KINDRED SPIRTS-JOYCELYN AND THE CHIEF

KINDRED SPIRTS-JOYCELYN AND THE CHIEF

In 2019 while traveling to New Orleans for a memorial to celebrate the life of a beloved family member, I stopped in Africatown, Alabama to pay homage to the descendants of the Clotilda. The story of the Clotilda is widely known as being the “last slave ship” to enter the United states 52 years after the international slave trade had ended. It is habitual for me to visit the African American parts of town while traveling. There is something spiritual by doing such. I cannot define it. It does however, feel like an innate force drives me to the places that once thrived before urban renewal, integration or gentrification. Perhaps it is because of my lived experience and/or oral histories collected over the years highlighting these places as “Park Avenue-ish.”

The words gentrification and urban renewal in my opinion are utilized by those who do not understand the negative impact on the community, or those who don’t mind playing monopoly with people’s lives who live in said places. I personally call the inhumane act, “hostile takeovers” due to the mental anguish and trauma many face while losing what they call home. These spaces are often occupied by descendants of ancestors who lived in the same communities for decades.