This is one of the celebrants at the 20th Annual Tribute to Our Ancestors of the Middle Passage. It was held on the boardwalk in Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York at the site where some of the earliest slave ships once docked. This annual tribute is in remembrance of the tens of millions of Africans who, after being kidnapped from their homeland, died during the Middle Passage – the voyage across the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean, and North and South America.
The tribute began twenty years ago as a storytelling event conducted by the late Dr. Mary Umolu, a noted African storyteller born in Virginia of Southern and Jamaican heritage who became chair of the Department of Mass Communication, Creative & Performing Arts & Speech at Medgar Evers College. The Tribute’s mission, she always said, was to educate people about what happened during the Middle Passage, to give them a fuller understanding of what their ancestors endured.