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In AP interviews, Mayflower’s legacy includes pride, prejudice

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AP marked the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower’s arrival in 1620 by interviewing descendants of the Pilgrims and the Indigenous people who helped them survive – all discussing the legacy of the Pilgrims’ arrival and how it manifests in today’s world confronting racial and ethnic injustice.

This was supposed to be the year for lavish celebrations of the Mayflower’s arrival in 1620,with President Donald Trump,Queen Elizabeth II and other dignitaries in attendance. The pandemic foiled those plans. But AP launched a transatlantic effort to track down descendants of the Pilgrims and the Indigenous tribe that helped them survive,only to suffer disease,persecution and injustice in the long run. Enterprise photographer David Goldman conducted the interviews in the U.S.; London video production director Steve Barker contributed from the U.K.; and Boston reporter Alanna Durkin Richer pulled it all together in an illuminating text story that also featured a photo gallery of Goldman’s elegantly composed stills, complemented with work from photographers Matt Dunham in London and Brynn Anderson in Atlanta.

One Mayflower descendant,19-year-old Olivia Musoke,whose father is Black,said the pride she feels in coming from people who helped settle this country “gets diminished by the role they played in kind of manipulating and terrorizing people of color, which trickled down to the structures we have today.”

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