When I read about the transatlantic slave trade, I often find myself thinking about the people who stayed behind. We know something of the terrible journeys across the Atlantic, of plantation life and of the generations who fought to survive enslavement and its aftermath. We must keep telling those stories. But I find myself returning to another question. What happened to the mother whose child was taken? To the family waiting for someone who would never come home? To the communities that had to carry on living with those absences?
As a Black African woman, I cannot see the continent merely as the place where the ships began their journeys. Before anyone was captured, there were ordinary lives in progress. People argued, worked, fell in love, raised children, grew food, traded, celebrated and mourned. They belonged somewhere. They had names and relationships, even when the surviving records have not preserved them for us.
What troubles me in my research is how easily those lives disappear when the history is told. We follow the ships across the ocean, quite rightly, but sometimes leave the African shore behind in our telling. The people taken away are remembered for what was done to them, while the worlds they came from receive much less attention. This matters to me as I work on the history of the slave trade and its effects on African societies. I want to know more than how many people were transported or which European powers profited. I want to understand what the loss of people meant in places where families depended on one another, where knowledge passed between generations and where everyday life did not stop simply because outsiders recorded a transaction.
Of course, those answers are not always easy to find. Much of the written evidence was left by merchants, officials and people concerned with power and profit. Their records tell us a great deal about what they wanted to count and control, and far less about a frightened child, an elderly relative or a family trying to make sense of someone's disappearance. I cannot invent their voices. But I can refuse to assume that their lives were unimportant simply because the archive is quiet about them.
This year's Black History Month theme, Honouring Our Communities, made me think about the word ‘our’. Who comes to mind when we use it? And where do we begin the story of the people we want to honour? In Britain, the Windrush generation has an important and deserved place in our public memory. The experiences of Caribbean people who came to Britain, helped build its institutions and challenged racism are part of this country's history. So too are the histories of Black British communities and of the descendants of enslaved people across the Americas. I would never want greater attention to African histories to diminish any of that.
What I hope for is a way of remembering that makes room for all these lives. The history of enslavement did not happen only at its destinations. It also changed communities in Africa: families were separated, relationships and livelihoods disrupted, and political and social life altered in different ways over time. Those who crossed the Atlantic and those who remained did not experience the same things. Yet their histories cannot be understood entirely apart from one another. I sometimes wonder how different our conversations about Black history might be if we asked children to imagine a person's life before capture, rather than meeting that person for the first time on a slave ship. What language might they have spoken? Who would have missed them? What might they have hoped to do the following year? These questions do not soften the violence of slavery. They remind us that the violence interrupted lives that were already full of meaning.
I also think about what these histories mean for us today. History is not something we encounter only in books or museums. It is present in the stories we grow up hearing, in the things our families remember and sometimes in the silences they carry. For people whose histories have been overlooked, being able to recognise themselves and their communities in the stories being told can be deeply affirming. It reminds us that we come from people who had lives, relationships, knowledge and traditions long before colonialism or enslavement entered their histories. Being able to see ourselves and our histories recognised matters. Such recognition can strengthen our sense of identity, remind us that we belong and help us feel connected to people whose experiences may be different from our own. Through writing, art, conversation and cultural gatherings, we do more than revisit the past. We create opportunities to listen, to share and to feel part of something larger than ourselves. That, for me, is one of the most valuable things about Black History Month. It is not simply about remembering what happened. It is also about what remembering can mean for how we live together today.
There is another reason I think about who is missing when a community tells its story. I live with disability, and I know what it feels like to belong to a community while being absent from its gatherings. Sometimes a journey is too much. Sometimes a place is inaccessible. At times I can join a conversation online but cannot speak easily, and a written contribution is lost while everyone else moves on. I have not stopped caring about the people in that room. I simply cannot always participate in the way they expect.
I do not equate that experience with the losses caused by the slave trade. But it has made me sensitive to how quickly absence can be misunderstood. We notice the people who arrive, speak and take part. We do not always ask about the people we cannot see. And sometimes, without meaning to, we tell a story about our community that leaves them out. I know how much it can mean when someone remembers to include you, even when you cannot physically be there. Equally, I know how isolating it can feel when your absence goes unnoticed. These are not simply questions of accessibility. They are questions of wellbeing, of being valued and of knowing that your place within a community does not disappear because your circumstances have changed.
This is where artists, writers and cultural organisations can make a difference. A community exhibition might include a history rarely taught. A conversation might begin with an African family rather than a ship's manifest. An event might make room for someone who cannot travel, or for someone who needs to contribute in writing. These may seem like small decisions. To the person who has been overlooked, they can change whether the occasion feels like it belongs to them too.
I want Black History Month to be a celebration. I love the idea of people coming together through music, stories, food and memories, and of younger generations discovering what earlier generations endured and achieved. But I also want us to be curious. There is no reason why pride in our communities should prevent us from asking whose experiences have been forgotten. When I think about honouring our communities, I think about those who made lives across the Atlantic under unimaginable conditions. I think, too, about the people on African soil whose loved ones never returned. And I think about people living among us now who are part of our communities even when we do not see them at every gathering.
For me, honouring begins there: not with deciding which story matters most, but with being willing to notice who has been missing from the one we usually tell.
To find out more about Dr Abigal Muchecheti's work, visit her website here