Black History Month: Take It Back, Sankofa

Theme: Take it Back: A Sankofa Story

Text: 1 Samuel 30: 1-4, 8, 17-19.

1.And it came to pass, when David and his men were come to Ziklag on the third day, that the Amalekites had invaded the south, and Ziklag, and smitten Ziklag, and burned it with fire;

2 And had taken the women captives, that were therein: they slew not any, either great or small, but carried them away, and went on their way.

3 So David and his men came to the city, and, behold, it was burned with fire; and their wives, and their sons, and their daughters, were taken captives.

4 Then David and the people that were with him lifted up their voice and wept, until they had no more power to weep.

8 And David enquired at the LORD, saying, Shall I pursue after this troop? shall I overtake them? And he answered him, Pursue: for thou shalt surely overtake them, and without fail recover all.

17 And David smote them from the twilight even unto the evening of the next day: and there escaped not a man of them, save four hundred young men, which rode upon camels, and fled.

18 And David recovered all that the Amalekites had carried away: and David rescued his two wives.

19 And there was nothing lacking to them, neither small nor great, neither sons nor daughters, neither spoil, nor any thing that they had taken to them: David recovered all.

On the land and in the air in the country of Ghana in West Africa, according to Akan mythology, there walks and flies a mythological bird the natives call Sankofa. Though this bird is not real, its legendary symbolic meaning carries a rallying cry for the peoples of the World in general and all people of African descent in particular. The official philosophical interpretation of the name, “Sankofa” is understood by the drawings, paintings and calligraphy used to represent this fabled bird. In these artistic sketches the bird is flying forward with its neck and head are turned backward. Scholars argue that the life lesson taught by this mythic bird is that you should gather the seeds of the past or learn from the past as you move into the future. However, a more widespread redefinition/reinterpretation of Sankofa is held among the common people of Ghana that simply says: “TAKE IT BACK.” You see Ghana, once called the Gold Coast, was one of the most brutalized territories of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Historians argue that as many as seven million people were captured and shipped to the Americas from Ghana. Bound and shackled together, millions of Ashanti, Fantis and Ga were herded from the Ivory Coast and the inland towns of Ghana to the Atlantic Coast. There they were stuffed into dungeons of fortresses built on the shore with one door to the Ocean through which just one person at a time could pass and go onto a waiting slave ship. This door was called “the door of no return.” But the natives say that above these fortresses there flies a bird with her head turned backward named SANKOFA, literally saying “Take it Back.” The first time I stood in one of those dungeons, a rush of emotions flooded my soul. There was only one small hole in the wall through which a few rays of sunlight shone. My eyes that held focus on that hole began to well up with hot tears, tears burning with anger and draining with sadness at the same time. In that dungeon reserved for female captives, above which there was the barracks for the guards who happened to have made a trap door to the female dungeon below, I began to think. In that dungeon where less that 260 years ago one of my female ancestors may have been standing on the very spot I stood in 1999.

I have African blood (Ghanaian, Ivorian, Nigerian, Benin, Togolese, Senegalese, Cameroonian, Bantu, and Malian). I have Irish blood, Welsh blood, German blood, and Jewish blood. My mother’s name was Merle Solomon, my grandmother was Dewdrop Soyer, and my great grandmother was Uranni Soyer. Uranni’s great grandmother was a slave born in Grenada. Her great grandmother was captured and probably brought to the Americas from Ghana. In other words, about nine generations before mine, my great grand-ancestor could have been the one standing where I was standing in the female dungeon in the Cape Coast Fortress, ironically called a Slave Castle. As the tears flowed down my cheeks, I began to think about her. She was a bewildered and traumatized teenager or even a ten-year-old. She had cried until she had no more tears to shed. The shackles on her weakened, tiny feet were causing wounds and infections, and her body shivered in revolting pain from fever or even malaria. Urinating, defecating, menstruating, vomiting, and bleeding her beautiful bronze-colored body was now scarred and filthy. She stood on her feet in that putrid mixture of disease carrying waste that issued from the bodies of the six hundred women that were crammed into that hell hole for days that turned into weeks. She probably screamed at times in agony and fear, as the Captains of ships proudly flying the red, white, and blue Union Jack flag of the British Empire or the stars spangled banner of the United States of America were rushing to buy her at the lowest price and push her through the “door of no return,” to take her away from her continent. Every few days the guards would throw buckets of salty sea water on them that left them screaming from the burning of the open wounds on their bodies. She may have been violently raped at least once by some guard or guards. In agonizing pain, she groaned for her mother and father, sisters and brothers to come and rescue her from her torturers, and TAKE HER BACK, SANKOFA. Going forward but looking back this mythic bird has been saying since the first Arab Slave Trader set foot on African soil, “TAKE IT BACK.” Recover it all.