Finding History Under the Waves

Tara Roberts was a bookish kid, often holed up under the covers with a fantasy novel and a flashlight. “I loved books about magic, adventures, heroes off to save the kingdom,” she recalled during a main stage talk at College Board’s A Dream Deferred™ and HBCU Conferences in Philadelphia. “I really yearned for Ms. Whatsit”—from A Wrinkle in Time—“to come knock on my window and invite me to save the universe.”

In 2016, that knock finally came. Roberts was living in Washington, D.C. and spent a day visiting the National Museum of African American History and Culture. On the second floor of the museum, in a section devoted to archives and galleries, she saw a photo that would change her life. It was a snapshot of a group of Black scuba divers, happily arrayed on the back of a dive boat, wearing smiles and wetsuits as the ocean glistened in the background.

“That picture, when I saw it, it literally stopped me in my tracks. I felt like the rest of the floor went stage dark,” Roberts recalled. “There was something about that picture that reminded me of my dreams as a child.”

She was looking at a group of real-life Black adventurers; a cadre of volunteer scuba divers who work together to find wrecked ships that were part of the transatlantic slave trade. A nonprofit called Diving With a Purpose leads expeditions across the Atlantic, from the shores of Mozambique to the waters of the Caribbean, to recover the history of the Middle Passage by documenting the ships and stories lost on the journey.

“When I was growing up, I couldn’t tell you the name of a single one of those ships,” Roberts told an audience of educators and school leaders at A Dream Deferred, a gathering devoted to broadening opportunities for African American students. “I could tell you about the Mayflower; I could tell you all about the Titanic. But not a single one of those ships, and that didn’t feel right to me.”

The idea of literally resurfacing lost history and portraying the brave divers finding purpose and connection beneath the waves, appealed to something deep in Roberts. She applied for a grant from the National Geographic Society and spent more than a year learning how to dive, all so that she could bring the story of these Black scuba divers to a broader audience. “I know that maybe on some level this work seems like it’s hard, it’s traumatic, like it’s sad work. But for me, it isn’t,” Roberts said. “When I am at the bottom of the sea, I feel nothing but agency and power.”

In 2022, Roberts became the first Black female explorer to grace the cover of National Geographic, peering into the camera from behind dive goggles and under the headline “Into the Depths.” She also produced an immersive podcast series by the same title, a mix of ocean adventure and profound historical connection between Africa and the Americas. Her memoir of the experience, Written in the Waters, was released last year.

“It is one of the most monumental events in human history, and it deserves to be more than just a footnote in our history books,” Roberts said. “The transatlantic slave trade connected us in a way that cannot be underdone ... We are a part of each other. So what if we could lean into that connection? Could it change how we see each other?”

Roberts is eager to see her work make it into schools. She is working on a follow-up project with National Geographic that will involve more resources for educators to help establish connections between this piece of global history and the students in their classrooms. “For me, this is a fresh story that is full of potential and opportunity for profound healing,” she said. “And I actually get to be that adventurous storyteller that I dreamed of being as a kid.”