Knowledge holds the keys

For Roxanne Holmes, the legacy of slavery was heavily edited and sanitized in her early school days. Like many Americans, Holmes was never taught that slavery was alive and well in the Deep North.  

“I know that slavery was all over the United States, but it was talked more about in the context of the South because of cotton, tobacco, and sugar cane,” she said. 

But slavery existed everywhere. Slavery was in Brooklyn, New York. Slavery was all over. Having lived in Brooklyn for over nine years, Holmes expressed her shock how easy it was to move through the boroughs and never learn about enslaved Africans who once heavily populated the land here in Brooklyn and throughout the north and that most of the slavery economy was driven by northern bankers and insurance companies.

To move forward with the 400 years commemoration Holmes believes that knowledge and dialogue hold the keys for a better future. 

“The way that you're going to prepare yourself to commemorate these 400 years since slavery began is by doing further research about your community and your neighborhood. Teach the younger generation and their families. For those who will listen and especially the people who are in the streets who’s hanging out there. Just maybe out of 10 people that I talk to, there is one person who will get their consciousness together.”

Holmes sees the remnants of slavery every day as memorialized on Brooklyn street names like Lefferts Boulevard, Dean Street and Flatbush Avenue. White colonists and slave owners continue to be celebrated and their narratives exclude and erase highly problematic legacies. Around New York, the contributions of these men are saluted with no recognition given to the enslaved African men, women, and children who provided the driving factors for today’s thriving economy. 

“In order for us to break that barrier of those walls that have been set up, we have to know our history. We have to know ourselves. We have to know that Black people came from a great civilization and that there is no way that things can change if the contributions of Black people to civilization is not recognized. And one way to do that is to read history books and to sit down with families and children and have some type of organized way in which you can say OK here's what's going on with what happened. Because the past is alive today,” Holmes said.

Roxanne Holmes is a Brooklyn resident and Bard student.

Listen to her full conversation below: