For this year’s Black History Month I am reading Bouki Fait Gombo, which tells the story of enslaved people on the German Coast of Louisiana. This book is a page turner that I highly recommend, for its author, Ibrahima Seck, does more than account atrocities. While speaking of the hardships that Louisiana’s slave community endured, he depicts them as more than victims of a dehumanizing enterprise. Seck shows these men, women, and children as a bold community who resisted attempts to erase their past by creating powerful traditions. Traditions that their descendants, like me, continue to observe this very day. Traditions that are, in the words of Cornel West, buffers which ward off hopelessness.

While visiting the Whitney Plantation last summer, where I purchased Seck’s book in the gift shop, I thought about the buffers that have shielded me since childhood. One of them is the Easter Rock Vigil of Louisiana’s Black Baptist tradition, which is filled with echoes of Africa cleverly wrapped in Christian symbols. Slave owners had forbidden their captives to express things from their homeland, but they resisted through a table laden with cakes and bright laterns. They proclaimed who they were through a rhythmic shuffling with coloful banners, and reminded themselves of the days before they came to be called Negroes. These traditions said, “You were once Bambara, Mina, Igbo, Ewe, and so forth, and you worked fields that belonged to you and enjoyed the fruits of your labor.” Each practice also compelled them to resurrect their former selves, and with faith and works pursue the freedom they were robbed of as Africa was robbed of them.

Indeed, buffers like the Easter Rock Vigil have shielded me since childhood, and during Black History Month I join my people in celebrating their protection. This is a time of more than highlighting the most famous names among us, but a moment where we ward off hopelessness with heirlooms from generations past. Furthermore, we remember that we do not stand on our own, but are standing on the shoulders of men, women, and children whose voices continue to speak to us. We hear our forefathers when we cook family recipes and eat the foods that they created. We hear our foremothers when we sing and speak and recall the songs and proverbs that they composed. We hear them laugh in our laughter, weep in our weeping, pray in our praying, and groan in our groaning. And their voices pull us close to them and rescue us from hopelessness.

There was a saying among Black-Creole slaves, from whence Seck got the title of his book, that goes:

Bouki fait gombo, Lapin mangé li.

The goat makes gombo, but the rabbit eats it.

In other words, it is a warning to not forget where the things we enjoy come from, and during Black History Month my people heed these words while enjoying beloved traditions. These treasures that shield and raise us up were forged long before the plantations. They were forged in the land where we were once free, and before we were called Negroes. I hope that we will have the courage to pass them on like those before us, and that one day our voices will be heard as future generations stand on our shoulders. I also hope that in the present we would not, as Peter Gomes once said, “colonize” the past or put aside what we have become and are becoming as we remember who we once were.

Despite the things taken away by slavery and other ills, we have forged and are forging an identity on our own terms and in our own way. We have built and are building amazing things that have made and are making the world better, and we are answering our ancestors’ prayers which still echo on southern Plantations. At Whitney I saw this as my son walked past exhibits and looked upon statues of children, some possibly relatives, who once lived there. He displayed a happiness that they once dreamed of having, and watching this I said, “Amen”, and felt their joy and gratitude.