September 23, 2016
‘If these shackles could speak’: Charles Johnson’s powerful statement for Smithsonian Magazine feature on new African American Museum of History and Culture
Charles Johnson, UW professor emeritus of English, was asked to write a statement about an item that will be displayed in the new National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. What he wrote was featured in a special edition of Smitsonian Magazine.Wendel A. White
Charles Johnson, UW professor emeritus of English, was asked to write a statement regarding an item that will be displayed at the new National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. What he wrote was featured in a special issue of Smithsonian Magazine.
The item is an iron slave shackle from the 19th century.
Johnson is the author of several books, including “Middle Passage,” which won the 1990 National Book Award. Its central character is a freed slave who finds himself aboard a ship bound for Africa to capture tribal residents there to return to America to sell as slaves.
Here is what Johnson wrote, under the title “Captured in Africa”:
“If these shackles could speak, they would say it took the resources of an entire society to create slave ships. Every shipboard item pointed to not only the financiers but also the merchants who prepared barrels of salted beef and the workers who created tools of restraint. A medical device adapted for the trade, the speculum oris, was used to force open the mouths of slaves who refused to eat. Everyone in slave trading societies, even those who never owned a slave, was implicated. No one in a country that profited from traffic in slaves was innocent.”
Johnson is in excellent company in providing statements for the article, about items in the museum. Oprah Winfrey wrote about a shawl owned by Harriet Tubman. Rep. John Lewis wrote about a bus station waiting room sign for white passengers only. Andrew Young wrote about a protest placard for the 1963 March on Washington — and many more, illustrated in the magazine through haunting images by photographer Wendel A. White.
The museum opens on Sept. 24.
Johnson’s next book is “The Way of the Writer: Reflections on the Art and Craft of Storytelling,” being published this fall by Simon & Shuster.
Tag(s): Charles Johnson • College of Arts & Sciences • Department of English
