Читать книгу Hope’s Daughters - R. Wayne Willis - Страница 27

In 1986, The United Church of Canada formally apologized to Canada’s aborigines for all the wrongs the church inflicted on them hundreds of years earlier. The United States Senate in 2009 officially apologized for slavery. The apology came 146 years after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

I am trying to understand what good it does to apologize for something someone else did generations ago. Could it be mainly to make ourselves feel and look good for not having done what they did? Let me give it a try.

My grandfather’s grandfather, Joseph Willis, in his Tennessee will dated May 9, 1843, bequeathed to his wife “all the land belonging to me with all my negroes, horses, cattle, hogs, sheep, and farming utensils.”

The 1810 census showed that Joseph’s father, Peter Willis, had thirteen slaves. The slaves were listed right next to “100 yards of homespun fabric made annually by the family (value $50).” In the 1820 census, Peter’s plantation was up to sixteen slaves.

In 1833, a slave belonging to Peter’s neighbor was hanged. Many slaveholders in the area, including Peter Willis, signed a petition requesting the government to reimburse Peter’s neighbor for the value of this slave. The petition does not identify the slave’s crime or name or estimated monetary value.

There! I did it. I feel better now, having apologized for the sins of my fathers.

Not really. I assume that my ancestors were just doing what those in their time and culture did, possibly never questioning whether regarding another human being as a piece of property—like a hog or a piece of fabric—was right or wrong.

There is one thing more important than apologizing for the actions of our ancestors. It should move us to ask which people our descendants will wonder how we, in our time and culture, could so blindly and ignorantly mistreat.