|
Books
by Acklyn Lynch
Nightmare Overhanging Darkly: Essays on
Culture and Resistance
/
Blueprint for Change
*
* * * *
“Time
Longer Dan Rope”
Slavery, Resistance, and Revolt
in the Americas
By
Dr. Acklyn Lynch
Since the Middle Passage, Africans, in the New
World, have preserved their gods and their orishas not only as
residual memory…but both in the synergy and logic of survival
and the modalities of revolt which directly rejected their
oppressive conditions. They had discretely preserved their gods
and their orishas, which undoubtedly influenced cultural
expressions in dance, music, visual, and plastic arts. One must
always remember that slave ships carried on board not only Black
women, men, and children but also their gods, beliefs, and
folklore. Africans did not leave the continent as a tabula rasa
. . . a blank slate . . . but rather with the brilliance of
peoples who were advanced in architecture, agriculture, arts,
science, and technology for centuries. They shared their knowledge
with Asia, Europe, and the Americas long before the arrival of
Columbus in the New World and the European grandeur of the Age of
Enlightenment and Renaissance.
The expansion of Christianity and Islam
exploited the human and natural resources of the African continent
in their quest for Empire . . . . The emergence of this expansion
into the New World was the reflection of a continental thrust
accentuated by greed and power for hegemony in the European world.
The clash between Islam and Christianity in the struggle for
dominance in the Mediterranean basin necessitated the opening up
of the entire African continent to slavery, colonialism, and
imperial designs. Africans in the Americas were subjected to three
centuries of domination under the terror of this peculiar
institution . . . slavery.
Walter Rodney in his work,
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
writes,
|
In large parts of Europe, when
communalism broke down it gave way to widespread slavery
of the new form in which labor was mobilized. This slavery
continued throughout the European Middle Ages with the
Crusades between Christians and Muslims, giving an added
excuse for enslaving people. Slavery in turn gave way to
serfdom, whereby the laborer was tied to the land and
could no longer be sold and transported. Because it took
many years for the transition from slavery to feudalism to
take place in Europe, it was common to find that feudal
society still retained numbers of slaves.
Parts of China, Burma, and India also
had a considerable number of slaves as the society moved
away from elementary communalism, but there was never any
time span when slavery was the dominant mode of production
in Asia. In Africa, there were few slaves and certainly no
epoch of slavery. Most of the slaves were in North Africa
and other Muslim societies, and in those instances a man
and his family would have the same slave status for
generations, within the overall feudal structure of the
society. Elsewhere in Africa communal societies were
introduced to the concept of owning alien human beings
when they were made captives in war. At first, those
captives were in a very disadvantaged position, comparable
to that of slaves, but very rapidly captives or their
offspring became ordinary members of the society because
there was no scope for perpetual exploitation of man by
man in a context that was neither feudal nor capitalist. |
Orlando Patterson in his work,
Slavery and Social Death, agrees with Rodney in his argument on slavery in
Europe and Islam when he writes,
|
Europe was hardly unique in this
association of civilization with slavery. The rise of
Islam was made possible by slavery, for without it the
early Arab elites simply would not have been able to
exploit the skilled and unskilled manpower that was
essential for their survival and expansion. Even more than
Western states, the Islamic world depended on slaves for
the performance of critical administrative, military, and
cultural roles. |
However, he differs significantly with Rodney
on Africa when he argues,
| The same holds true for Africa and certain
areas of the Orient. In both the pagan and Islamic regions
of pre colonial Africa advanced political and cultural
developments were usually, though not always, associated
with high levels of dependence or slavery. Medieval Ghana,
Song hay, and Mali all relied heavily on slave labor. So
did the city states of the Hausas, Yorubas, and Ibibios,
the Kingdoms of Dahomey and Ashanti at their peak, the
caliphate of Sokoto and the sultanate of Zanzibar. |
The uprooting of Africans from their soil and
the horrors of the slave dungeons remain the dramatic reality for
a people’s descent into a chasm of despair. As the doors of the
slave castles were shut with hundreds of Africans being kept for
unknown periods before they entered the door of no return, the
human spirit was confronted with the beginning of a journey that
defied the frontiers of prior knowledge, as their imagination
could never have anticipated the Middle Passage and the plantation
experience. They had no references in history, literature,
folklore for this experience and Africans were totally unprepared
for the journey. They had understood some aspects of slavery, but
what was to come . . . simply was devoid of any comprehension.
They would not only be exiled from their fragmented roots . . .
but more tragically they were scorned in the night of self
contempt. They would be an exiled people in a new world, burdened
and challenged from the very outset by the paradoxical
relationship between slavery and freedom.
Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois in his classic work,
Black Reconstruction, writes,
|
The most magnificent drama in the last
thousands years of human history is the transportation of
ten million human beings out of the dark beauty of their
mother continent into the new found El Dorado of the West.
They descended into Hell; and in the third century, they
rose from the dead, in the finest effort to achieve
democracy for the working millions which this world had
ever seen. It was a tragedy that beggared the Greek; it
was an upheaval of humanity like the Reformation and the
French Revolution . . .
Yet we are blind and led by the blind .
. . We discern in it no part of our labor movement; no
part of our industrial triumph; no part of our religious
experience . . . Before the dumb ages of ten generations
of ten million children; it is made a mockery of and spat
upon; a degradation of the external mother; a sneer at
human effort; with aspiration and art deliberately and
elaborately distorted. And why? Because in a day when the
human mind aspired to a science of human action; a history
and psychology of the mighty effort of the mightiest
century; we fell under the leadership of those who would
compromise with truth in the past in order to make peace
in the present, and guide policy in the future. |
We have clearly before us why there has been a
superficial rendering of slavery in our educational institutions
from kindergarten through university. Du Bois challenges us to
look seriously at this institution of slavery and the impact of
the Trans Atlantic slave trade both on the metropolitan centers of
Europe and North America as well as the immediate challenges of
colonialism and neocolonialism which have emerged in Africa and
its Diaspora, especially the Americas.
Slavery, as an institution, represents one of
the most extreme forms of human domination as reflected in the
power relationship between master and slave, The master, having
purchased the slave as property,
is entitled to exercise total legal rights over the
productive and reproductive life of a slave, even to the point of
using or threatening violence in the control of that person . . .
He also dominates the psychological well being of the slave, who
must accept the cultural authority of his master in every manner
of thought and action. In the New World, this social relationship
was judicially implemented in Constitutions and Black Codes which
specifically defined it in the terminology of race and class. The
issue was not only coded in the language of freedom and slavery .
. . but Europeans and Africans . . . White and Black . . . For
three centuries an entire body of philosophical thought has been
devoted to the validation of this peculiar institution in order to
justify its morality and expediency.
Henri Wallon, in writing about slavery,
states,
|
The slave was a dominated thing, an
animated instrument, a body with natural movements, but
without its own reason, an existence entirely absorbed in
another. The proprietor of this thing, the mover of this
instrument, the soul and the reason of this body, the
source of this life, was the master. The master was
everything for him, his father and his God, which is to
say his authority and his duty. |
These ideas percolated the dominant discourse
on slavery from the fifteenth century through the twentieth
century. It represented the dominant voice in the establishment of
plantation society.
Orlando Patterson argues that
|
all slaves experienced some sort of
secular excommunication…because they were alienated from
all rights or claims of birth, the slave ceased to belong
in his own right to any social order… |
Thus, he refers to the slave as a genealogical isolate
|
. . . not only was he formally isolated
in his social relations with those who lived . . . but he
was culturally isolated from the social heritage of his
ancestors”. since he was isolated from the social
heritage of his ancestors . . . . Slaves differed from
other human beings in that they were not allowed freely to
integrate the experience of their ancestors into their
lives, to inform their understanding of social reality
with the inherited meanings of their natural fore bearers,
or to anchor the living present in any conscious community
of memory. That they reached back for their past, as they
reached out for the related living, there can be no doubt.
Unlike other persons, doing so meant
struggling with and penetrating the iron curtain of the
master, his community, his laws, his policemen, his
patrols and his heritage. |
Slaves were heathens or infidels . . . but the
resistance movement essentially negates this idea, because it
calls on the collective consciousness based on the “ship
mates” experience to invert the process by awakening African
Gods and Orishas in the assertion of self. Warriors had to be
bathed and cleansed in the spirit of Oludumare, Shango, Oshun,
Yemanja, and Olokun.1
Therefore it is at this level that we must
begin to examine the significant role of resistance in the African
consciousness as we engage in an ongoing war against tyranny.
Africans as free men and slaves intuited the deception and
duplicity of the Europeans in the pursuit of establishing the
slave trade. At educational institutions throughout the Americas,
it has been implicitly suggested that African leaders of the 15th
and 16th centuries were simple, childish
operatives who exchanged human cargo for trinkets, alcohol, arms,
utensils, gunpowder etc. We were never informed that certain
African leaders had a different idea of trading with the Europeans
and some even fought against the trading in slaves.
The subjugation of the African economy was a
slow process in the beginning (like globalization and the FTA). At
the turn of the 16th Century, the King of the Kongo
asked the Portuguese for masons, clerks, priests, physicians, and
technicians but instead he was overwhelmed by slave ships sent
from Portugal. He was incensed and opposed this trade . . . but
the Portuguese played off one part of his kingdom against another
and later forced them to specialize in the export of human cargo.
Queen Nzinga in 1630 as head of the Angolan
state of Matamba tried to coordinate resistance against the
Portuguese and their slave trading. However, by 1648, they gained
the upper hand and she was isolated. In 1656, she had to resume
business with the Portuguese and made major concessions to the
decision making role of Europeans with the Angolan economy. The
Baga people under the leadership of Tomba tried to organize an
alliance in what is now the Republic of Guinea in order to stop
the slave trade . . . but he was defeated by the local European
resident traders, mulattoes, and other slave trading Africans.
In the 1720’s Dahomey opposed European slave
traders and was deprived of European imports (like the Cuban
embargo). Again Trudo, Dahomey’s King between 1706 and 1726
looted and burned European forts and slave camps; thereby reducing
the slave trade from the “Slave Coast” to a mere trickle, by
blocking the paths leading to sources of supply in the interior.
The Europeans failed to unseat or crush him, but he was not able
to get around the embargo. They pressured him tremendously and by
1730 because he needed firearms and cowries, he was forced to deal
with the Europeans and agreed to allow the resumption of the slave
trade. So much for then and now . . . Dahomey . . . and Cuba . . .
the struggle continues. Thus the complexity of certain Africans in
the slave trade must be carefully understood in any critical
analysis.
The journey from "then till now” has
been historically called the Middle Passage.
Dr. Eric Williams, distinguished Caribbean scholar, writes
in his major work,
From Columbus to Castro: The History of the
Caribbean, 1492 -1969,
|
The Negro slave trade became one of the
most important business enterprises in the 19th
century. It began about 1450 as a Portuguese monopoly, and
became an international free for all by the end of the 17th
Century. |
“The Middle Passage” and the “Door of No
Return” remain significant memories of those who attempt to
"Return to the Source" (Sankofa),
in order to reconcile the trauma of an African Holocaust
with transcendent visions of freedom and equity. From the slave
castles to the slave ships, it was obvious that African slaves
were entering a mediated zone in the human experience. They were
impounded like animals in the bottom of slave ships with limited
access to freedom of movement . . . they were allowed to
come on deck at specific intervals, when they stretched, danced,
fought their jailers and
jumped overboard, uttering cries of triumph as they cleared the
vessel and disappeared below the surface. These early acts of
resistance were logical responses to the horror of living in the
slave "catches" and the violence imposed on them by
their captors . . . . No place on earth, observed one writer of
the time, concentrated so much misery as the hold of a slave ship
. . . . Violence and ferocity became the necessities for survival
and violence and ferocity survived.
The Middle Passage has been permanently etched
in the consciousness of artists like Tom Feelings, Leroy Clarke,
Valerie Maynard, Robert Hayden, Nicolas Guillen, Haile Gerima,
Black Stalin, David Rudder, Bob Marley and Paul Robeson’s "Many
a Thousand Gone.” The horror of the experience is not only
explained by the courage of those who survived but by the reality
of their captor’s demonic sensibilities. A ship’s captain held
up by the adverse winds in the doldrums was known to have poisoned
his cargo while he was drunk…Another killed some of his slaves
to feed others with the flesh . . . . Fear of the cargo bred
savage cruelty in the crew . . . . One Captain, to strike terror
among his cargo, killed a slave and dividing the heart, liver, and
entrails into 300 pieces, made each slave eat one piece,
threatening those who refused with torture.
Such incidents were not rare. Given the
circumstances such things were inevitable . . . . The slaves died
not only from the regime, but from grief, rage, and despair. They
undertook vast hunger strikes . . . undid their chains and hurled
themselves on the armed crew in futile attempts at insurrection.
Their courage was tremendous . . . . But the system did not only
consume slaves . . . . Every year one fifth of all the captors who
took part in the African Slave trade died. The horror story
extends beyond the frontiers of memory and humanity. All America
and the Caribbean took slaves . . . and Robert Nesta Marley chants
“Redemption Song.”
This early encounter with European captors
compelled the captive to ask the question . . . Where am I going?
Is this a descent into Hell? Who are these Europeans and from
where does their inhumanity arise? Will I ever return home, and if
so can I be whole? These tortured questions troubled them all the
way to the Auction bloc as Paul Robeson’s beautiful voice
caresses the wind with solid determination, "No More Auction
Bloc for Me… No More." Slaves came to this most humiliating
moment enchained and sometimes stark naked as plantation owners
and auctioneers examined their body parts . . . . It was
particularly devastating for African women, who did not have this
prior experience, but more importantly had to bear witness to the
powerlessness of the African man to protect her while she was
standing on the auction bloc.
It was a dramatic moment for this clash of
cultures to take place in New Marsalis. Highly decorated West
Point Confederate General Dewitt Willson and the African met under
strange but challenging circumstances. At a slave auction in New
Marsalis, the auctioneer wanted to bring up the African, but only
after all the other captives were taken off the boat . . . . Now
the auctioneer had a Negro working with him who looked, walked and
talked just like his master. He had the same build . . . . the
same crafty eyes . . . . and wore the same type of clothes . . . .
Some people claimed that it was his son by a colored woman Dewitt
and others were waiting till the slaves came up, herded in a long
line out of the hole. The slaves were naked and stood on the decks
blinking . . . they had not seen the sun in a long time . . . .
They looked pale and undernourished.
After they dispensed with the other slaves,
they brought up the African who the auctioneer referred to as
their chief. When the African came up he scared and frightened
everyone. He was a huge man at least two heads taller than any man
on deck. There were so many chains on him that he looked like a
fully trimmed Christmas tree . . . . His eyes were sunk deep
in his head and he was carrying a baby. He was quiet now . . . not
blinking . . . but shining in the sun . . . a magnificent
species.
General Dewitt Willson said immediately,
“I’ll own him. He’ll work for me. I’ll break him. I have
to break him.” After they sold the others, the auctioneer put
the African up on the auction bloc with twenty men guarding.
Dewitt went up and paid one thousand dollars cash for the African.
The auctioneer said “sold.”
Then some strange things happened. The African
took the chains and knocked off the head of the auctioneer
spilling blood all over the place . . . . With a baby in hand, he
began to clear out with the Negro guiding him, “This way, and
this way!” Some men raised rifles to shoot the African, but
Dewitt shouted, “Don’t shoot my property, I’ll sue. That is
my property”.
But by that time the African had gone . . . .
out of range . . . . So Dewitt and others got on horses and went
after him. The African was traveling pretty fast carrying the
baby, the chains and the Negro too. The Negro helped the African
to get rid of his chains. For several weeks they couldn’t catch
the African… One
evening, the African showed up at Dewitt’s home in African
clothes with a spear and a shield and before Dewitt could respond,
the African freed all of Dewitt’s Negro slaves.
The next night he did the same thing at someone
else’s home. The general described the event furiously,
| I was sleeping peacefully when I heard the
noise outside by the slave cabins. God Damn, when I
reached to the window, if I didn’t see all my niggers
heading into the woods behind the African …And there was
another too… never more than a few steps behind the big
one, waving his arms and telling my niggers what to do and
where to go. |
Dewitt Willson then offered a ransom of one
thousand dollars for any information concerning the African.
Finally, one night the auctioneer’s Negro
came to Dewitt Willson and told him ‘“You want the African?
I’ll take you to him . . . . I’ll go up to him and slap him on
the cheek if you want it that way.” He took him to the clearing
where the African was sleeping and Dewitt couldn’t figure out
why there were no guards and why no one warned him. The Negro
smiled and said, “There was only one guard, me.” The general
asked, "why did you do this? Why did you turn on
him?”
The auctioneer’s Negro smiled and replied
softly, "I am an American; I am no savage. And besides, a
man’s got to follow where his pocket takes him, doesn’t he?” Dewitt Willson nodded and thought about returning to his camp
that night but he knew that he would have missed the opportunity
to capture him the next day. Dewitt had his men surround the
African who bolted on top of a rock straddling the baby. Dewitt
shot the African from point blank range, “just above the ridge
of his wide nose.” The African fell to his knees and with one
last effort, he crawled toward the baby to kill the child with a
rock, but the general, a marksman, shot him once again. Dewitt
looked down at the pile of stones that the African had been
talking to and at the dead man. He picked up the smallest white
stone, before taking away the child.
In Paule Marshall’s,
Praise Song for The Widow, she recreates folkore in a dialogue
between young Avery Johnson and her great aunt in what
happened when the Ibos landed on the Georgia Sea Islands near
Tatem. The rich archival memory had been preserved for generations
in stories about how the slaves were brought to the landing in
small boats, as the slave ships remained out in the deep
water.
Aunt Cuney said,
|
And the minute those Ibos was brought
on shore they just stopped, and taken a look around . . .
. A good long look . . . . Not saying a word . . . . Just
studying the place real good. Just taking their time and
studying it . . . . And they seen things that day you and
me don’t have the power to see. ‘Cause those pure born
Africans was peoples that could see in more ways than one.
The kind can tell you ‘bout things happen long before
they were born and things to come long after they’s
dead. Well, they saw everything that was to happen
‘round here that day. The slavery time, and the war my
gran’ always talking about, the ‘mancipation and
everything… after that night up on to the hard times
today.
Those Ibos didn’t miss a thing. Even
seen you and me standing here talking about ‘em. And
when they got through sizing up the place real good and
seen what was to come, they turned my gran’ said and
looked at the white folks what brought ‘em here. Took
their time again and gived them the same long hard look.
Tell you the truth, I don’t know how those white folks
stood it. I know I wouldn’t have wanted ‘em looking at
me that way. And when they got through studying ‘em,
when they knew just from looking at ‘em how those folks
was gonna do, do you know what the Ibos did? Do You . . .
.
They just turned, my gran’ said, all
of ‘em – and walked on back down to the edge of the
river here. Every las’ man, woman and chile. And they
wasn’t taking they time no more. They had seen what they
had seen and those Ibos was stepping! And they didn’t
bother getting back into the small boats drawed up here
______ boats take too much time. They just kept walking
right on out over the river (even with their iron chains
around their ankles, wrists and necks) . . . .’ Nuff
iron to sink an army. The chains didn’t stop these Ibos
none. Neither iron.”
The white folks looked on in a state of
shock and Aunt Cuney laughed, “Those Ibos! Just upped
and walked on away not two minutes after getting here,
stepping and singing on their way home!!”
Avery then asked Aunt Cuney, “But,
how come they didn’t drown?”… Aunt Cuney, standing
on consecrated ground, stood tall in silence, before
replying, “Did it say Jesus drowned when he went walking
on the water in that Sunday School book your momma always
sends with you”. “No ma’am”, Avery said
sheepishly. Aunt Cuney responded. “I didn’t think so.
Anymore questions.” |
Today we hardly ever tell folk stories to our
children about the heroism of the slave experience . . . We have
surrendered the battlefield of ideas to television, video games,
and other consumer gadgets . . . . Memory has become vestigial . .
. . interlaced with cotton candy sensibilities. We have forgotten
everything beyond our parents and their habituated lives in the
comfort zone of memorabilia . . . . The stories are no longer
accessible because we don’t stand on consecrated ground in post-
modern idolatry.
Who are our grandmothers, grandfathers, great
aunts and uncles whose archival memory would situate the
contextual experiences of migration and displacement? We need to
recall the motifs of defiance, so that the underground poets could
connect the legacy of the run away griots. We must challenge, as
artists and academicians, the anachronistic and pernicious
definitions of Africa as a closed universe with notions of
identity as fixed and primordial.
Margaret Walker in her poem entitled “Lineage,”
expresses the strength of those women who came before her like
Aunt Cuney, Vyry, Harriet Tubman,
Sojourner Truth, and
Nanny.
|
My
grandmothers were strong
They
followed plows and bent to toil
They moved
through fields sowing seeds
They touched
the earth and grain grew
They were
full of sturdiness and singing
My
grandmothers were strong
My
grandmothers were full of memories
Smelling of
soap and onions and wet clay
With veins
rolling roughly over quick hands
They have
many clean words to say
My
grandmothers were strong
Why am I not as they? |
The slave experience relegated the African
woman to double and triple exploitation, to grotesque sexual
relations, an enforced promiscuity, to rape, to child raising that
bore no resemblance to her previous mores . . . . The essential
horror of her story has been charted in procreation as she was
compelled to raise children in this abysmal reality for her master
as captor and owner of her body, mind and soul.
Our concern for examining the spirit of revolt
and resistance in the African consciousness in plantation society
is simply to dispel the propaganda that Africans were docile,
lazy, cowardly . . . lacking the wherewithal to resist their
oppressive reality. Quite the contrary, Africans fought not only
on board the slave ships, but on the plantation for their freedom
and independence. The slogan "Liberty or Death"
and "Patria
O Muerte"
resonated throughout the Hemisphere from the very beginning
of this pernicious reality. Slaves demonstrated a stubborn and
tenacious resistance throughout the region against a slavocracy to
which they had been forcibly subjected. Some Africans committed
suicide as self determined destinies in the Middle Passage,
as they jumped overboard into the Atlantic Ocean. They
believed that death would allow their souls to return to the land
of their ancestors as the old Negro Spiritual resonates "Coming
forth to carry me home.".
For some women there was voluntary abortion,
the object here being to spare their children the yoke of slavery
. . . . Many women poisoned their white masters and their children
with toxic plants . . . with the
advice of their herbologists and medicine men . . . There
were also deliberate incidents of sabotage at the work place, general strikes ( Du Bois’
Black Reconstruction ), which gave rise to the
stereotypical picture of the Negro being lazy, ignorant, and
cowardly (D. W. Griffith’s
movie, Birth of A Nation). Finally, slaves conducted
armed resistance in rebellions and flight.
Revolts were extremely numerous from the 16th
through the 19th centuries. This paper will examine the
character, integrity, and the strategies of some of the revolts
with emphasis on the consequences of their efforts. Slave revolts
occurred in Haiti in 1520, 1679, and 1691; in San Domingo in 1523,
1537, 1548; and in various British West Indian islands in 1649,
1674, 1692, 1702, 1733, and 1739. Herbert Aptheker has documented
the occurrence of six rebellions in the U.S.A. between 1663 and
1700; fifty during the 18th century, and fifty-five
between 1800 and 1864, which included Gabriel Prosser (1800),
Denmark Vesey (1823), and Nat Turner (1831). The latter coincided
with the Jamaican revolt of 1831-32 (The western Liberation
Uprising led by Samuel Sharpe).
Puerto Rico had uprisings in 1822, 1826, 1843,
and 1848; Martinique in 1811, 1822, 1823, 1831 and 1833. This is
far from an exhausting list, but many of the revolts were
spontaneous and violent as a passionate reaction to systematic
torture and brutalities in human work schedules. Others were
carefully planned uprisings over long periods . . . . The leaders
of these movements were religious people who had a concrete and
specific attachment to the community. In the U.S.A. it was Nat
Turner and Denmark Vesey. In Jamaica it was Daddy Sharpe in 1832
and Paul Bogle in 1865, the
Morant Bay Uprising. In South America especially in Brazil, this
leadership role was taken over by the Muslim Imams and the
Candomble priests with their syncretistic innovations to Orisha
rituals.
The first type, the Imams can be explained in
socio-economic terms . . . i.e., the African’s opposition to the
whole concept of servile labor. The second was also a movement
of “cultural resistance… a symptom of black
protest against compulsory Christianization,” the
importation of European customs and values. These rebellions led
to large scale armed struggle aimed at the seizure of all or part
of the colony as evidenced in Haiti, Brazil or Suriname.
It began on the night of August 14th
1791, with Voodoo
incantations as the medium of conspiracy. There was a thunderstorm
and the Africans had gathered in the clearing at Caiman Forest. In
spite of all the prohibitions (Black Codes), the slaves gathered
to sing, dance, practice their rituals, and plan the insurrection.
They remembered the efforts of Makandal and how they failed
despite mass poisonings among the whites. They recalled the
contradictions in Makandal’s leadership and the betrayals. They
were now poised to move to a higher level under the leadership of
Boukman, a Papaloi or High Priest, a huge man, who had been a
headman on a plantation and one who followed carefully the
political situation among the whites and the Mulattoes.
In the middle of this tropical storm in the
thick forest, Boukman gave his last instructions. He stimulated
his followers by a prayer spoken in creole, which like so much
spoken on such occasions has remained,
|
The God who created the sun which gives
light, who uses the waves and rules the storm, though
hidden in the clouds, he watches us. He sees all that the
white man does. The God of the white man inspires him with
crime, but our God calls upon us to do good works. Our God
who is good to us orders us to revenge our wrongs.
He will direct our arms and aid us.
Throw away the symbol of the God of the whites, who has so
often caused us to weep and listen to the voice of
LIBERTY, which speaks in the heart of us all. |
The symbol of the God of the whites was the
cross which, as Catholics, they wore around their necks. That very
night the insurrection began. The slaves destroyed tirelessly . .
. . They were seeking their salvation in the most tireless way . .
. . the destruction of that which they knew was the cause of their
suffering; and if they destroyed much, it was because they had
suffered much. They burned down the sugar plantations. They knew
concretely that as long as the plantations remained intact, their
living conditions would never change. From their masters they had
known rape, degradation and at the slightest provocation death.
They returned in kind. C.L.R. James stated that “the slaves had
revolted because they wanted to be free…but no ruling class ever
admits such things” . . . so they labeled the resistance as
barbaric, savage, primitive, and emotional.
The cruelties of property and privilege are
always more ferocious on a daily basis than the revenges of
poverty and oppression . . . . But the propaganda of history never
admits to this, especially when discussing, "How the West Was
Won." The whites committed horrendous acts of cruelty against
men like Makandal, Ganga Zumbi, Cudjoe and other rebel leaders who
demonstrated enormous courage, strength, and determination in
their organized resistance to prevent their extermination. The
Mackandal revolt never came to fruition but it led to Boukman,
Toussaint, Dessalines, and Christophe.
In 1788 the Le Jeune case exposed the realities
of slave law and justice in San Domingo.
| Le Jeune was a coffee planter of Plaisance.
Suspecting the mortality among his Negroes was due to
poison, he murdered four of them. and attempted to extort
confessions from two women by torture. He roasted their
feet, legs and elbows, while alternately gagging them
thoroughly and then withdrawing the gag. He extorted
nothing and threatened all his French speaking slaves that
he would kill them without mercy if they dared to denounce
him. |
The slaves reported him and a commission was
established to investigate the accusations. The commission not
only found that the testimony of the slaves was true, but they
actually found the two women burned and chained, with elbows and legs
decomposing, but still alive; one of them had her neck so
lacerated by an iron collar that she could not swallow. Le
Jeune’s evidence on the poisonings was found to be a hoax . . .
. The women died . . . he disappeared and the Governor and the
Intendant not only reprieved him but ordered 50 lashes for the 14
Negroes who testified to the Commission. The Governor wrote, “To
put it shortly, it seems that the safety of the colony depends on
the acquittal of Le Jeune.” So much for colonial justice . . .
then and now.
Angela Davis in her book,
Women
Race and Class, writes about a young woman called Nellie who was
whipped for the offense of impudence. She fought and cursed the
overseer who was determined to brutalize her. He overpowered her
and succeeded in tying her arms to a tree before beating her.
| The cries of the now helpless woman while
undergoing the terrible infliction, were mingled with the
hoarse curses of the overseer and the wild cries of the
distracted children. When the poor woman was untied, her
back was covered with blood . . . She was whipped,
terribly whipped, but she was not subdued and continued to
denounce the overseer. |
This reminds me so much of Fannie Lou Hamer in
prison in Mississippi during the early part of the Civil Rights
Movement in the sixties as we fought for voting rights and
democracy. Women resisted slavery at every turn and often urged
haste in the organizing of slave uprisings. An Africa woman from
Virginia in1812, said that the slave uprisings would not rise too
soon for her as she wished to God that it was all over and done
with . . . that she was tired of waiting on white
folks.
Angela maintains,
| One might better understand now Margaret
Garner, fugitive slave who, when trapped near Cincinnati,
killed her own daughter and tried to kill herself. She
rejoiced that the girl was dead-- 'now she would never
have to know what a woman suffers as a slave'- and pleaded
to be tried for murder, ‘I will go singing to the
gallows rather than be returned to slavery. |
This true story fuelled the writing of Toni
Morrison’s,
Beloved. During slavery the women fought back
on equal terms with the men. In the Haitian Revolution, when
Chevalier, an African chief, hesitated at the sight of the
scaffold, his wife shamed him. "You do not know how sweet it
is to die for liberty!" And refusing to allow herself to be
hanged by the executioner took the rope and hanged herself. To her
daughters going to the public execution with her, another woman
gave courage. "Be glad you will not be the mothers of
slaves.”
The whites committed frightful atrocities not
only against the Africans but also the Mulattoes. They killed a
pregnant woman, cut the baby out and threw it into the flames. It
was the core of Richard Wright’s short story, “Bright and
Morning Star” and Max Roach’s brilliant composition,
“Triptych” in his
Freedom Now Suite. The latter emerged
from the story of a pregnant cultural worker and resistance
fighter in the South who was about to be lynched by the Klan . . .
. However before they lynched her, they cut open her stomach and
the baby fell out. It screamed at that dramatic moment . . . .
FREEDOM NOW.
In the struggle, resistance, at times, was more
subtle than revolts, marronage, and sabotage. It involved, for
example, the clandestine acquisition of reading and writing skills
and the imparting of this knowledge to others. In Natchez,
Louisiana, a slave woman ran a “midnight school,” teaching
African slaves between the hours of eleven and two o’clock in
the morning until she had "graduated" hundreds.
Undoubtedly, many of them wrote their own passes and headed in the
direction of freedom.
There were also revolts in the north east of
Brazil, especially around Salvador, Bahia. They were organized by
the Hausas in 1807, 1809, 1813 and the Nagos. The Yorubas also
engaged the slave legacy by providing leadership and resources
through their religious organizations. The quilombos in Brazil and
palenques in Venezuela, Colombia, and Peru, etc. were beach heads
of resistance as these rebellions emerged. Unfortunately, none of
these rebellions succeeded like the Haitian revolution. They
became deeply involved in a return to their cultural moorings
through the orishas and the pursuit of a syncretistic approach to
the Brazilian paradigm. There was movement towards assimilation
and preservation which intensified and complicated the double
consciousness of the Hispanic experience.
The first example of Marronage was in 1575 . .
. . A quilombo, called Palmares, in north eastern Brazil . . . .
Its history spans the 17th century as it was finally
destroyed in 1695. Palmares was a collection of settlements which
made up an African political system under the leadership of Ganga
Zumbi. He was treated with all respect due to a monarch and all
the honors due to a Lord. He lived in the Royal enclave called
Macoco, the capital of Palmares. Palmares resisted one attack
after another from the Portuguese army. The Republic stands out as
a remarkable example of the African creation of a centralized
kingdom with an elected ruler out of a large number of people of
various ethnic groups from Africa and Brazil.
Maroons not only fought successful wars against
colonial governments, but were able to make treaties which
protected their land rites, their cultural autonomy, and their
pursuits of economic self sufficiency. They negotiated certain
protectionist peace arrangements with governors and administrators
but they also agreed with the plantocracy that they will not
accept new run away slaves. This arrangement became prevalent in
Jamaica, Colombia, Mexico, and Panama.
In 1823 in Demarara (Guyana) the largest slave
rebellion in that country’s history took place under the
leadership of Tacky. At Le Resouvenir Estate, the slaves rose,
demanded immediate emancipation, and very nearly seized control of
the country. The slaves insisted on no violence to whites and
immediate freedom because there was no moral justification for
slavery.
Marronage is not solely an economic or
political phenomenon, but also bears witness to cultural
resistance. During the 19th century, the Guyanese
maroons prayed in Catholic style, while facing east towards
Cayenne (French Guiana) as though it were a holy city. The Boni
runaways from French Guiana were influenced by Catholic
missionaries; the Djukas of Dutch Guiana have four villages
inhabited by Jewish maroons. This phenomenon deserves further
attention. Many of the maroon republics have disappeared either
through destruction by colonial armies or being taken over by
white settlers like Palmares in Brazil.
The first group of African slaves, who went to
the interior forest in 1663 in Suriname, were sent there
voluntarily by Portuguese Jews who didn’t want to pay head
taxes. Interestingly, the slaves never came back .In 1712, when
the French naval forces entered Dutch Guiana, the big landowners
fled to the capital. The slaves took advantage of their absence to
loot their master’s homes and they retreated further into the
forest. In the course of time the bands grew larger and in 1749,
they engaged the Dutch in a ten year war. Their leader ADOC gained
independence for all those who were under his command.
In 1757 another insurrection also broke out; it
was led by an African slave named ARABI, probably a Muslim. Four
years later in 1761, Arabi and Adoc were able to extract terms
from the Dutch which gave them the right to form Republics on the
condition that they gave no further asylum to fugitive slaves. In
1763, the Saramacas people also fought for their independence.
Today, the maroons of Dutch Guiana have no
geographical or political unity, but they exist as a group of
tribes. The Saramacas are the largest group, and then the Djukas
(also called the Auca), then the Boni, the Quinta Matawaki, The
Paramaccas and the Poligudu. They exist as isolated Republics with
clans and hierarchies based on matrilineal systems. There is a
Supreme Chief or Gran Man, A Council of Elders and an Assembly,
which is responsible for governance and democratic decision
making.
Domingo Benhos established a kingdom in
Colombia at San Basilio, near Barquisimeto. Bayano in Darien was
regarded with the reverence of a king . . . he too, signed a
treaty. Yanga in Mexico made the same arrangements. Cudjoe became
leader of the Leeward band of maroons in Jamaica and made the same
arrangements.
Not even Cudjoe’s name in Jamaica carried
with it a great sense of power than that of Nanny, rebel leader
and military tactician, who by sheer force of personality and her
powerful oaths of loyalty breathed courage and confidence into her
followers. The dread her name inspired among the whites can be
judged by the joy with which they greeted the news of her supposed
death in 1733. A slave called Cuffee claimed to have killed her
and was given a reward. The claim was false and Nanny was very
much alive; she survived the end of the first maroon war in 1740
and received from the government of Jamaica 500 acres of land for
herself and her people
In February 1739, a treaty was signed between
Colonel Guthrie and Cudjoe who led the Leeward maroons. The treaty
ensured liberty and freedom for Cudjoe and his followers and their
right to ownership of their land up to 1500 acres. The runaway
slaves who joined Cudjoe in the past two years were given the
choice to return to their masters. Cudjoe’s maroons could sell
their produce in neighboring towns. New runaway slaves who came to
Cudjoe’s town had to return to their masters. Jamaica sent some
of their maroons back to Freetown, Sierra Leone and others to Nova
Scotia, Canada to begin new reconstructive efforts.
The extended experience of military and
cultural resistance has manifested itself in the challenges
offered by Africans in the shaping of the New World . . . whether
it is the contradictions of Toussaint in Haiti or Sam Shape (The
Western Liberation Uprising of 1832) or Ganga Zumbi in Palmares .
. . whether it was the brilliance of Nanny or the focused vision
of Dessalines as he moved beyond treachery . . . whether it was
the millions of Africans who died for freedom in the Americas . .
. Liberty or death in the New World and the elimination of slavery
as an oppressive institution . . . became the strident, unending
war cry . . . .
This journey has left us with a myriad of
unanswered questions on leadership . . . the role of the Mulattoes
. . . political opportunism . . . trade and the articulation of a
people’s best interest . . . the propaganda of history . . . the
cultural significance of an African presence in the post modern
world . . . and the preservation of our archival memory . .
. ordinary folk have left with us messages from plantation
experience that we must reflect on seriously . . . sayings
that are witty . . . ironic and relevant . . . forgotten
voices from below . . . but a collective memory immersed in the
spoken word . . . .
*Poor man
never vex
*Man
you can’t beat; you have fe call him fren
*Time
longer Dan Rope
*Everyday
you goad a donkey, one day him will kick you
*Beware
of those who carry tales
*When
six yeye meet story done
*When
black man tief, him tief five cents…when
*Backra
tief, him tief de whole estate
*he
river carries away an elderly person who does not know his own
weight
(never
overestimate your power)
*Not
because cow don’t have tongue, him don’t talk
*You
never tek popgun to kill alligator.
Olokun is a hermaphroditic deity of both male and
female identification. Its realm is the bottom of the ocean, below
Yemanja, where light does not permeate and photosynthesis does not
occur. Olokun is an important deity for displaced Africans because
Olokun guards the bones/remains of our ancestors who jumped from
the slave ships to avoid domination and who died in the Middle
Passage, because of diseases or resistance. Olokun rules the
unknown as well as representing our link to Middle Passage
ancestors. Olokun represents strength and faith when the outcome
cannot be known.
Bibliography
Bastide, Roger,
African Civilizations in the New World
Beckles, Hilary. Slave Voyages: The Transatlantic Trade in
Enslaved Africans
Beckles, Hillary & Shepherd, Verne (ed.)
Caribbean
Slave Society and Economy
Beckles, Hillary & Shepherd, Verne
(ed.)
Caribbean
Freedom: Post Slave Society and Economy
Beckles , Hillary & Shepherd , Verne.
Caribbean Slavery
in the Atlantic World
Davis, Angela.
Women
Race and Class
Fanon, Frantz.
The Wretched of the Earth
Fouchard, Jean. The Haitian Maroons
Harding, Vincent.
There is a River
Hart, Richard.
Slaves Who Abolished Slavery: Blacks in
Rebellion
James, C.L.R.
Black Jacobins
Kelley, William Melvin.
A Different Drummer
Knight, Franklin .
Slave Society in Cuba During the 19th.
Century
Lewis, Gordon.
Puerto
Rico: Freedom and Power in the Caribbean
Lynch, Acklyn.
Nightmare Overhanging Darkly : Essays on
Culture and Resistance
Marshall, Paule.
Praise Song for The Widow
Patterson, Orlando.
Slavery and Social Death
Rodney, Walter.
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
Sherlock, Philip & Bennett, Hazel.
The Story of The
Jamaican People
Williams Eric.
From Columbus to Castro: The History of the
Caribbean, 1492 -1969
* * * *
*
Time Longer Dan Rope
challenges us to look deeply into
our history, listen to our inner voices, excavate ancient memory
in order to shape the future and confront the present. Sankofa
Unity Ashe (Axe)
Presented June, 2003 Curacao, Netherlands Antilles,
UNESCO Conference on Slavery * * * *
*
update 30
June 2008 |
