Black Caesar’s Rise From Enslaved African Warrior Chief to Pirate of the Caribbean — by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
Black Caesar (place date of birth unknown — died 1718) was a legendary 18th-century Caribbean pirate of West African decent. For nearly a decade, he raided ships from the his home base in the Florida Keys and later served as one of the infamous pirate Captain Blackbeard's (Edward Teach's) head crewmen aboard the Queen Anne's Revenge. Caesar was one of the few surviving members of Blackbeard's crew following his death at the hands of Lieutenant Robert Maynard in 1718. Caesar's Rock, one of three islands located north of Key Largo, is named in his honor, and is the site of Caesar’s original headquarters.
I first heard of Black Caesar when I was a child, after meeting an older relative who named his large dog Caesar (actually it was a HUGE dog). I had at first assumed he named the dog after Julius Caesar the Roman Emperor, one of my cousins later corrected me and told me he was named after Black Caesar the pirate. Years later in college I got into a discussion with some black friends about the blaxploitation flick Black Caesar, they didn’t know the name had come from the pirate so I looked him up and showed them.
During the ”golden age” of piracy in the late 1600s and early 1700s, a pirate ship was one of the few places a black man could attain power and money in the Western Hemisphere. Some of these black pirates were fugitive slaves in the Caribbean or other coastal areas of the Americas. Others joined pirate crews when their slave ships or plantations were raided; it was often an easy choice between perpetual slavery and freedom through piracy.
Historians estimate that approximately 1/3 of the 10,000 pirates during the golden age of piracy were former slaves. While many were still mistreated and forced to do the lowest tasks aboard ship, some captains established revolutionary equality among their men, regardless of race. On these ships, black pirates could vote, bear arms, and receive an equal share of the booty. However back on dry, justice for black and white pirates was not equal. White pirates were usually hanged, but black pirates were often returned to their owners or otherwise resold into slavery, a fate often worse than death.
The most famous black pirate was of course Black Caesar, who raided ships in the for almost a decade before joining Blackbeard aboard the Queen Anne's Revenge. Like many pirates, his life is shrouded in legend, but he was apparently a very large and very cunning man. Before enslavement Black Caesar, according to traditional accounts, was a prominent West African tribal war chieftain. Caesar was widely renowned for his "huge size, immense strength and keen intelligence," and had evaded capture from many different slave traders, until he was finally captured by a cruel deception.
Caesar was captured in West Africa when he and twenty of his warriors were lured onto a ship by a slaver posing as a trader in goods. The “trader” showed him a watch, and then promised to show Caesar and his warriors more objects. The slaver then claimed the goods were "too heavy and too numerous to bring on shore" but if they came aboard his ship he’d display them all. The slaver then enticed Caesar and his men to stay aboard with food, musical instruments, silk scarves, and jewels. But while doing this the slave-trader had his men secretly raise anchor and slowly sail away.
When the Caesar discovered what was happening, alarmed he and his men attempted to charge their captors but were driven back by the well-armed sailors using swords and pistols, and imprisoned. Although it took a considerable length of time for him and his warriors to accept their captivity, he was eventually befriended by a sailor who was the only man Black Caesar would accept food and water from. Unlikely as it seems aboard a slave ship, the sailor who gave him food and water and Caesar became close friends. It seems the sailor was an indentured servant who wasn’t happy with his own lot in life.
Later on the journey as they neared the Florida coast, the sudden appearance of a hurricane threatened to destroy the ship on the Floridian reefs. Recognizing the ship's imminent destruction, the indentured servant sailor snuck below the deck and freed Caesar. The hurricane had provided all the confusion the Caesar and his new friend needed for an escape. The sailor and a few surviving members of Caesar’s African warriors forced the captain and crew into a corner at gunpoint. The men then loaded one of the longboats with ammunition and other supplies. The wind and waves pushed them to shore where they waited out the storm. But apparently between the storm and slave uprising, only Caesar and his one sailor friend survived the conflict on the doomed ship.
For several years thereafter, the pair amassed a considerable fortune by posing as shipwrecked sailors. They began by using the lifeboat from the doomed slave ship to lure passing ships which stopped to give assistance. While posing as the shipwrecked sailors, they would sail out to the vessel offering to take them aboard. Once they were close to the vessel, they brought out their guns and demanded supplies and ammunition, threatening to sink the ship if they were refused.
Black Caesar and his friend, the sailor, turn to a life of piracy. ( Noah Scalin / CC BY-SA 2.0)
Caesar and the sailor continued this ploy for a number of years and amassed a sizable amount of treasure which was buried on Elliott Key. However, he and the sailor had a falling out over a young woman the mate had brought back from one of the ships they had looted. Fighting over her, Caesar killed his longtime friend in a duel and took the woman for his own.
Over the next decade Caesar began taking on more pirates, and over time was soon able to attack ships on the open sea. He and his crew were often able to avoid capture by running into Caesar Creek and other inlets between Elliot and Old Rhodes Key and onto the mangrove islands. Using a metal ring embedded in a rock, they ran a strong rope through the ring, heeled the boat over, and hid their boat in the water until the patrol ship or some other danger sailed away. Caesar also lowered the mast and sunk the ship in shallow waters, only to later cut the rope and pump out the water to raise the boat and continue raiding. It is thought that he and his men buried 26 bars of silver on the island, although no treasure has ever been recovered from the island.
Caesar apparently had a harem on his island, having several women seized from passing ships, as well as a prison camp which he kept prisoners in stone huts hoping to ransom them. When leaving the island to go on raids, he left no provisions for these prisoners and many eventually starved to death. A few children reportedly escaped captivity, subsisting on berries and shellfish, and formed their own language and customs. This society of lost children gave rise to native superstition that the island is haunted.
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During the early 18th century, Caesar left Biscayne Bay to join Blackbeard in raiding American shipping in the Mid-Atlantic serving as a lieutenant on his flagship Queen Anne's Revenge. In 1718, after Blackbeard's death battling with Lieutenant Robert Maynard at Ocracoke Island, Caesar attempted to set off the powder magazine as per Blackbeard's instructions. However, Caesar was stopped by one of the captives who tackled him as he prepared to light a trail of gunpowder leading to the magazine. He struggled with the man below decks until several of Maynard's sailors were able to restrain him. Taken prisoner by the Virginian colonial authorities, Caesar was convicted of piracy and hanged in Williamsburg, Virginia as he said he would never live as a slave.
But historian Cindy Vallar contest this story, she claims that the Black Caesar who was part of Blackbeard’s crew was in fact not the same man as the Black Caesar who operated in the Florida Keys. Vallar notes that the former was actually a slave owned by a Tobias Knight of North Carolina before he became a pirate. Thus, it is possible that there were two Black Caesars and that their stories were conflated, in which case the ultimate fate of the Florida Keys Black Caesar is perhaps lost to history.
Later adding to the confusion over the name during the Haitian fight for independence a slave name Henry took up the moniker Black Caesar.
Henri Caesar — the second Black Caesar
Henri Caesar was born a slave on the island and as a young man worked in a lumber yard. The supervisor of the yard mistreated him and Henri saw a chance for freedom during the slave insurrection toward the end of the 18th century. During the insurrection, he killed the supervisor and joined the underground freedom fighters.
Caesar stayed on the island until it received independence from France, then set off to make his fortune at sea. According to the tale, he captured a Spanish ship and made his way around Cuba and the Bahamas. By 1805, under the name Black Caesar, he was attacking small villages and lone ships from his base in the Florida Keys.
Henri Caesar is said to have buried between $2 million and $6 million in treasure across several islands in the area. He disappeared around 1830 with various theories as to why. Some say that he fled when the US took possession of the area, while others believe that he was captured and burned to death by the US authorities.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Newly-released data on COVID-19 infections and deaths in South Carolina reveals that the global pandemic seems to be disproportionately targeting the state’s rural black residents in the same way it has targeted non-white people in more populous states.
The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) meticulously compiled the state’s COVID-19 numbers, offering one of the most detailed glimpses into the spread of coronavirus of any state so far. South Carolina’s statistics disprove many of the speculative reasons officials have given for why the novel strain has disproportionately affected African American communities.
Although the number of cases across the state has doubled every seven days since the week of March 7, Republican Gov. Henry Mcmaster’s stay-at-home order is less than a week old, making S.C. one of the last states to issue such a directive. As of Tuesday, April 14, 3,439 South Carolinians have tested positive for COVID-19, with 87 succumbing to the viral illness. Roughly 10.5 percent of the residents who were checked have tested positive for the virus but DHEC experts estimate that the true number of cases statewide is most likely more than 20,000.
National health authorities have speculated that the disproportionate infection and death rates among black communities were due to population density. Because cities like Chicago and Milwaukee were among the first to share racially disaggregated data, officials theorized that black people were affected because they were more likely to live in densely-populated urban areas.
That is not the case in South Carolina.
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IN 2002, WHEN Halle Berry became the first black woman to win a best actress Academy Award for her role as the forever-yearning widow Leticia Musgrove in “Monster’s Ball,” she wept as she accepted her golden statue. Many black Americans immediately identified with that well of emotion, which reflected both the toll of her journey and the hope for more change to come.
But Hollywood has always been a mercurial experiment, with white men holding the reins of power, making progress, inclusion and diversity at best a seasonal proposition. Almost 20 years on, Berry remains the only African-American woman to win a best actress Oscar. And yet there is an increasing sense that it is the Academy that is behind the times. We are living in an age in which some of our greatest, most successful actors are black women, near 50 or older, veterans who have fought against an industry that for much of its history would have rather ignored them. Some of them, like Taraji P. Henson and Berry, began with bit parts on TV. Others, like Viola Davis, who got her start in the theater, or Mary J. Blige, who had almost 10 years of hit singles to her name before being cast in her first film role, came to cinema later in their careers. Many of these actresses were first reliable character actors or supporting players in the 1980s and ’90s, during a shift in what studios deemed bankable, a time that saw a spate of films targeted to black audiences: “Jungle Fever” (1991), Berry’s big-screen debut; “What’s Love Got to Do With It” (1993), with Angela Bassett’s star-making turn as Tina Turner; “Set It Off” (1996), with Kimberly Elise as a bank robber; and “Eve’s Bayou” (1997), with Lynn Whitfield as the matriarch of an upper-middle-class Southern family. This was a kind of golden era, allowing this generation of black American actresses — women who also include Alfre Woodard, Regina King and Queen Latifah — to showcase their depth on a scale previously unimaginable.
When money for projects with black casts dried up in Hollywood by the end of the ’90s, these actresses carried on, forced to look farther down the thoroughfare than merely the steps they could see. To be a black woman in Hollywood is to have to be steadfast in the pursuit of one’s craft, in the search for basic opportunities. They have had to toil through the intricacies of a doubly marginalized existence — being black and being a woman — and have rarely been allowed to fully extol the complexities of their truth for the screen.
THIS HAS BEEN the historical situation for women of color in Hollywood, all of whom are cupped in the palms of mighty forebears. There was Hattie McDaniel, the first African-American to win an Academy Award, for her role as “Mammy” in “Gone With the Wind” (1939). Then there was the singer and actress Lena Horne of “Stormy Weather” and “Cabin in the Sky,” both from 1943 and early exceptions in mainstream Hollywood as popular films with black casts. Or Diahann Carroll, the star of the sitcom “Julia” (1968-71), the first black woman to lead a network series. And of course, there’s Dorothy Dandridge, the first black woman nominated for a best actress Oscar for her role in 1954’s “Carmen Jones,” a woman presciently portrayed by Berry in a 1999 biopic, and Cicely Tyson, who at 95 has played strong leading roles throughout her nearly seven-decade career. Like their predecessors, these women were journeymen out of necessity, often lone souls in their creative environments.
Clockwise from left: TARAJI P. HENSON, MARY J. BLIGE, ANGELA BASSETT, LYNN WHITFIELD, HALLE BERRY, KIMBERLY ELISE
Photo by Mickalene Thomas and Racquel Chevremont. Styled by Shiona Turini
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Wrongful convictions are so persistent in the US justice system — by some counts, over 2,600 innocent criminal defendants have been exonerated since 1989 — that at times they seem more like a feature than a bug. The Innocence Project, founded in 1992 by law professors Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, is one organization devoted to not only overturning wrongful convictions through DNA testing but also advocating for reform in the criminal justice system.
All of those numbers can feel pretty abstract, however. The new Netflix series The Innocence Files aims to translate the abstractions by showcasing the stories of real humans, people who went to jail for years or even decades based on evidence that fell apart when it was put under a microscope. In nine documentary episodes — some as long as a feature film — The Innocence Files draws on the same intriguing stories that often become the subjects of true crime series, while aiming to make a bigger point.
The nine episodes are grouped into three sections, each of which focuses on a broad aspect of America’s due process laws that might lead to wrongful convictions: evidence, witnesses, and prosecution. Each section uses real stories to illustrate the breakdown of supposedly just systems and the unreliability of allegedly unimpeachable evidence. For instance, the first three episodes, directed by Oscar-winning documentarian Roger Ross Williams, focus on two men who were wrongfully convicted of sexually assaulting and murdering young girls based on the largely disproven science of “bite-mark evidence.” The men, their families, jurors, members of law enforcement, and one particularly salty forensic odontologist who served as an expert witness all appear in the gripping story.
The Innocence Files tells the story of eight prisoners who were freed after their wrongful convictions were overturned.
Courtesy of Netflix
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Caribbean leaders say a financial bailout offered to some of the world’s poorest countries this week by the International Monetary Fund to help cushion the economic blow of the coronavirus pandemic doesn’t go far enough — and stressed that they, too, are in desperate need of a rescue.
On Monday, the International Monetary Fund announced that it was canceling six months of debt payments, totaling $215 million, from 25 nations. Haiti, which gets to keep about $4.8 million, was the only Caribbean nation to make the cut along with Afghanistan, Yemen, Sao Tome, Solomon Islands, Nepal and mostly war-torn African countries.
“Up until now, there is no rescue plan for the Caribbean and we need a rescue plan,” said Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne. “This is not a situation where we are trying to ask for assistance conveniently. It is an absolute necessity.”
With the Dominican Republic leading the region with 3,167 confirmed COVID-19 infections and 107 deaths as of Monday, the Caribbean region has registered more than 5,000 cases of the deadly rapidly spreading respiratory disease. The effects have not only been devastating in the loss of lives but also jobs, as governments closed airports and cruise ports and shuttered hotels to try to stop the spread.
The World Bank, in a report released on Sunday, said the pandemic could send economies across Latin America and the Caribbean plunging by 4.6% this year.
Browne believes the projection is too conservative and fundamentally flawed, and underestimates the impact of the coronavrius on the Caribbean’s tourism-dependent economies.
Using his own debt-ridden and still hurricane-recovering island-nation as an example, Browne said, Antigua has already lost 20,000 jobs, which is half of its national workforce. He estimates another 6,000 could also be laid off as the government struggles to make payroll for its 12,000 public servants.
Meanwhile, he said, “they are looking at our per capita income and saying we’re so wealthy, we’re not eligible for assistance when, one, we have no surplus and second, about 80 percent of our revenue could be wiped out. How the hell can we survive?”
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More often than not, incarcerated persons are viewed negatively in society. Ken Burns and Lynn Novick‘s documentary, College Behind Bars, is striving to change that narrative.
“Inside the walls of a classroom, you escape the walls of a cell — and you become an individual again,” says Shawnta Montgomery, speaking at the 16th commencement of the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI), in the documentary.
College Behind Bars first premiered Nov. 25, 2019 on PBS and has since then become popular among Netflix audiences. The four-part series follows the journey of men and women incarcerated in maximum and medium-security prisons across New York state over the span of four years.
The documentary shadows them as they pursue college-accredited degrees through BPI, one of the most challenging prison education programs in the nation.
To further discuss College Behind Bars and the advocacy for college access in all prisons, theGrio spoke with Dyjuan Tatro, a formerly incarcerated student of BPI who appears in the documentary. Tatro completed his incarceration in 2017.
“One thing I am grateful for about College Behind Bars is that it complicates the narrative we see around incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people like myself,” Tatro tells theGrio.
“The filmmakers decided to introduce you to the subjects as people before you found out what they were incarcerated for. The film brings people to acknowledge the humanity of others. We view someone who went to prison for something and we say that’s who they are.”
Before incarceration, Tatro says going to college was not a part of his solid plans for the future.
Dyjuan Tatro, 31, has served 11 years incarcerated. (Photo courtesy of Florentine Films)
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