Leaving a reclaimed plantation on Juneteenth
It's Juneteenth and I'm a Black man freely leaving a reclaimed plantation.
I never thought for any reason I would ever find myself in South Carolina. I don't particularly love visiting “the South”, the areas of the U.S. that at one point seceded to keep slavery, for me sometimes it is a little like visiting Europe. When I think about those places, I just keep remembering that there's too much of that wealth and opulence that was borne on the forced enslavement of Black people, and other people of Color, people who look like me. But, like Europe, I do visit and often I learn something while there that makes me feel connected to ‘my people,’ aka the African Diaspora.
Mepkin Abbey was the destination in South Carolina that I visited. It is where my New Monastic Community, the Community of Incarnation, chose to go for our inaugural retreat as a growing community. The Community, part of the Center for Spiritual Imagination, seeks to connect folks who are drawn to a contemplative life that is justice oriented. It is a blessing that I am a part of the community.
I've heard of Mepkin Abbey before from visitors to a monastery I frequent, and tried to join, Holy Cross Monastery in West Park, NY. I heard that Mepkin was a wonderful place. No one talks about its history, they may not know it, but they say it's a nice place and a beautiful monastery. It is a part of the Trappist order from whence the most renowned monastic writer of the US Thomas Merton came.
Upon arriving at Mepkin (a Native American word that means serene) I was taken aback by its entrance. The entrance is scenic, with Oak Trees, laden with Spanish Moss, lining the walkway into the Guest House and the Visitor’s Center. While I was walking in with my friend and community member, I started to think that this resembled something that I had seen before in movies, which was confirmed when she mentioned that this monastery is now in what was at one time a plantation.
That fact didn't hit me at first, I mean it was South Carolina so it is not something I didn't expect. And so I just kept on going about my business, meeting the members of the community and really enjoying my time. It was once I got to my room that I looked at the map of the grounds of the monastery and saw a path to the African American Cemetery.
Now the grounds of the Monastery started to take a different meaning. Could this be a ground where people who were enslaved were buried? How many people, named and unnamed, would there be? I intended to go there during our free time the next day, after the midday office.
Getting to the Cemetery was interesting. The path to the Cemetery wasn't clearly labeled, and upon asking a friendly groundskeeper for directions he wanted to make sure I had a phone in case I got lost, some water because the walk was long and it was over 100 out, and recommended I not go alone because of possible snakes in the area. The warning seemed somewhat eerie. Why did I need all of these things? I’m just going to see a cemetery… but I heeded his warning and, aside from going alone, returned to grab my cell phone and a bottle of water.
The walk to the site was a very contemplative walk, I prayed the Jesus Prayer while walking and just enjoyed the time of silence in nature. After seeing a small snake slither by, I took a branch and made a walking stick, just in case.
Once I arrived at the Cemetery, there was a sacred feel to the space. The Cemetery, surrounded by trees, had just four headstones therein for Frank Haig, Mariah Richerson, Rosa Lee Green, and Ethel Lee Segar. I sat there praying and meditating about what their stories meant and what it means for me to be here, amongst some of my ancestors. Based on the dates on the headstones, none of them were enslaved people, a relief. Ethel Lee died very young, 6 years old, Rosa Lee when she was a little over 20 years old, Mariah died when she was close to my age, Frank had lived the longest, he died in his 40’s. Before I left, I made a make-shift cross out of tree branches and palm leaves and prayed for them and all of those others not named.
I wanted to know more, I wanted to read their stories and also learn more and more about the site. What kind of plantation was it? How many people were enslaved here? As the questions came on, from me and my community members about the history of the place, walking in and around the Abbey started to take on a different meaning.
See, here I was a guest at this monastery, surely not the first Black guest and certainly not its last, walking around a place where at one point people who looked like me were unable to walk freely. I was in and out of the grounds, just taking them in and walking around and I couldn't shake that thought, I am walking freely where my people weren't able to before. How should that make me feel? What if, while I walked the grounds, I somehow traversed back in time, ala Edana Franklin, the main character in Octavia Butler’s Kindred, and became enslaved in this place?
My mind started to really think about that and then it was Sunday, Juneteenth.
Juneteenth, perfectly defined by my friend Galvin as “the day commemorating the day where all enslaved Black people in the United States were given the news that they were free,” felt like a unique day here. Here I was, a Black man walking around a former plantation now commemorating the announcement of freedom for Black people.
I have, for over a decade now, observed Juneteenth in some private way. Sometimes through listening to special Juneteenth albums, or reading something on Juneteenth, sometimes by mentioning to people I knew that Afro-Mexicans have been celebrating Juneteenth as well, or sometimes by going to events in Brooklyn honoring Juneteenth (now that it is an official federal holiday there are more public ways to observe it).
But as the day went on, and the Monk’s at Mepkin Abbey acknowledged the grounds history during a morning prayer, I started to really think of the meaning of me being here on this day. What does it mean for me to be here? Sure, I am AfroColombian, AfroLatino, not African American, but the day still has meaning for me, still resonates. The recognition of freedom for any person of African Descent anywhere in the world always carries meaning for me.
It was at the end of Eucharist, when one of the monks came to speak to us, where we asked about the history of the Cemetery and if there was record of the people named in the Cemetery. He pointed us to a book, published by the monks at Mepkin, that detailed the stories that could be recovered of the people in the Cemetery, but also contained the gruesome history of this land. He informed us that Mepkin was a large plantation, where people were bought and sold and that the monks have been in prayer about how to make a reclamation for this place.
Reading the book he lent us is when it all really hit me.
It’s Juneteenth and I am a Black man walking around freely in areas where Black people before me were, as detailed by the book The Other Side of Mepkin, bought, traded, sold, beaten, maimed, and possibly killed… That there were more Black people buried here, more than just the four that had headstones, many in unmarked sites and graves… It started to just really get to me. I started to feel connected, even more so to all of the named and unnamed. I had felt connections like this before:
At drum circles
At an Ocha birthday
At a Pentecostal church
At AfroColombian funeral processions
At places of historical importance for Black people
Maybe it's the African part of my lineage that somehow connects me to the people of the continent once known to some locals as Alkebulan, and all of the Diaspora. Maybe it's the Spirit, and the way that prayer and contemplation can connect us to things beyond ourselves… Likely, both things tether me to this place and to the people here, past present and future.
But what does it all mean? I don't quite know what it means. I don't know exactly what I am supposed to make of it. I just know that this had meaning, a full meaning that maybe will be unlocked much later in time but it did remind of the importance of freedom and the legacy of it.
Being at Mepkin Abbey during Juneteenth with my community, reading Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practices of the Black Church by Barbara A. Holmes, reading my friend Galvin Mathis’s Juneteenth message of hope to Metro Hope Church, remembering my father, Floresmiro Perea Renteria, as it was also Father’s Day, celebrating the election of Francia Marquez, Colombia’s first Black Vice-President; all keep reminding me that freedom is more than just a singular moment in time, it is a continued legacy, even if imperfect, that connects Black people all over the world and it is that legacy that allows me to be able to reclaim spaces for my ancestors, to make contemplation a genuine AfroLatino religious experience, and to invite others to think about freedom in different ways.
