Today in Church History

On 26 July 1833, having abolished the slave trade in 1807, Britain's House of Commons banned slavery itself. When William Wilberforce, who had spent most of his life crusading against slavery, heard the news, he said, "Thank God I have lived to witness [this] day." He died three days later.

Today in Church History

On July 24, 1725, John Newton, author of "Amazing Grace" and other hymns, was born in London. Converted to Christianity while working on a slave ship, he hoped as a Christian to restrain the worst excesses of the slave trade, "promoting the life of God in the soul" of both his crew and his African cargo. In 1764 he became an Anglican minister and each week wrote a hymn to be sung to a familiar tune. In 1787 Newton wrote Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade to help William Wilberforce's campaign to end the slave trade.

Today in Church History

On July 1, 1896, abolitionist writer Harriet Beecher Stowe died. She averaged nearly a book a year, but Uncle Tom's Cabin remains her legacy. Even one of her harshest critics acknowledged that it was "perhaps the most influential novel ever published . . . a verbal earthquake, an ink-and-paper tidal wave."

Today in Church History

On June 30, 1881, Presbyterian preacher and African-American abolitionist Henry Highland Garnet is appointed minister to Liberia. The former slave shocked the abolitionist community in 1843 by calling for violent rebellion. "Rather die free-men than live to be slaves," he preached.

Oversimplifying the history of abolition?

Today's issue of Ethics Daily has run an article that helps us to look at the history of slavery and abolition in a more nuanced way.

Close reading of history should make us wary of the broad-brush approach, in which an over-simplified reading of the past shapes our understanding of the present. For instance, there is a strong case for saying that Britain should just apologize for the trade, rather than patting itself on the back for abolishing it. Put that way, it's like a mugger wanting to take credit for stopping hitting his victim.

But what does "Britain" mean? Conditions on the plantations of the Caribbean or the Americas were little different in degree from those in some of Britain's burgeoning factories and mines. Was it in Jamaica or Manchester that small children had their ears nailed to tables for minor breaches of discipline? Manchester, actually. So are the descendants of these white, British slaves responsible for Britain's slave trade?

We are entitled to both our heroes and our villains, but we have a responsibility to see the issues as clearly as we can.

Click here to read the rest of the article.

Not Showing in a Theater Near You: Why Amazing Grace hasn't come to the Caribbean

Thanks to the persistant detective work of Nicolette Bethel, we finally have an answer as to why Galleria Cinemas is NOT showing Amazing Grace in the Bahamas, at least not for now. Apparently, the movie is in limited release--having opened in the U.S. on February 23rd and, now, slated to begin showing today, March 23rd, in the U.K. and Ireland. In the meantime, Galleria Cinemas' distributor has agreed to let them know when, or if, the film is available to be shown locally.

The irony here is that even though the people of the Bahamas, along with their Caribbean neighbors, are the primary beneficiaries of the abolition of the slave trade, they will not have the opportunity to see the film in conjuction with this weekend's bicentennial observances. Bethel elaborates on this irony:

If the film is not intended to be released in the Caribbean at the time of the Bicentenary of the Abolition, then that is a significant lapse of judgement of the filmmakers and the studio. There is really very little to be gained, either for history or for Christianity itself, to show the film in the homes of the people who perpetrated the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, and not to do so in the homes of the societies that were created by that very trade.

Something is askew.

Yes, something is indeed askew! But given the nature of the pre-film publicity, we should not really be surprised. Nearly a month ago, I observed that:

In the United States and Great Britain, for example, many well-meaning Christians are using the bicentennial of abolition [and the publicity surrounding the release of the film Amazing Grace] to raise awareness of and generate support for campaigns against modern day forms of slavery such as child labor, prostitution, and human trafficking. While I applaud these important efforts, I am concerned that they have largely obscured the legacy of slavery that still persists for Bahamian and Caribbean descendants of the liberated Africans and slaves who originally benefited from abolition.

While I don't believe that any of these oversights are intentional, let alone sinister, I do believe they tell us a lot about the worldview of the of the folks who are distributing and promoting the film. Basically, theirs is a worldview that--consciously or subconsciously--assumes that the evils of slavery came to and end with the abolition of the slave trade and, subsequently, emancipation. It is also a worldview that recognizes that slavery--understood as physical bondage--continues to exist in the world today and, more importantly, it is a worldview rooted in a moral passion to fight this injustice. Hence, they have siezed upon an inspirational event in history and held it up as a model to emulate as they seek to abolish modern day forms of slavery.

For the most part, this is a good thing. The problem, however, is that such a worldview ignores the fact that while abolition and emancipation brought an end to the physical bondage of Caribbean slavery, they did not come anywhere close to bringing an end to the economic systems that allowed and continue to allow one group of people to unfairly benefit from the labor of another (for more on this topic see my post on the legacy of the Atlantic slave trade). More critically, this worldview fails to acknowledge that the Caribbean descendents of liberated Africans and slaves are still struggling today with injustices perpetuated by the descendents of former slave traders and slave owners.

One reason for this, perhaps, is that it is easier to fight against injustices, such as human trafficking or prostitution, in which one is not directly involved. But for those of us--like myself--who are the descendents of countries who profited from the slave trade, it is much more difficult to join Caribbean peoples in their modern day struggle for full emancipation because to do so is to admit that we are still beneficiaries of the modern day economic systems which keep them enslaved.

Even two-hundred years after the fact, there a great need for reconciliation between the countries who benefited from the slave trade and those that were created by the slave trade. The failure of Amazing Grace's promoters to include the Caribbean in their efforts is not the problem so much as a symptom of something much more serious, our failure to recognize that while abolition and emancipation were important steps in the right direction toward mutual reconciliation, they were just the beginning of the journey, not the end.

Nicolette Bethel on Abolition of the Slave Trade

Back in December, Nicolette Bethel at Blogworld wrote a couple of really interesting posts on the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade and why it is important for us to commemorate that event today. She writes . . .

We know slavery was bad. We know it’s an indelible part of our history. But it’s over, and it has been in our country for almost two hundred years. So why should we commemorate Abolition, when it didn’t actually erase the institution of slavery or free the slaves?

The short answer is that it marks the beginning of a process of emancipation that involved all parties — the slaveowners as well as the slaves. The long answer is that Abolition created a culture that provided the foundations of the one in which we live today. If we begin with the question about who enslaved whom and when that ended and who ended it, we begin in the wrong place. We already know those answers, and we tend to use them to justify weaknesses and cast blame. The commemoration of the Abolition of Slavery, however, allows us to approach the institution in a different, and, it’s hoped, more constructive way.

Currently, we’re taught to consider the institution of slavery as an unrelieved victimhood, with the Bad White Oppressor and the Poor Black Oppressed — Simon Legree, for those of you who still remember Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Uncle Tom, Topsy, and company. But what we overlook is that the real institution was far more complicated. The slaves themselves struggled for their freedom from the moment of their capture, and their activity in that struggle for freedom contributed to importantly to the Abolition movement. The slave-owners, on the other hand, were not all greedy and cruel, and several engaged in the education, religious and otherwise, of their slaves. Not all people of colour were slaves, not all white people were slave-owners, and not all slave-owners were white; some, like the Fox after which Fox Hill took its name, belonged to the group of people known as Free Coloured People.

So we have to approach this bicentenary of Abolition in a spirit of openness. We need to understand the processes of emancipation that began with/led up to/culminated in the passage of the Abolition Legislation through the British Parliament in 1807, and to recognize that those processes must continue; for two hundred years later, we are still not entirely free.

Be sure to read the remainder of Bethel's reflections in her post On Abolition as well as her post On Commemorating Abolition.

Festival of African Arts Commemorates Abolition

Below I've posted a copy of an article from the Nassau Guardian, which lists the various activities that the Festival for African Arts is planning for 2007 to commemorate the abolition of the slave trade in the Bahamas. Of immediate interest is the 'Celebrate Africa' Festival, scheduled for this Saturday the 24th from noon to midnight at the Southern Recreation Grounds.

Slave Trade

By NORMAN ROLLE, Guardian Features Writer

Great Britain was the last European country to engage in the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the first to terminate it. The Slave Trade Abolition Bill was spearheaded by William Wilberforce, a born-again Christian and Prime Minister Pitt.

The Bill first moved in the House of Commons in 1804 was defeated but became law on March 25, 1807 which marks the bicentenary of the cessation of the slave trade. Emancipation, however, did not occur until 1834.

There is little that the 85 per cent of African slave descendants in The Bahamas have to celebrate about the nefarious slave trade, but a group known as the Festival of African Arts is using the occasion to bring attention to our African culture and heritage.

Jamaica MP Andrew Holness, puts the celebration in perspective: "The bicentenary commemoration offers us an opportunity to finally confront our history, grapple with our past, make the connections to the present and view the trajectory of our future.

"We have mostly tried to forget about slavery and the slave trade while we secretly retain the inferiorities that are a part of slave mentality. Let's use this opportunity to confront our history and use it as motivation for moving upwards because we are a mighty race."

The Festival of African Arts has planned a 10-month celebration of the artistic, folkloric and cultural expressions of the African Continent," says Pat Rahming, executive producer of the Festival 1807 Entertainment.

The Festival of African Arts is a non-profit Bahamian company headed by Dr Thaddeus McDonald, Dean of Academic Affairs at The College of the Bahamas. Its mission is to create a greater level of appreciation for the wealth and diversity of the African heritage in The Bahamas through a greater exposure to the cultural expressions of the African Continent.

The Festival begins, appropriately, with a 'Celebrate Africa' Festival on March 24, timed to coincide with the Bicentennial of the passage of the Act to Abolish the Transatlantic Slave Trade, on the Southern Recreation Grounds beginning at noon and continuing until after midnight. African food, dance and customs will share the stage with the best Bahamian entertainment, culminating in a free concert to commemorate the event.

"This year we will set a record for murders in this country. The vast majority of those murders will be committed by young people...those young people have a problem. We give these fancy names as 'conflict resolution'...what that means is I can't get along with other people...this is because of a damaged self-image...psychgologists know it, but don't say...the damaged self-image is linked to history...you have to have some idea of where you're from...to feel valid. I feel that knowing your heritage and self-image would go a long way in reducing crime."

On April 28 a symposium will be held to discuss the influence of Africa on the development of Bahamian art at the National Art Gallery and on May 8, a symposium on religion - the relationship between African religion and European religion. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has arranged for governments of several African countries to send troupes to The Bahamas to give cultural performances and presentations.

"We are currently talking with South Africa about having a group from there. We hope to bring cultural groups from about 10 African countries during the course of the year, including the group from South Africa that recorded with Paul Simon.

Funds generated by the Festival will go toward a scholarship at The College of the Bahamas and a research mission to West Africa to investigate the relationship between Junkanoo and Africa.

The following programs and activities were submitted to The National Cultural Commission by Dr. Thaddeus McDonald, Christopher Curry and Jackson Burnside III for consideration:

Establish a Research Institute to foster knowledge and awareness of African History and Culture.

Establish a Journal of Slavery.

Conduct Annual Symposia linking The Bahamas to the wider diaspora, and hold regular meetings and lectures throughout the nation.

Agitate for a fuller curriculum on African History and Slavery in schools at all levels.

Publish regular Anthologies on Slavery and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.

Establish Scholarships for persons wishing to study history relevant to The Bahamas.

Make History mandatory in the school curriculum.

Expand the resources of The Pompey Museum and other similar institutions throughout the archipelago.

The matter of the African slave trade as it relates to The Bahamas is a delicate topic that few are bold enough to bring to the fore for fear of being labeled Afrocentric or having attached to them some label. But slavery is a matter of history.

SIDEBAR

During the 300-plus years that the Europeans engaged in the African Slave Trade 20 million Africans were packed into slave ships bound for the 'New World'; 10 million of them perished in the Middle Passage.

The United Kingdom Parliament passed the Emancipation Act on Aug 1, 1834. It gave partial freedom to slaves in The Bahamas. Full freedom was to come four years later in 1838.

Mitchell Speaks on Aboliton of the Slave Trade

As I mentioned in a previous post, the bicentennial of the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade is one of the important milestones being observed in the Bahamas this year. Since this coming Sunday March 25th is the day that the Slave Trade Act of 1807 was actually signed into law, I will attempt to spend the remainder of the week sharing items that help us to reflect on this important event. Today, I've posted the remarks delivered by the Hon. Fred Mitchell, MP for Fox Hill, to New Covenant Baptist Church on Sunday February 25, 2007.

On Marking The Occasion Of The Abolition of The Transatlantic Slave Trade in the British Empire

It is as usual an honour to be here to make this brief intervention on this subject that is of significance to the history and settlement of these islands. I want to thank Bishop Simeon Hall, my friend, for this kind invitation.

Last evening, I met with representatives of the Rasta community who have decided for the first time to engage fully in the electoral process by registering and voting in the next general election. Our discussions turned to the question of the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. I made the point that we are not celebrating this anniversary; we are observing or marking the occasion.

The fact is that slavery was wrong, morally wrong. There is a requirement for an apology by all those who were officially involved in slavery even centuries after the fact, in the same way that the German government has had to make amends for their conduct during the second world war toward Jews.

Millions of African peoples perished in the middle passage; the numbers exceed those who died in the Holocaust. Their names are not known and never will be. They must not be forgotten.

I made the point about observance because there are many in the country who want to pretend that this never happened, and that we ought to in some kind of 21st century love fest forget about the past as if it did not exist. We cannot do that. Our history is our history; and we ought to be sure that the young know their history. We must also tell them, though, that history should not be used as an excuse for their failings but rather as a source of inspiration for their success.

On 25th March 1807, the British Parliament passed an Act that would forbid the transportation of slaves from Africa to the new world. It came into effect in 1808 and once it did, the British Navy had the responsibility of enforcing it. This meant that vessels of countries that still carried slaves were subject to seizure and forfeiture by the navy on the high seas.

Amongst those countries where slavery had not yet been abolished was the United States of America who did not abolish slavery until 1865 and in Brazil where slavery continued until 1888. Slavery itself was not abolished in the British Empire of which The Bahamas was a part until the year 1834.

We in Fox Hill have organized a whole set of observances around that event since the time it took place in 1834, perhaps the only place in The Bahamas to do so on a wide scale. This year, I would like you all to come to Fox Hill to join us for the observances.

Fox Hill owes its beginnings to some extent to the settlement of freed Africans who were set down by the British in what was then called New Guinea or the Creek Village, later named Fox Hill and then Sandilands Village.

Here is what Michael Craton writes in his History of The Bahamas “After the abolition of the British slave trade in 1807, the Royal Navy maintained a special squadron to suppress the traffic. From 1830, slaves seized on the high seas were freed absolutely. The first such cargoes reached Nassau in September 1832, when 370 Negroes were settled on Highbourne Cay, 514 at Carmichael, six miles from Nassau, and 134 at Adelaide in the southwest of New Providence. In 1833, there was a serious drought and the Negroes at Highbourne Cay were brought back to New Providence and settled just ‘over the hill’ from Nassau, in an area already known as Grant’s Town after Governor Lewis Grant (1820-29).”

Dr. Gail Saunders writes in her book Slavery In The Bahamas:

“The arrival of Liberated Africans had a profound effect on the growth of the population of The Bahamas between 1808 and 1840… Most of the displaced Africans were condemned at Nassau at the Court of Vice Admiralty and between 1811 and 1832 over 1400 Africans had been put ashore under the protection of the crown.

“On being landed in The Bahamas they were placed in the hands of the Chief Customs Officer, whose duty it was to bind them to suitable masters or mistresses, in order for them to learn a trade or handicraft, for periods not exceeding 14 years... In the 1830s, there were at least eight free black villages or settlements outside the town of Nassau. They were Grants Town and Bain Town just south of the city, Carmichael and Adelaide in the southwest, Delancey Town just west of Nassau, Gambier in the west and Creek Village (New Guinea and Fox Hill) in the east…

“Fox Hill was named after Samuel Fox who arrived in New Providence in the 1820s and purchased property in the eastern district of New Providence. Fox Hill comprised a series of villages, for example, Congo Town, Nango Town, Joshua Town and Burnside Town. Congo and Joshua Town were probably settled by slaves or freed men who had been born in Africa. Congo and Nango Town probably took their names from the tribes that lived there.”

When I attended the celebrations for the 137th anniversary of St. Paul’s Baptist Church in Fox Hill, the history there says that their congregation formed out of Mt. Carey Baptist Church and arose in part because of differences between the Congos and Yorubas.

The Yorubas came from West Africa and the Congos came from the Congo. Most British slaves came from West Africa and the Portuguese took their slaves from what is now the Congo and were transporting them to Brazil.

It is said that after the abolition of the slave trade a slaver Congo slaves was captured by the British and set down in Fox Hill. They were looked down on by the Yorubas because the Congos could not speak proper English, having come later to The Bahamas and the English language. When the split took place over some doctrinal matters, the Congos moved to found St. Paul’s.

Language is very interesting because as you know we have all been stripped of our African languages. I recall how the people of Barbados who migrated to Panama at the turn of the 20th century and stayed in Panama, even though they were born and raised in Panama and have not been to Barbados in their lives still speak English with a Barbadian accent, 100 years or more after the fact.

You can tell then that language is a difficult thing to erase and yet you see how slavery was so dehumanizing that it wiped out all traces of the original languages that came with our forefathers.

So I hope you see how the modern history of The Bahamas is influenced by what happened 200 years ago. We are still struggling with the meaning of this for our people, their self esteem, and their right to exist as human beings within their own skin and not suffer because of it. It is important that our children continue to know the story and continue to tell the story.

This year the Government plans to mark special observances. I am hoping that the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Sierra Leone which was founded by the British to accommodate freed Africans will come to The Bahamas and that we will agree on special measures for these observances.

Ghana is to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its Independence this year and the Government hopes to send a delegation of civil society to represent us at those celebrations.

There are to be seminars and research projects, and collaboration with our Caribbean neighbours to mark these matters.

The Government of South Africa has asked The Bahamas Government to host the follow up regional conference on the African Diaspora in the Caribbean and we have agreed to do so as well.

I thank you for allowing me to share these tidbits of history with you and hope that during this morning’s service you will continue to reflect on where we have come from. You can see how the hymn "We've Come This Far By Faith" resonates so well in the African experience in the Commonwealth of The Bahamas.

Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade

Over at Blogworld, Nicolette Bethel suggests that the upcoming elections here in the Bahamas have muffled public discussion of the bicentennial of the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade. Interestingly, many of the points she makes are similar to those my students raised when we got sidetracked into a discussion on this topic during last weekend's class session. Bethel observes:

Perhaps this is why we aren’t discussing abolition and what it means for us. This should, of course, be a source of shame for us all. When the United Kingdom is making a big deal out of this year, and out of the anniversary that’s coming up on March 25, we’re strangely silent. Is it because people on the PLP are afraid to make too much out of it because of the long years of invoking slavery in election years (the running of Roots on ZNS, in 1977, 1982, and 1987, the references to Exodus) have rendered the concept of slavery impotent as a political tool? Is it because people in the FNM have rejected the concept of slavery because they believe that it alienates those people who are not the descendants of slaves?

You can read the rest of Bethel's post here.

The Legacy of the Atlantic Slave Trade

This year the Bahamas is observing two very important milestones in its history: (1) the bicentennial of the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade (1807) and (2) the fortieth anniversary of the achievement of Black Majority Rule (1967). With this weekend's release of the new movie Amazing Grace, the former has been getting a great deal of attention.

In the United States and Great Britain, for example, many well-meaning Christians are using the bicentennial of abolition to raise awareness of and generate support for campaigns against modern day forms of slavery such as child labor, prostitution, and human trafficking. While I applaud these important efforts, I am concerned that they have largely obscured the legacy of slavery that still persists for Bahamian and Caribbean descendants of the liberated Africans and slaves who originally benefited from abolition.

While ending the slave trade in 1807 was an important first step towards the liberation of peoples of African descent in the British Caribbean, emancipation was not declared until 1834 and was not fully implemented until after a four-year period of apprenticeship ended in 1838. Even then, the truck system and other discriminatory economic practices served to keep black Bahamians socially, politically, and economically subservient to their white counterparts until the achievement of Black Majority Rule in 1967. While Black Majority Rule succeeded in creating a sizeable black middle class that allowed many Bahamians to escape from generations of poverty, an even larger black underclass still remains today. And the achievement of Bahamian independence in 1973--partly as the result of political momentum gained from Black Majority Rule six years earlier--was largely symbolic. The departure of the British left a void that was quickly filled by the economic, cultural, and occasional political influence of the Bahamas' gargantuan next door neighbor--the United States.

So what's my point? First of all, injustice is multifaceted and expresses itself in many forms such as slavery, colonialism, racism, classism, and neocolonialism--to name a few. Secondly, the elimination of one form of injustice while allowing others to persist does not result in true freedom. Today, many Bahamians are much better off socially and economically then they were just one or two generations ago. Thus, we have developed a false sense of freedom that allows us to ignore the many injustices that continue to remain with us as a result of the legacy of slavery and colonialism. But persist they do, whether we are willing to acknowledge them or not. So as we observe this important milestone in our history, I hope that we will not only reflect on its significance for us today. But that we will also recommit ourselves to the struggle for full emancipation.