Blog Post: DC in the Isle of Spice

I am often enchanted with the way the African Diaspora twists and re-twists itself like a pretzel around and around again, especially in the Maryland, DC and Virginia area. Historically, Virginia was at the epicenter of the slave trade and the slave experience from the beginning of the British colonial era in 1619 through the end of the Civil War. Maryland, too, was closely behind. Africans from throughout the Diaspora were brought here, and Caribbean ports were likewise connected to Maryland and Virginia ones. This meant various ethnic groups within Africa as well as many ethnic groups from the Caribbean were enslaved, sold, sent and worked between ports of entry. In November 2018, while researching, I found out that a small rural historic town by the name of Londontowne was once a thriving tobacco port that brought in enslaved people from Barbados. This became known after researchers undug and identified the corpse of a young child from the colonial era who had been buried beneath his mother’s bed, just as it was the custom in Barbados at the time.

300 years later, Barbadians make Maryland their home as economic, political and job opportunities host a vibrant African Diaspora inside and right outside of the nation’s capital. We children of the African Diaspora, whether it be 9 generations down from Virginia, or first generation from other nations meet here at a crossroads of our experiences. I, too am the product of that, meeting and falling in love with a Grenadian-born man and this summer traveling to his home country where I took Perpetual Blackness on the road to understand how the African Diaspora meets abroad, but always speaks in a local tongue.

I get to meet this distinguished gentleman, who is the number 1 go-to in one of the island’s 3 main nutmeg processing facilities, an industry that is heavily dominated by Black Grenadian women who sort, filter and determine which nuts will be used for oil and which ones will be powdered.

Nutmeg is one of the island’s main exports, and helps give Grenada the nomenclature, the Island of Spice.