pull it forward. To involve you on an emotional level. <v Narrator>Historians have never clearly or accurately agreed over the number of lives lost at sea. Some writers have put the death toll in the millions, saying more than half generally survive the transatlantic nightmare. Visitors coming to the Henrietta Marie exhibit in Charlotte will journey through an area detailing the rigors of life at sea. It is a special section dedicated to the Middle Passage.

<v Eugene Niles>You now want to know more, do you want to know more about the people that were on the ship. You want to know more of what what caused people to do this to other people. You wanted to see, and you feel the despair that some of our people went through on that ship and you definitely want to find out what happened, because in school you don't learn that. You just learn they were slaves and they were freed. Abe Lincoln freed the slaves and that's it. Now, you get a chance to really understand what happened on those ships, to see how the conditions were and the feeling that these people must have had on that ship. <v Fannie Moore>It was a terrible sight to see the speculators come down to the plantation. They were going through the fields and by the slaves they wanted. When they'd come all the slaves start shaking and no one knew who was going. Sometimes they take them all and sell them on the block. The Negroes always had to get a pass to go off the plantation. They get it from the master or the missus. Then when the patrollers come, they had to show the pass to them. If you had no papers, they strip you and beat you. No matter how much you all done beat me and my children. The Lord will show me the way and someday we'll never be slaves.

<v Narrator>Like many Southern seaports, Savannah's docks became one of the sites for this. Now illegal trade was carried out. River traffic in this channel continues. While Georgia was an emerging colony, coastal inlets served as the dropping off points for a number of slaves bound for South Carolina's low country. <v Dr. John Hope Franklin>But the real contact, the real avenue of flow was coastal, that is by by ship. And so you get Savannah, Charleston and to a lesser extent, Wilmington, as ports that were important in the slave trade, foreign slave trade and to some extent, the domestic slave trade as well.

<v Narrator>Present day reminders in downtown Savannah proclaim cotton once ruled here. Within walking distance from these cobblestone streets where cotton was sold and slaves were traded as a place that helped secure their freedom. <v Harry James>It was constructed on the square by members of the congregation doing all the work themselves. They came here working late evening and night to erect a building after most of them had already worked from 12 to 16 hours for their slave owners. The man who later praised ?inaudible? Also, some time while the men were doing the work at the site, the females brought the ?inaudible? <v Narrator>The present site was completed two years before the Civil War began, First African Baptist was one of the nation's oldest black churches, stained glass windows, honor congregation leaders, leaders who assisted in providing freedom for the oppressed.

<v Harry James>There are some holes on the floor of our law auditorium. Those holes appear to be in the pattern of a diamond, but that is not a diamond that is an African symbol. There is space below the floor in a low auditorium. That space was used to hide slaves, part of the Underground Railroad, when Blacks had reason to move from one spot to the other. The holes are throughout that entire floor because anyone down there had to have ventilation. <v Narrator>Up the coast from Savannah and Charleston County, South Carolina, Sullivan's Island is now a popular getaway spot, complete with trendy restaurants and beachfront homes. Ships are also seen from the shore here. But the environment on this island was vastly different centuries ago when crews coming in from the Atlantic unloaded their human cargo. Some have acquitted Sullivan's Island with another famous island for people coming to America, but those familiar with the South Carolina entry point say it's an unfair comparison. <v Robert Smalls>Some people may have the mistaken impression and they use the phrase that Sullivan's Island was the Ellis Island for Africans coming here, personally, I think that's absurd. People who came to Ellis Island were immigrants who sought refuge in the United States. The Africans who came here really had no choice. They came in shackles. They were bounded in their lives. When they got here was a lot worse off than the lives that they had lived when they were in Africa.

<v Elaine Nichols>When African-Americans or Africans were coming as slaves. It was not by choice. And they didn't want to be slaves and they didn't want to be here. So I don't see that the similarities exist in that sense. <v Eugene Niles>There were no doctors waiting for us. There were no immigration waiting for us. We came in shackles. We came hungry, dirty, but we came strong. <v Narrator>However, a fair comparison can be made between South Carolina and West Africa. Charleston journalist Herb Frazier found similar skills and lifestyles during a 1995 assignment to Sierra Leone. The writer with The Postal Courier was there as part of a fellowship program sponsored by the National Association of Black Journalists. <v Herb Frazier>I remember most the people of Freetown. I remember most how they when they found out that I was from South Carolina, they referred to me as a Gullah cousin and they wanted to know a lot about South Carolina and the Lowcountry in particular, because, as you know, we share so many things in common. The one similarity is that, of course, you know, rice is the predominant part of the diet. Rice is a predominant part of the diet here. Women selling baskets is something you see common here, women selling baskets, something you see common in Freetown. So much is passed in the last two or 300 years that you really have to have a keen eye to find these similarities and to recognize them.

<v Narrator>While many African-American journalists are able to put questions to rest and for such assignments, Frazier isn't finished. <v Herb Frazier>It's tough to bring closure to such an issue that is so broad and so rich in a history that is so rich, it's tough to bring closure. I went to Bunce Island, which is about 20 miles up the Sierra Leone River, which is one of the one of three slave castles on the west, half on the west and west coast of Africa and from Bunce Island. That's where many people who came to grow rice in coastal South Carolina and Georgia, they were shipped from that location. <v Narrator>Even researchers of cultural folklore say the link between continents is hard to overlook.

<v Dr. Annette Brock>In all of these are considered African retentions or African survivals that persist in this area. And again, it goes back to the beginning when most of the people who came here were linked to that region. <v Sherman Pyatt>African-Americans in South Carolina can now identify not only just with the continent of Africa, but with a particular region. And they can identify with culture, for example, with food, with the language, with the artifacts. <v Dr. Annette Brock>There has been very recently great attention paid to what's called the Gullah Geechee connection, and that links the African area of Sierra Leone with this region of the Sea Island coast, the Sea Island area of this coast, rather. And what has been found is that there are more African survival's in this region than anywhere else from maybe Oklahoma, where there was an outmigration of people from this area. <v Narrator>From the low country to the upstate and even across the Piedmont, they live simple lives. Barns like this, one hundred thirty six year old structured historic Stangville and Durham remain intact. It was built by carpenters who were not free men. The nearby slave quarters of the Auton Grove plantation have been refurbished wooden cabins providing the shelter and fireplaces used to prepare food. But 90 miles up the coast from Sullivan's Island in Wilmington, North Carolina, one group of imported laborers responded in very different surroundings.

<v Jonathan Noffke>And you see a fairly ornate, stylized two storey masonry structure in town. You think, oh, this doesn't look like a slave dwelling. Well, it it is a good comment on the difference between urban slavery and plantation slavery. It was a much different culture in the cities. <v Narrator>This was a slave's view of the big house from inside the servant's quarters, the big house here is the Bellamy mansion. <v Jonathan Noffke>The construction was done entirely by free Black artisans and slave crews, including some of those slaves from one of the Bellamy plantations. You don't see a kitchen in there where you see with many earlier urban slave dwellings, you see a laundry inside. You see a certain level of privacy where you have four bedrooms and the structure. And there were probably eight to nine female domestics living there when the family was in residence.

<v Narrator>Fifth and Market is one of Wilmington's best known street corners. Visitors are lured by the mansions, columns, porch and wrought iron gates. But in coming months, attention will be focused on where laborers lived. The two story slave house near the back of the property, it's now under renovation. <v Jonathan Noffke>We're now trying to come to a more enlightened interpretation of slavery in slave times. We want to recognize that these were self actualizing people. They had lives, they had names. They weren't just an anonymous group of people that were slaves. Through the restoration of this structure, we plan to present some archeology associated with the African-American history of the site. But we want to use this site as a venue to talk about those contributions and talk about urban slave life in general and give people some impression of what the environment was like leading up to the Civil War. <v Sarah Gudger>I never knew what it was to rest, I just work all the time from morning till late at night, I had to do everything there was to do on the outside. Work in the field, chop wood, poke. I did everything except split, railed all bossiness out any kind of weather, rain or snow. It never mattered. We had to go out in the morning, cut would drag it down to the House. The rich white folk never did any work. They had us to do it for them in the summer. We work outdoors in the winters. We were in the house.

<v Narrator>During her time at sea in the 17th and 18th centuries, the Henrietta Marie had its share of company and competition. <v Willie Dixon>I would caution to remind you that this is just one slave ship that John the Baptist, the good ship, Jesus, Integrity, Destiny and the Amistead and Desire, name a slave ship, something much bigger than Henrietta Marie.

<v Narrator>Thousands of artifacts did not make the national tour. Instead, many pieces are here in special holding tanks at the Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society in Key West, Florida. Cannonballs, chains and other pieces found on the ocean floor undergoing a chemical and electrical treatment to remove corrosion so they, too, can one day be put on display. <v Angus Konstam>People are discovering more and more wrecks and more and more are being excavated, archeologically and material preserved and putting display in museums. So it's a it's a it's still a learning process where we're discovering ways of doing things that are groundbreaking. <v Corey Malcom>People are going to want to look at other shipwrecks, other slave ships to to learn about more than just the English slave trading system in the year. Seventeen hundred, which is one way you can look at the Henrietta Marie. We may want to learn about how the Portuguese did it in the 19th century. <v Eugene Niles>We are now looking and trying to find out about other slave ships. And I'm going to be in the first class for the excavation of new slave ships when they are found so that when we find any more, I want to be the first one there. We want to be the first ones to try and be there.

<v Narrator>Being there is important for members of the National Association of Black Scuba Divers. They were at NewGround Reef to place a memorial at the shipwreck side of the Henryetta Marie. The bronze plaque they left behind points toward the continent of Africa and reads Henrietta Marie in memory, in recognition of the courage, pain and suffering of enslaved African people, speak her name and gently touch the souls of our ancestors. <v Eugene Niles>It is our story, but it's a story that has taken so long to be told, the other Holocaust, the other hardships that other people have have have gone through is constantly out there. Ours isn't. Ours is just a short passage in the history book. But now with seeing the artifacts, now that you're able to actually see and understand what has happened, ours can now be told and be seen. <v Narrator>It is believed there are other undiscovered shipwreck sites connected to slavery and that some of the vessels went down in the triangular trade route. That is the famous stretch of sea linking Europe, Africa and the new world, but if there is a solid Carolina connection to the sunken vessel, it can be found in the ship's bell. The bell from the Henrietta Marie was discovered by David Moore, who is now with the North Carolina Maritime Center,

<v David Moore>if there is any focal point or particular artifact that really just focuses that particular ship. It has to be the bell because it is what gave us the name. The identity of the vessel allowed us to focus our historical research on one particular ship, which enabled enabled us to flesh out exactly who and what and where and why and when. The all of those answers to all of those questions. <v Narrator>While there is concern over new sites, many are hoping these pieces will inspire those overseeing this exhibit coming ashore, Charlotte Spirit Square for its three month run expect conversations that will evoke compassion and understanding. <v Madeline Burnside>We're not at a stage in our history where compassion is maybe it's never easy, but certainly when you look at a slave ship and what went on, compassion, I think particularly I mean, it's easy for white people to have compassion for Black people aboard the ship. It's not easy the other way around. It's maybe impossible at this juncture in our history.

<v Dr. Annette Brock>And to me, this is this is the only thing that that speaks to a positive good of slavery. And that is that the people survived it and never lost hope and never lost their commitment to move beyond it. And they were not bitter generally. And that, to me, is an excellent testament to the resiliency of a race and the fortitude and the the humanity of a race. And I think it deserves a place in history in every museum that you can get it in. And every textbook. <v Dr. Cornel West>I think any time is history can be talked about critically, openly, and not in the spirit of pointing fingers at people, not in the spirit of trying to demonize, dehumanize white brothers and sisters who are the descendants, some of whom are descendants of slaveholders, most of whom are not them. But it's a matter of trying to just tell the story and tell the truth about America. <v Ben Horry>We would treat it good for my own, I would say good according to the situation of time, every year when the master and his wife go to the mountains, they would call the overseas and say, don't treat them any way to be. Don't beat them, don't maul them. After freedom from my behavior with my former owner, I was appointed head man on the Brooke Green Plantation. God ain't going to ask you about your color. God asks you about your heart.

<v Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.>I have a dream, the former slaves, some people who may be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream. <v Narrator>On a Saturday afternoon in eastern North Carolina, the descendants came back to the land. In its Antebellum heyday. The spread was widely known as the Colins plantation. But now the mansion, slave quarters, outbuildings and property go by the name Somerset Place. This is the third reunion since 1986. The book Somerset Homecoming by site manager Dorothy Spruill. Redford resulting from the first gathering, which included a visit from the late Alex Haley.

<v Dorothy Spruill Redford>I am a descendant of the enslaved community here at Somerset Place. Somehow you sense that the ancestor pool here would want their descendants to come back and acknowledge their existence. <v Narrator>The 27 acre site in Creswell is far smaller than in years past. 100000 acres, and more than 300 slaves made up this thriving landscape during the eighteen hundreds of slaves who dug out a complex system of aqueducts so the land could be used for rice and corn farming. It was run by the English family of Josiah Collins for three generations, beginning in the late seventeen hundreds until it went broke during the Civil War. Josiah the 3rd was the only Collins to run the plantation while it was illegal in many Southern states for slaves to own drums. The rhythms are now openly embraced. <v Dr. Paa-Bekoe Welbeck>[Man makes spiritual offering].

<v Narrator>saw spiritual offerings and native tongues paying tribute to those who once lived here. <v Dr. Paa-Bekoe Welbeck>Great grandfathers share this dream. <v Narrator>Seeking answers about history and heritage is often a two way street. <v Dr. Paa-Bekoe Welbeck>Africa is learning from America, that is, African Americans and African Americans are learning from Africa. So it's almost like a continuous process of recreating our own culture is a way of sustaining some of the most subtle things about the culture that we tend to forget. <v Narrator>Visitors here are reminded of a different time. Twenty three slave buildings provided the most basic of housing needs. None stand today, but from the ruins, archeologists are hoping to learn more about the people who once called this home. <v Carl Steen>We know a lot about Josiah Collins, who owned the plantation, but we know very little about the people who actually lived here and 90 percent of people who lived here we know very little about. <v Narrator>Over time, they've recovered some very small personal items from the now decayed slave houses, and researchers believe that opens new doors.

<v Carl Steen>They were they were living lives of their own within very bad circumstances. You know, no one would want to live in the situation that they did, but yet they were doing everything they could to make the best of it. They had families. They you know, they loved their children just like anyone else does. <v Narrator>Grandchildren and great grandchildren recall the stories of hardship passed down by family elders who lived on these grounds under oppression <v Joseph Baum>Only thing we knew what a terrible time they had up here. Nothing too much about the running of the plantation. <v Narrator>When you say terrible times could you specify? <v Joseph Baum>Whippings and so so-forth. The denial of eating at times in order to get them to obey, running away and catching them, punishing them for that. <v Narrator>Forgiveness, say some at this reunion is hard, but others who came back find hope in healing.

<v Cathy Gowing>I wanted to see some some way that all of the oppression and all the grief could be resolved. I wanted to see how this could be something that's healing and beautiful. <v Dorothy Spruill Redford>So when we meet here, we're meeting on common ground at a common point and we can move forward. <v Frances Ingles>And I hope nobody's going to blame me because my ancestors were slaveholders. There's nothing I can do about it now. I've got enough things that concern me right now, you know, and I think the relation between the races is one of the things that concerns me. <v Narrator>Like the human cargo that came on the Henrietta Marie, the first Black inhabitants of the old Colins plantation arrived on a ship. The year was 1786 and 80 slaves came off a vessel in Edenton, North Carolina, it was called the Camden, no one is exactly sure what happened to that brig. But historians have recorded the efforts of his passengers who came in bondage. We know the skills they brought, the conditions they lived under and respect shown by some descendants who now have greater opportunities. <v Dorothy Spruill Redford>You have to acknowledge the past, you have to know it. You have to acknowledge it. You don't know how far you've come unless you know what your starting point was.

<v Narrator>One common phrase often associated with man's inhumanity is never again. More than one hundred and thirty years after freedom came to a group of Americans, some still wrestle with anger, misunderstanding and a clear lack of closure. Coping requires one simple action the decision to ignore or the choice to explore. I'm Steve Krup along the Carolina coast. Thanks so much for joining us.