Posted September 29th, 2009
www.thedefendersonline.com/2009/09/29/the-bermuda-heritage-trail/
By Eisa Nefertari Ulen
The hot sun bounces off of pastel covered walls and white rooftops. The white magnifies the light, enlarges it, brightens everything. I stroll along narrow lanes, sipping cool tea, thinking of my ancestors, some of whom strolled these same narrow lanes, in the same blazing sun, before air conditioning and Frigidaire ice makers. I smell the sea. The lanes are tidy, litter free, and everyone smiles as I walk by. They could be neighbors. On an island of about 66,000, they could be aunties, uncles, cousins. People of the same bloodline, descendants of the original 16 Astwood siblings to live on this rock, one of whom was my great-grandmother.
I am walking the Bermuda?s African Diaspora Heritage Trail, and I am learning about Bermudians and other African Americans who, like me, are connected to this place.
The Tucker House Museum, one of 11 historic treasures on Bermuda’s African Diaspora Heritage Trail, houses artifacts of the island’s rich and varied black history. Photo courtesy of the Bermuda Department of Tourism.
The Tucker House Museum, one of 11 historic treasures on Bermuda’s African Diaspora Heritage Trail, houses artifacts of the island’s rich black history. Photo courtesy of the Bermuda Department of Tourism.
On this beautiful stroll through the past, history comes alive. In 1862, Joseph Rainey and his wife, a Philadelphian named Susan, secreted onto a blockade runner and fled the state of South Carolina. Though free, the Raineys had been drafted to hard labor in the Confederate Army. Forced to perform the physically demanding task of fortifying Charleston with other local free blacks, the Raineys chose to escape to a kind of paradise.
While most African-American runaways before and during the Civil War journeyed to Canada, Mexico, Haiti, out west, or to the free states of the north to find freedom, the Raineys sailed east, toward the African continent, from which their ancestors came. They landed at their intended destination, Bermuda, 600 miles from South Carolina?s Gullah Sea Islands and the second most remote place in the world. They settled down in the country, in the town of St. George?s, where Joseph set up shop as a barber and Susan worked as a dressmaker. Together, in the freedom and promise of an island that had emancipated its slave population about three decades earlier, in the parish that had the largest free black population even during slavery, the couple thrived.
Joseph Rainey would go on to become one of the most important blacks in American history. By 1866 Joseph and Susan had returned to South Carolina, and, in 1870, Rainey became the first African American man elected to the US House of Representatives.
Rainey contributed so much to his adopted home that the lane where his shop was located is still called Barber?s Alley. There, in the Tucker?s House Museum, The Rainey Memorial Room contains some of Joseph?s original speeches and other artifacts from his life and work.
The Rainey exhibit is just one stop on the African Diaspora Heritage Trail (ADHT), a self-guided tour of 11 historic sites that celebrate 500 years of African-descended people in Bermuda. Conceived by the late Honorable David Allen, Bermuda?s former Minister of Tourism, the Trail includes slave burial sites, sea-swept caves where runaways hid, and a home owned by a black man before black men were legally allowed to own their own homes.
Pilot Darrell?s House is another rich destination on the Trail. Pilot James ?Jemmy? Darrell had earned his freedom by successfully piloting British ships around Bermuda?s treacherous reefs and becoming one of the island?s first King?s Pilots. He built a home at 5 Aunt Peggy?s Lane in St. George?s in 1800 and, less than a decade later, petitioned the British to allow ?all coloured people? the right to will their property to heirs. He succeeded, and Pilot Darrell?s House and now his legacy stands for all to see.
Darrell?s success is particularly significant, not just because he created a wealth-building opportunity for all black Bermudians, but also because he did it in 1806, just 15 years after Haiti?s 1791 Revolution, which struck fear in slave-owning communities and led to stricter limitations on free black populations in Bermuda and throughout the Caribbean and the United States. That same year, in 1806, Bermuda legislators passed laws discouraging free blacks and slaves from learning a trade like piloting.
Pilot Darrell continued his activism, helping black Bermudians gain the freedoms to work and prosper, and passed his home down through the generations. It remains owned and occupied by his descendants to this day.
The Trail remembers and tells. True tales like that of Bermuda?s Tony Tucker?s Town claim truth. Now a wealthy and majority white enclave on the island, Tucker?s Town was a black community about 80 years ago, when the land there was, in some cases, forcibly taken from homeowners who refused to sell to whites.
The black graves in Tucker?s Point Golf Club attest to black ownership in a neighborhood where, today, wealthy Americans like New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and former presidential candidate Ross Perot own homes.
Despite this tragedy of lost land and stolen wealth, race relations on the island are generally good. In an economy dominated by international business and a Gross National Income ranked number one by the World Bank, black Bermudians, about 63 percent of the island?s population, enjoy one of the highest standards of living on the planet. International and sophisticated, they fly abroad often for vacation, to study, or to work for a few years before returning to the island.
This global vision is reflected in the Trail.
At the 2001 World Travel Congress in Cape Town, South Africa, the Africa Travel Association endorsed the Trail as a cross-border travel initiative. In 2002, Bermuda hosted the first ADHT (Trail) conference to establish a similar initiative with Africa, the United States, and the Caribbean. Bermuda hosts the ADHT conference every other year, but in October 2009, the conference will take place in Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar, where Tanzania?s Trail, ?Ivory and the Slave Route,? will be launched.
Actor/activist Danny Glover supports Bermuda?s ADHT by chairing the conference some Bermudians are calling the ?Africa Homecoming? conference.
For African Americans, walking the Trail in Bermuda can be a kind of homecoming, too. Knowing the story of our island neighbors adds meaning and power to the concept of Diaspora and our shared heritage as people of African descent in the West.
Comment(s)
Amazingly I can relate fully. Keep it up!