Owning the Aftermath: Preserving the Buildings & Spaces Our Enslaved Ancestors Built

Caribbean wide and across the African diaspora, the tangible efforts of enslaved people still remain. Their blood, sweat, and tears, literally, is within the materiality of many of these places that stand in our city centers. So often they are regarded as elitist reminders of colonialism, but truly, above all, they are monuments to the resilience of our people. It was our people who built these roads, structures, fortresses, … it is their legacy. And, it is time we claim their legacy completely and intentionally.

Some might say preserving these places and spaces is about venerating our ancestors’ oppressors, but its more about setting the story straight. It is about telling the truth, honoring their legacy, their efforts, and restoring ownership of narratives that have been biased or fabricated. These are more than mortar and bricks and rocks. They once bore witness to the suffering, resistance, and also the care put into forming them. The cobblestones you walk down were once laid down brick by brick by your ancestors, the rocks in the wall you pass by on your way to your favorite restaurant downtown, were carefully lifted and placed there with calculative thought as to how to best balance the load and stabilize the weight. The giant fortresses took years upon years to finalize, each piece sensibly thought out. 

So much of our ancestors’ history from the motherland was taken from us, erased, and purposefully never recorded. However, these places and spaces remain. They are the mark of those who were denied any rights, but they did one better and left their legacy in something longstanding, stone-wood-iron. These spaces and places are our inheritance from our ancestors. Saving these places and safeguarding their stories is a way we can honor their legacy. We can remember them as we pass by, we can thank them for their gifts instead of taking them for granted. They can instill pride in all of us, of their amazing work and their resilience. 

Preservation can become a way to heal. Through truthful interpretations, we can begin to counterbalance the unjust narratives that have been too loud and in the forefront for too long. Our cultural pride and identity rely on the ownership and caretaking of these places. It offers space for community to rise up and share in the narrative that they have been silenced. These spaces can shift – their energies, their uses, and also how we show up to utilize them. If we realize there’s a greater connection to these spaces, I think we would care for them better, with more respect and regard. I think also that they would get more use and more community support. 

Overdevelopment and neglect often prey on some of these places. Old sugar mills and plantations turn into wedding venues, with zero regard for the history, story, or energy of the place. The lives and legacy of people completely erased. No mention or education to what actually occurred at these sites. On the other side of it, gentrification can occur in overdevelopment, pricing families out of generational housing, clearing historic neighborhoods into posh chain coffee shops with no ties to local heritage and culture. In some places, historians, activists, community members are joining together to reclaim these spaces from getting destroyed, gentrified, or usurped by imminent domain. Communities in turn are able to take ownership of their neighborhoods, their histories, and save these spaces with dignity, purpose, and pride.

 So many times, buildings are bought up by rich corporations, or people with no ties to place or community, they are then locked up till they are falling apart, then deemed unworthy an eyesore, they are either taken out by a hurricane, flooding, or bulldozed and replaced with something else with zero connection. We cannot allow these things to happen. We must retain ownership, caretaking, all of it. We are the ones with connection to these places. We are the ones whose ancestors built these places. To honor them we must do more, in advocating for stricter laws safeguarding ownership for local communities. 

Owning the aftermath of slavery means retaining the authentic, genuine preservation of these places. It means not letting them be lost, commercialized, or gutted. It means preserving and restoring the spaces for future generations to learn their legacies and history, highlighting the spaces, learning the stories of these spaces, sharing their stories with others, and doing whatever is needed to keep them alive, in use, and appreciated.

This work is for everybody, not just historians or preservationists. We all have a part to play. Everybody has power and the ability to create change. Visit them, support communities doing the work to preserve them, ask questions at historic sites, share stories, … all of these actions can have a greater ripple effect. When we take ownership of these places and spaces that our ancestors crafted, we are speaking truth back into existence, restoring our pride and connection, and putting our names back into history.