“What do they know of England, who only England know?” That’s a well known maxim which suggests the notion: “What do they know of freedom, who only freedom know?” It’s axiomatic, I suppose, that if slavery didn’t exist in our part of the world then the question of emancipation would not have arisen. So it’s only natural that on or about the anniversary of emancipation there should be more than usual interest in the institution of slavery as well as how the slaves adapted to their “new situation” and the sort of human resources which they drew upon and the survival strategies which they employed. Now God alone knows where the “primitive” label came from and why it was assigned to Africans, generally, African slaves in particular, and by extension, their progeny. In a lecture, entitled “ The making of the Caribbean peoples” CLR James found the odious label not only repugnant but totally unjustified. James referred to a quotation from the Moyne Report (1938). James claimed that the report was produced by a number of excellent English gentlemen and ladies, sympathetic to the West Indies.
The repugnant quotation referred to, “Negroes were taken from lands where they lived no doubt in a primitive state.” James explained that the members of the Moyne commission were not hostile to the West Indies but were merely profoundly ignorant of what they were dealing with. Said James, “I don’t know where they got that ‘primitive’ label from because the early Portuguese and the rest who discovered Africa did not find very much difference between the Negro civilisations they met and the great masses of the peasantry they had left at home. In many respects, many Africans were more advanced.” Gad Heuman took CLR’s point a bit further with his report that, “The slaves’ work on their grounds and in the markets demonstrate a high degree of initiative and enterprise, particularly since slaves had to tend their crops outside the long days devoted to the plantations. Yet white stereotypes of slave behaviour depicted them as Sambos or Quashees, who were inveterately lazy, irresponsible, inefficient, dishonest, childish and stupid.” Gad Heuman asks, “But how accurate is this depiction of the slave in his community?” Answering his own question, “How-ever debased slavery was, slaves resisted it at home, in their communal life with other slaves, and in their maroon societies. Their religion, culture and songs attest to their independence within an oppressive system.”
Lawrence Levine suggested that those factors, alluded to by Heuman, probably prevented legal slavery from becoming spiritual slavery. The notion that slaves were largely resigned to their lot in life and that their yearning for freedom was largely extinguished seemed very much at variance with known facts. There are those, of course, who’d have us believe that, subconsciously, the slave virtually told him/herself, “I’ve got plenty of nothing, and nothing is plenty for me.” As they say, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast.” And I might add here that some obscure reference to runaway slaves escaping bondage in the southern states in America and wending their way north by way of the “Underground Railroad” had somehow whetted my curiosity. I had mistakenly imagined it to be a system of underground caverns and natural tunnels. That’s probably what aroused my interest in Ann Perry’s little book, titled: Harriet Tubman; Conductor to the Underground Railroad. I soon got disabused of my conception. The underground railroad that ran straight to the North securing freedom for fugitive slaves was not a railroad at all, and did not run underground. It was composed of a loosely organised group of people who offered food and shelter or a place of concealment to fugitives who had set out on the long road to the North and freedom and, I might add, at great risk to themselves. They were, in the main, whites (yes, whites) whose religious persuasions caused them to regard slavery as profoundly abhorrent.
Apart from learning about the “Underground Railroad,” I learnt about the incredible exploits of a “shinning star” and genuine heroine known as Harriet Tubman. She was born a slave and named Harriet Ross. By the age of six (yes, six) she was hired out and experienced cruel treatment at the hand of her new mistress who kept telling her that she was stupid, and sent her back to her “former home,” specifically the Brodas plantation, where she was owned. Her mistress expected so much of a little six-year-old girl and deemed her “unteachable, intractable, and hopelessly stupid.” She was not exempted from whipping. The yearning for freedom had apparently been in young Harriet’s blood — and she did not yearn for freedom only for herself. Something happened that gave every indication that Harriet was made of “sterner stuff” and, incidentally, left her with a physical disability that would have prevented “lesser mortals” from leading even a normal life. She received a gaping wound in her forehead when she blocked the path of the overseer, in pursuit of a runaway slave. The long term effect of the wound was that she would, at any given moment, loose consciousness for extended periods. That notwithstanding, this outstanding and extraordinary woman not only escaped but returned again and again and led over 300 black men, women and children past the swamps, forests, rivers and secret hiding places that marked the dangerous escape route.
Though more like the “Scarlet Pimpernel,” she was aptly known as the elusive “Moses,” whose motto might well have been, “Let my people go.” After reading Harriet Tubman’s story, it occurred to me that the stories of black heroines of the slavery and post-emancipation eras have not been highlighted but rather have been largely ignored. Black male chauvinism? Some years ago, in a BBC radio panel discussion, a couple of young, black, educated, articulate women poured scorn on Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) and virtually took him to the cleaners for his foolish and flippant reply to a question he was once asked. The question: “What do you consider black women’s position in the emancipation process?” His answer, in one word: “Horizontal.” Make of that answer what you will.
