i haven’t seen the movie Harriet yet, but i hear groans and grumbles of black americans saying that they don’t want to watch another slave movie. as for me, i’m watching *EVERY* single one they ever make – cause nobody has told it right YET. They attempt to bury the history of the abject cruelty of the europeans’ minds, thoughts, and actions – and they do it because they can. black americans are tasked with recounting our own histories and keep the names of the enslaved on our lips. the names of the lynched on our lips. the names of the men and women who were emancipated only to be swept up by police raids, imprisoned and leased out to plantations again – on our lips. the conqueror will never tell the (full) truth about his conquests because then he would appear barbaric and not righteously patriotic. we teach american children about george washington and his cherry tree honesty – but never about the 325 slaves in his care at the end of his life. i’ve never heard a white person admit that their ancestor was a slaveowner but we know their blood still courses through the veins of white americans. hell, some black americans too. shout out to thomas jefferson.

who, by the way, wrote in Notes From the State of Virginia (1785): ‘Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, and that his justice cannot sleep forever.’ he says he ‘trembled’ and yet he continued to fuck his slaves and still owned them until the day he died.

so, if i can #neverforget 9/11, and revere the tenacity of jews during the holocaust reading the diary of anne frank – the *least* i can do to honor the plight of my ancestors is to learn of their indelible imprint on the infrastructure of this country. they built this bitch. the global economy we ALL benefit from today was forged and perfected during the transatlantic slave trade – when the lumps of sugar europeans put in their tea came at the expense of so many caribbean lives.

250 years they trudged along. generation after generation of black americans were born, lived, bought, sold, bartered, worked like dogs, died enslaved in the name of jesus and then buried in unmarked graves. born enslaved and died enslaved – clinging to a bright spot of the possibility of peace and rest in the afterlife. can you imagine that shit? i can’t either – that’s why i read about it, turning pages in utter disbelief (sometimes) over the depravity of the human condition. it keeps my ancestors’ caskets open – as they should be. the stench wafts from 1619 to 2019. the only reason i can look at my black ass face in the mirror each morning is because my ancestor decided to live another day. and they got the nerve to say they don’t want to see another slave movie??? tuh! not me. i’ll never forget.