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Keeping history alive

One woman uses storytelling to remind African-Americans of their ancestors' hardships.

By STEVE THOMPSON
Published January 2, 2006

DADE CITY - The stage, a basketball court on a sunny day, is silent but for the storyteller's repetition of two words. She sings them slowly, her voice turning and lingering over each syllable.

Anybody there.

The phrase seems more of a statement than a question. Or it could be a question that somebody alone and dying has given up asking, but repeats anyway. A colorful shawl covers the storyteller's black dress, and she stoops like an old woman.

"My name is Josephine Smith," she tells her audience. "I'm 94 years old."

The kids look up at her. Several of them are as young as 3 or 4. Some have their legs crossed on the pavement. Others pull knees to chests.

"I don't know who we belonged to, but I remember the day we was put on the block at Richmond," the storyteller says. She is singing the story more than telling it.

"I don't know who my daddy belonged to. My mammy and me was sold away from him, like cows sold away from the bull."

She repeats that last part, for effect, before going on.

"A preacher man by the name of Maynard bought me and my mammy. We stayed until his daughter was married. I was a piece of property, so I was given to her."

Before the climax of the story, the narrator tells of her marriage after the Civil War, and her husband's death 60 years later. The storyteller, 46-year-old Angela Redmond of Washington, D.C., says the story is true. She read it in a book of slave narratives, My Folks Don't Want Me to Talk About Slavery .

Redmond does want to talk about it. She says she feels like her ancestors sit on her shoulder compelling her to tell people about them. So she is spending Saturday afternoon at Naomi Jones Pyracantha Park helping several dozen Dade City residents celebrate Kwanzaa, a weeklong observance of African-American ideas, history and culture.

"Slavery, oh, it was terrible," her narrative continues.

"The worst thing I ever did see was a young woman, a slave woman, marched away from North Carolina to New Orleans, Louisiana. She had just been sold away from her 3-week-old baby."

Redmond repeats those last words, then goes on.

"She fell out in the middle of the road. She looked up and begged me for some water, and I had to give it to her.

"She was chained with about 20 or 30 other slaves. They drove 'em into the shade of a big oak tree, while the speculators ate their dinner. The slaves ain't had no dinner.

"It was bearing-down hot, and when they started to leave, she fell out in the middle of the road. And she died.

"They buried that woman right by the side of the road, cussing about money, 'cause they had lost some."

The story stops there and Redmond's voice rises into a hymn. She ends as she began.

Anybody there.

[Last modified January 2, 2006, 02:30:25]