As we toured the museum at Hilton Head Island in South Carolina, I was awestruck at the vast amount of history it contained. The Gullah Geechee history, culture, language, and iconic figures were all on display. The word “display” resonated in my mind as I thought about all of the “tourists” who came to this museum. I judgmentally questioned their motives while simultaneously doing an internal check of my own.

Our tour guide on this journey, Uncle Emory, as one of my fellow Black Writers honorably referred to him, told us about how isolated his ancestors were before the Intercoastal Highway, cars and boats brought outsiders and “development” to their lands. I remember one of my fellow writers talking about the idea of isolation versus insolation. Clearly, this was a difference not only in perspective but also in an attempt to preserve an identity many would seek to vanquish.

My eyes were drawn to a glass box that held an incredibly intricate model of a ship. I can’t recall reading the ship’s name, understanding its significance, or understanding why this museum chose to include it. I just remember staring at it with a sadness that I often felt when I allowed myself to think about how my ancestors were torn away from any life they had known and brought to these shores. I tried to block out images made even clearer by movies like “Amistad.” The lower levels crammed with slaves—the sickness, the screams, the sacrilegious way the slave owners used the Bible to justify these atrocities.

Was this particular ship one that transported soldiers to shore to fight in the Civil War? Did this ship carry wealthy northern landowners scoping out their latest conquests, ignoring the current inhabitants and rightful owners of these lands? Or were they the survivors of the horrendous Middle Passage, my ancestors who somehow happened to make it through, watching some who died and were thrown into the seas, and others who chose to jump in willingly, escaping a life of chattel slavery by taking back the power of who held the future of their lives?

I remember guiltily thinking that it was a beautiful ship: magnificent, elegant, and exquisitely crafted. I remember the words of another fellow writer on this journey. “In order to see the beauty, you have to see it through a lens of pain.” Maybe this is why my heart ached with an almost physical pain that I felt in the depths of my soul at the sight of this ship. The oxymoron of such a majestically beautiful ship that potentially held such a horrendously ugly truth.

Selah.