1987 is a song in which the narrator, a young black man, meets a street vendor who appears to have knowledge of the narrator’s past and describes the struggles, sacrifices, and losses of enslaved African peoples, including particularly vivid descriptions of the middle passage. In this way, 1987 might be understood as an exploration of what Walter Benjamin described as the “weak messianic power”. Benjamin, in his third thesis on the concept of history writes:

“The past carries a secret index with it, by which it is referred to its resurrection. Are we not touched by the same breath of air which was among that which came before? is there not an echo of those who have been silenced in the voices to which we lend our ears today? have not the women, who we court, sisters who they do not recognize anymore? If so, then there is a secret protocol [Verabredung: also appointment] between the generations of the past and that of our own. For we have been expected upon this earth. For it has been given us to know, just like every generation before us, a weak messianic power, on which the past has a claim. This claim is not to be settled lightly. The historical materialist knows why.”

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/benjamin/1940/history.htm