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| Marchers wear yokes, chains as sign of apology for slavery - Daily News |
 Marchers wear yokes, chains as sign of apology for
slavery
By Sean Flynn/Daily News staff "We today don't need to feel guilty, We just need to feel SORRY.'
- Jacob Lienau, 13, of the Lifeline Expedition, on right NEWPORT - The sight of a 13-year-old boy with a yoke over his head and his hands tied in chains was perhaps the most controversial image in Thursday's "slavery reconciliation march" through the streets of Newport. Jacob Lienau of Camano Island in Washington said he decided on his own to wear the yoke and chains after seeing a painting of African slave children wearing them in the 19th century, and hearing about the march. "At the end of the slave trade, the majority of the captured slaves were aged 7 to 15," he said. "We today don't need to feel guilty, we just need to feel sorry." Lienau and his large family, including his parents, Shari and Michael Lienau, and their four biological children and five adopted children, are part of the Lifeline Expedition that is visiting prominent American slave-trading ports from the Colonial era this month. They marched in Marblehead, Salem and Boston in Massachusetts earlier this week and in Providence on Wednesday. "We recognize this is an unusual form of symbolic action," said a brochure the marchers handed out to passersby. "Our hope and prayer is that this form of apology will speak in ways that words cannot." The marchers drew some onlookers and stares, but no hostility. "It creates good awareness," said Vern Michaud of Wallingford, Conn., who is in the city on vacation for a week with his wife, Trudy. "We were not aware the slave trade was so strong in Newport," Michaud said. "I thought it was concentrated around Boston and New York in Colonial times, and also in the Southern ports." David Pott, a Londoner who founded the Lifeline Expedition, cites historical records that show at least 934 ships left Rhode Island, most from Newport, headed to West Africa in the period from 1730-1805 for shipments of slaves. It was part of the notorious triangle trade. The slaves were paid for with rum distilled in Rhode Island. Most of the slaves were then traded in the Caribbean for molasses. The molasses was then brought to Rhode Island to be distilled into rum, and the trade cycle would begin anew. Slaves made up the servant class of Newport in the 1700s, said Keith Stokes, executive director of the Newport County Chamber of Commerce. Stokes welcomed the group of about two dozen Africans, African descendants, white Americans and white Europeans to the Common Burying Ground on Farewell Street Thursday morning, where he showed them "God's Little Acre." The section of the cemetery has the oldest and perhaps largest collection in the country of markers of slaves and free Africans dating back to the late 1600s. The children of the group bent close to the ground to read the inscriptions on the small slate markers, such as "Ann, died at 2, June 1, 1743, a Negro child belonging to Robert Oliver, and daughter to his Negro, Mimbo." "What I've learned, it that this is a vehicle for stirring up people's hearts," said Sonya Barnett, an African-American from Colorado who was marching with her 6-year-old daughter, Shannon. "Then, the door gets opened for healing," she said. Barnett said people should know slavery existed "at the very beginning of this country." Dutch traders sold the first Africans to English colonists at Jamestown in 1619. "I did not know Newport was so involved in the slave trade until now," she said. "The only thing I knew about Newport were all the pretty houses here." Leaving the cemetery, the group marched along Farewell Street and then went south on America's Cup Avenue, with police cruisers in front and back of the marchers. A prayer service was held on the harbor at the southern end of Washington Street. The marchers later sang and danced on Washington Square. Drivers slowed to look at the group wearing black and white shirts that said, "So sorry," in addition to the yoke and chains. "You can't judge your brothers unless you've walked a mile in his moccasins," said Shari Lienau, drawing on a Native American saying. "This gives us just a taste of what it must have been like to be treated as cattle." Cleverson Souza of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, said he was marching because up to one-third of the slave trade may have gone to Brazil, brought there by Portuguese slave traders. "This is about restoration and forgiveness," he said. "I'm a descendent of both the Portuguese, who were part of the slave trade system, and the Africans who suffered as slaves." He said that division among the races is not part of his distant past, since his mother is of Portuguese heritage and his father of black African heritage. Paul Tapa of Cameroon said he joined the Lifeline Expedition four years ago in France and believes this visit to the United States is important.
breaks into tears as she prays with members of the Lifeline Expedition. The group is visiting former slave-trading ports to march as a sign of apology. (Matt Stanley/Daily News photo) "I am African," he said. "I don't have a problem with my identity. I know where I am from. I know my village. But many African-Americans do not have that kind of strong identity. They don't know where they came from." Tapa said knowing of their contributions to the development of the United States is important to African-Americans. "It will give them inspiration to lift themselves up," he said. "They need to accept the past. It's done. We can't change the past, but we can change the future." The group submitted a letter to the Newport City Council, asking the council to vote on a letter of apology for the city's past involvement in the slave trade. City councils in Liverpool and Bristol in England approved such letters, Pott said. Stokes agreed to bring the letter to the office of Mayor Richard C. Sardella. The group then left Newport for Virginia, where they will march in Richmond, Jamestown and Williamsburg, and then on to South Carolina, where they will march in Charleston. Michael Lienau is making a documentary of the marches that he hopes will be seen on public television. He said his past documentaries, most recently one on Mount St. Helens, have aired on public television. Contact Michael or Shari Lienau www.globalnetproductions.com 360-387-8222 or David Pott www.lifelineexpedition.co.uk 44-20-8694-2220 Email this story | Print this story | Return to news index © Copyright 2004 - 2001. The Newport Daily News. All Rights Reserved. |
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