Leoneda Inge
This is Tested from WUNC, a look at how we're responding to the day's challenges in North Carolina and the South. I'm Leoneda Inge.
What a way to make a splash! I am always looking for Southerners, especially people of color, who are the first at something, maybe the only person doing it, and definitely are one of the best at it. Well, I've met a Black woman whose journey just takes my breath away. Tara Roberts of Atlanta, Georgia is a National Geographic Explorer. For the last few years, she's been following Black scuba divers as they document wreckage from slave ships.
Tara Roberts (podcast excerpt)
I decided to ditch everything, including my job to join these divers to tell stories about their work finding and documenting these ships. As I got to know the divers, the ships, they had found the stories of those who had been captured, I realized this was a way to come to grips with those 400 years, with this traumatic history.
Leoneda Inge
Amazing. More than 150 years after the emancipation of enslaved Africans in America and we are still finding bits and pieces, trinkets and ledgers authenticating the treacherous journey people who look like me took through the Middle Passage. For Tara, it has also propelled her to investigate her own family tree, rooted deep in the Carolina coast in Edenton, North Carolina.
Tara Roberts
Part of what this journey has given me is the courage to look back into my own ancestry. And to find out what I could. I think there was a part of me that was really afraid on some level to face the fact that my ancestors had been enslaved.
Leoneda Inge
Today, I would hope textbooks are catching up and explaining how millions of African slaves ended up in the quote "New World." But we still don't know a lot about the 1.8 million enslaved Africans who died in the ocean on ships that sank. Tara explores those questions and her podcast with National Geographic, it's called Into the depths.
Tara Roberts
There is something about being under the water that is just so peaceful and so beautiful. It really speaks to my spirit.
Leoneda Inge
Here's a snippet of the program featuring fellow NatGeo explorer and poet Alyea Pierce.
Alyea Pierce (podcast excerpt)
Rhythm and repetition, beats booming in coordination through the acoustic architecture. Sound, a new language of resistance. A code only the 274 captured knew built from the body as a reminder. I am still human. I am still here. Listen.
Leoneda Inge
Learning this history changed Tara's life. She set out to meet a group of Black scuba divers who were a part of Diving With a Purpose that led her to Dr. Albert Jose Jones, co-founder of the National Association of Black scuba divers. Here he is recalling his experience documenting slave ship wreckage off of Key West, Florida.
Dr. Albert Jose Jones
It felt eerie. It was like diving on a gravesite. It felt like you were touching the souls of your ancestors when you were down there. And it involves people that could be your own family.
Leoneda Inge
Tara's life on this journey of exploration began after visiting the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC.
Tara Roberts
I took my time and went back a few times, because I was local. And I ended up on the second floor. And I saw this picture. And it was a picture that literally changed the direction of my life. It was a picture of a group of primarily Black women in wetsuits on a boat. And I was just struck by them, I was like, Who are these women? I had never seen a group of Black women in wetsuits on a boat before. And so I immediately wanted to know who they were and what they were doing. And I discovered that they were a part of this group called Diving With a Purpose, and that their mission was to search for and help document slaves, shipwrecks around the world. And I was just blown away by that. Like, I found out that there were about 36,000 voyages that brought 12.5 million Africans to the Americas to get 36,000 voyages. And they estimate that as many as 1000 of those ships wrecked. But to date, less than 10 of them have been found and properly documented. So I felt like there was this whole part of our history, that was just missing
Leoneda Inge
A lot of work to do, a lot of work to do. Oh, my goodness, it was time for you to put on a wetsuit. And I like to think there are a lot of us on the bottom of the ocean, that we can't even count, you know, and they're wreckages, too. So tell me about your journey and learning how to be actually a scuba diver yourself.
Tara Roberts
Yeah, I was not a scuba diver when I saw this picture, I will admit that I am somebody who loves to swim. And I like the water. But I didn't know jack-diddly about scuba diving. But when I saw that picture, I found out about the group, I ended up reaching out to them. And I became friends with the person who founded the group. It's a gentleman named Ken Stewart. He's in his 70s, which is also like this is work that people of all ages can do. And Ken invited me to come and dive with them. DC apparently is a place that is full of like legendary Black scuba divers. I had no idea that this existed. And so the oldest Black diving club in the United States exists in DC. It was started in 1959. It's like over 60 years that these these folks have been diving. So when he invited me to dive with them, I was like, Yes, I would love to.
It was Doc, who went down on the Henrietta Marie. And that's the ship that he was talking about where it felt like he was diving on a grave site. Doc and a team decided that they wanted to memorialize the Henrietta Marie, and they raised money to put a huge plaque down at the site. I think it's like a 3000 ton plaque. It's big and substantive. But they put an inscription on it to honor some of the Africans that were lost in the Middle Passage. And Doc definitely talks about how hard you know it was to be down there. It's definitely tough, knowing what you know, when you dive. But I will say that there's also some other surprising feelings that come up, or at least that came up for me, and I had feelings of pride. I had feelings of triumph, because I am, we are still in search of this history. We are taking on the job of honoring and I don't know if you knew this number, but it's 1.8 million Africans that were lost in the Middle Passage. People who have never been grieved, who might never be grieved, if not for this work. So there is a sense of healing that happens under the water as well as a sense of resolution. And maybe I can speak for more than just me, but I would imagine that many of the divers also feel this. So it is not necessarily a sad journey. I mean, it's a journey that has sad notes, for sure. But it's also a really triumphant journey. You know, that feels really good to be doing this work.
Leoneda Inge
I think about the Middle Passage, I think about, you know, those that were brought to the Americas. And then when I hear about Black scuba divers kind of going down to give their respect it almost it's.. it is quite emotional. You can't help but smile over something that was so dreadful. But I've smiled ever since I heard about you in this story, I must tell you.
Tara Roberts
You're making me emotional.
Leoneda Inge
Well, I didn't want to do that.
Tara Roberts
They say that the Atlantic is one of the most turbulent oceans and that it likely is because it's full of these lost souls who have never been acknowledged. Like you're not taught in the history books that 1.8 million people died. Not 10 people, not 1000 people, it's 1.8 million people who've never been acknowledged. So I feel you in and I think that those lost souls, and those ancestors are calling to us. And that's why this work is happening now. I think it is a time for reckoning, and it is a time to put those souls to rest. So I feel you in the smile.
Leoneda Inge
I know all you can do is smile. Well, I wanted to also ask you definitely about Edenton, North Carolina. I mean, what can you tell me about your time there. And you know that North Carolina tie.
Tara Roberts
So my family is all from North Carolina. My mother, who is one of 14 siblings, they all grew up in Edenton, North Carolina. We are able to trace back to my great great Grandpa Jack, who was born in 1837 in Chowan County. So I don't know if it was Edenton at that moment, but within that area, and my great, great Grandpa Jack, we found out like, this is amazing, so even though we had a picture of Grandpa Jack in my mom's house, and I would pass by that picture all the time, I didn't ask more of his story. I just thought it was a nice picture. And I was maybe mildly curious, but mainly indifferent. And I think that that was because I was really afraid to face those facts about my ancestor. But something about this work, which is so healing, and it makes you see those ancestors as human beings, like they're not statistics. They're not these faceless beings. They are human and fully human.
Great great Grandpa Jack managed to buy, this is what we discovered, I ended up hiring a genealogist to see if I could trace my roots back to a slave ship. And I couldn't, most African Americans can't because we hit what's called the 1870 brick wall, which means before 1870 the US Census did not count identifying details of those who were enslaved. And so we get stuck there. And the genealogist wasn't able to go back any further. But she found out these details about great great Grandpa Jack that I was like, I never knew, this is incredible. But he he ended up, he owned like over 174 acres of land in Chowan County, which is crazy. Like he was an enslaved man. Before he died, he managed to amass 174 acres of land
Leoneda Inge
Do your families still have that land?
Tara Roberts
Not all of it, but they have quite a bit of it. And so I went back as a result of this work and I would go back to Edenton when my grandmother was alive, but I hadn't been back in a while. And I went back with this work and I stood on that land now knowing its legacy and it felt so different.
Leoneda Inge
I hear you are the first African American woman on the cover of National Geographic, like there have been women of color from all over the world on the cover of National Geographic, but is that true that you're the first African American woman?
Tara Roberts
I think the way that they note it that I'm the first Black woman explorer, like anywhere. So as someone who is actively out, exploring the world writing stories about it, I'm the first of that kind to be on the cover instead of as a subject of a story, but as an originator of the story.
Leoneda Inge
Tara Roberts is a storyteller and a National Geographic Explorer. Her work following Black scuba divers, historians and archaeologists as they document wreckage from slave ships is chronicled in the National Geographic podcast Into the Depths.
That's it for this episode of tested. Charlie Shelton-Ormond is the producer. Dave DeWitt, the editor. I'm Leoneda Inge. Thanks for listening