I’m soon off on a family trip to Savannah, Georgia. I’ve never been there before, but have heard it’s beautiful, similar to Charleston, and a former port where Africans who survived the Middle Passage were delivered. When I google Savannah for things to do, there is no mention of this port as a gateway to slavery. Among the suggested top ten things to do, nothing related to slavery appears. I must google Savannah and slavery. That is where I find reference to a 2014 article in the Atlantic detailing one of the largest, if not the largest, auction of enslaved men, women and children in the U.S. It happened in 1859 in Savannah. It was known as The Weeping Time, and it is evident who named it so.
It is said to have taken place over two days of a weekend, and through it all, the sky drenched the earth. In 2008, this race course where it happened, two miles away from the center of Savannah, was commemorated with a plaque. I plan to see it. Advertisements for the auction said 440 enslaved people would be up for bid. Records say 436 human beings were sold. As mules, intrusively examined before hand.
Knowing about The Weeping Time I feel that much more held by Bryan Stevenson, the Black attorney and author of Just Mercy, who is marking every location where an African-American body hung mutilated, from a tree. In the surrounds, faces and voices of hatred rejoicing. But this will not be the last word, image or feeling. We, the community of the beloved, will witness these involuntary sacrifices with love and sorrow.
The Weeping Time takes me to the Trail of Tears and to tusks piled for transit, severed from their left behind mothers and fathers. Takes me to tsunamis we have found a tree limb to hold on to, or have succumbed, our bodies bloated, lifeless floats.
I honor this legacy holding both the sorrow and the beauty of what my ancestors made possible, sacrifices I dare not fail to treasure. April in Savannah, 80 plus degrees warm, friendly sidewalks that beckon, the joy of family togetherness, my grandson’s first visit to a zoo. Respite taking. Gratitude making. I am alive, and my children and grandchild(ren) will go on, embodying the hopes and dreams spun by my ancestors, the thread well-kept, and golden.