COLUMBUS, Ga. (WRBL)-- One Columbus native is working to preserve more than 100 firsthand accounts of slavery and the Civil Rights Movement one interview at a time.
"When my grandmother was young, just about your age, maybe seven years old. She liked to sit on a big oak tree and read the picture since she didn't know how to read. One day, a white man who was the old trader saw her read and he became angry, snatched a book from her, dragged her from beneath a tree and began beating her. He made a small brush fire and grabbed her by the arms and forced her hand it to the fire. Rosanna was never the same after that. She lost the feeling of both hands, which turned the same color as burnt coal."
An excerpt from 'Shackled Again,' read and written by Tony Watkins
This is the story that changed the trajectory for Tony Watkins, now documentarian. Watkins says hearing the story of his great grandmother’s grandmother, Rosanna, and finding her slave shackles led him to start his documentary Shackled Again.
His goal: to preserve history, educate and enlighten others.
“My great grandmother's generation was children that [were] never to be heard, or they didn't have conversation about the yester years or the past in front of us," Watkins told WRBL. "So, after she told that story and I'm like, 'Wow, can you imagine the cemetery is full of stories? Can you imagine? People died with things they need to tell, but they didn't tell us.’”
Watkins has recorded more than 100 firsthand accounts of slavery and the Civil Rights Movement in the Chattahoochee Valley. He has published 24 of these accounts across two volumes of Shackled Again. He asks potential readers to do the following.
“Take into consideration what someone had to go through just for you to be here today. The education part of it," Watkins advised. "We need to know our history. This is our voices. This is our people. This is our legacy.”
For those who aren’t readers; Watkins shares the following advice.
"I know we have a lot of things for not only for Black History Month that goes on and that February is where we acknowledge and reflect on black achievement. We need to do this 365, that's all year long," Watkins said. "And if you're if you're not a reader and I understand and I get that a lot of us, not readers, if you want to sit and watch some movies, go to some venues, please do that. But learn history. This is Black history, you know. We definitely belong in history."
Watkins’ second volume featuring women’s stories through the Civil Rights Movement was published two weeks ago.
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