Honoring Those of the Middle Passage - Prayer of Unity

“If the Atlantic were to dry up,

it would reveal a scattered pathway of human bones,

African bones marking the various routes

of the Middle Passage.”

~ John Henrik Clarke

“The auctioneer’s Maryland is the place

to witness the heartrending cruelties of

slavery, not merely in the infliction of the lash

on the back of the slave,

but there you see the iron of slavery

enter the soul of the slave.

There you see husband torn from his wife,

and the children torn from their parents.”

~ Frederick Douglass

“But if this part of our history could be told

in such a way that those chains of the past,

those shackles that physically bound us

against our wills could, in the telling,

become spiritual links that willingly bind us together

now and into the future,

then that painful Middle Passage could become ironically,

a positive connecting line to all of us whether

living inside or outside the continent of Africa….”

~ Tom Feelings

“You have discovered truths about your past.

You have confronted the beast

and in doing so have conquered it.

From now on your backs will be a little straighter,

you will hold your heads a little higher.

You have attained a dignity that no one

can ever diminish.”

~ Desmond Tutu

“There is no place where I can go,

or where you can go, and think about,

or summon the presences of,

or recollect the absences of

ones that made that journey.

There is no small bench by the road,

there is not even a tree scored and initialized

that I can visit, or you can visit

in Charleston, or Savannah, or New York,

or Providence, or the Ohio River, or better still,

on the banks of the Mississippi.”

~ Toni Morrison

Prayer of Unity

All praise to the Divine in us.

Praise to our ancestors and elders.

If a person does not know the past, then

the present and the future are not knowable.

Let the spirit of the ancestors help bring us

closer in unity and to our divinity.

On behalf of Historic Sotterley Plantation and the Middle Passage Ceremonies and Port Markers Project, community members and leaders are invited to an ancestral remembrance ceremony on Monday, November 12, 2012 at 1:00 p.m. at Sotterley Plantation. This ceremony honors the people transported against their will from the Gold Coast of Africa who died in the Atlantic Ocean and also those who arrived during the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Owners of what was later to become known as Sotterley Plantation participated in the trans-Atlantic slave trade on the Patuxent River in the early 18th century. There is documentation of persons perishing during the passage and being thrown overboard. Some of those who survived the passage remained here, while others were shipped into Virginia. Sotterley’s owners maintained their wealth and property through enslaved labor for 165 years.

This project has the mission of identifying all middle passage ports, sponsoring remembrance ceremonies, and installing historical markers at 175 sites in North, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Europe, officially designating the Atlantic Ocean as a sacred burial ground of African ancestors. Since August 23, 2012, remembrance ceremonies have been held in Baltimore and Annapolis. Sotterley is the final of three Maryland middle passage port sites. The next phase will be the installation of the historic markers.

Sotterley Plantation is a place where many African-Americans find their ancestors and this ceremony is intended to repair broken circles, heal, and bring us together. This project is a step to connect personally to our history at the places where African ancestors first arrived. The ceremony will include a historical narrative, prayers by diverse faith groups, drumming, and libation led by an Akan priest.

For more information please visit our websites:

www.middlepassageproject.org

and

www.sotterley.org.