The Middle Passage Project
Support for the work of the Middle Passage Project has come from the College of William and Mary, The Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy, The W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University and the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.
The Middle Passage Project gratefully thanks the above foundations, organizations and institutions, and especially the College of William and Mary, our academic home. In particular we thank Provost Geoffrey Feiss, Vice Provost Dennis Manos, Dean Carl Strikwerda, and Dean Joel Schwartz for their ongoing support of these scholarly and creative efforts.
Many thanks to Sean Barker, and especially to Joe Dombroski for their assistance in the design of this web site. We also appreciate the assistance of Rob Nelson, who helped with difficult technical applications.
For help with Crossing a Deep River: A Ritual Drama in Three Movements, the playwright would like to thank those friends, colleagues and kindred spirits who have read, commented and shared their ideas: Louis Catron, Jasmin Lambert, Akinsola Akiwowo, Amma Geraty-Tagoe, Shirley Kaplan, Varun Begley, Hermine Pinson, Steve Holliday, Arthur Giron, Lois S. Hornsby, Wanda S. Mitchell, Garland Thompson, Sr., Garland Thompson, Jr., Geoffrey D. Williams, Mycah M. Braxton and Barbara C. Swarzenski. Each has imparted a unique point of view and made an invaluable contribution. Thank you for your time, your commitment to Crossing a Deep River, and your boundless energy and spirit. In addition, I thank the College of William and Mary and Harvard University for the artist in residence fellowship that made it possible for me to spend the fall of 1998 at the W.E.B. DuBois Institute writing the first draft.
I also acknowledge and thank the Middle Passage Project Curriculum Development Team: Carol Beers, Lynda Dunnigan, Loretta Hannum, Serbrenia Sims, Robert Watson, Aaron Butler and Steve Tatum. These skilled specialists bring the work of the project into the k-12 classroom and build a bridge to teachers, students and the community.
For inspiration and training, I am indebted to mentors, friends and colleagues, including my father, Harry M. Braxton, Sr., the artist Tom Feelings, historians John Blassingame and C. Vann Woodward, and literary scholar Charles T. Davis. Poets Larry Neale, June Jordan, Audre Lorde and Pepsi Charles also deserve thanks and praise, as does the great musician and cultural ambassador Michael Babatunde Olatunji. These noble spirits have gone on to join the ancestors; other father-mother spirits too numerous to mention, are remembered in my heart.
Also among the ancestors are my grandmothers Mary Elizabeth Weems, who inspired the poem “Miss Maime,” and Emma Margaret Harrison, who kept the memory of Africa alive within the oral tradition of my family and who inspired the title poem of my collection Sometimes I Think of Maryland (1977). I also remember the love and protection provided by my grandfathers, Douglass Braxton and Morris Leonard Weems. Each of you is held in loving memory.
Among the living, I thank historian Gerda Lerner, scholar/activist Belle Chevigny, writer Grace Paley and playwright E.L. Doctorow, who taught me in my formative years at Sarah Lawrence, as well as novelist Paule Marshall and scholars Alan Trachtenberg and Bill Ferris, who helped shape my graduate career at Yale. Poet and friend Ethelbert Miller has been a constant source of encouragement and support. Finally, there is my phenomenal mother, Mary Ellen Weems Braxton, my model for personal courage and perseverance.
Because of that which each of these individuals and institutions has entrusted to me and for the sake of future generations, the work of the Middle Passage Project goes forward.
Joanne M. Braxton, Ph.D., Director
The Middle Passage Project