Evelyn R.

Sawubona - Ngikhona

I see you - I am here

by Evelyn R.

Theophilus Niger:

Toffee

We attempt to pull

His voice

From beneath the narrow-minded titles

he’s constrained within.

—Slave, negro, servant, mine—

Ugly words dance

On the hungry paper lips of history.

We are hungry too.

We hunt for details with fervor and desperation.

We chase the words in a helpless need to know.

The more Known, the more

Pulled. Threads connecting in a

Tangled,

Mangled

Mess.

Theophilus could be the name of a daffodil:

Flowers don’t get to

Choose

Their names. But

They still

Inspire

Hope.

I need to know, but not as much as they

Needed.

I wish to take them in my arms,

Those I painstakingly unearthed

One

By

One:

Penelope, quietly strong, a mother of six.

Penelopy

Phillip, firstborn son of the resilient,

Left with the responsibility of being the eldest.

Phillip

Phebe, daughter of the strong, growing up female, black, and indigenous in a time

where no respect would be afforded her.

Phebe.

Theophilus, second son of a survivor, determined to live up to his name.

Theophilus Jr.

Eliab, third son, born of perseverance.

Eliab.

William, innocent, taken from life before he could learn the

harsh realities of racism.

William

Ama, daughter of those who fought to thrive in a world

that refused to acknowledge their humanity.

Amy

Emma

Henry, Theophilus III, Alfred, and William.

Grandsons of

Hope.

Bravery.

Optimism.

Alexander Petion Niger, Elizabeth Kennedy Niger, Mariah C. Niger,

Fredric Augustus Niger, Margaret F. Niger.

Great-grandchildren

of the

Proud.

Bold.

Self-reliant.

Inspirational and

Resourceful.

Still more—

A legacy of rippled water in Theophilus’s wake.

Branching off into new

Tributaries in

Tribute to this man of long ago.

Twisting and turning, cutting a path through history

In ways unexpected.

Harriet Frances, Roland, Francis, Elizabeth A., Frank T., Walter, Nancy.

All Nigers, in a

Tree forcibly re-planted.

All branches growing from roots unknown,

So all we begin at is

Theophilus Niger.

Evelyn’s Writer’s Statement:

I wrote this poem because I felt it was very important to uncover Theophilus’s story. In my history class, my teacher starts each class by welcoming us with a Zulu greeting: “sawubona.” This translates to “I see you,” and the proper response is “ngikhona,” meaning, “I am here.” This acknowledgement of someone else and their humanity is beautiful, and I wanted to bring some of that to my poem and say that we see Theophilus Niger — not a slave or “negro” — and that we are here to celebrate him.

I wanted to offer historical facts but also share my own thoughts and feelings on this topic. I attempted to mention most of the Niger family I was able to unearth while saying something special about each one that could also apply to Theophilus. It didn’t feel right to just list their names like a checklist (“okay I’m done with all of Theophilus’s grandchildren, on to the next ones!”), so I really thought long and hard about what each person probably felt or was like. There weren’t any historical documents that outlined each person’s character traits, but I tried my best to breathe some life into what otherwise would just be a list of names by creating lines such as: “Penelope, quietly strong, a mother of six.”

I have never done any work like this before and found myself thoroughly engrossed in the process of sifting through historical documents and family trees: I wanted to know who Theophilus’s great grandchildren were, what they felt, what they were like, how each narrative fit together. This desire to understand made me dig deeper into ancestry.com and is referenced in the lines “We are hungry too./We hunt for details with fervor and desperation./We chase the words in a helpless need to know.”

There are also some references I made in the poem that some might not understand completely without knowing Theophilus’s whole story. One such example of this is the part where I mention Theophilus’s legacy “Branching off into new/Tributaries…/Twisting and turning, cutting a path through history/In ways unexpected” this is a subtle nod most specifically to Alfred Niger (a Black voting rights activist) but also to Theophilus’s other descendants who popped up in military records or other historical documents that impacted American history.

The format of this poem was very deliberate, and everything means something. Every italicized word is a name, a title, or the way that a person was addressed in either the historical documents we researched or our class discussions (like how we differentiated between Theophilus and his namesakes by calling them “Theophilus Jr.” or “Theophilus III”). Quite often the spelling of someone’s name differed depending on the document and sometimes people had nicknames like Theophilus’s nickname of “Toffee.” This prompted me to think that it was interesting how people have these labels and how it changes the way we think of them. Take Penelope for example: wife, mother of six, indigenous, woman, wife of a formerly enslaved Black man, Penelopy, Penelope. If you only ever heard her described as indigenous, you might picture a tan woman with dark braids woven through with feathers and wearing animal skins. If you only heard of her as a mother of six, you might picture a woman holding a baby on her hip, two toddlers clutching her skirts as she called to the other three kids to help her with the younger ones. Neither of these scenes is the whole story and maybe neither is even accurate. But nonetheless, I thought it was important to include and highlight each title to attempt to tell as much of the story as known.

I hope that this poem helps to commemorate Theophilus’s life, family, and legacy as well as the importance of the Witness Stones Project’s mission to “restore the history and honor the humanity of the enslaved.”