SOMETIMES THE DIASPORA BEGINS AT HOME

About the Book

Sometimes the Diaspora Begins at Home F. Ev’one yaY a.k.a. Felton Perry This manuscript addresses the participation of some continental Africans, i.e., indigenous members of various linguistic, religious, and cultural communities who aided and abetted the European slave traders during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (TAST). They committed innumerable acts of kidnapping on their neighbors with whom they coinhabited the African continent’s sub-Saharan regions: Western, Central, and to a lesser extent, Eastern. There exist in some current societies the memory of ancestral involvement in past enslaving activities for which they have created ceremonies and graven images to atone for their forbearers’ predatory practices. Many of the abducted unfortunates, besides being incorporated into the TATS, were sold into other slavery systems as well. The Trans-Saharan, the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, and the ubiquitous African internal networks for which there is very little verifiable documentation translated into English. This lack of written records reflecting the number of humans absorbed into these systems means that there will never be an accurate total of all who were ensnared; however, the European slave-ship captains maintained fairly good ship logs of their slave purchases for the duration of the TAST era. While deficient in some aspects, they nevertheless provide a general accounting of the human trafficking business from the mid-fifteenth century of the dawning of the twentieth century.

About the Author

Felton Perry, an accomplished veteran actor, has had a career in theater, television, and film that dates back to the mid-1960s. Raised in Chicago, Felton dropped out in high school at the age of sixteen and joined the United States Marine Corps. Four years later, he emerged as a sergeant with an honorable discharge and a high school diploma—while on active duty, he passed the GED exam. Back in Chicago, he was accepted as a probationary student at Wilson Junior College where he played baseball and hung out with the students from the drama department while working full-time. He won an academic scholarship to Roosevelt University in the Windy City and got a bachelor’s degree. In 1968 he coproduced a summer street-theater touring company for the city of Chicago, and in 1969, he cofounded a theater group, EX-BAG, which mounted many successful productions. Shortly thereafter, Felton relocated to Los Angeles to pursue a film career. Migrating to Los Angeles in 1970, Felton enrolled in Open-Door Writers’ Program offered by the Writers Guild of America west. In 1973, he produced the world premiere of his own play, OR. In 1975, he helped organize a theater group which, although short-lived, produced many plays, among them Buy the Bi and Bye, his second play, which was produced by the Los Angeles Actors Theatre to great critical notice. In 1980, he produced his musical comedy Sleep No More, which garnered favorable critical notice, and went on to subsequent productions by the Los Angeles Inner City Cultural Center and the Shakespeare Society of Los Angeles. In 1986, he sponsored a series of play readings every Saturday morning, which ran from 1988 through 1991. A card-carrying actor now for almost fifty years, he has spoken with elementary school students from time to time. One of the questions they have asked him is “What is your favorite disease?” Because they see actors on television raising money for different diseases, actors often get identified with diseases. Felton always answered, “Education. I’m a carrier, and I want to infect everyone.”