The image "Witness at the Water's Edge" evokes the first documented landing of enslaved Africans on English colonial soil — the 1619 arrival at Point Comfort, Virginia. On the horizon stands a tall-masted, 17th-century-style wooden ship with billowing white sails. The ship is clearly the source of the enslaved people on shore.
  At the water's edge stands a dignified Black woman of mature age who serves as an ancestral "witness." She wears flowing ivory and cream robes with gold-embroidered borders, suggesting ceremonial or spiritual significance. Clothed in spiritual authority and adorned in the wealth of her motherland, she stands between a group of enslaved people in simple wrapped garments on the shoreline and the ship that brought them. The posture and presence of the enslaved people depict captivity and displacement. The woman holds a tall golden staff with a curved crook at the top, indicating both African royal tradition and spiritual leadership. Her expression is calm, grave, and watchful...  the face of a "witness" seeing, remembering, and testifying at the water's edge.