For sixteen years, the judge advocate had impassively presided over incidents of murder and child rape, yet nothing of this kind could be attributed to Caesar, whose crime had been to steal food. [The judge] was unperturbed by venality in convicts; he expected it. What so disturbed him about this refractory convict was the persistent refusal to be reduced to the condition of a slave.
Professor Cassandra Pybus
Research Chair of History at the University of Tasmania
Review of Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and their Global Quest for Liberty. Beacon Press, 2006. ISBN 080705514X. $US 26.95.
This is the first time I have started a review with a quote taken from a book's epilogue. However, since I am an African American being held in one of America's Southern prisons, it seems appropriate for me to do so out of a genuine respect for those who have gone before me.
I had a visceral reaction to Professor Pybus' words. For I know that I share a historical kinship with the man who was known as 'Black Caesar' in eighteenth century Australia. A bounty was placed on his head: 'dead or alive'. He was hunted down and killed. The reward for killing him according to Professor Pybus was a 'lavish' one: five gallons of rum.
On February 15, 1796, the New South Wales Judge Advocate David Collins wrote a brief obituary which in part read: 'Thus ended a man who certainly, during his life, could never have been estimated at more than one remove above a brute'. The judge went on to later declare Caesar an 'incorrigibly stubborn [B]lack'.
Interesting words to be sure, especially when you consider that they were chosen and written by a White man who obviously condoned the State paying other men to go murder a man for the liquid coin of rum.
Professor Pybus has produced an informative and scholarly work full of little known African American history. In many ways her book salutes those men, women and children who were able to cast off the chains of their bondage in the American colonies before, during and after the American Revolutionary War.
When American colonists began to rebel in earnest against British rule, England's on-the-scene representative, Lord Dunmore, felt sufficiently threatened that he prudently sent his wife back to England.
While the British warship HMS Fowey rode at anchor on Virginia's James River, Dunmore used the vessel as his headquarters. In her wardroom he set about the task of 'assembl[ing] a squadron to strike back at rebellious Virginians', who greatly outnumbered British loyalists in the vicinity. Moreover, he had been told that in 1775, there were no less than 180 000 Black people enslaved in Virginia.
One of Dunmore's war stategies was the offer of 'freedom' to any slave who would swear an oath of allegiance to England. Consequently, slaves ran to Dunmore in droves. One among them was Harry Washington who was once the servant of then Colonel George Washington, the same George Washington who would become America's first president. Harry became a member of England's Royal Artillery Unit. Of course, no one thought that the rebellious colonists would actually win the war.
In defeat large numbers of Dunmore's troops, and those runaway slaves who supported them, succumbed to various diseases along with the standard horrors of mortal combat. Those who survived the colonists' fury were grudgingly allowed to leave America after a victory and ceasefire had been declared.
In due course, the British sailed first for Nova Scotia and after making landfall they deposited a substantial number of Blacks there. However, the bulk of the British fleet sailed for England, taking even more freed Black people with them.
From that point on, the African American struggle for freedom became a global diaspora. A growing number of destinations far beyond the shores of Nova Scotia and England (here read the West Indies, West Africa's Sierra Leone and Australia, for example) became both havens and/or earthly hells for those intrepid Black men, women and children.
Epic Journeys of Freedom is an engrossing read. For me it has had the effect of connecting those dots left dangling by several other historical narratives on the African American experience.
This book also exposes a demoralizing feature on the part of the well intentioned British effort to enhance the growth of freedom's seed for those Blacks who left America: a kind of undeclared Holy War between the Anglican Church and a number of seemingly adversarial Methodists. The consequence of which more often than not rendered Black refugees casualties of the very freedom they had been offered by the British.
Added to the long list of instructive history this book provides is its 26 succinct biographies of Black refugees, a feature which is easy to access while absorbing the depth of the main text.
On November 3, 2006, I listened to the 'Frank and Wanda Show' on V-103 radio, in Atlanta Georgia. The host, Frank Ski, offered a prize to the caller who could give the name of the first President of the United States. Several people called, none with the right answer. Eventually someone said John Adams and Frank Ski agreed and awarded them the prize!
If ever there was an example of how badly some African Americans needed to study history, this is it. Of course George Washington was America's first president, and John Adams the second (from 1797 to 1801).
Sadly that error was neither noted nor corrected.
While both Mr Ski and the caller were wrong, I do not mean to assail them. My deeper concern is for those many poor African American children listening to that show five days a week who are learning degrading rap lyrics and this kind of historical misinformation.
I wish that Frank Ski and the caller would read this book aloud - one page per day on air.
Brandon encourages your response to this or any other essay, poem, book review or short story. He does not care if your response is positive or negative - he answers all letters.
If you are interested in reading more about African American history I urge you to read 'while the Mississippi and Hudson merge' a roman à clef. It can be purchased from iUniverse.
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