VOA常速英语2020--1619年的回声（在线收听）

The ship came up the Chesapeake Bay, and it landed here at Point Comfort in the latter part of August of 1619, and on this ship were 20 and odd Africans.The first Africans who were brought here were destined for a life of servitude.They had to work the plantations from sunup to sunset, the tobacco fields, the corn fields.They had to work these fields with no hope of ever being free.It makes me feel goosebumps and a sad nostalgia.I just can imagine the sailing into the bay of these chained individuals in a strange land, not knowing anything about where they were.Being taken off the vessel and told you’re going to work here, you’re going to live here.These were free people who had been kidnapped as free people and sold into slavery.Angela, interestingly, is the only African whose name was actually written in the records in 1,620, that survived.Now, there may have been other names mentioned, but those records did not survive.With Angela, we can tell the much broader story of slavery and the beginnings of slavery in our country,and racism which really went hand in hand with slavery.And at the same time, give Angela, through our imagination, some sense of identity, some sense of dignity.They did most of the work, and a number of them obviously died in the process,but we owe a debt to those Africans, because they were the foundation of the economic development, of what became the United States of America.

这艘船驶上切萨皮克湾，并于1619年8月下旬停靠在康福特港，船上有20多个非洲人。第一批被带到这里的非洲人注定要过上被奴役的生活。他们不得不从日出而作，日落而息，在烟草田和玉米地里劳作。他们必须在这些田地上耕耘，不可能获得自由。这让我觉得很恶心，也很悲伤。我能想象他们戴着镣铐被运往这个海湾，然后登上了一片陌生的土地，不知道自己身处哪里。被带离船上后，就会有人告知你要在这里劳作，要定居在这里。他们都是自由人，被绑架的自由人，然后被卖为奴隶。有趣的是，在1620年，“安吉拉”是唯一一个记录在案并保存下来的非洲人的名字。当时可能还记录了其他人的名字，但都没有留存下来。与安吉拉一起，我们可以讲述更广泛的关于奴隶制的故事，我们国家奴隶制的起源，以及与奴隶制相伴而生的种族主义。同时通过我们的想象，还可以给安吉拉一些认同感和尊严感。他们承担了大部分的劳作，显然，很多人都死于劳作，我们对那些非洲人有所亏欠，因为他们是经济发展的基础，也造就了美利坚合众国。

So, as early as 1650, Newport had a burial place where anyone,regardless of race or class or ethnicity, could be buried.By 1705, the northwest section of this burying ground, we are starting to see enslaved Africans buried there.And over the next 100 years, hundreds and hundreds of markers and hundreds and hundreds of burials are being made at that burying ground.We believe there were at least 3,000 burials during the life cycle of that burying ground.My own family is buried here,but more importantly, it's a sense of African identity.I mean, this is a place where men and women of African descent actually lived in this community and were buried here.And it gives me a direct connectivity to the history of my own community.So, one of the great ironies of Rhode Island is the fact that we are founded under religious freedom,but we soon enter and dominate the enslavement of human beings in the African slave trade.The church, particularly in Rhode Island, profited directly from the slave trade.But in a more direct way, we owned slaves. We had clergy who owned slaves.We had slaves who were owned by the missionary organizations that were creating by the Anglican churches here in the United States.Between 1705 and 1805,there are at least 900 documented slave ships that begin in Rhode Island and eventually end from West Africa,through the West Indies, and back to Rhode Island.

所以，早在1650年，纽波特有一个墓地，不分种族、阶级或族裔，任何人可以在此下葬。到了1705年，我们开始看到被奴役的非洲人被埋在这个墓地的西北部分。在接下来的100年里，在这个墓地上立起了成千上万的墓碑，也举行了大量的葬礼。我们相信，从开始到废弃，这片墓地至少有3000座墓葬。我的家人就埋在这里，但更重要的是，这是一种非洲认同感。非洲人的后裔们实际上生活在这里，并最终被埋葬在这里。这个地方让我可以直接了解我们非洲人群体的历史。所以，有关罗得岛州，最讽刺的一点就是我们国家建立在宗教自由的基础上，但我们很快就进入并主导了非洲奴隶贸易中的奴役人类的行为。教会，特别是罗德岛的教会，直接从奴隶贸易中获利。但更直接地说，奴隶是我们的附属品。我们有神职人员拥有自己的奴隶。我们有传教士组织拥有他们自己的奴隶，而这些组织都是英国圣公会教堂在美国创建的。从1705年到1805年间，至少有900艘记录在案的奴隶船从罗德岛起航，最后在西非靠岸，途径西印度群岛，返回罗德岛。

This is where it is, right?This is the DeWolf family cemetery.This is the funeral mound of James DeWolf.It is hard to muster much sympathy for the lack of dignity in this, for someone who engaged in slave trading and on that kind of an epic scale.James DeWolf and his extended family brought more than 12,000 enslaved Africans across the Middle Passage,and are probably responsible for about half a million people who are alive today in the Americas, descended from those who crossed the Middle Passage on their ships.They would take rum, primarily, as well as other commodities to the coast of West Africa to trade for men, women and children,who were then brought back to be sold at auction, either in the Caribbean-and primarily that was in Cuba or in the American South, in ports like Charleston, South Carolina.All of this was tremendously important in building the economy of the North and what became the United States.In the colonial era, the slave trade, and the provisioning trade to slave plantations of the West Indies, were a key part of what allowed the British colonies to prosper and eventually to rebel against Great Britain and become an independent nation.It's incumbent upon me, as someone with this kind of a family history, and knowing about this history, to speak out about what our family did, and to help other people draw the connections to the ways in which their families are connected to slavery.If we bury the dark parts of a family history,if we bury the dark parts of a national history,we will start to assume things like that didn't happen, and that will greatly distort our understanding how we got here today.There were so many captured and put on the slave ships.So many did not survive, but those that did survive, we are the healthy ones, our ancestors.It is a sacred ground for us. And so, there is no way we can pass it or walk through it without thinking of an ancestor. We exist because they worked hard.They struggled. They did whatever they had to do to survive.

就在这里，对吧？这是德沃尔夫家族的墓地。这是詹姆斯·德沃尔夫的墓地。虽然他的墓地看起来很没有尊严，但我们很难对他产生同情，因为他从事奴隶交易，而且规模非常庞大。詹姆斯·德沃尔夫和他的大家庭把12000多名被奴役的非洲人通过中段航线带到了美国，他们可能要为今天在美洲生存的大约50万人负责，这些人都是那些通过中段航道被带到美国的奴隶的后代。他们主要把朗姆酒和其他商品运送到西非海岸去交换男人，女人和孩子，并将这些人带回美洲进行拍卖，要么是在加勒比海，主要是在古巴，要么在美国南部，像查尔斯顿、南卡罗来纳州的港口。非洲奴隶贸易对北美的经济建设至关重要，并最终造就了美国。在殖民时代，奴隶贸易，以及西印度群岛奴隶种植园的供应贸易，是保持英国殖民地繁荣的关键部分，这些殖民地最终反抗英国，成为一个独立的国家。作为一个有奴隶贸易家族史并了解这段历史的人，这是我义不容辞的责任，去了解这段历史，说出我们家族的所作所为，帮助其他人找到这种他们的家庭与奴隶制之间的联系。如果我们掩盖家族历史的黑暗部分，如果我们掩盖一个国家历史的黑暗部分，我们会开始假设这样的事情没有发生，这将大大扭曲我们从那时到现在的历史进程。有那么多人被俘并被关在奴隶船上。很多人没有活下来，但是有一些人活下来了，他们是我们的祖先，他们造就了我们今天健康的生活。对我们来说，这是一片神圣的土地。因此，我们不可能忽略我们的祖先，就此遗忘在这片土地上发生的事情。我们的存在是因为他们的辛勤劳作。他们挣扎着。他们为了生存不惜一切。