On a recent trip back to Tulsa, Davis visited those ancestors, and she told them herself. "I know that I am in control of myself, my destiny, my dreams and everything that I want for myself, and that my ancestors wanted for me," she said. She said she left the United States in part to reclaim her own identity.
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We're coming to understand that America was really never meant for us to be there, as free people." "I think that as Black Americans, we're starting to come to the realization of our place in America. And it has made her regard America differently. Davis was acutely aware as she walked through the castle that her ancestors likely passed through it, or another just like it, hundreds of years ago. Only a third of the Africans dragged into the castles in bondage made it out alive, only to be pushed onto ships, never to return to the land of their birth. Raquel Maria Carbonell Pagola/LightRocket/Getty The entrance to a dungeon where Africans captured for the transatlantic slave trade were held at Elmina Castle, on Ghana's Cape Coast. They walked down corridors shadowed by horror, past the church where slave traders would pray above chained bodies, and into the godforsaken dungeons where tens of thousands of people perished. Patta joined Davis as she revisited the castle. "When we got there, I thought I was ready, I thought I was ready, and walking into the dungeon, I couldn't breathe," Davis recalled of her visit in 2019. Many Black Americans have been able to trace the roots of their enslaved ancestors' awful journeys to the new world back to the Elmina Castle and others like it on Ghana's Cape Coast. I'm just another person."Īs for building a personal connection to Ghana, Davis said she's been "trying to muster up the ability to go back to the slave castle." The old slave quarters are seen at the Cape Coast Castle, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of a number of slave castles near Elmina, Ghana. "I don't feel like I am looked at for the color of my skin. Famous examples include Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison, and Maya. African-American literature is a major genre in American literature. Her therapy practice is now all online, and while she misses the convenience of modern American life, she's no longer looking over her shoulder. Many African-American authors have written stories, poems, and essays influenced by their experiences as African Americans. Just over a year ago, Davis traded her home in Washington D.C. "The feeling of belonging, the feeling of welcome and a sense of freedom." It's how you feel where you are," said Bennet.