President Joe Biden traveled to Angola this week. It's the first time a president has traveled to the African nation, and the first trip to the continent by a sitting president since 2015.
The U.S. delegation invited Hampton Roads resident Wanda Tucker and other members of the Tucker family to join them on the trip, one of several they have made to their family's ancestral home.
Tucker and her family trace their lineage to the first African people trafficked to English North America in 1619, and have committed themselves to sharing that story.
WHRO’s Nick McNamara spoke with Tucker about the experience, and what it means for the future of the relationship between Angola and the U.S.
This interview was edited for time and clarity.
NICK MCNAMARA: How did this trip all come together?
WANDA TUCKER: Well, I understand that there were a lot of people working behind the scenes to have me in Angola. While President Biden was there, I received a call from the U.S. Embassy in Angola asking if we would be willing to be there, and then I got an email from the White House to join the Biden delegation.
NM: Were you on Air Force One?
WT: No, I wasn't on Air Force One, but a separate plane with the Biden delegation.
NM: What did that mean to you personally, to be invited?
WT: I felt that the President was interested in knowing my family's story and history, and wanted my family just to be there while he made the announcement based on our relationship with Angola and our many trips back. And also because we met President Laurenco for the first time in 2021 at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. And then President Laurenco invited us to Angola in 2021 and we did. And subsequently after that, my family and I, we've had meetings with President Laurenco. And we have a tour, the heritage tour – family heritage tour – that we go back to Angola once, sometimes twice a year.
For Biden to know all of this, and want our family as Angolan descendants from the first Angolans trafficked there, and the descendants of the first African child born in America, to be present would be a part of the human story of a horrific narrative and history that both countries share. As well as sharing this people, Angolan people and the many descendants of African descent who are Angolan in America – so African Americans as well as Angolan Americans – and to have us present as a representative of that shared history and shared people.
NM: What were the emotions like for you during the trip?
WT: Overwhelmed all the time.
Even though I'm comfortable in Angola, the significance of this trip was very overwhelming, but positive. But very much overwhelming. I did not know I would have a personal moment with President Biden. I did not know he was going to speak to me personally, so emotional about the work of my family.
And I can't remember the words that he said to me (but) I know how he made me feel as he talked to me. And he valued the story of my ancestors, and he understood why the partnership with Angola was so important and necessary. And he said it was about time. But to kiss me on the forehead, and for our foreheads to touch while we talk, or mostly while he talked to me, it was so powerful. He knew. It was like he knew the story, he understood the story, and why telling the story is so important.
NM: What did you think of the president’s speech in Angola?
WT: It’s to acknowledge publicly the atrocities. It was no longer a story that’s withheld. Some aspects of it was heard and not heard and confusing anything about the story or reinterpreting the story.
For President Biden to acknowledge the atrocities of the slave trade as a president of the United States on the soil of Angola where those atrocities began, for me, was powerful. And I thought that it meant a lot to the Angolans, the African Americans as well as Americans. The world now knows. These are the words of the president of the United States. The world now knows this history.
NM: What do you think this moment means for the future of the Angola-Hampton, and Angola-American relationship?
WT: Well, in September there was a partnership formed with the sister cities between the city of Hampton and the province of Malanje, where my family we trace our lineage. So that work has already begun at both of those local levels. And then I just see the opportunities with the Lobito Corridor to provide jobs, employment, and that would, of course, increase education and health care opportunities for my Angolan family.
