Oluale Kossola, the Last Survivor of the Atlantic Slave Trade

[Steve]

I came across this video about the last known survivor or the Middle Passage, that I think is really interesting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DgcbC7qu10

[RJNorton]

(02-05-2019 07:59 PM)Steve Wrote:  I think is really interesting:

I second you, Steve. Thanks for posting.

[L Verge]

(02-06-2019 05:01 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(02-05-2019 07:59 PM)Steve Wrote:  I think is really interesting:

I second you, Steve. Thanks for posting.

I agree. and I enjoyed it so much that I passed it on to other site managers on my list as well as our Black History Program here at the gov't agency that I work for.

[Joe Di Cola]

You might enjoy reading Zora Neale Hurston's Barracoon, published for the first time last year. It is a biography of Cudjo Lewis, based on Hurston's interviews with him in 1927.

[L Verge]

(02-06-2019 01:42 PM)Joe Di Cola Wrote:  You might enjoy reading Zora Neale Hurston's Barracoon, published for the first time last year. It is a biography of Cudjo Lewis, based on Hurston's interviews with him in 1927.

I mentioned this video to one of my volunteers at the museum today, and she also recommended this book.

Even being a historian, it is amazing to me to listen to stories like this and see folks such as this in 20th-century garb -- knowing that their history dates to the mid-1800s and that his enslavement particularly came at the hands of tribal warfare within his own African roots (a subject that seems to be avoided in much of modern history on slave trade).

[Rsmyth]

Taking slaves as plunder has been the norm since the beginning of recorded history. In this country certain American Indian tribes took other Indians as personal slaves or to be traded. Mexican settlers and white pioneers were not immune to such treatment. There is evidence that Mormon living in the southwest purchased Paiute children from Ute raiding parties. And a piece of history not widely known is the fact that Mormon's in southern Utah murdered 120 Arkansas immigrants traveling to California. They then took 17 children below the age of 5 from the doomed wagon train, changed their names and placed them with local Mormon families before they were rescued by Federal troops 2 years later. This is known as the Mountain Meadow Massacre.

[L Verge]

(02-07-2019 07:56 AM)Rsmyth Wrote:  Taking slaves as plunder has been the norm since the beginning of recorded history. In this country certain American Indian tribes took other Indians as personal slaves or to be traded. Mexican settlers and white pioneers were not immune to such treatment. There is evidence that Mormon living in the southwest purchased Paiute children from Ute raiding parties. And a piece of history not widely known is the fact that Mormon's in southern Utah murdered 120 Arkansas immigrants traveling to California. They then took 17 children below the age of 5 from the doomed wagon train, changed their names and placed them with local Mormon families before they were rescued by Federal troops 2 years later. This is known as the Mountain Meadow Massacre.

Learning of examples of this type of human enslavement and its history throughout the world for centuries makes one understand that it was/is not just a problem in the American colonies and the United States and not just racially oriented. Evil comes in every shape, size, and color and has throughout history. Until we can wipe out that around the globe, history will repeat itself, IMO.

[David Lockmiller]

(02-05-2019 07:59 PM)Steve Wrote:  I came across this video about the last known survivor or the Middle Passage, that I think is really interesting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DgcbC7qu10

This was a very good, informative video. I wonder what percentage of Americans, especially black Americans, realize that the first profiteers of the African slave trade were the African tribes who captured the members of other African tribes for sale to European and American slave traders. Surprisingly, this video also stated that it was the women warriors of one tribe that killed the elders of his tribe and wore the heads of their victims on their belts. The qualifying members of the captured villagers, including Oluale Kossola, were then sold into slavery. The video included a photograph of some African women warriors (obviously, at a much later date than the time of his capture).

One interesting portion of the video was Thomas Jefferson speaking sympathetically of slavery and the contradictions within the U. S. Constitution.

And, the last point that I should like to make is about the "justifiable" criticism of Lincoln for proposing that former slaves be recolonized to Africa. So very few Americans know that many Northern states, like Illinois and Indiana, had black exclusion laws. And, more recent slaves who were liberated by the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment, like Oluale Kossola, actually wanted to return to the Africa of their youth and its culture.

[David Lockmiller]

“Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam,” painted by John Greenwood, circa 1752-58.

The slave trade provided political power, social standing and wealth for the church, European nation-states, New World colonies and individuals. This portrait by John Greenwood connects slavery and privilege through the image of a group of Rhode Island sea captains and merchants drinking at a tavern in the Dutch colony of Surinam, a hub of trade. These men made money by trading the commodities produced by slavery globally — among the North American colonies, the Caribbean and South America — allowing them to secure political positions and determine the fate of the nation. The men depicted here include the future governors Nicholas Cooke and Joseph Wanton; Esek Hopkins, a future commander in chief of the Continental Navy; and Stephen Hopkins, who would eventually become one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

(Source: NYTimes Magazine and Sunday Newspaper 8/25/2019 - MAGAZINE
A Brief History of Slavery That You Didn't Learn in School
By MARY ELLIOTT and JAZMINE HUGHES)

[L Verge]

(08-25-2019 07:16 AM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  “Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam,” painted by John Greenwood, circa 1752-58.

The slave trade provided political power, social standing and wealth for the church, European nation-states, New World colonies and individuals. This portrait by John Greenwood connects slavery and privilege through the image of a group of Rhode Island sea captains and merchants drinking at a tavern in the Dutch colony of Surinam, a hub of trade. These men made money by trading the commodities produced by slavery globally — among the North American colonies, the Caribbean and South America — allowing them to secure political positions and determine the fate of the nation. The men depicted here include the future governors Nicholas Cooke and Joseph Wanton; Esek Hopkins, a future commander in chief of the Continental Navy; and Stephen Hopkins, who would eventually become one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

(Source: NYTimes Magazine and Sunday Newspaper 8/25/2019 - MAGAZINE
A Brief History of Slavery That You Didn't Learn in School
By MARY ELLIOTT and JAZMINE HUGHES)

Would love to read this article, but the Times won't let me in. Is anyone able to supply a working link to it?

P.S. Glad to see that the enrichment of coffers in New England related to slave trade is mentioned...

[RJNorton]

Try this, Laurie:

https://the-breakingnews.com/2019/08/20/...in-school/

[David Lockmiller]

“Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam,” painted by John Greenwood, circa 1752-58.

The painting is like a window looking back into history.

[David Lockmiller]

The Danish Colony in the West Indies

From 1672 to 1917 Denmark had a colony in the Caribbean called the Danish West Indies, which consisted of the islands St. Thomas, St. Jan and St. Croix. In 1917 the colony was sold to the U.S. for $25 million in gold coin. March 31st 2017 is the centenary of Transfer Day, when the Danish West Indies was handed over to the U.S.

The lack of manpower was resolved by one of the most appalling crimes against humanity in world history – the transatlantic slave trade. Some years prior to the colonization of St. Thomas, Denmark had built forts on the west coast of Africa for the trade of goods, including enslaved Africans. This marked the beginning of the large-scale trade and transportation of human beings across the Atlantic, where they were bought by plantation owners to produce sugar. Today is it estimated that around 120,000 enslaved Africans were transported to the Caribbean on Danish ships. Many of them did not survive the passage, and if they did a harsh fate awaited them in the sugarcane fields.

Resistance is a natural reaction to inhumane conditions. Some enslaved Africans chose freedom by ‘marooning’ - hiding in the bush or escaping to neighboring islands. There were also cases of direct rebellion, like that on St. Jan in 1733, when the enslaved population seized and held control of the entire island for more than half a year. Only with the assistance of their French and English neighbors were the Danes able to suppress the rebellion. The rebellion of 1733 is now commemorated with an annual Historic & Commemorative Tour on the island of St. John. There were also uprisings after the abolition of slavery in 1848, like the Fireburn rebellion of 1878 on St. Croix.

During World War I, fears that Germany might secure the Danish Virgin Islands renewed the U.S.’s longstanding interest in them. The Danes had been trying to get rid of the Caribbean islands since the mid-1800s, because their plantations had collapsed after a slave revolt forced the abolition of slavery in the colony.

Denmark resisted a deal without provisions for the population, but agreed to sell after President Woodrow Wilson’s secretary of state implied that the U.S. might occupy the islands.

And in 1946, the U.S. offered the country $100 million to buy Greenland.

[Gene C]

Great paintings. Thanks for posting them David.

[David Lockmiller]

(08-27-2019 05:53 AM)Gene C Wrote:  Great paintings. Thanks for posting them David.

The paintings capture extreme wealth without having to look at the overwhelming cost to other people to achieve it.