A Man from Another Land: How Finding My Roots Changed My Life (11 page)

The freedom of the
Amistad
Africans made a further impact on the United States. In 1846, the American Missionary Association was the best organized
abolitionist society in the United States. After the Civil War, the association established more than five hundred schools
and colleges in the South for the education of newly emancipated slaves. Eventually, these schools evolved into universities—Clark,
Atlanta, Howard, Fisk, and Dillard—and Hampton Institute, just to name a few. Thousands of African Americans owe their higher
education to Sengbe Pieh and the
Amistad
case.

I read everything I could get my hands on that was written by Joseph Opala, and I would have the pleasure of meeting him in
person a few years later in 2006. Joe suggested that these institutions educated the young reformers who started the civil
rights movement. Morehouse College was another beneficiary of the
Amistad
case. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Morehouse man. The connection between Sierra Leone and historically black colleges and
universities is direct and the importance for African Americans, all Americans for that matter, is clear.

I also read about the history of diamond mining. It seems the first diamonds were discovered in the riverbeds of India. They
were discovered in Africa in 1866, when a fifteen-year-old boy found a transparent stone on his father’s farm on the south
bank of the Orange River. In the next fifteen years, diamond mining dramatically increased, with Africa producing more diamonds
than India had produced in the previous two thousand years. To this day, diamond mining is one of Africa’s most important
industries.

“Diamond” comes from the Greek word
adamas,
meaning
unconquerable. Diamonds are made up of pure carbon and are the hardest natural substance known to man.

Like many cultures around the world, as Americans we think of diamonds as a symbol of wealth, a sign of love and romance.
But at the same time, they also have something of a sinister side and are at the core of one of the darkest periods in my
Africa’s history. Used as capital by rebels to buy weapons, diamonds have funded some of the country’s bloodiest and deadliest
wars including in Angola, the Republic of Congo, and my new homeland, Sierra Leone.

De Beers, a London-based company, is the largest producer of diamonds. You often see De Beers featured in magazine and TV
advertisements, especially around Valentine’s Day and Christmas. The company’s first chairman, Cecil Rhodes, was an Englishman
who founded De Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd. By 1888, he enjoyed a monopoly over Africa’s diamond production. He formed the
London Diamond Syndicate, a cartel of the largest group of diamond merchants of the time, and essentially controlled both
sides of the diamond market by manipulating the supply and demand.

When Sir Ernest Oppenheimer took over the company in 1929, he followed Rhodes’s example and formed the Central Selling Organization
(CSO), which served to expand De Beers’s control by incorporating more diamond sellers and producers into the cartel. When
the Great Depression hit, De Beers had a bigger supply of diamonds than there was demand for them and the company was forced
to shut down many of its mines. The problem was it was still obligated by contract to buy diamonds from members of the CSO.

In 1939, Oppenheimer’s son Harry took over the company after his father’s death. He initiated a U.S. marketing campaign to
expand the market for diamonds to include the middle class as well as the rich. A copywriter who worked for him came up with
the now famous advertising slogan “A Diamond Is Forever.”

De Beers’s successful marketing campaign became very popular around the world. In fact, it became too popular. The increase
in demand put it under pressure to keep pace with the number of new mines being discovered and exploited by the cartel, and
as a result De Beers had to stockpile a large amount of its own diamonds. After the Department of Justice charged it with
violating U.S. antitrust laws, De Beers had to reduce its U.S. presence, restructure, and rethink its marketing strategy.

The relationship between my homeland and De Beers started in 1935 when the company legally assumed complete control over the
mining prospects in Sierra Leone for the next ninety-nine years. But when Lebanese traders figured out the immense potential
profits to be made by smuggling diamonds out of the country, Sierra Leone soon became a hotbed of illicit diamond mining and
trading. Foreign companies were forced to provide security for their own mines and personnel. By the 1950s, Sierra Leone’s
government had essentially given up trying to police its diamond industry with the exception of two places: the Kono diamond
district and the Freetown diamond export center. As a result, illegitimate diamonds, taken from the secured cities of Kono
and Freetown, were diverted to Liberia—and an illegal diamond pipeline between Sierra Leone and Liberia was born. The government
tried to stem the tide of illegal activity by introducing the Alluvial Mining Scheme in 1956, empowering local miners to receive
mining and trading licenses. However, rather than bringing order to the legal diamond trade as hoped, it only served to increase
the number of illegal miners and strengthen the Liberian pipeline.

When Sierra Leone gained independence from Great Britain in 1961, diamond smuggling became a political and economic pariah
for the country. Populist Siaka Stevens became prime minister and, to gain power officially, encouraged illicit mining. He
nationalized the diamond mines and De Beers’s Sierra Leone
Selection Trust (SLST) by creating the National Diamond Mining Co. (NDMC), giving himself and his key adviser, Jamil Mohammed,
a Lebanese businessman, control of the diamond mines. Under Stevens’s rule, legal diamond trading decreased from over two
million carats in 1970 to less than fifty thousand carats about twenty years later. When Stevens left office after seventeen
years, De Beers “officially” withdrew from Sierra Leone and sold its remaining shares to the Precious Metals Mining Co., controlled
by Mohammed.

The high level of corruption and illicit diamond mining made the country attractive to rebels, and in 1991 civil war erupted.
The Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a group of one hundred fighters from Sierra Leone and Liberia, headed by a savage and
brutal leader, Foday Sankoh, an ex–army sergeant, began its reign of terror. The RUF claimed to represent the urban dispossessed
and promised poor Sierra Leoneans that unlike the current corrupt government, it would offer a greater share of the wealth
from diamonds. But Sankoh and the RUF routinely subjected people to mutilation and amputation. The RUF used systematic rape
of women and girls as a tool to terrorize the population into submission, breaking apart families and communities. Many more
women were abducted and forced to travel with the rebels as sex slaves, often gang-raped, tortured, and threatened with death
if they tried to escape. Women and girls who escaped or were released now often suffer a variety of consequences including
HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, as well as serious gynecological problems. Many also suffer from posttraumatic
stress disorder and extreme anxiety, and find themselves ostracized by their families and communities. A high percentage of
the survivors are now single mothers of what are referred to as “rebel babies.” The RUF used profits from diamond smuggling
to fund its rebellion, knowing control of the diamond trade meant control of the country.

Under pressure from the United Nations and the U.S., Sankoh and President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah signed a peace treaty in 1996
and three years later they signed the Lome Accord in July 1999. To avoid a death sentence for Sankoh, the RUF agreed to surrender
its rebel forces in exchange for a share in Sierra Leone’s government. In the deal, brokered by Reverend Jesse Jackson acting
as a special envoy, Sankoh became chairman of the Strategic Mineral Resources Commission and essentially controlled most of
Sierra Leone’s diamond exports. But peace was short-lived, lasting only about seven months. The RUF, having never surrendered
its forces as agreed, revived its attacks and the fight for diamond mine control raged on. In response, the UN issued a ban
on the purchase of nongovernmental diamonds from Sierra Leone.
⁴

I continued to read one horror story after another about my ancestral land’s history, before and after it declared its independence
from British rule in 1961. Now that I knew I was 99.9 percent Mende and Temne, it was time for me to go and see for myself
what so many West Africans had seen in me for so many years. It was time for me to go home again. I had no idea how this trip
to Sierra Leone would come together, but I prayed and planned to have everything and everyone I needed to make the journey.

One afternoon, I sat in my trailer reading and waiting to be called back to the set of my very popular TV show. Then it hit
me… access. I had access to capital that could help many people in need. I picked up my cell phone and called Ms. Carmen Smith,
an ABC executive. Carmen was a fan of my work on four Spike Lee films, and my work starring opposite actors such as Clint
Eastwood and Warren Beatty, as well as Jennifer
Lopez and George Clooney in the critically acclaimed film
Out of Sight.
She respected that body of work before I had ever considered doing television. In fact, it was that same résumé that brought
Shonda Rhimes, my boss and executive producer, to insist that I be on her show.

“I recently took a DNA test with an organization called African Ancestry Inc., a genetic-testing company,” I explained to
Carmen. “I discovered that I share an ancestral link to the Mende and Temne peoples of Sierra Leone. I want to travel there
and document what I hear and see. I feel as if I am in a unique position to help the people of Sierra Leone and make a change
there.” I told her I wanted to put a delegation and camera crew together.

Carmen was immediately intrigued and supportive. She was already aware of my philanthropic work with various charities and
organizations. At the time I had a PSA running on WABC TV where I acted as a spokesperson for the Los Angeles Regional Food
Bank. The LA Food Bank provides the basic food requirements for anyone who needs help. I was beyond surprised when I realized
how few people were even aware that this organization existed. I produced and filmed the PSA
The Construction Accident
using $75,000 out of my own pocket. I knew that I could use my celebrity as an outreach to those who may be in trouble but
were too embarrassed to ask for help. I recalled times that I, as a student, and later as a struggling actor, knew firsthand
what it meant to be homeless and hungry. I recalled sleeping in my car my first week at Howard University, unable to afford
food.

Carmen told me she thought I would qualify for a grant that ABC Entertainment Group funded. I applied for a $30,000 grant
as a first-time director of a documentary. She made sure that my application and new dream were ushered through as quickly
and efficiently as possible. As an African American woman, Carmen shared my passion for trying to reconnect with Africa, and
she was there for me every step of the way. ABC Entertainment Group awarded me the $30,000 within six weeks. It is important
to note that what I was planning to do had been done many times since 1787 and written about extensively in James T. Campbell’s
book
Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787–2005
. I was not the first African American man to feel this pull, this need to connect with my homeland. Having been kidnapped
and brought as slaves to the United States, African Americans are the only “immigrants” who do not have a continent they can
claim as their own. Our history was destroyed because of slavery. This knowledge of my ancestry, of my DNA, changed that for
me. Like my Italian, Irish, Scottish, and other European sisters and brothers, I too wanted to know and understand where I
came from. I began to wonder if I could help reverse the Middle Passage.

In May 2005,
ABC News
invited me to attend my first White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington, DC. As I looked around the room and at all
the famous faces in attendance, and listened to First Lady Laura Bush roast President George W. Bush, I began to think of
Edward R. Murrow’s famous 1958 speech to the Radio and Television News Directors Association. It reminded me that I now had
access. That night, he said:

To those who say people wouldn’t look; they wouldn’t be interested; they’re too complacent, indifferent and insulated, I can
only reply: there is, in one reporter’s opinion, considerable evidence against that contention. But even if they are right,
what have they got to lose? Because if they are right, and this instrument is good for nothing but to entertain, amuse and
insulate, then the tube is flickering now and we will soon see that the whole struggle is lost.
This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans
are determined to use it to those ends.

Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box.
⁵

After that first White House Correspondents’ Dinner, I called Tavis Smiley to enlist his help in throwing out a very large
net to see what I could catch that would help me with my Sierra Leone project.

On June 27, 2005, I appeared on
The Tavis Smiley Show
on PBS. We engaged in typical show business talk for a bit. We talked about how I came to acting, discovering the legacy
of Ossie Davis, and my first glimpse of Spike Lee’s work. We discussed my career and my struggle to find strong, intelligent
roles, and some of the films I had made, and talked about the major success of my hit TV show.

Then the conversation turned to my search for my African roots. Tavis said that he had spoken to a few African Americans who
had recently done some digging to find their roots. He asked me what I had found. “What does it do for you?” he inquired.
“My mind goes back to
Roots
obviously. What does it do for you to have, at a certain point in your life, discovered what those roots are for Isaiah Washington?”