Chapter 11: Overcoming Intergenerational Trauma During the Pandemic of 2020: Healing Is Peace

My paternal grandfather was born in 1862, during American chattel slavery. Though many people state that the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation was in 1863, many slaves did not know they were free at that time. The proclamation was not enforced in many parts of the South for more than 20 years; therefore, my grandfather must have had a slave mindset because my father, his son, did. My grandfather grew up when the slave master held the Bible in one hand and the whip in the other, and when the slave master told slaves that God wanted them to be slaves. My grandfather received this love-hate message. The slave master could beat him, cut off his limbs, rape his wife or daughter, or sell him like he was a stock on Wall Street. These messages and actions had to be confusing to my grandfather, who saw his mother sold off when he was only five years old. That confusion was likely passed on to my father, who then passed it on to me and my siblings. This mental confusion created trauma in my family and many families who were direct descendants of enslaved Africans in America (Hall, 2001).