Prologue

 

My death was insignificant. It merely marked the passing of an old and now useless slave. The tyrants bred my replacement the same way they raised livestock. Their system insured my proxy. Such was the story of my predecessors. Without fail, it would be the fate of future generations. Each one supplanted by another until blood is shed in the name of freedom.

​

In their shallowness, the enslavers failed to recognize or acknowledge my incalculable worth. Their arrogant hearts demurred from the stark truth conspicuous before their eyes. They enslaved my body, but I was never a slave. They never owned me. By no means did they hold sway over my spirit. Every individual captive forcefully brought to this territory under duress was unique. Crafted by the hands of the Creator, we possessed sharp minds, strong bodies, and immortal souls.

​

The captors ignored an elemental reality; seizing me and others such as me, ripping multitudes from our native land was an abomination. Accordingly, their actions will not be without consequences. There will be a hefty price to pay for their moral depravity. They persist in ignorance of the mighty and righteous power released by their actions. It is a power born from the pain of a stolen people in a stolen land. It is a smoldering ember that cannot be extinguished by an indifferent and heartless captor. They planted a seed of bitterness and nurtured it in the soil of violence and degradation. It will chafe for generations, though, new life and new hope will sprout. Greed cursed a nation with division and disaffection. But it set into motion a determination for survival in these people that cannot be deterred.

 

My body expired and turned to dust. But my soul lingered in Sasha, the limbo between life and death. The journey to Zamani cannot be completed until the natural order is restored and what was taken from me, and my countrymen and women is redeemed. I am at rest, but not at peace. My spirit lives on in my descendants. It lives to guide them. It lives to demand justice and recognition. And like the spirits of all Unknowns, my essence resides at every intersection of this nation. It is fierce. The former enslavers sense it, and strive, though fail, to repress it. Despite their best efforts, they cannot blindly divert their attention away from the hardened faces that remind them of past and present sins. They cannot evade the curled angry fists of the weathered hands that built a nation. Fists that will one day stretch toward an unblemished sky in protest.

 

The Unknown Ancestors weep silent tears. We are witnesses to the human wreckage spawned by the enslavers when captivity ends. Slavers no longer hold the people in bondage by law, but bleak circumstances fuel exploitation. Oppression continues. The evil ones have not altered their ways. They are determined to rule this Black and mulatto race forever. Landowners control the feigned freedom of Black people who remain tethered to the fields, laboring to stretch out a meager existence. They work as sharecroppers, housekeepers, craftsmen, and traders. Emulating earlier times, the workers are indebted to the landowners who hold their subsistence in their hands. The proprietors control how these freed men feed their families. They regulate their survival, and thus render them impotent from day to day.

 

But my bloodline, my descendants shall not be cowed. They are survivors. They have strength. Having learned a potent lesson from the slavers, they comprehend a significant truth. In property, there is power, in the land there is freedom. It is not enough to work the land or live off the land of others. They discern they must have their own property to prosper. It will begin with a few acres and increase to hundreds more; not by an unfulfilled promise of forty acres and a mule gifted by an indifferent government. It will be acreage earned through hard work and sacrifice.

 

They will hold the land until the great migration, when the younger generations will depart in search of a different life, a perceived better life. Their property will slowly slip away. But perseverance and determination will continue to drive them, and they will find freedom and success in alternative ways. Yet, even in that success, they will be scorned and tormented by lesser men.

 

The migration will have its price. It will cost the people, not just the land, but also their ancestral history. Their knowledge of the past will fade as they struggle for survival. Bygone times will be a vague memory. Some will forget the past. Others will never grasp its true meaning. Some who are familiar with the history will deliberately bury the stock-piled memories passed on to them by the elders. They will find such memories too painful to speak of and carry forward. They will leave stories untold; stories of exploited people, victimized by a painful past they struggle to forget, bearing a shame not of their own making. But with heartbreaking tales, stories of triumph and survival will also be lost. And the brothers and sisters will be witnesses to others rewriting who and what they are.

 

Nevertheless, the resolve of the Unknown Ancestors will not allow the false narrative to prevail. We will recast our story in truth. We will restore our people’s knowledge. We will give truth to power, for as the African proverb states, “at the bottom of patience one finds heaven.”

 

The children will be our messengers. In their innocence, they will accept the impossible. They will travel across generations and tell their family stories. My descendants will tell the story of the land and the legend of the man and woman who construct the memoirs of the McElmurry/Calhoun clan.