 I'm really delighted that so many of you could be here on Mountain Day. And really pleased, really, really pleased that our first guest for this series is the one and only Tara Roberts, class of 1991. I'm going to tell you a little bit about her, but I just want to say I'm very, very excited. So thank you so much for being with us. Thank you for having me. It's amazing to be back. So Tara describes herself as an adventurer, a journalist, and a humanitarian. And she started out here at Mount Holyoke in the class of 1991 as a communication studies major. You might say, I didn't know we had a communication studies major. We didn't. It was a self-designed major. And she has been self-designing ever since, I think. We were so excited to invite her. Among her many accomplishments, she was recently recognized as the Rolex National Geographic Explorer of the Year for 2022. So pleased. Her picture appeared on the cover of National Geographic. And the reason she was recognized in that way has everything to do with her project, which became the basis of a six-episode podcast called Into the Depths. That podcast was about her journey, one learning how to scuba dive, so that she could travel with a group of black scuba divers who were exploring the wreckage of ships used during the transatlantic slave trade. I can't imagine something more adventurous than that. So I get why you call yourself an adventurer, but it's certainly a really interesting story to learn how you have connected the dots from your time here at Mount Holyoke College as a communication studies major to Explorer of the Year. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about that. Let's start at the beginning. Okay. First, let's shake it out. Yes. Yes. Shake it out. It's always a little nerve-wracking. And I can't see your faces fully, so I don't know what you guys are really doing behind those masks. But you can. You want to make your faces at me. No. You can see the little squinkles, which means they're smiling. They're smiling. Smiles. Yes. So, you know, you graduated, and then what happened? Okay. So, all right, all right. So broad strokes of what happened after I graduated. I moved to New York, and I went to grad school, went to NYU, and I got a degree in publishing studies, which I went to an interview at Condi Nass, like while I was getting my degree, and I told the human resources person that I was getting a degree in publishing studies, and she was like, why, what a waste of time, but whatever, I did it. And that led me to sort of this career in magazines, and so I worked for a number of women's magazines and teen magazines like Essence, Cosmo Girl, Ebony, and I did all of that partly because I really wanted to start my own magazine, but that was always my goal, and I was trying to get enough information, enough skills, enough to be able to do that. So I did. I left my jobs at those places, and I started my own magazine for a while. That's a fabulous title. So you have to tell us about the magazine. So it was called Fierce, and this was, you know, I'm kind of old, so this was like before Fierce was a thing, and our tagline was Too Bold for Boundaries. So we were trying to do a magazine that was diverse, thoughtful, that went beyond, but at that time there were lots of magazines that were about fashion and beauty. There's nothing wrong with fashion and beauty, but we wanted to go beyond that. So we did the magazine, and our first cover, we were so proud of ourselves because we were this scrappy group of folks living in Atlanta trying to do this, and we got, and this again might be dating myself, but maybe some of the folks in the room will appreciate this. But we got Lisa Bonet on our first cover. It was Lisa, and she's best friends with Kree Summer, I don't know if you know who that is. Kree Summer. You feel it, right? Right? Kree used to, for those of you who don't know, she is a show called The Different World, and she played Freddie on A Different World, and so she and Lisa are best friends in real life. So they agreed to be on our first cover. So we had our whole little team fly out to Lisa's house, and we shot them, and interviewed them, and it was incredible. We were like, ah, this is amazing. So doing that magazine was fantastic and wonderful, but doing magazines, it's a hard business. It's an expensive business, which I think is pretty evident since the economic downturn, like just demolished the publishing industry, and especially the magazine world. So we got, we published for about three years, got like some issues out there, got nominated for some stuff, had some other big wins, like we got Benazir Bhutto, who used to be the prime minister of Pakistan, we did an interview with her, like we were really, I think, pushing boundaries. Too bold for boundaries. Too bold for boundaries! But the magazine is an expensive world, and we ended up having to fold it. I was the one who was financing it, and I was in a lot of debt after doing this magazine. So I ended up going back into the publishing world to pay off debts, and that got me, this is way too much detail, isn't it? No, it's not, actually. I'm sure people are quite interested. Okay, all right, we're getting closer to the end there, but I ended up at Cosmo Girl, and Cosmo Girl surprisingly, which also no longer exists, but when it was publishing, it was such a champion for girls doing incredible things in the world. It was my introduction to this world of changemaking and social entrepreneurship, which I've never really heard of before, but Cosmo Girl gave out grants to girls, it gave girls internships and policy, I could just do all this really, really cool stuff, but then it died because of the economic downturn, but when it did, I felt like the work that it was doing was still really important, and it was important to show that girls were doing incredible things around the world, that they were leaders in their communities. So I decided, when Cosmo Girl died, to clean out my savings, pack my bags, get rid of everything I owned, and get on the road for about a year. I traveled around the world telling stories about young women change agents from different countries. I traveled throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia to help tell those stories. And while I was on the road, I realized that these young folks in India didn't know what young folks in Senegal were doing, young people in Senegal didn't know what young folks in Germany were doing, and I just felt like maybe they don't need anybody to tell any more stories, they actually need an organization to support them. So again, it's a story's long, but I ended up deciding to start an organization to support them, so I created a nonprofit called Girl Tank that supported these folks doing incredible stuff around the world, and that did well, like we won some awards, we got out there, we raised some money for organizations, but somewhere along the way, I was like, I'm a writer, why am I running a nonprofit? I'm fundraising, I'm doing all this administrative stuff, I'm doing all of these things that aren't around my passion, even though part of my passion was bringing about gender equity, having these sort of conversations, but the way that I was doing it stopped resonating. So I decided to go back into the communications world, but I did it through the nonprofit world, and this got me to D.C., and I started working, I became a director of communications for a nonprofit, and I thought, okay, I'm in the media communications world, that's great, but it really wasn't, again, I'm a writer. I'm not a communication, it's a difference, even, yeah, it's different, so this is now, we've gotten me up to 2016, and yeah, a lot happened in 2016 in this country, it was a pretty big year, and I started to feel like I wanted to do more, and I also felt like race was a conversation, I mean, I'm a black woman, there's, like, race is present for me all the time, but my emphasis since Mount Holyoke had really been around gender equity, and that was where I was putting most of my effort, but around 2016, as race became so big on the national stage, I wanted to do something in that space, but I didn't know what to do, so there I am in D.C., feeling dissatisfied at this job, which was a wonderful job, great place to work, they're doing fantastic work in the world, it just wasn't quite what I wanted to do, and I happened one day to play hooky from work, and I decided to go to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in D.C., has anybody gone to that museum? Incredible museum, right? That museum completely changed my life, it was while I was there, that I went to the second floor, and because I lived in D.C., I could take my time going through this museum, it's a big museum with a lot of, it's just so much history, so many stories in there, but because I could take my time and go several times, I ended up on this tiny floor, second floor, where there are only a few exhibits, it's like the archival floor, and there happened to be a picture of a group of predominantly black women in wetsuits on a boat, and I had never seen black women in wetsuits on a boat before, and I was like what is this, what are they doing, and then I looked at the little placard around it and it said that they were a part of this group called Diving with a Purpose, and that they helped die for and document slave shipwrecks around the world, and I was like, what, what, what, these people who look like me are doing what in the world? So, yeah, it shifted something for me, it was like that picture, which is a normal looking picture, they're just folks sitting on a boat, but to me it's almost like they look like superheroes, you know, it's like the picture transformed and they were standing with their fists on their hips, it was like they had a cape, so the capes were blowing in the wind and they were like, aw, and I was like, oh my God, I want to be a part of this some sort of way. So I wasn't thinking about telling stories about them, I just wanted to be a part of this work, so I ended up reaching out to them, they invited me to come dive, and I did not know how to do, I had to go get scuba certified, and it took me like a year to do that, but at the same time, all I really wanted to do was to help contribute in this way, but inside of that journey, I got to know these divers, and I was like, they are incredible human beings, and they're doing really important work, because they're just regular people who had a passion for scuba diving and wanted to make a difference with their diving, so I was like, wow, somebody should tell their story, and I was like, oh wait, that could be me! So I was like, ah, and then I applied for a macho grants, I got it, and the rest is history, the rest is history. Well there's a theme here, and I just want to point out, there's probably multiple themes, but you know, you won awards for your magazine, and you won awards for your not-for-profit organization, and you've just won an award for your podcast, so tell us about the award and the podcast, how that came about. Ah yeah, okay, so the podcast is, it's called Into the Depths, sorry, and it's a six-part narrative podcast that tells this journey of me following these divers around the world, and we travel to Mozambique, South Africa, Senegal, Benin, Togo, Costa Rica, and around the U.S. and Alabama and Florida, and at first I thought that I was telling the story about these scuba divers, which to me felt revolutionary, because lots of people think that black folks can't swim, but it's surprising to find them in the diving space, so I thought just telling the story already sort of upends the idea of who black people can be in the world, but as I traveled with them, I really began to see that this story is so much more complex and so much deeper. Originally I was just writing blog entries about my travels, but as I traveled and I started to realize this is about the ships that have been lost, it's about the people who were lost on the ships, it's about the communities that are involved in helping to find these ships, and here are just a couple of statistics so that you can get the magnitude of this history that I didn't know and was just starting to learn, so there were 36,000 voyages that brought 12.5 million Africans to the Americas, 36,000 voyages, ships going back and forth. They estimate that somewhere around 1,000 of those ships wrecked, 1,000 ships that wrecked, but to date less than 20 have been found and properly documented, so there's this enormous amount of history that's just missing. The other thing that I discovered, I didn't know this, maybe you guys have learned this, which would be amazing, but I did not learn this growing up. There were an estimated 1.8 million Africans who lost their lives in the middle passage, like y'all just be with that number for a second. I'm not talking about what happened before they got on the ships or even what happened once they got off of the ships just in the crossing, 1.8 million people, not 10 people, not 100 people, not 1.8 million people. Where is the official grieving, mourning, acknowledgement of the loss of that enormous amount of life? So the work that these divers are doing started to have much more resonance to me because those were things that I didn't know and if I didn't know it, I imagine other people didn't know, so I really wanted to share that out and trying to do the history of the middle passage in 200 word block entries just doesn't make any sense. So while I was traveling I interviewed probably about 100 people, historians, archaeologists, scuba divers, descendants, faith leaders, like all sorts of folks and I started to hear the story. Like these are people from so many different parts of the world, it's different accents, people who are young, old, black, white, like just a variety of people who have a way of thinking about this history in a way that I had never thought about it before and I thought that they were so articulate and amazing. So I was like, and I'll say this too, I was trying to record the journey in as many platforms as I could. So I had my video camera, I had my tape recorder, I had my pen and paper and I was trying to do it all and quickly I was like, I am not a filmmaker, so we're going to stop that part. But I always had my recorder going and when I went back and started listening, I was like, I think that this is an audio story. I think this is the way to tell a story about the past, but also about what's happening underwater, which I think both require your imagination and I think there's something about voices that could do that. So I went back to GEO and I was like, dudes, I think this is a podcast. And they were like, we agree with you. So they agreed to produce it and it came out and it's done really well and we just found out today. Today? Yes. There's a film festival or film awards called Jackson Wilde and Jackson Wilde, it's like the Oscars of the environmental film world. And so we just found out that we won the special jury best engaged platform award. That's fabulous. And I'll say one thing that it's also a different kind of podcast. It's a podcast that has, we have this amazing spoken word artist on it. Her name's Alia Pierce. She's a Nat GEO explorer just like me. So one of the things that we wanted to do with that, knowing that like the 1.8 million people, we wanted to honor them, but we'll never know their names. We won't know details about them. But at the same time, we wanted to turn them into more than just these faceless statistics that were on a boat, which is kind of mainly how you probably think about or how I used to think about these ships. I didn't think about like, they were mothers, fathers, they were probably scientists, writers, like all these different sorts of people on there. So what we try to do throughout the podcast is we speak their names and we have Alia imagining their journeys throughout the podcast. And then it's full of music and hopefully you're there. Like it's almost like a documentary, but it's audio so. And it's fabulous. If you haven't listened to it, I certainly have enjoyed listening to it and learned a lot about you too in that process. And one of the things that I was struck by in the podcast is your story about how you yourself were transformed by the experience of traveling to these places. Could you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. Yeah. So I like to think of myself as a kind of future-oriented person. Like, I'm a sci-fi fantasy geek. I've watched every episode of Star Trek like 30 times. I read Harry Potter. You know, I've liked to look forward. And I realized as a part of this journey that I was afraid to look back. And I was afraid to look back because I thought that most media that talks about black folks's past, it focuses on our pain and our trauma and it's traumatizing to look back. Like it hurts so much. So I didn't want to look back at our past, but yet I'm drawn to these slave shipwrecks. So maybe y'all see the contradiction but in the moment I was like, this is great. I'm going to focus on the divers. We're going to focus on the present and what we're trying to do in the future. And I thought I could avoid the past, but I couldn't. But what I discovered through this journey that doing this work with slave shipwrecks, again, it might sound sad and hard. And maybe there are moments when it is that. But it's more than that. It's bigger than that. I found that this work was healing and it was transformational. There's something about going down in the water, encountering actual history. Like this can't be denied. These are the artifacts from the past and you're not supposed to touch them. But let's say you just sort of touch them a little bit. You are embracing what happens, what happened in the past. I think a lot of our, the way that we look at those traumatic moments is often to minimize them or to pretend like they didn't happen. But to actually be engaged with the material evidence of the past, it forces you to be with it. And when you're with it, then you can move through it. Like I don't think there's a doctor in the world that would like try to come up with a solution for a wound or a problem without actually looking at it. So you have to look at it. I think to really understand it. And I found that there's actual power in doing that. When I think about me and the divers, and I think we raised our hands and we said, we're not going to wait for someone who doesn't look like us to say, this is important and this belongs in a history book. We're going to say, no, we can do this now and we can be a part of bringing it up from the depths and back into history. So that felt really empowering. And at the same time, I also ended up deciding to look back at my own history, which I'd never done. My mom has pictures of some of our ancestors on the wall and I've never wanted to engage with them. I walk past them and I'm like, yeah, whatever. But because I was meeting descendants from people who were on these ships and I was finding that they found strength in knowing the details about their ancestors. It started to make me think, ah, maybe there's something here and I should look back. And I'm so glad I did. I ended up finding out that my great, great grandfather, his name is Jack, and he was born enslaved in North Carolina. He's one of the persons on my mom's wall that I've just always walked past. But I hired a genealogist to help me with this. And she found out like three incredible things that I did not know about Jack. Again, I just think his life is about enslavements and that that is too painful for me to deal with so I don't deal with him. But I found out that, and none of my family knew this, we found out that Jack actually fought in the Civil War. He was in the United States colored troops. I found out that he managed to amass over 175 acres of land in North Carolina and enslaved man in 1837. Well, that was when he was born, but in the 1800s, 175 acres of land. I also found out that he was a delegate to the Freedmen's Convention, which was, y'all know what that is? Okay. I mean, Jack was the man. I didn't know. I thought that he was an enslaved person and so there was nothing but tragedy and sadness in his life. Not true. I also found out that Jack most likely owned a speakeasy, which you know, that's how they got the hundred and sixty acres. So he wasn't like a perfect person, but he was human. And I'm finding so much strength in looking back. And what I realized through this journey through us doing this work is that we're also offering that out to other folks too. Hopefully inspiring them to have the courage to look back. That is a fabulous story. I love that you found out about Jack. That's a great thing. We have an audience of students who were nominated by faculty members to be here because they are the kind of students who will ask great questions. So in case you're wondering, I am going to open the floor for you to ask questions in just a minute so you can start thinking about what you'd like to ask about. But there is a question that I've got for you which has to do with boldness. So as I started looking up alums that I might like to interview for this series, I came across one whose name is Sheila Marcello. I don't know if she was going to be able to join us or not yet. We haven't confirmed that. But I read about her and in an interview she used a term to describe herself as learning to be authentically bold. I thought that was a fabulous description. And she said in an interview, when you bring your truest self to the table, you are able to be bold in your own authenticity. There's lots of evidence of that kind of authentic boldness in your story. And I'm curious to know, how did your Mount Holyoke experience help you find that boldness or deepen it if you came with it? That's a great question. So when I got to Mount Holyoke I was 17. I'm from Atlanta originally. I grew up with, it was just me and my mom in Atlanta growing up. I feel like I did some things growing up that were good. Like I excelled in school. But I think being here at Mount Holyoke was the place where I was really validated as a leader and as someone who had something to contribute. So when I was here, I was the editor of Voices. I don't know, Voices still exists. It was the people of color paper. It was inside of the paper notes. It's about to be reborn. I was a dorm president. Let me say, so I felt like I was affirmed as someone who could stand up and hold space for others. That felt like something that I got from Mount Holyoke. I also, when I got here, I took my very first women's studies class. And that class, that was another thing that just transformed me. I left that class pretty much every time in tears. Just feeling like there was this war going on against women around the world. No one was talking about it. So I feel like, I think I came with a sense of wanting to do something and wanting to move forward. And Mount Holyoke helped ground that. And again, like, help validate that I could be a person that could contribute in some way. So that was really powerful for me. Yes. Well, thank you. So now I'm going to open the floor for some questions. And if you've got a question, you can raise your hand. And if it needs to be repeated for the camera, I can repeat it. But I know that there must be some. Yes. Yes. Tell us your name. My name is Antioch. I'm a junior. I'm an English major. So a lot of the stuff you said about writing, I was like... My question had to do with what you said about grief earlier. Because a lot of what you said resonated with me in terms of the strength of looking back, connecting back to your ancestors. I was like, dang, it brought me to this point. But how do you... I'm sure it's a really overwhelming experience to literally dive into the deep and uncover material history that physically has been buried and historically has been buried by the violence of the archive and erasing these histories. So how do you... How did you or how do you handle just like the grief that can arise from uncovering all of this history? Yeah. So there's a... I think there are a couple of different kinds of grief. And there is a healing grief that comes. And I'll tell you, I hope I won't go... Well, I'm realizing how long winded I am. I'm sorry, y'all. We're good. We're good on time. Okay. I'll tell you this story about one shipwreck. That'll give you an example of like how we did this. So this is the wreck in Mozambique. Well, it's a wreck in South Africa, but it's a Mozambican ship. So it wrecked in Cape Town and it's called the São José, Paquete de Africa. So when the team discovered the wreck and they discovered that it was from Mozambique, they were also able to discover what ethnic group was on the ship. So they knew that it was the Makua people, the Makua people of... It's like northern Mozambique. So the team decided to take news of what happened to the wreck because they knew now all the details. It was like 500 and 60 some people on the ship. About half of them died that night and the rest were sold into slavery. But they've got records so now they know some of the details of what happened. So they go back to the Makua descendants and they tell them what happened. And the Makua descendants decided to hold a celebration. So they had a celebration with music and dancing and with speeches because they finally knew what happened to their ancestors. So the team came back and they participated in this celebration. And the Makua chief speaks to... Blani Bunch is the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. So he was one of the persons who was part of the team. So the Makua chief comes to Blani and he gives him a gift. And it's a gift of a carousel encrusted basket. And he takes that basket and he bends down and he puts soil from Mozambique, from where they are into the basket. And then he charges Blani with going back to the wreck site of the Salzozé and pouring that soil on the wreck site so that his ancestors can touch home for the first time in over 200 years. So that is, there is sadness in that, but there's also beauty in that. And there's closure. There's a way that you can move beyond it. Do you know, you can... Yeah. It's weird because this is not even the first time this month that I'm learning and we're talking about these histories of David's class, right? And you talk about classes that are changing your life. You've already cried in front of two professors and you haven't even been October. I don't know what it is. And it's this class called Revolution and Change, the Age of Necropolitics. It's taught by Professor Kate Sanger in the English department. And one of the books required reading is this book called Wake. It's a graphic novel by Rebecca Hall. You ready to go with it? Yes! And it's all about her attempts to go once again into the archives and recover histories of women-led slaver goals. And I think that's in part what inspired my question because a lot of the book is just her reckoning with not just the history but the lack thereof. Because so many of the women, the only thing that she could do was really imagine and make a very educated guess. And that in and of itself is a crime. But it's at least something, right? And one thing that was in the book that kind of stuck with me was the phrase water holds a perfect memory. Because I'm getting in. I was six years old when I went to the Cape Coast Slade Fortress for the first time and I didn't understand why I was there. But I already knew something was wrong. This is before I even knew I was black and I knew something terrible had happened. And ten years later I returned with my family. It was 2018, knowing what had actually happened. And it was heavy. I was underground and walking on literal bones and seeing scratch marks like seeing history and touching history. But at the end, I was like, I was upset. At the end though, there was a priest and poured like something. I think it was palm wine on my head. I still have a video of it. There was a shrine right next to the door of no return where people would never leave. And when I went back out to like the courtyard, I guess, I looked over the side of the fort and I saw these just like two or three kids just playing near the Canon Fortress. And at the time, I thought it was just sad. But now I think it's kind of an example of that being emboldened by your past. Because if you acknowledge that this thing has happened and the water knows that it happened because the water is also carrying the remnants of what happened. I guess the water can kind of welcome you as a friend. So, thank you. Wow, that was beautiful. We pulled what's wrong. So, how about another question? Yes. Hi, I'm Louisa. Also, your answer to that was great and this has been really good. I'm Louisa. I'm a sophomore. And I think my question to you is, as a person before me mentioned crying in class twice in the sorry, I relate to that so hard. It's difficult because I think a lot of us, especially the people in this room, have experienced, like we've been living as racialized people like our lives, but we get here and we learn about exactly what led up to that experience. And that's difficult, especially when you're sitting in a classroom with white students. And so, what advice do you have for us as we're moving through this to be good people to ourselves, but also to be hard on learners and to not cease this process of learning all of this? Yeah, that's a great question. I don't know that I have an answer for it because it's hard. And it's hard, especially you don't know how the subject is being treated in the class by the professor or the teacher. Yeah, I don't have an answer for you. You saw my strategy was to not deal, but that's not an answer. And now I'm dealing, but I'm dealing on my own terms. So it's a little bit different than how you deal in a classroom. The way that, like we as divers, as we're approaching this history, we're coming up with our own rituals around it. I'm writing about it in a way that matters for me and I'm deciding what to do next. So I don't have an answer. But I have a follow-up question, which maybe is helpful because I'm thinking about your experience in the gender studies class, you know, when you were a student and you talked about how mind-blowing that was and just can you put yourself back in that time period when you were learning all this new information you didn't have before and how you processed it then? Yeah. But is that your question? Is it about processing or is it about how do you deal with it as it's coming to you in class? It felt like there was an element of like, what if it's coming at you in not quite the right way? Well, I mean, to be honest, I didn't really think through this question. I think I'm more curious about like, what advice you have, because you obviously went to Mount Holyoke, and so I think that's like a similarity in experience and so how I think, like speaking from that experience and also speaking from your experience now, what advice you might even give your younger self of being in like classrooms here and of like, how you lived experience and how you might, I don't know, relate that to us. Yeah. Of course, y'all are so smart. I'm thinking okay. And forgive me if I called it women's studies. It's gender studies now. And forgive me if I've been using she, her pronouns. I apologize for that. That's sort of like what was happening then. Yeah. Yeah. So when I reflect back to that class, I did a lot of journaling and I did a lot of processing with peers who were also in the class and who were affected as much as I was affected. And I remember trying to talk about what I was learning with people outside of my class and realizing that wasn't a safe space, especially when I went back to my family, to home, and I'm like, did you know there's what? Like, did you hear what's happening in El Salvador? Like, it's just... And people were like, whatever. These issues are more important. So it wasn't always safe. So I think you have to be careful around who you choose to process with. Yeah. I don't know if that's helpful at all. Yeah, I don't want to look into your space, but that was a really good point because it's like we're in this little ivory tower situation and there's so much else going on, so it's like being mindful of that at the same time. But yeah, thank you so much for your answer. Yes. Hi, thank you so much for sharing your time with us. I'm Darian, I'm a senior here. I noticed a few points in your story where there seem to be these profound moments of reflection, such as when you understood that 1.8 million number, when you saw this team of scuba divers who inspired you and where you were actually able to come face-to-face with physical history. I was wondering if there were any similar moments that provoked a perspective shift in you during your interview process. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, so I did a bunch of interviews with two people, just two brilliant folks. Weston Donovan and Ayanna Fluellen, who founded the Society of Black Archaeologists. So one, that there's a Society of Black Archaeologists. That's incredible. But I remember interviewing, so they're doing work in St. Croix, which is where there are a few ships are and there's a plantation that they're documenting. And I remember sitting down with Justin and he said, actually both of them, in different ways, and they said something that it tilted my world. So one, I think that the way, I'll just speak to the way that I was taught about the transatlantic slave trade is it was sort of a side note. It was kind of this thing that happened. Maybe it's sort of mentioned, but not really. So first I'll say, what I learned through this journey, what I really began to see is how monumental an event the transatlantic slave trade was. I mean, y'all, you know this, but I am a smart educated person, but I did not weigh it like this. There were four continents involved in the trade. Europe, it's Africa, it's South America, it's North America. Over 400 years. There's a way that the transatlantic slave trade has shaped modern day society. Europe wouldn't be where it is today. Africa wouldn't be where it is today, if not for this trade. And what Justin said to me, which I had never considered before, and I was like, again, y'all are gonna be like, that's so odd, but I was like, what, I never thought about it like that. He was like, there is no way that you can transport 12.5 million people across the ocean and not change coastlines. He was like, landscapes were changed because of new crops being planted in places where those crops weren't planted before. There's a way that the transatlantic slave trade has clearly impacted climate change, which we don't think about or talk about. And I was like, I never thought about that. Like, there are classes on World War I or World War II, but there are no classes on the transatlantic slave trade, and that has given us the shape of our world. There's a way that we are intricately interwoven with each other culturally as a result of the trade. Africa, Europe, South America, North America, cultures, religions, beliefs, like, we are connected because of this thing that is completely not examined. So that was something that I had not thought about in that way before, and it sort of blew my mind. The other thing that really blew my mind was these archaeologists who are incredible, but I met an archaeologist in Senegal. He's like one of the foremost maritime archaeologists there. And we were having a conversation about what is the place of African-Americans in Africa, which was a whole other layer. We will not have to go there, just say that the thing that he said to me that I had never considered before, when he said that maybe Africa is not a geographical home for African-Americans, but maybe it's a moral home. And he was like, what is the opportunity if we begin to think about what it means to be globally black? That's not even a thought that I've... I mean, there's plenty of thought around pan-Africanism and the African diaspora, but to have it be like your identity, where you're not connected to a specific geography, I don't know if I'm explaining that very well, but it sparked a new way of thinking about things around this idea of race and identity and blackness that I'd never considered before. And I feel like I'm in the middle of still following that thread. So, that's a couple of things. Mai. Hi, my name is Mai. I'm a junior here, and I'm a gender studies major, so that's what you're talking about. I'm probably taking a politics class called the Politics of Reparations, and we're talking about reparations. And before I started taking this class, I thought about reparations from like a monetary perspective, and so I'm really curious from like what you've seen and the people that you've interviewed what your perspective is on reparations and what you think I might reflect. Yeah, I think it's very diverse inside of the group that I was talking to. There are folks who are like, wow, and it should be money. And there are folks who think differently. I think one of the spaces that has been interesting to me that quite a few people are thinking about is this work of memorialization. And what does that mean? And I think that there is a level of reparations around just the acknowledgement and the honoring. So I think there's some really interesting work happening in that space. Yeah. Oh, go ahead. This will be our last student question. Maybe two more. I see I've got two hands. Okay. We'll go with you and then we'll come in here. My name is Rebecca, and I'm just I'm so grateful to hear you like the story in me. The story in me is so happy for us to be talking about the past. And as I was like just looking through that geo and stuff, something that you said that really stood out to me was that these shipwrecks were not sites of death, but sites of remembrance. And I was like, oh my God, it's so good. And so I was just wondering what it was, what do you mean by sites of remembrance and how do you carry that remembrance in your day to day life? Oh, what a great question. What a great question. I love the school. Yeah, I mean I think like the story of the South Jose is a story of remembrance. And there are more sites and stories like that. There's the most recent ship that's been found is the Clotilda. The Clotilda was found in Mobile, Alabama. And it's an incredible story. Just, I don't know how much time we have. You've got time. All right. So the Clotilda was a ship that sailed in 1860. And it sailed because a plantation owner in Mobile, Alabama made a bet that he could build a boat, sail it to Africa or buy people and enslave them here. And 1860 was after the slave trade had been made illegal, but he was like, I can do it. So he makes his bet and he goes to West Africa and he goes to Benin and he buys 110, it's a few more, but only 110 made it on the boat and sails it back to Mobile, Alabama. When it comes back, they got rid of, or they sold off everybody but 35 of those people and he enslaved the 35, so they lived in Mobile. The rest of them were distributed to the financial backers and they burned the ship and tried to hide the evidence. But in 2019, because of some storms, something happened and suddenly the ship became visible and they were able to track it. But that's not what's like the incredible part of this story is that since 1860. So the 32 Africans that were enslaved in Mobile on this guy's plantation were freed in 1865 with the Civil War. When they were freed, they managed to pull together, they worked for like another nine years, pull together their money. They wanted to go back to Africa but they couldn't afford it. So they pulled together their money, they bought land in Mobile, bought about 57 acres of land and they turned it into a town that they called Africa Town. And Africa Town still exists today. So their descendants grew up in Africa Town and it became its own place. And in its heyday, Africa Town had like 12,000 residents. It had barbershops and churches and schools and similar. Like it was a full-on community. But so the descendants of those ancestors, two things, so the descendants of those ancestors have formed committees. They've been trying to make this story known. And you guys, I'm sure you all know Zora Neal Hurston, the writer. So her book, Barakun, is about Kuja Lewis who was one of the people on the ship. And he's considered the last surviving person on a slave ship. And he died I think in the 1830s somewhere around there but she managed to interview him ahead of time. So this is a roundabout long story just to say that so when they found the Clotilda finally, they're going inside the ship to find DNA evidence to match it to the descendants that are there. And we're also doing a documentary where we're taking the descendants of Kuja Lewis back to Benin because they're traces and notes of where he lived and what his experience was. So all of that to say, to me the Clotilda then becomes, like Africa town, becomes a site of remembrance. And it's remembering these people and their stories and bringing them alive. I kind of got lost in the telling of that so I don't remember exactly your question but we got there. You got there. Last student question. Hi, my name is Tony Ann. I'm a senior here at Mount Holyoke sociology major education minor. And my question has to do with you actualizing your dreams even if that meant having some alterations along the way. I'm pretty sure you had to take some really big risks. I know there are a lot of seniors in the room who are grappling with the harsh realities of I need to make up my mind or I need to know what I'm doing right now. How did you deal with like taking these big risks and probably having backlash from family and friends or even other professionals? Yes. My mother who, so my mother retired from Spellman college and she overlapped with Dr. Tatum. So like they know each other. Full circle moment. Full circle moment, yes. My mother, I'm an astrology person. She's a Virgo. And I'm an Aquarius. So if y'all don't know, my mother likes to have things planned out, likes to have things very clear. And I as an Aquarius, and I'm not like I'm an Aquarius sun, moon, like I got a lot of Aquarius energy, which means I hate rules and I don't do things my own way. So I stressed out my mother a lot. Let me try to put this in a way that like might sound like advice. I had a passion inside that I had to follow. I believe that our soul speaks to us and it tells you when this is not the right thing for you and when something is the right thing for you and I think the way that the soul speaks is through feelings. So like when you are unhappy, depressed, sad, doing a thing, maybe that's not the thing to do when there is joy and happiness. Even if it's hard, even if all the dots are not, or the T's are not crossed, that's where the power is. And I don't think I'm necessarily unique inside of this, but I trust that. And so things haven't always made sense. It hasn't looked like it's going to work out and my mother's like, what are you doing? Can you get a job? I think in my whole career, I've worked for a nine to five. It's like six years, not consecutively. But I was like, I got to start my magazine. I've been dreaming. I got to go travel around the world. I got to go start my nonprofit. I had to do that. And I didn't always have the money to do things, but it felt like the right thing to do. And my Instagram handle is its curvy path, Tara, because I really believe in the curvy path. There are some people who travel a straight and narrow path. They know exactly what they want to do and where they want to go. But I think a lot of us, we have to get on the path and let the path unfold to take us where we want to go and the opportunity is to trust that. And it's not always easy to trust, but for your soul's health, like it's essential. It's critical. You know? Yes, yes, yes. That is such a good place to end on, but I'm going to ask one more question. Which is a pretty easy one. Who, maybe, who in the Mount Holyoke community inspired you the most? Oh, God. We've established I'm a little long-winded here. So two people come to mind for two different reasons. The first person, and I don't know if you all would have, no, you won't likely know her, but you will know her. Rochelle Calhoun? Sure. Something you know, Rochelle. Rochelle was the dean of students. She was the dean of students, and then she was the ombuds person. Rochelle... Way back when, 20 years ago. She's an African-American woman. And she held herself with such grace. She always had a beautiful smile. Also a Mount Holyoke alone. Also a Mount Holyoke alone. Yeah, we should invite her back. Yes. And the reason I think of Rochelle is because when I was... I was hall president of Meade in... Are you hall president of Meade? Okay. Well, and this was also, I think, a moment of learning and validation. It's another example of that. But when I lived there, we had a big incident. Like, it was one of those... I don't know if you remember this, but it was a big thing. One of the students invited her boyfriend over, and it was, like, casino night. I still do casino nights. I think he was a Coast Guard. The Coast Guard of the Naval Academy, something nearby. Yeah, Coast Guard. And the night that he stayed over, he actually urinated on the door of two African-American women. Oh, I don't. You don't remember this? Yeah. And it turned into... An incident. Huge, huge thing. It got covered in the papers. It was really a big thing. And Rochelle, with her ability at facilitation and at holding space, was, like, my rock around this. And I feel like I learned so much from her about how to hold space for, you know, like, we were all living together as a dorm. So how are we going to get past this? Because there was a lot of anger, and there was a lot happening. But Rochelle taught me something about grace and space. And I love her and appreciate her for that. That's the first person. And then the second person is... She was a student. And I have to say, I was at Mount Holyoke when some... I'm sure you're at Mount Holyoke and you are amazing, and we'll go out and do amazing things in the world. But some of my classmates have been fantastic. Like, I was there when Kimberly A. Bear, Gregory, who's an actress, was there. Dari Alexander, who's a reporter for Fox News. Mona something. I never pronounce her name correctly. Mona something. Yes, and she's coming October 6th. And then New York Room. Yes. All incredible people. She's incredible. So all these amazing people were there, and I felt like incredible human beings. But one person in particular who should also be on your list, because she's incredible. Her name is Karima Grant, and she's in my podcast. And her daughter actually just graduated from Mount Holyoke last year. Sukena Abbott. I don't know if anybody knows Sukena. Do you know Sukena? So her mom and I went to school together. Karima is, like, when I first met her, she was just a bundle of sunshine. And she became my, like, ace and played with me throughout all my adventures, from fierce to girl tank, to have a couple of books out. Like, she contributed to them. She's been incredible. And such a source of inspiration for me. And now Karima, the reason why she should be on your list, is she started the first children's museum in all of West Africa. Wow. And she's been opening schools. Like, she's a force over there. But Karima, amazing energy. Love her. Well, please join me in thanking Karima.