Igbo Landing - The Legend of the Flying Africans, When death is a better option than slavery
By dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
Stories of slave rebellions are severely under-taught in American history courses. In the Caribbean where my family is from, they comprise a much larger share of school history, and I’ve always had an interest in them. Unfortunately in the US the white supremacist who created slavery and later segregation, understood the power of slave revolts, and took active steps to strike them from both public memory and school’s historical curriculums. Furthermore the stories of American slave resistance that many of us do know from our times in high school only dwell on the rioting, bloodshed, violence, and destruction of slave revolts. We only learn of a few revenge killings as enslave people like Nat Turner rose up against their oppressors. But throughout American history there are other acts of resistance by slaves whose stories are worthy of being retold. These tales may have sad and bittersweet endings, but they also speak to the unconquerable spirit of Africans held captive by brutal economics of the transatlantic slave trade.
Take for example the story of “The Igbo Landing” (also known as the Ibo Landing, Ebo Landing, or Ebos Landing). The story that gives Ebos Landing ( as it’s called in coastal Georgia) its name is one of the most colorful, anguishing, but enduring tales in the state of Georgia's rich history. This story has become better known as the "Myth of the Flying Africans”. Regardless of its name, the story of the Igbo landing has been retold and embellished for 200 years in the form of local legends, Gullah folklore, and children's tales. It has also been adapted into movies, novels, and television shows. The story of the Flying African is based on the historical event of the remarkable story of an Igbo slave rebellion on St. Simons Island. This melancholy tale has blossomed to become a powerful metaphor of African American courage, longing, conviction, and a refusal of the captived to submit to being conquered at all cost. Furthermore this story stands out for me for a personal reason, my brother-in-law is an ethnic Igbo from Nigeria. Because today modern Igbo people self identify with the spelling “IGBO” that is the spelling I will use when writing this piece.
The historical roots of the flying Africans legend can be traced to the spring of 1803, when a group of Igbo slaves arrived in Savannah Georgia after enduring the nightmare of the Middle Passage. The Igbo (from what is now the nation of Nigeria, in West Africa) were renowned throughout the the current and former British colonies (including the US) for being fiercely independent and unwilling to tolerate the humiliations of transatlantic chattel
slavery. The Igbo Landing itself is a historic site at Dunbar Creek on St. Simons Island, Glynn County,
Georgia. In May of 1803, the Igbo and other West African captives arrived in Savannah, Georgia, on the slave ship the
Wanderer. Historical records show they were purchased for an average of $100 each by slave merchants John Couper and Thomas Spalding to be resold to plantations on the nearby St. Simons Island.
On that day in May 1803 the chained slaves were then reloaded and packed under the deck of a coastal vessel, the York, which would take them to St. Simons where they were to be resold. During the voyage, approximately 75 Igbo slaves rose in rebellion. These brave captives fighting for their very freedom, overpowered their outnumbers captors. During their revolt they drowned or killed all their captors. But unfortunately the struggle that won their freedom also caused ship to the ground in Dunbar Creek, Georgia as they were unable to navigate their newly captured ship.
The sequence of events that occurred after the ship ran aground remains unclear. It is only known that soon after running aground, the freed Igbo marched ashore singing. The Igbo were led by their high chief who was among the former captives on the ship. At some point at the high Igbo chief’s direction, the group of Igbo turned around and reversed course, walking in unison into the marshy waters of Dunbar Creek. They began singing in the Igbo language: ”♫ Mmiri Mmiri ahụ wetara anyị, ♫ Mmiri Mmiri ga-akpọga anyị n'ụlọ ♫" (“♫ The Water Spirit brought us, the Water Spirit will take us home♫ ") thereby accepting the protection of their God, Chukwu and certain death over the alternative of a lifetime of slavery, and committed mass suicide.
Roswell King, a white overseer on the nearby Pierce Butler plantation, wrote the first account of the incident. He and another man identified only as Captain Patterson recovered many of the drowned bodies. Apparently only a subset of the 75 Igbo rebels drowned. Thirteen bodies were recovered, but others remained missing, and some may have survived the suicide episode, making the actual numbers of deaths uncertain.
Regardless of the actual numbers, the deaths signaled a powerful story of resistance. These captives had overwhelmed their captors in a strange land, and then took their own lives rather than remain enslaved in a strange New World. Over time the Igbo Landing gradually took on enormous symbolic importance in the local African American folklore of coastal Georgia. The mutiny and subsequent suicide by the Igbo people has been called by many locals the first freedom march in the history of the United States. Local people claimed that the Landing and surrounding marshes in Dunbar Creek where the Igbo people committed suicide in 1803 were haunted by the souls of the dead Igbo slaves. Locals claim that on moonless nights, the singing and clinking of chains can be heard emanating from the marshes.
To modern audiences the idea of a group of people taking their own lives together appears to be an unbelievably tragic act. But put yourself in the shoes of the Igbo landing folk, whose lives where shattered by the trauma of the events leading up to their actions that day. One fateful night you are stolen from your bed, dragged into a dank slave castle on the West African coast, sold as a slave, transported by strange people you have never seen the likes of before. These people speak a language you don’t recognize clad in garments that seem alien. These pirates store you in a dank dark ship galley, where you suffer from sea sickness and filth for weeks on end. They feed you strange foods and then sell you again, letting you know your freedom and liberty is forever vanquished. Finally rising up, you win your freedom only to recognize there is no hope to return to your beloved home and people. With only the prospect of imminent recapture and a lifetime of cruel servitude before you, the cold embrace of the arms of water spirit taking you to the home of your god Chukwu, seems like the only rational option.
The story of the people of Igbo landing, who chose death over slavery which had long been part of Gullah folklore, was finally recorded from various oral sources in the 1930s by members of the Federal Writers Project. The Federal Writers Project was part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a New Deal program, created to provide jobs for out-of-work writers during the Great Depression.
According to Professor Terri L. Snyder, “the enslaved cargo “suffered much by mismanagement,” “rose” from their confinement in the small vessel, and revolted against the crew, forcing them into the water where they drowned”. Led by their chief, the Africans then marched ashore, singing. At their chief’s direction, they walked into the marshy waters of Dunbar Creek, committing mass suicide.
But what happened to the official records of the revolt is a striking example of the ways in which African American slaves and white slave masters interpreted the fact of this historical events in starkly different ways. One of the only contemporary written accounts of the event by
the aforementioned white overseer Roswell King of nearby Pierce Butler. King recounted that as soon as the Igbo landed on St. Simons Island, they "took to the swamp"—committing suicide by walking into Dunbar Creek. But if you read the story from King's perspective the salient feature of this story was the substantial loss of a financial investment for Couper and Spalding.
On the other hand African American
oral tradition, has preserved a very different account of the events that transpired that day. As with all oral histories, the facts of the story have evolved as storytellers elaborated the tale over the years, such that there are now dozens of identified variations on the original episode. In the late 1930s, more than 100 years after the Igbo uprising on St. Simons, members of the Federal Writers Project collected oral histories in the
Sea Islands (many of which can now be found in
Drums and Shadows: Survival Studies among the Georgia Coastal Negroes). An older African American man by the name of Wallace Quarterman was asked if he had heard the story of Ebos landing. Quarterman replied:
Ain't you heard about them? Well, at that time Mr. Blue he was the overseer and . . . Mr. Blue he go down one morning with a long whip for to whip them good. . . . Anyway, he whipped them good and they got together and stuck that hoe in the field and then . . . rose up in the sky and turned themselves into buzzards and flew right back to Africa. . . . Everybody knows about them.
A typical Gullah telling of the events, incorporating many of the recurrent themes that are common to most myths related to the Igbo Landing, is recorded by Linda S. Watts:
The West Africans upon assessing their situation resolved to risk their lives by walking home over the water rather than submit to the living death that awaited them in American slavery. As the tale has it, the tribes people disembark from the ship, and as a group, turned around and walked along the water, traveling in the opposite direction from the arrival port. As they took this march together, the West Africans joined in song. They are reported to have sung a hymn in which the lyrics assert that the water spirits will take them home. While versions of this story vary in nuance, all attest to the courage in rebellion displayed by the enslaved Igbo.[*]
For centuries, some historians had cast doubt on the events of the Igbo Landing. Many of these historians argued that the entire incident was more local folklore than fact. But a 1980 research project verified the accounts that Roswell King and others provided at the time. University researchers used “modern scientific techniques to reconstruct the episode and confirm the factual basis of the longstanding oral accounts”.
So powerful is the story of resistance of the Igbo Landing that it is often referred to in African American literature. Famously writer Alex Haley recounts it in his high acclaimed book, Roots, and it was the basis for Nobel laureate, Toni Morrison’s, novel, Song of Solomon.
Contemporary artists like Beyonce have also depicted and paid homage to the Igbo Landing in their music.
In the acclaimed Marvel comic film, Black Panther, Killmonger, played by actor Michael B Jordan, refers to this event, the Igbo Landing, saying, “Bury me in the ocean with my ancestors who jumped from ships, ’cause they knew death was better than bondage”.
In September 2002 the St. Simons African-American Heritage Coalition organized a two-day commemoration with events related to Igbo history and a ceremonial funeral procession to the site. 75 invited attendees came from across the American South, as well as Nigeria, Belize, and Haiti, all countries where similar acts of resistance to a life of slavery had taken place. They gathered to designate the site as holy ground and give the souls rest. The account of the Igbo is now part of the curriculum for coastal Georgia schools.
The Igbo Landing has come to occupy great symbolic importance in local African American folklore. The mutiny and subsequent suicide by the Igbo people have been called the first freedom march in the history of the United States and local people claim that the Landing and surrounding marshes in Dunbar Creek were haunted by the souls of the dead Igbo slaves.
Sometimes when faced with between only two choices, a life of slavery and dying with the loved ones of your community, the unfortunate choice becomes clear. The brave rebel slaves of the Igbo Landing chanted ”♫ Mmiri Mmiri ahụ wetara anyị, ♫ Mmiri Mmiri ga-akpọga anyị n'ụlọ ♫" (“♫"The Water Spirit brought us, the Water Spirit will take us home♫"") accept the protection of Chukwu and decided to walk back across the waters to their ancestors.
Sources:
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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On Tuesday, Empire actor Jussie Smollett reported being assaulted in Chicago by two white men in ski masks. The brutal attack, which Smollett told Chicago Police included racial and homophobic slurs (as reported by TMZ), a noose, and the attackers yelling “this is MAGA country,” came as a shock to many. Celebrities, social justice advocates, among many others, voiced their horror on social media and gave messages of support to Smollett, who was released from the hospital later that day.
But as stories of the attack spread on social media, its users noted—and recoiled—at the way it was being described:
“A possible hate crime.” A “homophobic” attack, but not a “racist” one. “Racially charged.”
Some of it was bucking at old media industry conventions that sounded particularly galling and abrasive, given the severity of what Smollet said happened to him. Others noted news outlets’ repeated—and problematic—reluctance to describe things as “racist” had reared its head yet again.
An important thing to note here is that news outlets have a lot more discretion to describe an event as “racist” or “homophobic” than we do “possible” or “alleged.”
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Fans of comedian Robin Thede and her canceled late-night show, “The Rundown” will soon have new reason to laugh. She announced her upcoming program for HBO, “A Black Lady Sketch Show,” in a video with collaborators Issa Rae (“Insecure”) and Lauren Ashley Smith (“Fashion Queens”).
Thede, who worked as late-night television’s first-ever Black female head writer on “The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore,” will oversee what she describes as “the first time in history [an] all-Black women [team has] come together to do a sketch show for TV.” Deadline adds that she will act, direct and write the half-hour show with a core cast and crew of Black women. Smith led the writers room for “The Rundown” and serves in the same capacity on the new show. Both Thede and Smith will co-executive produce with Rae.
Thede tweeted (January 28) that she made “A Black Lady Sketch Show” to give voice to Black women in a field dominated by White men.
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Patrick Coleman is packing a piece of history into the meals served at his soul food restaurant Beans & Cornbread. Throughout Black History Month, the Detroit-based bistro will offer “shoebox lunches” similar to the boxes African Americans used to store food when traveling in the south during the Jim Crow-era. Because they were banned and refused service in white-owned establishments, they resorted to cooking and packing their own meals in shoeboxes.
“You get on the highway these days and you can stop at any restaurant along the interstate, but back during Jim Crow, [black] folks couldn’t do that,” he told BLACK ENTERPRISE. “You could not go into the dining cars if you were on the train or pull over to a Denny’s or a Cracker Barrel and walk in…you could potentially end up getting killed.”
“LUNCH AND LEARN”
Coleman, who opened Beans & Cornbread in 1997 in Southfield, a northern suburb of Detroit, says the “shoebox lunches” were inspired by the stories his mother and grandmother told him about taking trips in the segregated south. “They would get into this nice train up north in Detroit and once they hit the Mason Dixon [line], they had to get on the old, coal-powered train where soot was coming in the windows,” he said. That’s when “someone would open up a bag and the shoeboxes would come out because they could not go into the dining cars.” He added, “I’m just one generation removed from that.”
Coleman launched his “shoebox lunch” idea last February, which was a hit. “The shoeboxes were extremely popular last year,” said Coleman. The idea was so successful that he added a “shoebox lunch” to the Beans & Cornbread lunch menu back in November, which consists of southern fried wings in a decorative box commemorating black history. The box also pays tribute to African American trailblazers and includes information about Freedom Riders and the Green Book, a guide that instructed black travelers on where to find safe havens throughout the deeply-segregated ’60s South. “It’s a history lesson [that] we call ‘lunch and learn.’”
Starting next month, Coleman will expand the “shoebox lunch” meal to include a variety of traditional soul food dishes like fried chicken and cornbread, southern fried catfish strips, and their signature Harlem burrito. The “History in a Box” meals will run for $11, while the keepsake boxes will be sold for $3 each.
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Step into a cinema in Uganda’s capital and you could watch an action-packed retelling of President Yoweri Museveni’s ascent to power. Step outside of it and Museveni could be watching you.
A new surveillance system with hundreds of cameras on Kampala’s streets; a glitzy biopic made by the president’s daughter -- superficially they have little in common. But in the East African country the former rebel has ruled with a firm grip for more than 30 years, critics say they’re part of a push to glorify his achievements and tighten control of public space before 2021 elections that may be his toughest yet.
Ugandan state TV showed ‘27 Guns,’ which reenacts Museveni’s 1980s revolt against President Milton Obote, before last week’s Liberation Day holiday. Celebrations this year, though, followed months of sporadic unrest in which pop star-turned-politician Bobi Wine became a lightning rod for dissent for one of Africa’s youngest populations.
“The youth of urban centers in Africa tend to vote for the opposition, so of course that is going to concern Museveni,” said Nic Cheeseman, professor of democracy at the University of Birmingham in England. The government’s “worried about the youth vote and the urban vote and the potential for those two to unite against a president who is getting increasingly old.”
Museveni, 74, who can seek reelection after presidential age-limits were abolished, presents himself as key to Uganda’s stability and a crucial U.S. ally. Seizing power in 1986, he eventually drew a line under the years of political upheaval -- including Idi Amin’s bloody dictatorship -- that followed independence from the U.K. in 1962.
These days his government brooks little dissent and is regularly accused by human-rights groups of clamping down on opponents.
In Africa, only the presidents of Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Congo Republic have ruled longer than Museveni -- and ‘27 Guns,’ likewise, takes its time. Its 2 1/2 hours span about five years as the film’s Museveni accuses Obote of stealing elections and takes to Uganda’s forests to wage a guerrilla war. His self-declared freedom fighters storm army barracks by using the titular firearms and later seek help from Tanzania’s then-president, Julius Nyerere.
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The discussion around criminal justice reform these days usually centers around the same four or five themes. We need to change sentencing laws and guidelines so people aren’t thrown into prison for unreasonable terms. We need to fix policing to better hold accountable those officers who discriminate or use excessive force. Our prosecutors must begin to take a fairer view of what crimes should be aggressively prosecuted, even if it means fewer indictments. And when we do jail people for crimes, we must give most of them a meaningful opportunity to be released from pretrial detention. There is broad, bipartisan support for most of this.
What we almost never talk about when we talk about the need to fix our justice systems is the labyrinth of procedural hurdles established by legislators and judges to thwart the ability of the wrongfully convicted to get relief. We focus on figuring out how not to put innocent people in prison, which is great, but we don’t focus enough on figuring out how to get them out of prison after they’ve been convicted. The prime example of this, of course, is the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, the Clinton-era federal law that vitiated habeas corpus reviewand made it measurably harder for justice to come to criminal defendants who deserve it.
But it’s at the state level where these procedural hurdles are most pernicious. Take, for example, the case of Johnny Lee Gates. Earlier this month, a trial judge in Columbus, Georgia, ordered a new trial for Gates decades after he sought one. That’s the good news. If ever a defendant deserved a new trial, it’s Gates. From the start, his case was marked by a level of official misconduct I’ve rarely seen in nearly a quarter-century covering criminal justice. Police never even arrested another man who confessed to the murder for which Gates was subsequently charged.
The bad news is that the judge cited a series of arcane state appellate rules to avoid basing his ruling on the most egregious component of Gates’s conviction: the fact that prosecutors systematically excluded black citizens from his jury pool. In a three-day period in 1977, Gates, an intellectually disabled black man, was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for murdering a white woman. An all-white jury heard the case and that’s because prosecutors had put a “W” next to the list of white prospective jurors and an “N” next to the list of black prospective jurors before moving to strike from the case all of the black candidates.
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