An Annapolis alderman traveled 4,000 miles to Africa only to discover a centuries-old advertisement announcing a slave ship?s arrival to his city.
“I was dumbfounded,” said Alderman Sam Shropshire, who visited Banjul in The Gambia, Annapolis? sister city, last year.
“I knew we needed to do something to apologize for city government?s involvement in slavery because we enabled it.”
On display at a Gambian museum, the Sept. 29, 1767, clipping from the Annapolis Capital-Gazette newspaper heralds the arrival of “a cargo of choice healthy slaves” from The Gambia on the Lord Ligonier, the very ship that the late “Roots” author Alex Haley claimed carried his ancestor, Kunta Kinte.
The discovery inspired Shropshire to ask the city to publicly repent.
Virginia became the first state in the nation last month to apologize for slavery and Jim Crow laws.
Maryland, Georgia, Missouri and the federal government are considering doing the same.
A descendant of slave owners, Shropshire witnessed the everyday injustices of a segregated Georgia and later met people who he believes are descendants of slaves his family owned: black Shropshires from Baltimore with Georgian origins.
“This is personal,” said Shropshire, who represents Ward 7. “But it?s also my concern that the city apologize for its part. We were neck-deep in the economics of slavery.”
Shropshire said he expects that his resolution, which calls for “reconciliation among all Annapolitans,” will pass at Monday?s council meeting.
“Millions of Africans became involuntary immigrants to the New World, and for nearly 200 years, the tobacco industry fueled the demand for slave labor in Annapolis and the surrounding area with the influx of thousands of enslaved African men, women and children,” according to the resolution.
“The story of the enslavement of Africans and their descendants, the human carnage, and the dehumanizing atrocities committed during slavery should not be purged from our history or discounted … now at this present time and on the eve of celebrating 300 years of our status as a royally chartered city, Annapolis acknowledged and atoned for its pivotal role in the slavery of Africans.”
The measure also calls for the creation of a Week of Atonement from Sept. 24-30 ? to coincide with the week the Lord Ligonier docked ? to encourage schools and civic organizations to discuss Annapolis? involvement in the slave trade and ask religious leaders to focus their sermons and prayers on “forgiveness and racial reconciliation.”
If you go
» What: Annapolis City Council votes on slavery apology
» When: 7:30 p.m. Monday
» Where: City Council Chambers, 160 Duke of Gloucester St.
