Early Resistance

African American Resistance

Early Resistance

The Hunted Slaves by Richard Ansdell, 1861
 
The Shores of Africa, 1500s: The Forerunners
 
It began at the edge of our homeland where the verdant forests and tropical bush gave way gradually to the sandy beaches of the Guinea coast. It began at the mouths of rivers, from the northern point where the Senegal and the Gambia pour their troubled streams into the waters around Cape Verde, down the thousands of miles of coastline to the place where the mighty river Congo breaks out into the ocean. On these shores near the mouths of these rivers, we first saw the ships.
 
There was no way to know it then, but their crews of men and boys came from many ports to find the shores of Africa. They sailed from Amsterdam and Lisbon, from Nantes and La Rochelle, from Bristol and London, from Newport and Boston on ships with strange names. They came to us on “Brotherhood” and “john the Baptist,” on “Justice: and “integrity,’ on “Gift of God” and Liberty”; they came on the good ship “Jesu.” But by the time our weary lines of chained and mourning travelers saw the vessels riding on the coastal waves, there could be but one meaning: captivity. Thus it was on the edge of our continent—where some of us gulped down handfuls of sand in a last effort to hold the reality of the land—that the long struggle for black freedom began.
 
Vincent Harding, There is a River, 3
 
 

Hispaniola, 1522: First Slave Rebellion


Slave Revolt published in The Abolitionist, 1802
 
We cannot forget that America was built on Africa…America became, through African labor, the center of the sugar empire and the cotton kingdom and an integral part of that world industry which caused the industrial revolution and the reign of capitalism….
 
W.E.B. Dubois, quoted in Milton Meltzer, Slavery II, 127
 
It takes only one generation. Columbus brought the first cane plant to Hispaniola on his second voyage. Two decades later his Diego is reaping sugar and revolt. This “white gold” savagely devours the fertility of the land and the flesh of the indigenous population. Africans brought to work the land in place of the Arawaks prefer to die in the fire of revolt. Diego sees his plantation and fields burning. When the Spaniards finally stop the revolt, they hand the rebels along the road to stop future uprisings.
 
It doesn’t work.
 
See Eduardo Galeano, Memories of Fire: Genesis, 72-73
 

 

Sierra Leone, 1721: Black Women in the Struggle

…in spite of constant and costly defeats, the struggles for freedom went on. Often women took a crucial part, making full use of the special status and greater freedom of movement accorded them. Their role was exemplified in the events on board the English ship “Robert” as it stood off the coast of Sierra Leone in 1721. Among the thirty captives on board was a man who called himself Captain Tomba, one of the earliest identifiable leaders of the struggle. He and several other African men and an unnamed woman had developed a plan to attack the crew, overcome them, and make their way back to the shore. The woman, because she had greater freedom of movement, was chosen to inform the men of the best time for the attack.
 
One night as she roamed the deck, she noted that the number of sailors in the night watch was small enough to make a surprise move more feasible. After she managed to inform Tomba, he prepared to act immediately; but only one of the African men who had promised earlier to assist him was not ready to join Tomba and the woman. Nevertheless, these three decided to strike for their freedom. The smallness of their force and an accidental sounding of an alarm worked against them, so that after killing two of the crew they were overwhelmed by others, beaten to the deck and placed in chains….
 
And what of the black woman who chose the struggle for black freedom over her privileged bondage among white men? We are told that “the woman he hoisted up by the Thumbs, whipp’d and slashed her with Knives before the other slaves till she died.” And so, not far from the shores of her homeland, the swaying bleeding body of a sister in struggle bore terrifying witness to the cost of the decision for freedom. Yet perhaps she would have considered this lonely vigil above the sea a better use of her body than any that the crew members had had in mind.
 
Vincent Harding, There is a River, 12-13

http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=ad45


Position as Slaves

Africans were the only group to come to this hemisphere as slaves, and from the very beginning, African and African American resistance was a constant. Because of the nature of the slave institution, that resistance had to take a variety of forms, many of them disguised. To the whites what seemed like laziness or stupidity was often really a work slowdown or a pretending not to understand in order to deprive the slave owners of labor.
 
Sabotage, work slowdowns, organized strikes, running  away, fires destroying plantations, mutinies on slave ships, ground glass in the master’s food poisonings, feigning sickness or pregnancy, insurrections plotted or carried out—all were acts of resistance perpetrated by slaves for the sake of freedom. Even suicide was an act of rebellion, a way of depriving the white man of his “property.” Some slaves also believed that death would take them back to Africa. The resistance of Africans to the dehumanization of chains and the middle passage was so great that some tried to starve themselves. Their captors devised tortures, including hot coals to the lips and a special instrument that wrenched open the jaws of the resisters just to feed them. In many cases, even that did not work.
 
Historian Herbert Aptheker found 250 instances of revolts and conspiracies in the history of North American slavery; in Brazil, Suriname, and Jamaica, slave rebellion was a way of life.
 
See Eugene Genovese, From Rebellion to Revolution


Before the Mayflower
 
In the sixteenth century, while Spaniards were just beginning the mass trading of human beings, an advanced civilization was developing in Africa. For example, Benin City, in the interior, was a center of art and commerce. The city stretched for twenty-five miles; wide boulevards were lined with sizable houses sporting balustrades and verandas. Travel was not unknown; increasing archeological evidence, including skeletons and carvings, points to the fact that Africans travelled to what is now Central and Latin America several times, centuries before Columbus. Not only slaves but also free Africans arrived in the Western Hemisphere long before the first permanent English colony at Jamestown in 1620.

 
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