From Tragedy to Triumph

Many accounts of a slave’s crossing from the slave ship to freedom is a history never documented in a book but passed down from generation to generation by word of mouth. Before Slaves in America were allowed to read or to write storytellers served as books. They told stories of their memories of Africa, the torments and horrors of the slave ship, the miseries of plantation life, and true or made up tales of escape. Having been torn from their individual customs, cultures, and traditions storytelling became one of the only ways of keeping the African in them alive or to secretly share their hopes, fears, and their dreams with one another.

From their new world on the plantation combined with their memories of the “Mother Land,” slaves ingeniously created new customs and identities without their masters ever becoming the wiser. And long after slavery ended storytelling continued on throughout the South. A family gathering hardly ever took place without a story of some sort being told. These stories could be heard on summer’s moonlit porches, in living rooms huddled next to winter’s warm firesides, in steamy kitchens as chicken fried in cast iron skillets, pots of collards greens simmered on stovetops, and peach cobblers and sweet potato pies baked in ovens, or just sitting around Sunday’s dinner table waitin’ on their biggest meal of the week to digest. And whether being told, made up, retold, or expanded, these stories were passed down with the intention of soothing the pain of slavery’s cruel and wicked ways and as a reminder of how they “got over.”

Big Mama’s lineage

My grandmother affectionately known as “Big Mama” was a master storyteller with a voice so rich and powerful she could paint pictures with her words. Big Mama took me in when my real mama took off in search of a better life with the promise that when times got better she’d come after me. Well, contrary to belief times never got better and I grew up under the guidance and tutelage of Big Mama who often reassured me that “God knows best,” and as it turned outshe was the best thing that ever happened to me. Fore it was at her knee where I learned the social graces of life, church, andthe history of how I came to be. It was amazing how a woman with such little formal education could speak so eloquently, read, write, and tell a story better than anyone in the entire state of Mississippi could. And everyone from miles and miles around must have thought so too “cause for as far back as I can remember our tiny house or its wobbly porch was the weekend and holiday gathering place for family as well as friends waiting in anticipation to hear one of Big Mama”s good ol’ stories.

No, Big Mama’s stories were not just stories; they were oral testimonies and histories that took those under the sound of her deep baritone voice all the way back to the 1750s when her great-great-great grandmother was kidnapped by slave traders and transported across the rough and raging seas of the Atlantic Ocean in a slave ship. Eleven year old Fuluke had often been warned about the strange looking men without color carrying Africans away in chains but could never imagine anyone doing anything so malicious or inhumane. Then one day before she could cry out Young Fuluke was gagged, bound, and carried off to the coast of West Africa where she faced a huge and unusual looking vessel that seemed to be awaiting her arrival.