LUANDA, Angola ‒ The Rev. Shavon Arline-Bradley left Angola earlier this month more inspired than ever to preserve African American history.
The visit, she said, standing near this African city’s National Slavery Museum, “makes me committed to putting my feet 10 toes down into Black History.”
Arline-Bradley, president of the National Council of Negro Women, joined a VIP delegation with President Joe Biden on a trip to Angola where centuries ago, Africans from the region were enslaved and brought to what would become the United States.
“Coming here was bigger than just (being part of) a delegation,” she said. “It was a reigniting of my fire and my angst of being a Black mother in America with my Black son asking questions about himself, not understanding the history except when I teach it.”
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Other national historians and civil rights leaders who joined the trip, which included visits to the slavery museum and the Museum of Anthropology, said it also fueled their passion for protecting African American history.
It comes at a time when some Americans have seemingly become more uncomfortable with the teaching aspects of the nation’s history, including centuries of slavery.
There’s “this fear of understanding the complexity of America. This fear of saying that America has made mistakes. America has benefitted from things that are horrific,’’ said Lonnie Bunch, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, who was also in Angola.
But Bunch said true appreciation will only come from knowledge. “In essence, what you also get is an understanding that these are examples of where America is a work in progress.”
In recent years, lawmakers in some states have pushed to restrict the teaching of Black history and banned books ‒ many about race and by authors of color.
Civil rights activists, faith leaders and others have launched programs to counter those efforts.
“They’re going to be pushing back for a long time. But I think the key is how do you push back against the pushback?’’ said Bunch, also founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. “You have evidence. You have research. You have candor. You have people who are willing to say, ‘This is important and here’s why.’ ”
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As the crowd waited for Biden to deliver remarks on a stage near the National Slavery Museum, Tonya Matthews, president of the International African American Museum, sat in the front row, facing the ocean. The museum she leads overlooks a wharf in Charleston, South Carolina, on the other side of the Atlantic.
“I feel like I’m looking across the water at the institution,” Matthews said. “I’m looking across the centuries at a more appropriate telling of history and the story. There’s some shared grief on both sides. There’s also shared wrangling about how we should tell the story and I think that’s a little encouraging to know that our sister country struggles as much as we do.”
Last year, Angolan President João Lourenço visited the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. “This is history that is part of our common history,’’ Lourenço said then.
Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP who was also part of the VIP delegation, praised Biden for closing out his presidency with the Angola trip.
Johnson called the history between Angola and the U.S. “rich and deep,’’ adding that the rice industry in America grew into a billion-dollar industry because enslaved Angolans brought the know-how for growing rice to places like South Carolina and Georgia.
“That’s a history we should never allow to be repeated and the way you do that is by understanding and studying it,” Johnson said.
‘The United States has been complicit’
Arline-Bradley’s National Council of Negro Women plans to work with the African American Policy Forum to create a Black History curriculum to be shared with community groups. It also intends to launch a campaign to teach civics education in Black communities.
“I feel the connection here,’’ Arline-Bradley said of the trip to Angola, adding that the experience comes with a responsibility.
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“This is not just for the cameras. This opportunity is actually helping us recommit to telling the full story on where we’ve been complicit,” she said. “The United States of America has been complicit … in hiding the story.”
Bunch agreed.
“History is not something you can run away from. History is something that shapes us,” he said. “You can run, but you can’t hide.”
