Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about
the September 29, 2004 Slavery Reconciliation Walk Thru Annapolis

Questions Directed to the Kunta Kinte-Alex Haley Foundation:

What is the Lifeline Expedition?
Lifeline Expedition is a project which is based in London, England. Since year 2000, Lifeline volunteers have been walking in various cities throughout England, France, Spain, and Portugal to encourage awareness of the impact and legacy of the slave trade on these countries that were so much a part of it. In 2004, the group plans to visit the United States, in 2005, Holland and the Caribbean, in 2006, West Africa, and in 2007 back to England where the group will commemorated the 200th anniversary of England outlawing the slave trade. Annapolis is the first stop of Lifeline's United States tour, where the participants will do their Slavery Reconciliation walk in cooperation with the local Kunta Kinte-Alex Haley Foundation and many other community organizations.

Who are the Lifeline walkers?
The Lifeline walkers are people from various European and African countries who are joined by nationals in the countries they visit. During a walk,local people who identify with the goals of the Walk often accompany them.

Why start the United States tour in Annapolis?
Annapolis is a particularly rich location for a discussion of the impact of slavery in America. It is the arrival port of the internationally known enslaved African Kunta Kinte, Alex Haley's ancestor whom he wrote about in the story of his family, Roots. The book and its subsequent television productions had tremendous impact on the American culture and other cultures worldwide. Haley encouraged people to learn about and take pride in their own family beginnings and challenges over time. A Memorial in tribute to Kunta Kinte and Alex Haley in the heart of Annapolis, at her City dock, is seen by some one million people per year. Furthermore, in Annapolis, there are other historical sites and monuments to individuals who symbolize significant turning points in the history of this nation's African American population. Because of the notoriety of Kunta Kinte and his arrival in Annapolis, the city has become the symbolic place of beginning for Africans in America, much like Ellis Island is for Europeans in America.

What is the purpose of having white people in the yokes and chains?
The act represents a confession of guilt and penitence, without which there can be little commitment to correcting the wrong. Also, the act of walking in the yokes and chains is the Lifeline Expedition's chosen symbol for apology and dramatizes how slavery and its social legacy of racism and fear enslave both blacks and whites. While no one of this generation in America is a slaveholder, we are guilty of racism, whether by commission or omission, turning a blind eye to it, or not working to combat it.

Whites walking in the slave yokes attract attention, It is the first thing that people seize upon when talking about the Lifeline Expedition. It stirs discussion and emotions. The image of whites walking in chains has remained a theme of Lifeline project presentations since their beginning some years ago.

What will blacks be doing on the walk?
Black people are primarily walking in attitudes of forgiveness. Penitence and forgiveness are two steps on the road to reconciliation and healing.

Questions Directed to the Lifeline Expedition:

Surely Africans should also be walking in chains as well as whites since they were involved in the slave trade?

With regard to African involvement in the slave trade, it is of course true that they were involved and indeed the Africans on our Lifeline Expedition always want to express apology for that to slave descendants. However, we believe that Europeans have a greater responsibility. There were Africans who sought to oppose the slave trade. For example Tomba in the Gambia region urged other Africans not to sell fellow Africans to the slave traders. His opposition soon alerted the Europeans and he was quickly defeated and his followers killed or taken into slavery themselves. The message was clear for Africans. "You must do it our way or you are finished."

The moral dilemma for an African chief was that if he wanted his nation to continue to exist, he was going to need to obtain guns. Without guns, his tribe would inevitably be enslaved. The only way to obtain the guns necessary for his nation's survival was to trade them for slaves. In other words African chiefs were forced into a choice -- either get involved in the slave trade or accept the annihilation of your tribe.

We are not in principle averse to Africans walking in the chains with us, but believe that it is important that is should at least be a majority of white people in the coffle.

What about the white slave trade?
The trade in white slaves firstly from Europe to North American and the Middle East and secondly from Europe to the colonies and Barbados is also an issue that should be acknowledged and dealt with, but it has to be admitted that through considerable, it was nothing like the scale of the Atlantic slave trace. Some historians estimate that is cost five dead Africans to land one slave alive in the Americans -- that was not the case with the European slaves. Also during the main period of the slave trade, the population of Europe grew from 100 million to 274 million, while that of African actually shrank from 100 million to 98 million. The economic and social consequences of the slave trade were of an altogether different degree for Europe and for Africa.

Your approach will only perpetuate a victim mentality and anger amongst African Americans.
We have found that in Europe our action has had the opposite effect. What we do does not provide excuses for the victim mentality. Africans of the Diaspora who have joined the Lifeline Expedition have admitted that they had a negative attitude to white people because of slavery and its legacy, but anger and bitterness is a wrong response to that situation. Invariably their participation has diffused anger and empowered people to live with a new sense of our common humanity.

Is it really valid to apologize for the sins of our forefathers?
Our Western culture is very individualistic and we tend only to take responsibility for our own personal faults. However, most other cultures in the world feel much more connected with their communities both in the present and the past. I (David Pott, President) believe that I am not personally guilty of course with regard to the slave trade, but I don believe I am in some sense accountable as an English person, who I know has forbears who took part in the exploitation of Africa. In the same way that I live with thankfulness for many good things that I inherit here in England because of the good work done by my forbears, I think that I should also take on board the fact that some things I have inherited (such as the poverty of African compared with Europe and the United States) is a negative inheritance that needs dealing with.

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