Discovering and Revealing the African Diaspora

Reflecting on the images I selected from my stacks of stills and miles of video to share on this website, I realized that they portray the evolution of my experiences in and research about the Global African Diaspora. They visualize when, where, and how I began, continued, and continue to discover this Diaspora for myself and record my learnings to share with others.

After initially lamenting that some of these images are old, from a previous century, I came to my senses and rejoiced that some images are indeed from a previous century. As such, they do two things. First, they record how things were, so contribute to a timeline of African Diasporan evolution. They also bear witness to my process of discovery, initially with no thoughts of where the cumulative effects of what I was learning would lead.

I had no idea that they would ultimately lead to my understanding that the African Diaspora is indeed global and that communities of this Diaspora share commonalities that they usually have no idea they share. They also continue to have links with their continent of origin that they don’t usually know they have—ancestral connections often integral to revealing what they share.

The image above, looking down from Brazil’s Quilombo of Palmares, the 17th-century Maroon community that has become symbolic for Afro-Brazilians of their ancestors’ resistance to enslavement and insistence upon regaining freedom, hints at more revelations about the Global African Diaspora.