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Slave Burial Marker

Slavery Chain Cross in the Potter's Field

Slave Burial Marker

Photo taken by Art Thomas at Memory Hill Cemetery, Milledgeville, GA.

This chain cross was made from chains during African American slavery. Along with being a burial marker, they are a sign, with a message, to the rest of the world.

They are one of the few sacred momentos in the Potter's Field, gone unnoticed, distinguishing African American slave graves from the graves of their oppressors. They serve as proof and as a vivid reminder of an era and people gone by, which endured hundreds of years of keeping each other in bondage. Did you know in order to keep a person in bondage or down the oppressor has to be there with them. I do not know quite how to describe the feeling I get from being so close to these chains, but to actually touch and feel them, gives me an inspiration like no other.

They remind me of the chains I am destined to wear - Respect, Human decency and Order. Their voices silienced, yet their pain and suffering lives on in me? We wish we had never done it, but my ancestors and your ancestors they knew not what they were doing. Please forgive them!

Slave graves are marked by chains consisting of one, two or three links. In their place, they are a testament to how plausible such a situation can easily exist today, whether you like it or not.

Today the chains may be viewed as a status symbol or communication to passerbys, of the amount of freedom achieved during a slave's life. However, in my mind, these chains represent a breed of people who are no strangers to oppression, exploitation, domination and exclusion through; Poverty, Illiteracy, Inequality, and Trickery. But They survived!

Need inspiration and self-help, then; you have come to the right place.

It is said, one link represents those born into slavery, two links for those born free but were later enslaved and died without regaining their freedom and three links for those whose entire lives were spent in slavery.

Three links are the only markers taking the shape of a cross. One and two links hang from an iron post which is somewhat shaped like an upside-down ( j ).

Southerners agree slavery was immoral, unethical and wants us to believe that the majority of Americans fail to realize slave owners comprised only 10% or less of the white population and 40% or more of the white population of the South in Lincoln's time were not even land owners, and most were more destitute than the Black slaves. But my question is, Does the means justify the end? What does that have to do with anything?

Below are a few words, I thought befitting this discovery.

Whenever we find ourselves alone inside duty,

----bound by moral chains we cannot explain,

----tied down in our freedom so as to be seen as too timid, too frigid, too afraid to pick up our own lives,

----when innocence and duty are seen as a weakness,

----when circumstance steals away our dreams and what we would want for ourselves we need to give to others, it is then, we are feeling what Jesus felt on Good Friday!!! Author unknown.

So African Americans have some idea of what it feels like to be crucified.

It is then we should think like the cat that got his tail cut-off. "It won't be long Now!"

Slavery might have been a blessing over the long term.

Art

Slaver chain cross on grave!

I freed thousands of slaves and could have freed thousands more had they known they were slaves. Harriet Tubman

Slavery, how did it happen?

(((your inner voice.com)))

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