All in a Summer’s Work

By Evelyn Todd

 
When I first started writing this blog post, I didn’t know what to expect or how much I’d write. I just knew that I would be cracking my chest open and finally applying words to the head-spinning experiences of my summer. Well…Here I am sharing my summer with you in three parts:
My Thoughts, The Work I Did, and Where Am I Now?
I have found that curiosity tends to leave people discovering valuable things about themselves, others, and the world around them. I hope it leaves you with questions and the desire to find out.

Where Am I Now? Part 3

The burden of the Black American historian is painful, birthing weariness and hope simultaneously.

– Evelyn Todd

[Photo © Culture Beyond Borders 2025]

At the Cape Coast Slave Castle in Ghana

[Photo © Culture Beyond Borders 2025]

A week and a half after I finished my internship at the plantations, I landed on the continent in Accra, Ghana. I spent the next 12 days living with my eyes wide open. I felt what freedom must feel like for the first time. It was kinda like being a kid again. That small period of innocence every Black child has before they have their first run in with racism. The relief of seeing mostly other Black and/or African folks after being the only one for the summer washed me anew. Truly, I felt like I came home.

W.E.B. DuBois, whose home [now museum] I was honored to visit in Accra, introduced this concept of double consciousness in his book, The Souls of Black Folk. Since learning about this idea in high school, it is a perspective that I carry with me and heavily identify with. DuBois defines the concept as Black people in America having to operate not only in how they perceive themselves but also with how others, specifically white people, perceive them as well. In Ghana, I lived solely as myself. I never once felt the internal pressure to present myself in any other way than as myself. My presence was not dangerous or the source of someone else’s perverted entertainment. I was welcomed, safe, genuine, and free.

Moments from my trip in Ghana

I enjoyed the flow of Ghana. The constant movement and energy navigating different spaces in Ghana was invigorating.

The Assin Manso Slave River and Cape Coast Slave Castle

Footage captured from my Ghana trip at the river and castle. One of the more heartbreaking aspects of this day is how water was used. I love being in and near water. It was difficult to process the horrors of these locations being so close to something that brings me peace.

As I finish my last semester of graduate school, I reflect on all that I have done to preserve our history here at PV and this summer in Brazoria County, and I find it hard to separate it from my more recent experiences in Ghana. I walked the path to the Assin Manso Ancestral Slave River for the Last Bath and stood in the dungeons in Cape Coast at the Slave Castle. Whatever emotions and ideas I had solely for my work done prior has been snatched and folded into a greater experience in Ghana that I will always be finding the words for.

I do know this: I have been gifted a through line. God answered a question I’ve had since childhood. I no longer have to wonder what our ancestors could have gone through. I’ve been to both sides, lived on both lands, laid eyes on both atrocities that our ancestors managed to survive. Do you understand how long they lived in chains? Multiple months walking to the river, who knows how long in the dungeons, more months on the seas to Turtle Island or the other islands. You have no idea the darkness that could taint our souls, yet and still we find reasons to smile, create, bless those who curse us, and laugh with joy. Resilience isn’t even the word for it. Although I would never wish my history on anyone else, I would choose this skin, this life, this bloodline over and over and over again.

In lieu of a conclusion [because my ruminations of this summer will never be complete], here’s where I want to focus: I hope I brought someone home. I spent my summer learning about and caring for the lives of indigenous and Black women [and men] who survived incomprehensibly unimaginable things and gave us their descendants to share their stories. I saw myself in the women I learned from. It honestly felt like I spent the summer talking with them, fighting for them, grieving for them and my own ancestors, and wanting them to know how amazingly important they are. Then for me to return to where our roots run the deepest. To stand barefoot and free in the waters and wash my feet with gratitude of their survival. For my hair and skin to thrive and glow like never before. To laugh loudly to tears, joke, dance, and sing with a divinely orchestrated tribe of a family. To gather, play spades, talk trash, and reflect over the journeys we’ve had. To know joy as my portion where their last moments only knew sorrow and pain, I am humbled at the notion of carrying their stories and mine home. It weighs on my soul to know that my trip to Ghana is the first time many bloodlines made it back to the land they only knew as home. It has been 400 plus years of living displaced, and it sparks these final questions in my mind:

How often do we fulfill the prophecies that persist in our lineage? Whose prayers were answered by my [our] return home?

Bringing Them Home

Photo Aug 27 2025, 12 39 48 PM
Part of the mural at the entrance to the Assin Manso Slave River Site entrance
Photo Aug 27 2025, 12 39 48 PM
Photo Sep 29 2025, 1 20 25 PM
at the river
door of return