Slave writers who abolished slavery
Arts on Sunday
by Al Creighton's
Stabroek News
July 28, 2002
When the sun rises around the Caribbean region on Thursday of this week, it will shine upon a wide range of celebratory activities for what is known to the Jamaican folk as “Äugus maanin”. It will be August 1, Emancipation Day. To the people who first lifted their voices in celebration of this day in 1838, it was indeed a new day, a new month, the dawn of a new era in world history. Although it was to continue in other countries for another couple of decades, the infamous institution of slavery that brought wealth to Britain, Portugal, Holland and North America but misery, subjugation, cultural upheaval and genocide to millions of Africans, was at long last dismantled.
The people then turned to poetry, theatre, music and dance in celebration.
Several of the items created then, and over the middle years of the nineteenth century, managed to survive, but, perhaps, more have disappeared. While some of these relics will definitely take centre stage in some countries, particularly Jamaica, Trinidad, Tobago and Carriacou, what one can expect to see in Guyana will be, unfortunately, very effete. Activities here will be informed by a vague and distant memory of the African past and present, and will largely be pseudo-African and superficial. However, that will not dampen the profound spirit of Emancipation since it is not a partisan African thing, but of national and international importance.
This magnitude of importance is well represented in the force that it is in literature, because emancipation from slavery has been a major factor in western literature since the eighteenth century. A significant contribution to this writing has been made by the prose and poetry written by persons who were enslaved or recently freed from slavery. The Stabroek Arts on Sunday has already featured samples of the poems written by slaves as a part of the struggle for freedom in the Caribbean. This week we introduce the work of the two most celebrated black writers from the eighteenth century: Olaudah Equiano and Phillis Wheatley, who were world famous as writers during their own lifetime in the period of slavery.
Equiano, (1745-1797 - also known in later life as Gustavus Vassa), was born in South-central Nigeria, kidnapped and sold into slavery in Barbados. He travelled, had rich and varied adventures at sea and was also enslaved in Montserrat and in the USA where he eventually bought his freedom. He migrated to England, where he published his most celebrated work, a prose narrative called The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African in 1789. He continued his life as a recognised published author, getting the attention of the British Parliament and the known Abolitionists within it.
Literary anthologists Richard Barksdale and Kenneth Kinnamon describe Equiano’s writing as “the first great black autobiography,” compared to John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift. They write that he “was a principal instrument in bringing about the motion for a repeal of the slave-act,” even though the repeal was not finally achieved until long after his death.
Phillis Wheatley (c.1753 - 1784) was born in Senegal, kidnapped when she was about six and sold into slavery in Boston in 1761. Her academic brilliance impressed everyone and, unusual for a slave girl, was allowed a sound education with emphases on religion and the classics. Her first published poem, at age 17, was “On the Death of the Rev Mr George Whitefield”. 1770. She went to London in 1773, automatically becoming free on arrival there because of Chief Justice Mansfield’s famous ruling which freed all slaves in Britain. She was immediately celebrated at the top of London society where she was called “the Sable Muse,” and, like Equiano, enjoyed the life of a published author.
She wrote in the tradition of the white writers from whom she learned, and is not known as a strong protestor against slavery. Yet her success as a writer on the world stage greatly assisted others who championed the cause of emancipation. The presence of a black writer in mainstream society strengthened the Abolitionists and opened doors for black writing.
We present excerpts from Equiano’s famous narrative and Wheatley’s On Being Brought from Africa to America and the first stanza of her lengthy On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield. (Source : Black Writers of America - A Comprehensive Anthology (eds) Barksdale and Kinnamon, 1972)
From Equiano
The Negro consolidated act, made by the assembly of Jamaica last year, and the new act of amendment now in agitation there, contain a proof of the existence of those charges that have been made against the planters relative to the treatment of their slaves.
I hope to have the satisfaction of seeing the renovation of liberty and justice, resting on the British government, to vindicate the honor of our common nature. These are concerns which do not perhaps belong to any particular office; but, to speak more seriously, to every man of sentiment, actions like these are the just and sure foundation of future fame; a reversion, though remote, is coveted by some noble minds as a substantial good. It is upon these grounds that I hope and expect the attention of gentlemen in power. [ . . . ]
Tortures, murder, and every other imaginable barbarity and iniquity, are practised upon the poor slaves with impunity. I hope slave trade will be abolished. I pray it may be an event at hand. The great body of manufacturers, uniting in the cause, will considerably facilitate and expedite it; and as I have already stated, it is most substantially their interest and advantage, and as such the nation’s at large (except those persons concerned in manufacturing neck yokes, collars, chains, handcuffs, leg bolts, drags, thumbscrews, iron muzzles, and coffins; cats, scourges, and other instruments of torture used in the slave trade). In a short time one sentiment will alone prevail, from motives of interest as well as justice and humanity. Europe contains one hundred and twenty millions of inhabitants. Query: How many millions doth Africa contain? Supposing the Africans, collectively and individually, to expend £5 a head in raiment and furniture yearly when civilised, &c., an immensity beyond the reach of imagination.
This I conceived to be a theory founded upon facts, and therefore an infallible one. If the blacks were permitted to remain in their own country, they would double themselves every fifteen years. In proportion to such increase will be the demand for manufacturers. Cotton and indigo grow spontaneously in most parts of Africa; a consideration this of no small consequence to the manufacturing towns of Great Britain. It opens a most immense, glorious, and happy prospect-the clothing, &c., of a continent ten thousand miles in circumference, and immensely rich in productions of every denomination in return for manufactures.
From Phillis Wheatley
On Being Brought from Africa to America
‘Twas mercy brought me from my pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there’s a God, that there’s a saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
“Their colour is a diabolic die.”
Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain,
May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train.
[From] On the Death of Rev. Mr. George Whitefield. 1770
Hail, happy saint, on thine immortal throne,
Possest of glory, life, and bliss unknown;
We hear no more the music of thy tongue,
Thy wonted auditories cease to throng.
Thy sermons in unequalled accents flow’d,
And every bosom with devotion glowed;
Thou didst in trains of eloquence refin’d
Inflame the heart, and captivate the mind.
Unhappy we the setting sun deplore,
So glorious once, but ah! It shines no more.