By Sean Flynn/Daily News staff
"We today don't need to feel guilty, We just need to feel SORRY.'- Jacob Lienau, 13, of the Lifeline Expedition, on right
NEWPORT - The sight of a 13-year-old boy with a yoke over his head and his hands tied in chains was perhaps the most controversial image in Thursday's "slavery reconciliation march" through the streets of Newport.
Jacob Lienau of Camano Island in Washington said he decided on his own to wear the yoke and chains after seeing a painting of African slave children wearing them in the 19th century, and hearing about the march.
"At the end of the slave trade, the majority of the captured slaves were aged 7 to 15," he said. "We today don't need to feel guilty, we just need to feel sorry."
Lienau and his large family, including his parents, Shari and Michael Lienau, and their four biological children and five adopted children, are part of the Lifeline Expedition that is visiting prominent American slave-trading ports from the Colonial era this month. They marched in Marblehead, Salem and Boston in Massachusetts earlier this week and in Providence on Wednesday.
"We recognize this is an unusual form of symbolic action," said a brochure the marchers handed out to passersby. "Our hope and prayer is that this form of apology will speak in ways that words cannot."
Jacob Lienau of Camano Island in Washington said he decided on his own to wear the yoke and chains after seeing a painting of African slave children wearing them in the 19th century, and hearing about the march.
"At the end of the slave trade, the majority of the captured slaves were aged 7 to 15," he said. "We today don't need to feel guilty, we just need to feel sorry."
Lienau and his large family, including his parents, Shari and Michael Lienau, and their four biological children and five adopted children, are part of the Lifeline Expedition that is visiting prominent American slave-trading ports from the Colonial era this month. They marched in Marblehead, Salem and Boston in Massachusetts earlier this week and in Providence on Wednesday.
"We recognize this is an unusual form of symbolic action," said a brochure the marchers handed out to passersby. "Our hope and prayer is that this form of apology will speak in ways that words cannot."
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