The water gave them a taste of freedom, only for a moment. These enslaved people didn’t labor on plantations but instead deep beneath the ocean’s surface, and there was nothing easy or breezy about it.
Many believe that enslavement happened only through agricultural bondage on plantation fields where our people cultivated tobacco, sugar, rice, and cotton. But there was another side of slavery deep beneath the surface.
Enslaved people who were strong swimmers became divers who plunged up to 90 feet to harvest pearls, salvage cargoes from shipwrecks, and clear riverbeds, often resulting in burst eardrums.
After their labor, many slipped into the cool waters for relaxing evening swims, and just for a moment, their buoyancy became a portal for imagining what freedom felt like. Although divers experienced more autonomy than field workers, with some purchasing their freedom from profit sharings, the job wasn’t any less brutal.
Divers lived a life of privileged exploitation. Their advanced skills meant more money for greedy oppressors and significant harm caused to their bodies from the life-threatening aquatic labor.
There is nothing under the sun that our people haven’t and can’t do. We can never let anyone tell us who we are, who we’ve been, or where we’re going – only we have the power to do that.
Let’s divest from giving anti-Blackness access to our skills and instead use Black brilliance to help ourselves.