AN AUTUMNAL DAY OF CONTRASTS

President's House

You can enjoy beautiful walks now almost everywhere.  Cooler air,  leaves crunching underfoot, deep reds and russets and golds.  Nature seems happy to shed and reveal its shapeliness.  Knuckle-head pumpkins, red warty pumpkins, smooth white and traditional orange jack-o-lanterns.  Clusters of mums on doorsteps of homes and shops, shades of purple and pink, red or orange, yellow and white.   And apples of every variety ready for caramel, cinnamon or nutmeg.  Fall is a season of excess.    

I was feeling its bounty yesterday when I was caught up short passing the historic President's House on the campus of Princeton University. Life is full of contrasts, as we know.  So switch gears with me if you will.

In front of the President's House is an iron plaque commemorating sixteen of the enslaved men, women and children who were bought, sold, traded or inherited by the men who lived in the house.  They too lived their seasons in the spot I was standing.  Loved and worked, laughed and mourned in this lovely university town. In the house and on the grounds of the President of the University. It is not something to notice and pass by.

I studied the names.  Caesar and Harry served one President.  Joseph and Sue another, Peg yet another.  Names given them by those who enslaved them, of course.  In 1766 a Jamaican mother would not have named her infant "Sue."  An African woman wasn't given the birth name "Peg" by her family. Possibly the earliest dehumanization taken for granted by the enslaver.  

But there's something more particular that caught my eye. Look at the sign closely. The plaque lists two unnamed women, an unnamed man, three unnamed children and an unnamed 11 or 12-year-old boy.  

This memorial was placed by Princeton University in 2019. Much good has come from the Princeton and Slavery Project, which developed from an undergraduate course in 2013. You can look it up as I did.  

But why in 2019 would these children be listed as unnamed?  A name might be unrecorded; it might be lost to history or unknown; but a person is not unnamed.  The enslaved community was no different than any other. Their mother named these children. The children, the women, the man and the boy were each loved by others who knew their names intimately and called them out, lovingly or in anger; in whispers or in fear. Our imaginations do not fail us here. 

I feel like there is a carelessness in so describing these children and adults.  Perhaps a paucity of feeling.  I wonder if this is another way racism unconsciously affects even those who try to make amends. 

I want to think about this.  I am glad during this bountiful fall of walks and road-trips for this time to think about the injustices of today that are so rooted in the brutalities of yesterday.  To remember our history in a tangible way, by the small gesture of touching the raised cast-in-iron mementos of people enslaved where, by the grace of God (and Abraham Lincoln), all now walk freely.  Simple things remind us how much remains for us to do.

Questions of evil like strings of seaweed rise tangled from the depths.  But we are meant to be aware of these contrasts, to confront the disconnects.  To not pass by but rather do good however we can.        

                                                 Nina Naomi