The Sankofa Village Wellness Center

“MAAFA (mah-AH-fah) is a Swahili word meaning "great disaster" or "great tragedy". Since the late 1980s, it has been used to refer to the transatlantic slave trade of the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries, during which an estimated 12.5 million African men, women, and children were kidnapped from their homes and forcibly brought to the Americas to work plantations without pay (by and large), building the wealth of their white enslavers. Some scholars prefer the term "African Holocaust" or "Black Holocaust" to describe this historic atrocity.” (Art & Theology, Victoria Emily Jones)

“The Maafa Remembrance Window plays with the themes of descent and ascent. As Emmanuel, Jesus was below deck, in the miserable belly of the thousands of slave ships that traversed the Atlantic, suffering with those chained inside.” (Victoria Emily Jones) Christ’s arms are draped with chains, but he’s rising. And at some point, those chains will break. That’s the hopefulness that shines through.

The MAAFA Remembrance stained-glass window at New Mount Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church is the largest iconic display of the Middle Passage in the world. The central image depicts a chained Black Christ whose body contains the well-known “Brooks” broadside; a graphic of ‘tight-packed’ enslaved Africans in a slave ship. Though chained, the body's head is tilted upward; rising toward redemption.