Reversing The African Diaspora

It is the late eighteenth century. Aboard a slave ship bound from West Africa to Jamaica, a terrified young boy is cared for by Ami, a fellow captive who becomes his surrogate mother during that nightmare voyage. They are sold to separate owners, but their lives remain curiously intertwined, and the boy, now a man named August, marries Ami’s daughter, Sarah. Ancestors tells the story of their lives, their part in the struggle for emancipation, and the hope and faith that sustains them.

At the age of ten, Paul Crook’s great-great-great grandfather, John Alexander Crooks was captured and put aboard a slave ship bound for Jamaica.  In researching his family history, Paul has been able to trace his ancestors through the history of Jamaican slavery, then further back to their ancestral home in Ghana.  Ancestors is the fictionalized account of John’s experiences from 1798 to 1838, the year that slaves in the British West Indies were set free.

"When I started on this search, there was quite a bit of interest from family across the seas, but it took me thirteen years to complete, and if you turned around and looked back down the track, nobody had kept up with me," explains Paul. 

 "I thought about writing a report of some sort and sending that around to the family, but I wasn't sure it was going to garner much interest, so I thought the idea of a novel, inspired by the work of Alex Haley, would capture the imagination a bit better.  It also helped me piece it together, because for thirteen years I had been collecting loads of documents, and a story was beginning to emerge from that, but some bits were unexplained.  I thought the vehicle of a novel would fill in those gaps of knowledge in a creative way, gain the interest from family and friends and a wider interest from a genealogical perspective."

The search for his African-Caribbean ancestry meant Paul had to use a variety of sources including maps of Jamaica from the National Geographic, and slave plantation records in the National Archives.  His advice to others researching their African ancestry, is to make sure you double check all your facts because often, the ancestor you think is your ancestor, may not be. 

"When slaves were on the plantations, they took the name of the master of the plantation.  Some of them would have taken it on baptism so some of them would have had African names, but because they took on the religion of Christianity, they would have taken a Christian name on by choice." 

"On emancipation, you had to have a name and give a name if you were looking for work, so invariably slaves would have given the name of the plantation they had previously worked.   If you look at the salve registers in the National Archives, you can see that slaves had old names - which were the names they were known by on a day-to-day basis - and in Jamaica we know call these pet names or nick-names.  So everyone was known by a nick-name on a day-to-day basis, but most would take on Christian names when they were baptised.  On emancipation, although they were still known by their old nicknames, they would have probably acquired a surname name based on the master of the plantations."

Paul advises to get as much information as you can from older relatives, then corroborate this information by looking at historical sources and archival material.

"One of the things I found with the records is that they have been transcribed for the main part, so it is possible for human error to creep into some of the transcriptions. The key thing is to try and verify everything that you find, and if you find the spelling of your name with a letter missing, really look into that but bear in mind that that may not be the ancestor you are looking for.  I found that there are other records that would help verify the authenticity of the ancestor I was looking at, so its really just checking and cross-checking everything."

"The other thing I would say, is to really familiarise yourself with the local history or islands of whatever place you are searching because that can give you clues to other sources of information you should be looking at.  For example, I didn't really know much about the history of Jamaica when I started researching, so almost missed the point that 1837 was emancipation - which meant there was mass migration from the plantation into the hills of Jamaica.  So knowing something about the local history is crucial to any type of research.

"It does take perseverance.  My search took thirteen years, but it wasn't as if I didn't have breaks in between, and you need breaks to overlook what you have done and find potential mistakes in your research."

The other issue with researching black ancestry is that many records are not as yet computerised like other genealogy records which cover mainland Britain.

"You do have to dig deep.  My first visit to the family history centre was to look at the computer really, and I naively thought I would be able to find everything on this international index. It is getting better and there are websites which are trying to catalogue many records on the internet, but its a humongous task and it is never going to be all things to all people - and it is never going to be a good substitute for going and visiting the archives and looking at the actual records."

"I did find that if you were born on an island that was controlled by the British you are in a better position to do this than if your ancestors are from an island that was controlled by the French ore Spanish - or a mixture of European powers, because the British colonies kept much better records than other colonial powers at the time."

Many times throughout his research Paul thought he had reached the end of line, but then fate played her part and another link in the chain was revealed.  In the book, Paul ponders whether his ancestors were lending a guiding hand to enable him to unravel his past and in the afterword says that he felt he would one day trace his ancestry back to Africa.  His hunch was right, and after the book was completed, by chance, he did find his ancestral home in Ghana.

"There was a lot of luck involved because there were many times along the journey, when I thought I had found as much as I was ever going to find.  A lot of it has felt as if other things were at work, but if you don't believe in spirits or what have you, it is really to say follow your instincts.  Your instinct might be to go and do a bit of research here or there, and now I always say, follow that, because you never know where it is going to lead." 

"In the last line of the book, I say that one day I will find the place where Ami was born, yet at the point the book was completed, I drew a line under everything.  But, since writing that last line, I have found the place where Ami was born in Ghana and I do think it is very fated."

"There was a friend in the background who had contacts in Africa and he said that I should come with him on a trip to Ghana because I had never been.  Although I had been writing this book I had always been waiting for the right moment, and this friend said, well let me get some contacts together and we can go."

"In 2004 we arranged a trip, but unbeknown to me, he had made a contact with a friend who knew someone who came from the Krobo region of Ghana and knew the Djaba family that are still there today, but I only found this out when I got there because it was all a surprise. When we arrived they took me to the Krobo region and I met the Djaba family, and actually went up the mountain to the village - well I came in close proximity of the village, where the Djaba house was originally built.  You see, since 1892 the Krobo people have been driven down the mountain so they have a settlement at the bottom of Krobo mountain called Somanya.  Every year, they have a festival where they go up onto the mountain and remember the ancestors and the location where they once lived.  There is a place on the top of the mountain called Plau, and that's where Ami and the original Djaba family originally came from 200 years ago."

"When I was there, I also met an elder called Henry Djaba.  He was actually 97-years-old when I met him and a couple of months after my meeting with him, he died.  It just all feels rather fated. He had good family knowledge and had lived in the original house that was built at the bottom of the mountain, which is still there today."

"I said in the book, something is telling me that this journey has not ended, but I had no reason to believe that would be the case when I completed the book, but I just felt that something is missing here.  I thought it will come, it will find me when its ready - and it did because I didn't go looking for Plau - somebody came to me and said lets go do this, and I followed them and there I was."

It is rare to be able to trace ancestors back to Africa but by doing so, Paul has reversed of the African Diaspora of his ancestors. 

"Being able to go back to Jamaica and trace family, and then onto Africa and trace family, it puts the whole history into context.  Ancestors is the result of my search to really understand the person that I am, and how I got to this place in time.  It wasn't by accident, it was clearly a number of events from the historic which links to the African-Caribbean's settling in Britain, the immigration of which my father was part of, so there is a whole historic context to me being here today.

"Tracing my ancestors back to Africa was difficult to do and I was very lucky. I have looked at other slave records in other parishes in Jamaica and they have not been kept so well as the Hanover parish records that I looked at, and some of the information that I found does not exist in other parish records on other islands. It varies how the records were kept, so I feel I was very fortunate to find this particular record with everything I needed on there, but it's not necessary the case for all records."

Completing his family history has altered Paul's perspective significant positive ways, and he wants to share this with others in the Britsh black community.

"I use the term African now because of the way my perspective has been changed by the research.  One of the things that didn't happen to Africans when we were emancipated was that we didn't have any therapy to help us deal with the trauma of our experiences and I think some of that is evident in some of the things that are going on today with young people and gun culture.

"I've always believed that family history and researching your roots is part of that therapy that you need to understand the past and come to terms with it, otherwise you are just left in a kind of vacuum.  I think if all our young people did this, then there would have a very different outlook on the world they have today."

"There's a lot of anger and when you talk about slavery, it becomes very emotive, particularly to people who feel they have lost their identity and yearn to find it, but once you go through the experience you just have a different perspective on history and on how you as an African-Caribbean community can move forward from slavery."

"All successful people of the world have a point of reference in terms of their culture and their beliefs.  If you look at Muslims, they have their religion, what binds Jewish people together is their past history and struggles, and it is the same for any nation.  If you look at Britain and France, it is a history of struggle and how that nation has overcome that struggle and that's what makes these people strong, but African Caribbean's we don't have that and therefore we are not as together as we could be."

"I am on a bit of a mission, a quest now in terms of my involvement with the community to try and promote the whole things about identity and family research and how that can give you a sense of pride and confidence in our people which I don't think we have.  I personally feel a lot more confident form the work I have done in terms of who I am and what I can achieve.  I don't feel that there are any barriers to me achieving things anymore because if you look at the history of the Krobo people and where they have come from, you can trace it back to Egypt and what have you, so I just have a different perspective and new found confidence.  I am far more confident as a person, far better focused now I understand things that I didn't before."

Being proud of African heritage is one of the things that is missing in today's black community, and in the novel, this is touched on by the way Paul describes Jamaican society during the nineteenth century with historical accuracy.

"In writing the book I also wanted to preserve the history that has been lost over time.  There is a book written by Edward Briathwaite called The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica 1770-1820 and in it he talks about how Jamaican society was for the whites, Africans and Creole people.  He portrays this whole society based on caste or the colour of your skin, or how many generations you were removed from your African ancestry.   The whole education of the slaves was if you think too much about Africa then you were primitive, and therefore you were on the bottom rung of society.  The more you adopted the Creole culture at the time, the Englishness, the well-speaking and mixed your ancestry with European ancestry, the more accepted you were, a I just wanted to capture that in some way through the eyes of slaves and Africans at the time, because growing up in Britain, these things are still prevalent in our community.  Our children do want to go out with light skinned boys and girls - and there is this whole issue which I wanted to explore with the book."

Paul believes it is essential the bicentenary of the end of salve trade is commemorated, but thinks it is important that untold stories are brought to the forefront.

"I was at a seminar the other day and this professor of history at Middlesex University asked the question, why are we celebrating 1807 because 1807 was not emancipation?  I think the answer is obvious - if we didn't commemorate it there would be an outcry, but I think it is important that some of the untold stories come out and I do think that the perceptions of people who perhaps aren't so well informed is that slavery all came to an end in 1807 thanks to William Wilberforce.  Yes we do have to thank William Wilberforce, but there is a whole story behind that - and 1807 is not the end of slavery in Jamaica, it is the end of Africans being taken from Africa and being enslaved in the Caribbean colonies.  Those who were slaves in Jamaica were not emancipated until 1837." 

"William Wilberforce inspired many of the slaves in Jamaica to contribute to achieving their own emancipation and the word William Wilberforce was on the tongue of every slave on the island.  But out of that came Sam Sharpe the slave who lead the uprising which eventually lead to emancipation, and that's why I think we need to remember 1807 because it was a marker in time.  Its certainly triggered subsequent events, and I think it was very much a significant point in that changing Caribbean history."

When asked whether he believes Tony Blair should have apologised for slavery last year in November 2006, Paul says it depends what reparation comes with it.

"The easiest thing to do is apologise - and there is no harm in Tony Blair doing that but it doesn't actually change the situation.  An apology has to be followed by some sort of reparation and if you are truly sorry for something, you want to make repair and I know the whole politics about the apology was that he didn't want to them be forced to be in a position of providing reparation, and without the reparations the apology is meaningless."

"Reparation is generally understood to be some sort of money pay out - but I don't think that money will resolve anything actually, so for my people I think we need to think about reparation in innovative ways.  An obvious example is the regeneration work that has been going on in our communities but more could be done about the mental health issues in our community as part of that reparation.  There are also other ways and I think the whole idea of debt relief in Africa is one such way of approaching things."

Blair's Apology

This interview was conducted prior to March 14th 2007, when Tony Blair did offer an apology to the Ghanaian president John Agyekum Kufuor for Britain's role in the slave trade.  You can read the BBC news article at the link below. 

March 14th - "Blair Sorry" - BBC Report - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6451793.stm

BBC's November 2006 report http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6185176.stm

You can read more about Paul Crooks and his family history at his website: http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~prcrooks/index.html

Ancestors by Paul Crooks costs £7.99 from all good bookshops.  Alternatively, you can purchase it from Amazon for £5.99

Interview by Rachael Hannan

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