SPIRITUALS

I have always known the spirits and they know me.

The first generation of enslaved Africans brought to America had to fight to hold on to their sense of God. After enduring the horrors of the Maafa (Kiswahilli term for “disaster”) known as the transatlantic slave trade, these African people were forced to labor impossible struggle to hold onto life itself, with all traces of identity, family, culture, language, and religion being stripped from them. Despite the continues assaults on their dignity, being sold on auction blocks like livestock; forced to labor in horrible conditions and adapt to alien ways and an alien language. When their souls cried to God in prayers and songs, the music of their voices rang through a miracle: hope, strength and an ancient nobility of the eternal soul. Their faith and songs would carry them through this horrific episode of human existence….