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Last year, when I began the process of planning a pilgrimage from Florida back home to Niagara Falls this summer, I thought I would be able to stop along the way to pay homage to all of the historic sites where people and events intersected in time to change the course of history for African-Americans.
That was last year, before I sat down with my maps, history books and the Internet. I did not realize then how many people and places there were out there.
Over the past quarter-century, African-Americans in cities and towns across the United States have begun the arduous process of recognizing, archiving, preserving and celebrating the places, artifacts and memories that chronicle our long hard journey from slavery to freedom in this land.
For too long we were in a state of denial. Our parents and grandparents did not want us to know the troubles they'd seen. They wanted to protect us from the pain they saw their own parents suffer. They wanted us to look ahead, not back.
They were burdened with their own challenges -- keeping a roof over our heads and food on the table -- so recording history beyond yesterday's troubles did not rise to the top of many family agendas.
Our common tradition of getting together at annual family reunions was, for most of us, the only connection we had with our roots, until Alex Haley opened the door with his own story, tracing his family's journey all the way back to Kunta Kinte, an African slave who arrived at the Annapolis slave market in 1767 from the region in West Africa now known as Gambia.
Haley's "Roots," published in 1976, won him a special Pulitzer Prize, and went on to receive worldwide acclaim when it was made into the most popular television series in history. But more importantly, "Roots" became the catalyst that launched a whole nation, not just black people, into a search for their own history.
Now, all across the country, there is a keen interest in how we got to where we are as a nation. New monuments and museums are being built at a frenetic pace all over the United States.
Just about every major city between Miami and Niagara Falls has preserved and mapped its role as a station along the Underground Railroad. Indeed some cities, such as Cincinnati and Baltimore, are spending millions of dollars to revive many long-neglected landmarks of African-American history.
And they are not alone. In Kentucky, there's Camp Nelson in Jessamine County, the state's largest recruitment and training center for black troops during the Civil War. In Charleston, S.C., a variety of places that reflect African-American history are being preserved, including the Old Slave Mart and the Avery Institute, the city's first free secondary school for African-Americans, now a museum and depository for archives.
In Macon County, Ala., legends like Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver and the Tuskegee Airmen are all celebrated in exhibits that highlight their achievements to all of humanity, not just African-Americans.
And, of course, in Washington, D.C., there are hundreds of new sites, memorials and monuments being designated all the time. One of the newest, the Kunta Kinte-Alex Haley Memorial in Annapolis, Md., just outside of Washington, was unveiled June 12, 2002, as a symbol of racial healing, as well as a reminder of the shameful history of black slavery in America.
The centerpiece is a bronze statue of Alex Haley reading to several children, with 10 nearby tablets that cite the values of tolerance, family and love.
Speaking at the dedication, Alex Haley's brother George, himself a highly accomplished man in his own right, having served as the United States envoy to Gambia from 1998 to 2000, said, "I believe a kind of healing comes when people are able to really look at what has happened in this country -- in this case slavery -- and have genuine dialogue about it. Although there have been certain parts of our history that have been cruel and unfair to blacks, we have to realize that blacks have made tremendous social and political progress since those days."
For me, my pilgrimage from West Palm Beach to Niagara Falls will have to be narrowed down to those places and people who are directly connected with my own family. It would be literally impossible to visit all the places along the way that I'd like to see in one trip.
But as I plot my course, I am sure I will find that I, like everyone else, am connected in many ways to a history that extends well beyond the roads I know.
When tourists arrive in Niagara Falls, the end of a journey traveled by tens of thousands of Africans, not yet Americans, who were seeking freedom from slavery in the South, they should be able to connect our city to the rest of the Underground Railroad.
Niagara Falls was an important terminus of the Underground Railroad and is a symbol of freedom to people around the world still bound by the chains of slavery.
We need to memorialize our place in this important piece of American history and cash in on the rapid worldwide growth in heritage-based tourism.
No doubt, if properly marketed, Niagara Falls would quickly become a destination point for people from all over the world.
We should be promoting ourselves, from the Deep South to West Africa and all points in between, as one of the premier locations in the world. The market already exists. Africans from Ghana, Nigeria and other developed countries are spending money to travel to sites in Europe and Asia, as their economies are progressing, freeing up more disposable income than ever before.
At the same time, Americans, not just African-Americans, are developing a new interest in Africa. Why shouldn't they be able to fly directly between here and there? I'd be willing to bet that with some direct marketing, in less than 10 years, Niagara Falls could become one of the most popular tourist destinations for Africans, if we made it easier to travel from there to here.
Niagara Falls deserves the opportunity to change our position in history as the city that refused to allow the founders of the Niagara Movement to meet here nearly 100 years ago to the city that hosts the annual convention of the NAACP, the organization that was formed as the result of the Niagara Movement.
The NAACP and Urban League conventions bring in millions of dollars to every city where they meet. Why don't we go after them, invite them to Niagara Falls? Why don't we capitalize on this natural connection?
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | July 30 2002 |