Reclaiming History: Memory beneath the Atlantic

It would have been made of wood — often live oak or white oak — procured along the eastern coast of the United States. Live oak was durable and iron-strong. It could hold up against the harsh winds of the Atlantic. Its closed pores resisted decay. The masts, most likely made of pine, stood tall and straight and swayed in the breeze and rocked in blowing winds. In a tangled array of rigging and sails, the masts would bend but not break.

Down below lay the cargo.

In the gigantic ships, they were as many as 600 strong. The smaller ones held a few hundred fewer. They lay on plank beds, as little as sixteen inches apart. Above them was a solid wall of wood, so close that they often couldn’t sit up. They lay shackled together, a coffle of confiscated bodies. Black bodies.

In the hull, it was dark as night. All the time. They lost the sense of time. Daytime, nighttime, it was all the same. For a while, they looked for a stream of light entering the darkness, any stalactite of light would do, a spear across a frightened face, a candle-like spot on a swollen hand.

The inner glint had long disappeared.

There came the sounds of constant bodily adjustments, the pulling of chains, the yank of limbs, raw fingernails scratched across wood. Faces slumped against legs and arms and stomachs and feet, their ankles fettered together. Then there were the voices. The steady stream of death-defying misery: moans, wails, whines, sobs. Throughout it all was the water, continuously splashing against the ship, incessantly rocking them, like an enormous cradle of death. Still, they did not give up.

The Middle Passage.

The Atlantic Ocean covers 20% of the Earth’s surface. Imagine, if you will, thousands of ships, for nearly 400 years, crisscrossing this vast body of water, carrying stolen human beings from West Africa to the Americas and to Europe. Up to 12 million of them. Submerged in the tanks of ships designed specifically for the movement of enslaved people, millions did not survive the trips, dying enroute.

These slave voyages landed in ports far and wide: Liverpool, England; Nantes, France; Lisbon, Portugal; Havana, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Charleston, South Carolina; Cuba and so many others. The last known slave ship docking in the United States was in Mobile, Alabama, around 1860, carrying some 110 African men, women, and children. It was an “illegal” voyage, as Congress had passed a law prohibiting the importation of enslaved people. The ship was subsequently burned in the bay to destroy the evidence.

And still there is the water.

Water can bring you home, but it can also take you away. It doesn’t want to remain still.

It can’t. There is, too, the inland waterways: streams and bays and, especially, the wide flowing rivers: the Paraiba do Sul, Amazon, Mississippi, Thames, Loire, Mersey. Many of these rivers flowed from ports where enslaved Africans were loaded onto barge-like, flatbed vessels, unceremoniously transported inland to work in mines and cotton and sugar plantations.

Water is life. But you can also die in it.

Photo credit Anna Lee

It is in the context of water's dualistic nature that Stephen L. Hayes, Esbenshade assistant professor of the practice of art, and Javier Wallace, instructor in the education program, have partnered to create the project “Reclaiming the Current.” This project aims to identify not only the many bodies of water for which the African diaspora were transported, but to lay claim to the truth for which the currents brought them.

Hayes, a sculpture artist, began his long-term alliance with water while in residence at Black Rock Senegal, a multi-disciplinary artist in residence program located in Dakar, Senegal. It was there that Hayes created “bio-art” and where he envisioned broadening his “collaboration with water” through an engagement with the places tied to the transatlantic slave trade.

Later, he met with Wallace in Barbados, where the project took its first step. On June 12, 2025, the first iteration was in memory of Barbadians’ failed attempt to install King Cuffee in opposition to British rule. Wallace's role, as a historian, in the collaboration is to “ensure each installation is rooted in meticulous historical research.”

Both Hayes and Wallace presented an overview of the project at Smith Warehouse on Feb. 23. Hayes intends to move the needle toward recognition of the transatlantic slave trade, so that this history isn’t erased. He plans to create busts, using actual living descendants of Africans, and submerge them in waters throughout the world. To that end, the first such sculpture was created in Speightstown, Barbados.

Photo credit Anna Lee

With the help of Speightstownians, including the hands of many children, two sculptures were submerged in 22 feet of seawater. There, the sculptures will stay for exactly one year, pointed in honor toward Africa. They will then be raised. Hayes, in his presentation, spoke about the importance of the art, the vitality of the waters and allowing the sea to do as it will to the sculptures.

“It’s a living memorial,” Hayes said. “The art is transformed by water.”

"It's a living memorial," Hayes said. "The art is transformed by water."

It is in the transformation, therefore, that “Reclaiming the Current” not only asserts its claim on the waters that brought Africans forcibly away from their homes, but demands a right to history itself. You can see this claim to history on the face of the bust that Hayes and Dr. Wallace brought to the presentation.

The bust, an example of the work Hayes creates, stood on a pedestal. It had been in the waters along the coast of Senegal. At first glance, the young African woman appears colorless. There is a classical look to the sculpture. But if you take a closer inspection and walk around the bust, the viewer notices multiple colors. There are specks of blue, gray-blue, brown and reddish hues. Even off-white. It is dotted with markings and discolorations. The sea has absorbed it. The sea has become a part of the bust, and it is a part of the sea. They are one.

Throughout the project, after the busts have been raised from the sea, one will be left with the host country, and the other will return to the United States. Eventually, after a number of years, Hayes and Wallace plan to exhibit them.

The story is clear. The transatlantic slave trade isn’t just the story of Black people. It is also the story of white people. It’s the story of all of us.

As for “Reclaiming the Current,” says Wallace, “I am hopeful our contribution will be tied to the public memorization of this travesty in our history that centers the people who endured and their descendants who lived to talk about them.”

To those many beautiful memorials that have been written about Randall over the past several months, we wanted to add a short reflection of our own, particularly as a testimony to his students. Even when he wasn't in the room with them, he had them very much in mind and held them in great respect.

Learn more about the "Reclaiming the Current" project on the project website.