<body><div><figure><figcaption>L-R "Catoctin SlaveSpeak," Elayne Hyman Bond, "They Came Across South Mountain." </figcaption></figure> A hush fell over the room as writer and performance poet, <a href="https://elaynebond.com/" rel="nofollow"> Elayne Bond Hyman </a> , led us in a land acknowledgment during a banquet for the Catoctin Furnace Descendants Reunion. This was not your typical land acknowledgement, where one briefly states the original name of now colonized land, and then moves on with their agenda. Hyman invited us to listen to, engage with and touch the land. She honored the land spirits with a poem, behind her a floor-to-ceiling window overlooked vast mountains. In the middle of her reading, rain abruptly fell from the sky—an undercurrent of white noise as her words filled the entire room like a song. And in many ways, it was a song and a prayer and an appeal to us all to be accountable to the earth and also to the ancestors, specifically those who labored and were laid to rest in the <a href="https://youtu.be/shalnfn_llM?si=X7kGF6d_bsa6H9dg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" title="https://youtu.be/shalnfn_llM?si=X7kGF6d_bsa6H9dg"> Catoctin Furnace African-American Cemetery. </a><blockquote> "I call myself East Coast Woodland because I don’t really want to deal with Mary. Who the hell was Mary? They call it Mary’s land. I don’t think so. You know, to me, that’s just continuing the linguistic genocide.” </blockquote> Hyman’s approach to this land acknowledgment ceremony is also a personal one. As a woman — in her words — of many nations, the acknowledgment is deeply tied to the land and to the people she descends from. “I’m West African. I’ve been to Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, trying to figure that out. . . But I know that I’m <a href="https://www.chickahominytribe.org/" rel="nofollow"> Chickahominy </a> , I’m <a href="https://tuscaroranationnc.com/" rel="nofollow"> Tuscarora </a> , and I’m <a href="http://www.nottowayindians.org/" rel="nofollow"> Nottoway </a> from the Indigenous people of the East Coast. I call myself East Coast Woodland because I don’t really want to deal with Mary. Who the hell was Mary? They call it Mary’s land. I don’t think so. You know, to me, that’s just continuing the linguistic genocide.” Thirteen years ago, Hyman moved from Washington, DC to Frederick County, Maryland to research her family of origin. Having been steeped in the Black community as a performer, particularly as part of a Black women’s acapella ensemble, it was a bit of a culture shock to find herself as one of a few in Frederick. Her desire to be in community with Black folks led her to the <a href="https://catoctinfurnace.org/african-american-cemetery/" rel="nofollow"> Catoctin Furnace Historical Society </a> . <figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=1NgDey_0vuUg8ft00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=1NgDey_0vuUg8ft00" width="1920" height="1080" ><figcaption>Hyman performs at a Juneteenth event. </figcaption></figure> “It was Black History Month, and I decided I gotta find some Black people. So, I went to an event at the Catoctin Furnace. And frankly, I was so disappointed by the quality of the event . . . there needs to be a better way to tell the story of Black people. So, dial forward. . . because I went to that event, and I left my email address, I got a notice inviting me to this trip to the Smithsonian to examine the exhumed bones . . . of humans who had been buried at Catoctin Furnace. So, I went, and that experience was really powerful for me.” Hyman’s experience at the Smithsonian to bear witness to these ancestral remains was, in many ways, spiritually transformative. As she details what it was like listening to the anthropologists speak about the human remains and speculate about what their lives might’ve been like, she paused to catch her breath, just on the verge of tears. “You can tell it hurts me to this day . . . I knew there was slavery. I knew there was emancipation. I grew up during the 60s . . . I went to Selma. I was a college student in those days. I had this intellectual and some sort of emotional connection. But this was a transgenerational trauma situation going on. So, because I’m a retired Minister, I have an aptitude for things spiritual, let me put it that way.” All the emotion and energy that came with her time spent there woke something up inside of her that she couldn’t ignore. <blockquote> "You can tell it hurts me to this day . . . I knew there was slavery. I knew there was emancipation. I grew up during the 60s . . . I went to Selma. I was a college student in those days. I had this intellectual and some sort of emotional connection. But this was a transgenerational trauma situation going on." </blockquote> “When it was all over, and people were leaving the building . . . I felt pulled back [and] called to do something. So, I did what I did as a minister. I offered a benediction, a prayer for all of these people. They were very real for me, and then I left, and I took the MARC train home, thinking, I’ve done my part. But I started being visited by the images in my sleep, in my wakefulness, the images and the speech of these people. And the first poem that came to me was ‘Iron Worker’ and it came to me in a rush.” Over the course of a year, the words and images and voices continued to come to Hyman eventually leading to a collection of narrative poetry, “ <a href="https://catoctinfurnace.org/shop/catoctin-slavespeak/" rel="nofollow"> Catoctin SlaveSpeak </a> .” In addition to pulling from archaeological and forensic anthropological research, these poems were born out of Hyman’s time in meditation with the earth and the Catoctin African American Cemetery. The poems offered in this work are reminiscent of a kind spiritual channeling—from the use of dialect to the visceral imagery of what slavery does to the mind, body and spirit. In 2023, her poem, “ <a href="https://out40.com/catoctin-speaks-by-elayne-hyman-receives-state-award/" rel="nofollow"> Creating Catoctin SlaveSpeak </a> ” won 3rd place in the Maryland Writers Association poetry contest. In it, she offers a poetic reflection of how Catoctin SlaveSpeak came to be. During our conversation, she reads the poem aloud to me: Creating Catoctin SlaveSpeak In the museum, I touched bones Smudging them in prayer. At the furnace, I walked earth And sniffed decaying soil. In the library I read words Finding them not there. <a href="https://out40.com/catoctin-speaks-by-elayne-hyman-receives-state-award/" rel="nofollow"> Read the full poem here. </a> In her most recent book, “They Came Across South Mountain,” Hyman continues her journey of elevating the voices of ancestors except this time pulling from her direct familial lineage. “[It] is a love story of four generations of my family of origin who lived and died—they were born free, and lived and died in the time when freedom wasn’t free. So, the story revolves around from about 1830 [or] 1840 to 1890. It’s about a 50 [or] 60 year period of time. . . that was a skeleton over which I draped the flesh of this fictionalized story. . . I self-published it in January, after 12 years of work—seven years of research, three years of writing and two years of submitting it for publication and being told this is interesting, but no. And I’m 79 years old, I don’t want to wait any longer.” <blockquote> “My people, though they were free, could neither read nor write. I can do both. So that’s the gift I lay on the altar of their lives.” </blockquote> The book is available in softcover, ebook and audio. Additionally, Hyman partnered with a book artist and printmaker to create 30 handmade bound copies. For every two handmade versions that she sells, one is donated. Frederick County Public Library currently holds a copy, but her hope is that it will also exist in museums across the state. “My people, though they were free, could neither read nor write. I can do both. So that’s the gift I lay on the altar of their lives. And my goal is to have this story told and to be appreciated and learned about as the story of the enslavement of African people.” For Hyman, her artistry goes beyond a creative passion, but rather a spiritual assignment that at every turn she has stepped up to despite any setbacks she may have encountered along the way. “I’ve always wanted in my retirement to give voice to those who had no voice. Specifically, my ancestry, I think that’s why God’s kept me alive and in relatively good health.” <div style="position:relative;width:100%; height:0; padding-bottom: 56.25%;"><iframe allowfullscreen="true" frameborder="0" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2qYrjqbFSMg?si=HkDUec2KfntjZNFD" style="width:100%; height:100%;top:0; left:0; position:absolute"></iframe></div></div></body>

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A Maryland poet honors enslaved African ironworkers at Descendants Reunion

Writer and performance poet, Elayne Bond Hyman, channels the voices and stories of enslaved ironworkers at the Catoctin Furnace.