We celebrate freedom every August 1st, but the long night with shackles clanking in an unending nightmare continues for many. Haunted like bodies alive and dead chained together in the dark below decks of ships making their way across the Atlantic Ocean. Screaming like they are on the ocean’s floor where the ghosts are restless of those who jumped or were thrown. Some are still sold like they are on the auction block. Some are displaying and selling themselves. Some are still brutalized, hands bleeding from working to enrich massa with hopes of enriching themselves.
The ancestors were heavy on my mind this Emancipation. The names of the ones I know and the faceless and nameless majority that I do not know. The libations we pour in honour of them, the prayers we whisper, I wondered if they are enough and if they appease them and give them hope of a return from how far some have strayed from the definition of true freedom. They were resilient, they worked and died for this country, they bought land to make sure their descendants had a home. For many of them, a long night might have ended in 1838, but who knew that decades later, the night would continue for many of their descendants.
