E-mail a friendAnne C. Bailey
airdate August 3, 2005
Historian Anne Bailey's work combines her traveling adventures with an understanding of contemporary issues. Her books range from adult non-fiction to historical novels for children. The Jamaica native earned her Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania and is an African history assistant professor at Atlanta's Spelman College. She's had extended stays in Paris, London and West Africa. In her new book, African Voices of the Atlantic Slave Trade, Bailey focuses on the trade from the African perspective.
Anne C. Bailey
Tavis: Anne C. Bailey is an Assistant Professor of History at Spelman College in Atlanta and author of a terrific new book that reconstructs the story of the slave trade. The book is a powerful oral history called "African Voices of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Beyond the Silence and the Shame." Professor, nice to have you on the program.
Anne C. Bailey: Thank you.
Tavis: I can't imagine anybody who's interested in learning would flip the channel just because they heard me say "African Voices of the Atlantic Slave Trade," but for those who might have been tempted to turn the channel, where they said, "Oh, I'm not sure I want to sees this one," what's the value of a book this many years later about the Atlantic slave trade and in particularly, the African voices in that process?
Bailey: OK, I wrote this book, Tavis, because I felt that growing up in Jamaica, I'm originally from Jamaica, and also in New York where we moved when I was a child, that there really is a silence about this question of slavery and whereas for most people of color, we do have slave ancestry, unfortunately, we can't really point to who, for example, would have been the last slave in my family and yet through doing this work, I found that when you explore this history, it is so powerful and it is so moving to think that they survived this cruel, incredibly cruel period, and that we're here today, so for me, it's a question of empowerment, not a question of powerlessness, but in fact, a question of empowerment.
Tavis: There are a lot of people outside of the Black community, I suspect, who say that what you've done, with all due respect to your work, is exactly what we don't need. We need to stop talking about the slave trade, stop talking about slavery. "Y'all negroes need to get over it and come into the reality of today and do something about the issues that face Black America today," and increasingly, not significantly, I don't think, but increasingly, there are folk in the Black community, certainly these Black neo-conservatives who would make the same kind of argument that outside of our community would make to those people who say that we need to be more silent about this and move on, you say.
Bailey: I say, well, first of all, we never addressed it in the first place, you know. Slavery was over and then nobody talked about it. We repressed that history in our personal histories and in the national history, we certainly haven't dealt with it in our curriculum, we certainly haven't given it real treatise on a public level, I think, on a public stage.
That silence is beginning to break right now, but I also say what about Jewish populations who I respect enormously. They have been telling the story of their escape from slavery in Egypt 2,000--that's 2,000 years ago. Every year at Passover, they make sure they pass that story on to the youngest in the family who asks the question why is this night more special than any other night? And when they do that, what they do is they not only pass on the history, but they give a certain responsibility to that young person, an obligation to make sure that they understand where they come from and also where they're going to and the kind of contribution they need to make.
Look at the power. Look at the power that its given them, and I'm not just talking about physical material power. I'm talking about the confidence that it gives you when you can know you are not just like a weed. You have roots.
Tavis: You may have just answered it or started to answer this question. We pride ourselves around here in having the youngest demo for all PBS adult programming. That's just a fancy way of saying a lot of young folk watch our program on PBS. What's the value--it occurs me to ask this--what's the value of young people in particular, certainly African-American youth, those in the hip-hop generation, what's to be gained out of a book like this for them?
Bailey: Let me tell you what I hope young people will get out of this if nothing else. There's a lot of things, but one thing that comes right to mind, because I know it's been in the news a lot, is the portrayal of women and also men, but specifically of women in our rap videos and other kinds of cultural expression that is quite prevalent now in the hip-hop industry.
And I must say it's not everybody, it's not every video, and it's not every artist. There are still wonderful artists out there doing incredible things and portraying us, I think, in a very beautiful way. But anybody who knows the history of slavery and knows that the degrading and the denigration of our women started in the slave castles and forts of places like West Africa and Central Africa, that those places, those dungeons where we were brought as slaves just to be picked up by those ships and then further degraded on the ships, those were the places where we were raped, systematically raped by slave traders, in those forts, in those castles, taken onto the slave ships, systematically raped.
And I don't need to tell you the same thing happening on the slave plantations where it became a way of life to degrade and denigrate Black women.
I want to tell you something. If you know this history, there is just no way that you could participate in any kind of--anything even remotely similar, anything that would degrade Black women. There is just no way and I'm not just talking about my book now. There are lots of other books on the subject. There's "Ar'n't I a Woman" by Deborah Gray White, there's "Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow."
I mean, I don't care if you don't read my book, read these books and see what Black women went through during this period and see if you won't feel the need, young people, to honor and respect our women above reproach, above reproach.
Tavis: The flipside of what they did, the point you make now, it seems to me that the flipside of what they did is what we did and by that I mean to suggest that you deal very forthrightly, very courageously with what we did in this African slave trade, this Atlantic slave trade, where Africans, the part of the story that nobody wants to talk about, where Africans willingly, not even unwillingly, sold other Africans into slavery. What kind of response do you get when people pick up a book and say, "Oh, man, you ain't supposed to put out dirty laundry like that, Professor Bailey."
Bailey: I know, right? Leave that alone. My life would be easier, but you know, essentially for me, being a researcher, being an artist, being a writer, it's about the truth. It's not about hiding portions of the truth or putting certain portions out there which are convenient and other portions out there which are less convenient. The fact is that some Africans did participate in the sale of other Africans, but what I try to do is to contextualize that and understand that this was a global system. This was the beginning of what we now call "globalization."
Tavis: What context could justify that?
Bailey: Well, for one thing, Africa was not a classless society. I mean, I think we think of the societies of Africa as somehow being classless and everyone was communal, everybody worked together, and loved one another. Yes, there's a certain element of that, but in African societies and African ethnic groups, they also had various stratifications and the way they considered themselves as a community really differed from one place to another, so the folks on the coast could see themselves as a coastal community, but the folks in the interior, that was a different community.
Tavis: Are you telling me they were having a Bill Cosby debate back in Africa?
Bailey: I hate to say it, but it runs true. That means in fact, you can say that there were certain stratifications at that time and that stratifications now are not new. They're not new. The struggle between classes, the struggle between those that you considered your kin, you know, "This is my family, this is my kin, this is my clan," but then, there are other people and other clans and other kin and I don't have a relationship with them, so the notion of what it means to be African actually comes out of the resistance to the slave trade and the resistance to colonialism. It didn't happen back then, that notion of community in terms of this global community of people of African descent just did not exist at that time.
Tavis: Let me ask you right quick, how much better off do you honestly believe that Black folk would be individually and collectively if there was a sense of connectedness to what was?
Bailey: I can answer that just unequivocally. We would have been able to by now, I think, achieve much more in terms of our potential. I just think African descended people are just the most amazing people in this world, but I have to say that we're not all living up to our full potential and again, I use the example of other groups who have mined their history and used this history as a jumping board and as a motivating force and to give them a sense of obligation and connectedness, they've used it. They haven't seen anything to be ashamed of, to be embarrassed about, and I think we've got lots of forebears who also did the same and so we just need to tap back into that.
Tavis: She's a professor at Spelman, a great school down in Atlanta. Her name is Anne C. Bailey. The book is entitled "African Voices of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Beyond the Silence and the Shame." She's on this TV program tonight because we had her on the radio program on PRI. Had such a response we had to continue this on television, so nice to see you. Glad to have you here.
Bailey: Thank you so much, Tavis.
Tavis: All the best to you, professor.
Bailey: Really nice having me here.
Tavis: My pleasure. That's our show for tonight. I'll catch you on the radio. You can catch me on the radio this week on PRI. Thanks for watching. As always, keep the faith.
Back to August 3, 2005