Dangerous Memories,Daring Documents,and the Demands of Discipleship: The Christian Church,Racism,and Racial Justice

Last year, Ms. Sarah Baartman was buried. She was not well-known except to physical anthropologists researching human origins (Gould 1981). She was buried in the area from which she originally came, in the little mission hamlet called Hankey, in the Eastern Cape. At the burial, choirs sang, Scripture was read, and the President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, stated, “The story of Sarah Baartman is the story of the African people. It is the story of the loss of our ancient freedom.… It is the story of our reduction to the state of objects who could be owned, used, and discarded by others” (Associated Press, Aug. 3, 2002).