♪
[SAM] It wasn't just people
who were brought from Africa
during the transatlantic
sl*ve trade,
it was knowledge.
Knowledge that helped give birth
to the world we live in
without most of us
knowing anything about it.
♪
We brought our ways with us.
It's not in the history books.
We're going to find it in
the bottom of the ocean.
[KRAMER]
They have an opportunity
to rediscover their
ties to the past,
and their connection to
the enslaved Africans
who were here.
[wave crashing]
Woo!
[SIMCHA] You look at this,
and it's beautiful,
but it's also a mathematical.
[RON] Exactly.
[DORRICK] There were 2,500
enslaved Africans
that ran away
to join the pirates.
[shouting and grunting]
[AFUA] Here was a world
where they had an equal vote
and an equal say alongside
their white counterparts.
♪
Your life depends
on your skills,
your equipment
and your attitude.
Why are you the first
Black person I ever seen
play a banjo?
[RHIANNON]
It was known by everybody
as a Black instrument.
All those things have been
considered for so many years
to be sl*ve food,
right now,
everyone wants to celebrate it.
The memories and talents
of the enslaved Africans
who arrived here
helped to create the culture
of the new world
in a way we have
only just begun to understand.
♪
[chain scraping]
♪
This community was
started by the Africans
who were on
the last ill*gal sl*ve ship
to arrive in America,
"The Clotilde."
♪
Five years after
they were brought here,
the end of the Civil w*r
set them free
and they started the only
African-run town in America.
♪
Grammy award-winning musician,
Rhiannon Giddens and I
are here with Joe'l Billingsley
who brought us here
to see the monument
honoring her great-great-
grandfather, Kazoola,
one of the founders
of Africatown.
Kazoola happens to be the one
we know the most about.
Right.
Because he lived longer
and he shared his story
in a way that a lot of us
are learning about it now.
Wow.
My grandmother was born
in 18 something.
So her mother was a sl*ve.
So she could talk to me
about what that was.
That forms us in
interesting kinds of ways.
I mean, people always
talk about sl*very
like it's ancient history.
- Yeah.
- And it's not.
- Mm-mm
- And lasted a long time.
That. Yeah.
♪
In Africatown,
they grew their own food.
They established
their own community
based on what they did
in their homeland,
based on their traditions.
And so as you sort of move
through the decades,
you'll see that,
that community at one time,
when it was thriving,
had everything you needed.
♪
Didn't have to go anywhere,
to go to the grocery store,
see a doctor to be educated
or even have some entertainment.
[children shouting]
Everything you needed to live
was right here in the community.
And so when you talk to people,
they have so much pride
in what it used to be.
One time it was 12,000 people,
now it's 2000.
♪
Now we're trying
to revive Africatown.
♪
We have a place called Kazoola,
named after my great-great-
great-grandfather.
♪
[applause]
So why are you the first Black
person I ever seen play a banjo?
- That's the question.
- That is the question.
Because it was like,
I grew up seeing white people
play the banjo
and kind of going,
oh, that's cool,
but it's not part of my culture.
And then I found
there are some recordings
of the Black players
of this music.
And then as I started to dig
and, like, this used to be
a huge tradition.
It was an enormous
tradition all across,
not just the south,
but all across the country.
So I know the banjo
as this, metal strings,
metallic instrument
often played bluegrass style.
And then I learned
that the banjo
was an African American
instrument.
So it looked more like this.
It was known by everybody
as a Black instrument.
The emblem of being Black
was the banjo.
♪
Then you have a change
in the 1820s, and 30s,
and that's when
white folk started going.
"That's really cool.
I would like to play that."
So you have white entertainers
picking up the banjo.
The reason why we don't
talk about this shift
is because the white folks
playing this banjo
would have been
doing it in blackface.
This entire industry becomes
the blackface minstrel show,
is the most popular
form of entertainment
for, like, over 60 years.
Are you saying that what
we know as bluegrass today
actually began with
African Americans?
- 100% - Wow.
That's exactly
what we're saying.
Wow.
So are you saying
the original do-si-do
was an African American thing?
So, way back when you have
nothing but dances
as entertainment,
and you have plantations,
the musicians for these ba*ls
are African American.
Almost always.
And so they are forced
to learn European dances,
European music,
and then they are
themselves mixing it.
The thing that sets apart
American square dancing,
and country dances from
Europe is the calling.
You don't have callers.
And that's the thing
that you think.
Do-si-do, and round around,
and round you go ♪
and grab your partner
and up and down ♪
and swing that
Sally girl around. ♪
That stuff.
These are the innovations
that make this music
uniquely American
are African American.
♪
I got a home in Beulah Land,
outshine the sun ♪
I got a home in Beulah Land,
outshine the sun
I got a home in Beulah Land,
outshine the sun ♪
way beyond the blue.
Do it again now, come on!
Nights in the valley,
outshine the sun ♪
Nights in the valley,
outshine the sun
Nights in the valley,
outshine the sun ♪
Way beyond the blue!
Yeah!
♪
[cheers] [applause]
♪
We're here in Costa Rica,
because of a local group
of young divers
believes that
Africans contributed
to their history and culture.
This time we're not diving
to investigate the deaths
of those that never made it.
This time, we're
investigating one group
that may have survived.
♪
Before we do any diving,
Alannah, Kinga and I
are traveling through
Southern Costa Rica
on our way to a remote village,
several hours from the ocean
into the rainforest
of the Highlands.
♪
[KINGA] We're meeting members
of an indigenous group
called the Bribri.
They're considered to be
descendants of the Mayans,
but there might be
another side to that story.
♪
Their folklore
tells of sl*ve ships
that were wrecked
on the Costa Rican shoreline,
and of Africans who came ashore
to make a new life for
themselves in the forests.
♪
But their African ancestry
has always been considered
to be a mere tribal legend.
[people chatting]
Maria Suarez Toro has invited us
here to a Bribri feast
to see if we can
help this community
reclaim its lost history.
[speaking Spanish]
[speaking Spanish]
[speaking Spanish]
I would like to thank everyone
for inviting us here
to hear your story.
On some level I'm jealous
because my question is always
where do you come from?
And the answer to that
for me is always,
I don't know.
I don't have a connection
to my home or my people
so to be able to assist
in answering those questions
is a connection for me.
[applause]
I want to hear the local story.
What do locals say
about what happened
or those shipwrecks?
I can't really imagine.
You've just wrecked up
in the middle of nowhere.
You have no idea where you are.
You look to your left,
and it's just ocean.
And then you look to your right,
and you see dark forest.
♪
You have to make a choice.
Do you try and
go back to the wreck
or do you go into
the rainforest?
That must've been
absolutely terrifying.
That must've been
absolutely terrifying.
- The Bribri adopted them.
- Yeah.
And they went into
the rainforest,
and the Bribri adopted them.
That's an amazing,
an amazing story.
♪
From time to time,
these teenage divers
have seen artifacts off shore.
If we can connect them
to sl*ve ships,
we'll be able to back up
the legends with hard evidence.
♪
♪
When enslaved Africans
were brought to the Americas,
it wasn't just their bodies
that came here.
♪
They brought their memories
and ideas with them.
And there's evidence
for this transfer of culture
wherever Africans were taken.
♪
In Brazil,
tens of thousands of artifacts
have been discovered
at a site in Rio de Janeiro,
that once processed
up to 1,000,000
newly enslaved Africans.
♪
Archeologists here
have unearthed
some of the most
intimate objects
associated with the sl*ve trade.
This is a cowrie shell.
You see these
in the Gulf of Guinea
on the coast
of West and Central Africa.
So an enslaved African
would have brought this
with them right up to Brazil?
Yes.
- It's incredible.
- Yeah.
So this is a pipe
that an African
would have actually
brought with them and smoked.
Yeah.
There's something
quite intimate about that.
It's a very personal thing
that you carry with you
that you use for comfort.
Oh wow.
These are the kinds of beads
that African women wear-
Yes.
Right up till today,
you see them in countries
in West Africa.
I'm just imagining
a woman who was enslaved
clinging on to this vestige
of her dignity,
of her style, of her culture.
Is it a spiritual thing?
Does it bring good
luck or protection?
Protection, mostly perfections.
So that culture of wearing
these survives till today
in areas where there's a lot
of African heritage in Brazil?
Yes.
- It is a ring.
- Yep.
As a woman, I know that a ring
is a very precious thing,
no matter what it's made out of.
It's a very personal object.
Now looking at
all of these things,
I feel that when we talk
about the Africans
involved in the sl*ve trade,
they're often these nameless
faceless victims,
we don't have photos of them.
Their names were
changed or forgotten,
but these things
are so personal and intimate,
it really gives them a face.
Really brings them
to life as living people
who had their own style,
their habits and their culture.
♪
Most people in Costa Rica
don't take the folklore
about the Bribri's
ancestry very seriously,
but marine archeologist
Andreas Bloch does.
He thinks he might even
have identified
the exact ships
the legends are talking about.
He found the clues
in the archives
back home in Denmark.
♪
I didn't know Denmark was
involved in the sl*ve trade.
I didn't know how large
scale we were involved
in sl*ve trade.
I couldn't believe
when I started looking
at what had been written.
[rooster crowing]
Scholars suspect that two
specific sl*ve ships
made it to this coast.
I think they're right.
Looking at the material,
it's the first time
that Denmark
ever sends two ships
on the same sort of voyage.
They left Copenhagen and 1708,
"Christianus Quintus"
and "Fredericus Quartus."
They're going to
go to West Africa,
get sl*ves and then transport
them to the West Indies.
When they leave West Africa,
they are in
bad weather conditions,
but they're completely lost.
They're in open waters
for days and days and days.
And they end up about here.
- Ola.
- Hi, guys.
One of the reasons that we know
that the two ships could be here
is because in the archives,
the name Caretto is mentioned.
That was where they ended up,
but that doesn't exist.
So Caretto sounds
a lot like Cahuita.
And that is one of the reasons
that it could be here.
♪
From the historical records,
we know that the crew
of "The Fredericus"
and "The Christianus"
anchored the ships
close to shore
and then mutinied
against their captains.
[all shouting]
The conditions on board
were horrendous.
There was no food, no water,
and they were afraid to die.
[loud blast]
"The Fredericus" was set on fire
and the crew on
"The Christianus"
cut the anchor
and the ship ran aground.
♪
The objects on board
sank with the ships
and scattered across
the ocean floor.
♪
Most of the Africans
were set ashore.
♪
So these might be some
of the first Africans
coming to this area
and populating it.
[SALVADOR] So we have seen
a lot of artifacts out there.
How can we link all these
objects to that time period
in which the ship
actually shipwrecked here?
Hopefully we'll find
these clues that point to
these two wrecks
being "Christianus Quintus"
and "Fredericus Quartus."
This looks like a cargo list.
Is that correct?
Yeah, it is.
We can see there's loads
of different stuff here.
These are canvas
and there's clothes
and there's handguns
and there's timbers
and there's bottles
of wine and brandy.
What key pieces
of information and evidence
do you have in these records
that would connect them
to these two wrecks?
There's a lot of artifacts
that would survive.
The ceramics would survive,
the glass bottles
that are very specific
in this period would survive.
That's what we focus on.
Sounds like
we need to go diving.
♪
Africa's contribution
to world culture
has been pretty much ignored.
♪
I'm traveling to Lalibela
to see one of the wonders
of the world.
♪
It's an 800-year-old
Orthodox church
carved into the ground
out of a single piece of rock.
- It's quite magical.
- Absolutely.
♪
I'm meeting the world's leading
expert on African fractals.
So tell me about fractals.
What are fractals?
Fractals are just
the simplest thing in the world.
So it's simply a pattern
that repeats itself
at different scales.
So when you were looking
at a building like this,
you're saying the crosses on top
big, medium, small.
Right. You've got the cross
within cross within crosses
on the roof.
At the very center
there's a sort of X form.
You can think of that as
the self-reproducing heart
of the fractal,
where the thing emanates from.
If you look down
into the interior here,
you can see that the ripples
of that cross
continue from
the base of the church.
This is really a geometric theme
that occurs again
and again and again
in these African structures.
This is a different way
of looking at the world
than Westerners are used to.
Yes, that's right.
Nature has this
fractal geometry.
It has this self
similar geometry to it.
A tree for example,
you could have a branch
and then that branch
can have branches,
and those branches
can have branches.
Clouds, the clouds
are puffs of puffs.
You see that in mountains,
peaks of peaks of peaks.
- Snowflakes.
- Yes, exactly.
So you have this fractal
scaling in nature.
But I was looking at
these aerial photographs
of African villages,
thinking to myself,
dang, those look like fractals.
And that's when I realized
there must be something
culturally specific.
Some form of knowledge
that's going into these.
♪
Once you understand fractals,
and you can sort of read them,
that whole African indigenous
knowledge system opens up.
It's all over Africa.
You see them in Senegal,
Mali, Burkina Faso.
I've seen them in Ghana,
and Cameroon,
South Africa, East Tanzania,
just beautiful arrays
of these fractal algorithms.
In Addis,
there's a whole building
that's a fractal building.
It breathes.
It has a fractal
perforation on the skin.
And so they've massively cut
the need for air conditioning.
And it took the West a long time
to recognize these patterns.
It wasn't until 1977
that the first book
on fractals was published.
Africans have been using it
for centuries before then.
[singing in native language]
Did African fractals
have an impact on the world?
Yes.
Through a mathematically related
fortune telling system.
You're doing these random lines,
you're counting them off.
Drawing all these lines in sand.
If there's an even number,
you put down two strokes,
there's an odd number,
you put down one stroke.
And when I went to these folks
and asked them
if they could tell me
more about it they said,
"nah, this is a secret."
"I can't tell."
So I had to go through
the initiation ritual
to become an Abonnema
divination priest.
So what I found was
that back in the 12th century,
the system went up into Europe
and it was taken up
by the Alchemist.
Now, Leibniz,
the German mathematician,
when he invented
the binary code,
he was actually
studying the system.
And then it goes from
Leibniz to George Boole
creating Boolean algebra.
Boolean algebra gets
turned into hardware
by John von Neumann,
that's the birth
of the digital computer.
So all those little ones
and zeroes running around
in all of our digital circuits
really start with
that African origin.
There are two different
paths that you can take
in mathematics.
One is to think about how to
impose order from the top down.
One is think how to allow order
to emerge from the bottom up.
♪
One of my hopes is
that we can now recover
that process that was
interrupted by the sl*ve trade.
♪
♪
We're going to a dive site
where young Costa Ricans
have noticed many
different artifacts
that might shed light
on their history.
Okay.
♪
It's finally time to get
in the water and start hunting.
♪
We're going to
snorkel around first,
and do a survey of the area.
♪
I hope that it might help
to actually put together
like all the pieces of the
puzzle
to give the voice
to all those people.
It seems easy, but it's not.
This is a huge area to cover.
And over 300 years,
tides and storms
would have moved
the artifacts around.
♪
We can barely see
anything down here.
The visibility is so bad.
♪
Our job is to discover
if there are any remains
of the two Danish
sl*ve ships left behind.
♪
♪
♪
Woo! I found something.
♪
It's actually kind of hard
to see down here,
so I really didn't expect
to find anything at all.
What we found here
could be significant.
It looks like a period bottle.
It's brown in color.
It seems like it might have some
manufacturing defects on it,
but it's definitely not
a modern bottle.
And one discovery
leads to another.
♪
Woo!
- You got something?
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
♪
I've never really
seen so many artifacts
scattered around
in the same place.
Archeologically speaking,
this is a treasure trove, right.
There are items
all over the place.
So now's the time where
we need to get back in,
and start to document
and record these things.
Great job, guys.
♪
We don't yet know whether
these artifacts
are from the sl*ve ships
we're trying to identify.
But finding so many
so close together
is a giant step forward.
♪
I've got a body,
dark and strong. ♪
♪
I was young,
but not for long. ♪
♪
You took me to bed,
a little girl. ♪
♪
Left me in a woman's world. ♪
♪
I've done a lot of research
about time of sl*very.
And I was looking
at advertisements
where people were putting ads
in the paper to sell people.
And I saw one in particular,
it was for a young woman
who was for sale.
And at the end of the ad,
it said that she has with her
a nine-month-old baby
who was at
the purchaser's option.
And I don't know,
those words just really
Stuck with me
and thinking about
her in particular.
♪
I got a baby,
shall I keep him? ♪
♪
'Twill come a day
when I'll be weeping ♪
♪
But how can I
love him any less? ♪
♪
This little babe
upon my breast ♪
♪
You can take my body,
you can take my bones, ♪
you can take my blood,
but not my soul. ♪
You can take my body,
take my bones, ♪
you can take my blood,
but not my soul.
♪
You have this lineage here.
You have this connection
historically to that last ship
that was sent over here.
You know where you come from.
I don't know necessarily
where my family comes from
in the same way, but musically,
I know my lineage.
There's more than
one way to be connected
to who we are as a community.
And it's not just blood.
♪
In the gathering place
right behind Kazoola,
the Africatown community
has symbols
to commemorate their ancestors.
♪
Family and friends,
in the presence of God,
we come to pour our libation
in memory
of our faith and blood.
Growing up not far from here,
I would never have imagined
the traditional African ceremony
survived in Alabama.
When we pour libation,
we awaken the ancestors.
We talk to them.
We're going to pour forth
water to symbolize
the richness of our inheritance,
to symbolize
how nourishing is the earth
which has fed our lives
and all our previous
generations.
In response to each pouring,
I would like for
you to respond "ashe",
which means, "so be it."
Repeat after me, ashe.
Ashe.
♪
For many years, those Africans
from "The Clotilda"
held rituals and rites
and buried their kin
in this sacred space.
If you would, call out the names
of those who you have buried.
Kazoola.
Ashe.
- [man shouts name]
- Ashe.
- [woman shouts name]
- Ashe.
♪
Ashe.
[roars]
♪
We found many different
artifacts on our last dive,
but only Andreas
can tell us if they match
the two Danish sl*ve ships
that may have brought
the enslaved Africans over here.
♪
What do you think?
This plate, I'm quite sure
that that is after 1850.
So if it's from after 1710,
it's not related to the wrecks.
This is a broken
piece of ceramic.
What do you think about that?
Could be from this period?
It could also be 150,
180 years more recent.
Also, this is
an interesting bottle.
♪
It's difficult
to see in this photo,
but it looks like it has
the shape of this onion bottle.
That's one of the things that
we know from the cargo list
is that we have
66 bottles of wine.
And we also know that
we have French brandy.
So this particular piece
is quite promising then?
This is definitely
an interesting object.
There are artifacts here
from so many time periods
that we can't fully
identify any of them
with the Danish ships.
So Andreas wants to focus
on a kind of object
that could have
only come from Denmark.
So we know that there are all
these different types of cargo.
Handguns, and there's bottles
of wine and brandy.
But one thing that is
very specifically Danish
is the yellow brick.
The yellow brick?
We know from the archives
that they usually carried
sort of around 40,000 bricks.
What would make
these bricks Danish?
The size of the brick is
specifically very, very Danish.
- I did bring one.
- Can we see?
- Can we handle it?
- You can handle it.
This is a brick
found in Denmark,
and this size
is specifically Danish.
And it's very often
that they're yellow.
If you were to find bricks
of this size, this color,
could be more reddish,
then it would definitely
be a smoking g*n.
So there would be
a lot of bricks?
Probably not going to look
like a gigantic pile
of 40,000 bricks,
but it will be sort of
a substantial area of bricks.
So this is what
we're looking for, huh?
This will be our smoking g*n.
♪
[Narrator] Jamaica was
a plantation economy,
completely dependent
on hundreds of thousands
of enslaved Africans.
Remarkably, some of them
helped plant the first seeds
of democracy in the Americas.
♪
- Dorrick.
- Hey.
- Hi.
- Hello
So good to meet you.
Yes. Welcome.
Welcome to Port Royal.
Thank you.
And it all connects
to the original
Pirates of the Caribbean.
What kind of city
was here in the 1600s?
[indistinct chatter]
Port Royal was also
full of brothels.
It was known as
the wickedest city on earth.
But along with all that
drinking and debauchery,
came freedom
and the form of democracy
in which Africans
would play a part.
[laughter]
I heard there were records
showing pirate ships
whose crews were made up of
as much as 30% escaped Africans.
Yes.
The plantations were
complaining that they had
2,500 enslaved Africans
that ran away
to join the pirates.
[cannon blast]
When you're on board
these vessels,
every man was equal.
It was not question
of the color of your skin,
but it was the skills you have.
Pirates actually
gave opportunities?
Yes.
Because on board,
it was one man, one vote.
It is remarkable that at
a time when Africans
had been classified as subhuman,
here was a world
where they had an equal vote,
and an equal say alongside
their white counterparts.
So here is the remains
of Port Royal
that is now
completely submerged.
- Submerged underwater.
- Underwater.
I'm not a diver,
but I can snorkel.
So I joined the pros
to see what remains
of this underwater city.
Woo!
♪
You can still see
the foundations of buildings
and sometimes
17th century artifacts
like this onion bottle.
♪
[all laugh]
For about 20 years,
this submerged city
was a place where Black pirates
got to vote at sea and on land,
helping to plant
democratic ideas
in the new world.
♪
After talking with the locals,
we learned that there are
a few more locations further out
that could have
what we're looking for:
Evidence of Danish sl*ve ships.
In addition to those
yellow bricks,
we're also looking
for bigger things like cannons,
cannon ba*ls,
gold, and even ivory:
things which would have been
on the sl*ve ships from Africa.
Since we're headed further out
and going into deeper water,
snorkeling won't cut it.
We're going to dive.
So we need to talk dive plan
and a bit more about safety.
Salvador is going to be
the lead youth diver
in terms of safety.
I know it's not very deep,
we've had instructors
drown in 10 feet of water.
So be aware of how
much air you got
remaining in your tank.
Don't take no dive
for granted, okay?
Your life depends
on your skills,
your equipment
and your attitude.
Everybody comprende? - I do.
Si.
All right, let's do it.
Pool's open, let's go.
♪
♪
♪
♪
Very soon, we start to
come across shards of pottery
and a broken bottle,
little clues
that we hope will lead us
to something much bigger.
♪
Amazingly, Anderson swims
right into a cluster of cannons.
It's exactly
the kind of evidence
we've been searching for.
The more I saw,
the more there were.
So that was amazing.
They're beside each other,
they're across each other.
♪
There are some cannons
that just looked like coral.
They were so heavily encrusted,
the ocean's taking it back.
♪
But we know distinctively
that they're cannons.
You can see the bore
on some of them.
Some of the bores
are covered up.
♪
Cannons can give us
a lot of information.
We saw about eight,
10, maybe 12.
But if there's more,
it could tell us
the size of the vessel.
We know the size
of "The Fredericus"
and "The Christianus"
so, that would be
very insightful.
The cannons were amazing,
but there were still
more surprises to come.
♪
Even with 300 years of
coral growth,
there was no mistaking
the shape of our next discovery:
A fully intact anchor.
The shape of the anchor,
it's about three, four meters.
Come from a very large ship
just based on the size
of that anchor.
Two floats are there.
Each one is about a foot wide
and maybe another
foot and a half long.
So in beautiful shape.
There's some incredible stuff.
Some more evidence that
we can put in the mix
and try to figure out
what's going on at the site.
♪
The first time I saw the anchor,
for me is amazing.
I asked my grandfather
and my grandmother
and they both say yes,
I had an African ancestors,
and they both had
like connecting histories
with sl*ves.
To know that makes me feel that
I'm more connected
to my history.
♪
It's not in the history books.
It's not in the documents.
And if they find it themselves,
they begin asking
the right questions.
And the right question is,
where do I come from?
What has that meant in the life
of me and my community?
♪
Clearly the pieces of the puzzle
are falling into place.
But going off of what
Andreas has said,
we're continuing to follow
the yellow brick road.
♪
Jekyll Island,
Georgia, like Africatown,
is where one of the very last
sl*ve ships arrived,
bringing 409 people here
just seven years before
the end of the Civil w*r.
♪
Matthew Raiford studied
at some of the finest
international
schools of cuisine,
but he's returned here to honor
the cuisine and culture
that was created
by his ancestors.
[MATTHEW] Going to school,
I would say things like,
"Well, there's another way
to do that right there."
And folks would look at me like,
"what do you mean
it's another way?"
"We're learning French cuisine."
And I was like,
"Well, my grandmother
would do it like this."
Grandma's food tasted better.
And my grandma
food tasted better, right?
Raiford's come back
to his family farm
as an activist, farmer and chef,
celebrating African American
culture through food.
We live on our own family farm.
We've had that land since 1874
and we've always farmed it.
We're still farming it now.
And we're still using a lot
of the old ways to farm.
So I'm doing a little quick
little cooking demo
off of things that
we grow on the farm,
and then things that comes from
the Gullah Geechee culture.
♪
Gullah Geechee culture
is an African culture
that took root
on the sea islands,
along the Atlantic
coast of Georgia,
Florida, North
and South Carolina.
See, during the Civil w*r,
the white plantation owners
fled in fear of former sl*ves
seeking revenge.
I mean, the African population
left on its own.
It had to hone
its survival skills.
♪
How do you make a living when A,
you don't have an education,
you're stuck
on a barrier Island?
A lot of them mined
what they learned
and what they saw here
and figured out a way
to make it work.
- Did they?
- They did.
I'm living proof that they did,
and they did
a good job of it too.
So when they were
crossing the Atlantic,
when they were
shipping their cargo,
people, human beings,
those human beings
came with their culture?
Absolutely.
We brought our ways with us.
We brought our foods with us.
We bought our use of spices,
of salts, of cookery.
So when I think
about American food,
I think about
the African influences
on what comes to our plate,
but also in what we grow.
So a lot of what I thought
is Southern cooking
is really Gullah cooking:
A cuisine made up
of many ingredients
that Africans brought here,
including rice,
sweet peas and okra.
I just threw in a little
bit of red pepper in,
I want that red pepper
to still have
a little bit of bite to it.
So that's why I put it
in a little bit later.
You've been cooking
longer than that.
Well, I'm 76 years old.
I've been cooking
since I was eight.
- So.
- My mother and father,
they taught us
how to cook everything.
Is that where Matthew gets it?
Well, let me tell you
that boy right there,
he's a good cook.
I got to give him credit.
He is better than me.
I hate to say it.
Do you remember
a favorite dish from your mom?
You know, you ever eat
fried chicken gizzards?
Not fried chicken gizzards, no.
Yeah, people used to throw
them away years ago.
My mother used to
go to slaughterhouse,
they'd give them to her.
She bring them home,
clean them up.
- Was it good?
- Oh, yeah.
Put a little pepper
and salt in there.
I do it today.
♪
So this is our vegetarian
paella right here.
Have a little bit of
sweet potato leaves,
some of the Cherokee
purple tomatoes,
some sea island red peas.
Then, for those that aren't
completely vegetarian,
we have Sapelo clams.
Charlie Phillips
actually harvests
these clams right here.
He's an amazing fisherman.
You can actually name
the fisherman who got the clams.
Yes, I can name the fisherman.
I actually can
name the fisherman.
Those traditions came with us
to bring a piece of home.
We were known to sew,
literally braid,
and bring seeds in our hair.
It looked like an ornament.
It won't look like a seed.
So when I bring it over,
I got seed,
I got something from home.
When I get to
my new destination,
I plant in my new home to bring
a piece of home with me.
Every time I eat it,
I still remember home.
I still remember when my mama
used to make it for me
and my mama's mama
made it for her.
When I think of your ancestor
- Mm-hmm.
That was kidnapped,
trafficked from Africa,
the odds that his great-great-
great-great-great-grandchild
- Mm-hmm - would be here
celebrating the culture that
came on that ship.
It's a miracle.
It is a miracle.
It's impacted
on the world around you.
Definitely.
There's not a city
in the United States
that is not trying to have
the best Southern
restaurant ever.
And what are they serving?
Rice and peas, you know.
They're making biscuits,
cornbread,
they're frying gizzards, right?
So it was like, think about all
of those that things
have been considered
for so many years
to be poor people or sl*ve food,
right now,
everyone wants to celebrate it.
♪
I've come to Kingston,
Jamaica's capital city
to explore the connection
between this island's
history of enslavement
and one of its
greatest exports, reggae.
[Jamaican Patois singing ]
[Jamaican Patois singing ]
I was born here in Jamaica.
Right. I have history, ancestry
of a slaved trip, right?
And the ones who survived,
came here on this rock
and I am a product
of their survival.
There is something
that's innate in our people.
When we come together
we can defeat any oppression.
♪
It's what left of the culture
or the practice,
the traditions that
they are coming across.
We as a people, we just
have to pass it on to our arts.
♪
Reggae has gone
to all parts of the world
inspiring people,
because of the very soul
of the music,
and that soul has to do with
an entire history of hardship,
of oppression,
of rebellion, of enslavement.
♪
Life on the plantation
was about this oppression
of Black life.
The culture around
the plantation life
gets translated into what became
Jamaica's indigenous
musical genres.
♪
By the time we get to the 1930s,
people began listening
to Marcus Garvey's philosophy.
Please help me,
Freedom Fighter
Marcus Messiah Garvey ♪
Africa awaits her creators ♪
Bill with me!
How many more need to die
before we see the strategy? ♪
♪
Marcus Garvey with his ideas
about returning masses
of people to Africa:
That of course gets crystallized
in the Rastafari movement.
And they're the ones
that develop reggae?
That's right.
Many of the lyrics in reggae
songs still talk about
the history of sl*very,
about returning to Africa,
about undoing the chains
of mental sl*very.
Do you think that
this is a music form
that's keeping
that history alive
in the minds of Jamaicans
and the world?
The Rastafari people
are the memory
of the Jamaican people.
They have been the
ones to consistently
dip into that history
to show us who we are,
show us where we're coming from
and also showing us
where we're going.
♪
We need a shepherd
for the sheep, ♪
we're gonna lead the flock. ♪
Wolves and leopards
get defeat ♪
with these slingshots.
[indistinct singing]
United States of Africa,
I like the sound of that. ♪
Organized and centralized
modern day sl*very
[singing]
Modern day sl*ve
♪
Modern day sl*ve
♪
The cannons and the anchor
are important clues.
But to identify those Danish
ships once and for all,
we need to find yellow bricks,
a lot of them.
So we're heading
back out to search again.
♪
We have the opportunity
to be with these kids
and to help them
find their roots.
And that is absolutely
incredible.
♪
It's a huge search area,
but the location
of the cannons and the anchor
gives us hope that we're
on the right track.
Those bricks have got to be
hidden out here somewhere.
Through the sea grass
and shifting sands,
Kevin felt sure
he spotted something.
♪
♪
♪
At first glance,
it was hard to notice
if there was anything different
about the spot at all.
♪
But when we looked closer,
there was a strange pattern.
In that moment,
you realize that this cold case
that has been lying
on the bottom of the ocean
for hundreds of years
is now right in front
of you about to be solved
and you're there.
To see that,
to be in that moment,
that's a historical moment.
This huge hill of seabed
is actually
a huge pile of bricks.
According to the ship's
manifest,
there should be
40,000 of them down here.
♪
Andreas has been able
to get permission
to bring up one
of the bricks for testing.
♪
I have it. Got it here.
♪
Whoo.
- Oh, my God.
- Whoo.
So now they have an opportunity
to rediscover
their ties to their past
and rediscover their contact
or the connection
to the enslaved Africans
who were here.
[all cheering]
♪
This is about Cahuita.
This is about
the people of Cahuita.
This is about the bravery.
This is about
the people who are here
to find out the truth about
exactly who they are as a people
and where they came from
and how Africans
were very much a part
of creating this community.
♪
Welcome to our World! Where we serve you cookies to ensure you get the best viewing experience on our site.
Did you know that you can remove censorship board-wide, use our advanced search functions, be notified when new content is posted, join our memberships, set episodes to show in any order you want & more if you are logged into your account?
Register or sign in here: ucp.php?mode=register
Did you know that you can remove censorship board-wide, use our advanced search functions, be notified when new content is posted, join our memberships, set episodes to show in any order you want & more if you are logged into your account?
Register or sign in here: ucp.php?mode=register
01x04 - New World Cultures
Watch/Buy Amazon
Series explores various aspects of the history of sl*very in the United States, including the efforts of American actor Samuel L. Jackson to reconnect with his African heritage through DNA testing.
Series explores various aspects of the history of sl*very in the United States, including the efforts of American actor Samuel L. Jackson to reconnect with his African heritage through DNA testing.