Breaking the Chains of Bondage: Remembering Slavery to Realize Freedom

For the staff at The Nubian Message, part of taking pride in African American culture was taking pride in the African American past--including slavery. Instead of viewing slavery as a collective experience to be forgotten, writers at The Nubian Message urged African Americans to remember how their ancestors had persevered through oppression. In fact, according to many writers, enslaved Africans and African Americans should serve as inspiration for African Americans in the present to continue resisting racism and prejudice. The struggles and sacrifices of past civil rights leaders, from Marcus Garvey to Malcolm X, should likewise motivate present-day African Americans to keep pushing for racial equality. Although early articles combined calls to remember slavery with skepticism that racial equality would ever be achieved in America, later articles expressed a more positive outlook if African Americans recognized their own potential and actively worked to achieve it.