Forced from Dahomey in Benin to Alabama in the United States of America (USA): stories of intergenerational wealth versus intergenerational trauma

The feautured picture above shows Cudjo and Abache who were forcibly taken to Alabama by cotton farmer Timothy Meaher and ship captain William Foster together with 108 others from Benin the Kingdom of Dahomey in Africa, in 1860. Their slave ship, Clotida is the last known ship to travel with slaves to America. A view that people like Cudlo and Abache were freely sold to people like Meaher is a lie that blames the victim. If in any case we sold each other, it was because those who needed slaves created a market and maintained it, driving the inhuman practice. There were also theories and biblical and quranic teachings behind the trade. These teachings said Black people were worth enslavement.

White people controlled every aspect of slavery. They supplied the weapons — firearms, gunpowder, ammunition, bows, arrows, chains, leg irons or shackles, locks and bibles — as well as the means of transport, including boats and ships. They provided food, operated plantations, jelly used to polish bodies, shelters such as forts, markets for trade. They brought attractants, bribes and incentives like alcohol or wine, tobacco, sugar, salt and other spices, mirrors, medicine, textiles, cowrie shells, beads, utencils, metals for knives, hoes and weapons to deceive leaders and slaving workers or ‘intermediaries’, nurturing greedy, trickery and resentment and accentuating conflict among communities and tribes. Offered protection and goods on credit to other tribes, in return for more slaves. They set the prices for children, women and men, the sick and the health. They provided the heated metal rods used to label slaves, and used their own names to change identities of slaves. They held the power, furnished the intellectual resources necessary to maintain the system, and were the ultimate beneficiaries.

The Arabs came too, buying the sick and treating them, then reselling! They too used the quran as a weapon of slavery.

In 1965, the Meeher and Foster slaves were freed after working for half a decade, creating wealth for their slave owners, their generations to come and the American people. After freedom, they had no resources to sail back to Africa, so they hard hard to create a community of their own. To create the community, they had to pool resources from their trades and small jobs to buy land from their slave owner. they created a community called Africatown which exists today.

Seen in this 60 minutes program video, descendants of Foster apologising in 2023. If you watch this video, remember to read the comments. Also, this 2024 National Geographic video.

Seen in this 60 minutes program video, present generations of the slave owners (right) and slaves (left) meet to break the silence, discuss forgiveness, reconciliation, and the future in 2023. If you watch this video, remember to read the comments.

In the meetings and discussions, the slave descendants were clear that present generations of slave owners benefited from the wealth slaves created while generations of slaves were disadvantaged and experience trauma as a result of slavery. In simple terms, there is inter generational wealth for the White families and inter generational disadvantage and trauma for the Black families.

What are the lessons from this narrative?

1. The trauma of slavery did not end with freedom; it continues to shape lives today.
2. Speak up against false stories that shift blame onto the victims of slavery.
3. See clearly how some families built wealth from slavery while others were left with nothing but struggle.
4. See the power of communities to come together and rebuild their lives, like they did with Africatown.
5. Make space for honest conversations about pain, forgiveness and how to move forward.
6. Do not just focus on symptoms; work to change the systems that cause injustice.
7. Always see the courage, strength and hope that lives on in oppressed communities.
8. Support real acts of repair, not just words, to help heal the damage done across generations.
9. Recovering lost philosophy (Ubuntu), culture, identity, artifacts, languages and memories is just as important.