Tag: slavery

Pasquinade

Courtesy of the Archivo General de Indias (Seville).

A satirical text criticizing the Spanish-American Black Code of 1789.

Creators: Anonymous

Date of Creation: May 1790

Place of origin: Caracas, Venezuela

Physical measurements: Approximately 24 cm. x 18 cm.

Materials: Paper, ink, and pencil

Process by which it was made: Writing and illustration

Current location: Archivo General de Indias (Seville).

Information contributed by Cristina Soriano.

“The Negro”

Courtesy of the Special Research Collection at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

A 1789 poem by Mary Leadbeater praising Edmund Burke’s speech supporting resolutions to end the slave trade.

Creators: Mary Leadbeater

Date of Creation: 1789

Place of origin: Ballitore, Ireland

Physical measurements: Eight-page manuscript booklet.

Materials: Laid paper, ink

Process by which it was made: Manuscript

Current location: UCSB Library Special Research Collections.

Further Reading

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York, 2018.

Fuentes, Marisa. Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive. Philadelphia, 2016.

Ghaddar, J. J., and Michelle Caswell. “‘To go beyond’: Towards a Decolonial Archival Practice.” Archival Silence 19, no. 2 (June 2019): 71-85.

Hartman, Saidiya. “Venus in Two Acts.” Small Axe 12, no. 2 (June 2008): 1-14.
Schellenberg, Betty. Literary Coteries and the Making of Modern Print Culture, 1740-1790. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Information contributed by Rachael King.

“Unwritten History of Slavery”

Table of Contents for the Unwritten History of Slavery: Autobiographical Account of Ex-Negro Slaves (1945), Fisk University Social Science Institute. Image courtesy of Drew University, Madison, New Jersey.

A 1945 collection of interviews with formerly enslaved African Americans.

Creators: Ophelia Settle Egypt, J. Masuoka, Charles S. Johnson

Date of Creation: 1945

Place of origin: Nashville, Tennessee

Physical measurements: 8 inches x 11 inches, 322 pages plus 5-page introductory note and table of contents.

Materials: Paper

Process by which it was made: Printing

Current location: Drew University Library, Madison, NJ.

Further Reading

“NAACP History: Carter G. Woodson.” NAACP.org. Online. https://www.naacp.org/naacp-history-carter-g-woodson/.

Smith, John David, “Dubois and Phillips – Symbolic Antagonists of the Progressive Era.” The Centennial Review 24, no. 1 (Winter 1980): 88-102.

Stevenson, Louise L. “The New Woman, Social Science, and the Harlem Renaissance: Ophelia Settle Egypt as Black Professional.” The Journal of Southern History 77, no. 3 (Aug. 2011): 555-594.

[Woodson, Carter G.], “Book Review: American Negro Slavery by Ulrich Bonnell Phillips.” Journal of Negro History 4, no. 1 (Jan. 1919): 102-103. Online. 

Yetman, Norman R. “Making the Collection Known.” Under Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938. The Library of Congress. Online. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snintro12.html

Information contributed by Anne M. Ricculli.

Muhammad Kabā Saghanughu’s Arabic Address

Courtesy of the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI), Belfast.

An address celebrating emancipation delivered in August 1838 in Jamaica by a former slave and apprentice originally from West Africa.

Creator: Muhammad Kabā Saghanughu

Date of Creation: 1838

Place of origin: Jamiaca

Measurements: 14” x 14”, 1 page

Materials: Ink on paper, with cutout of printed text affixed with tape

Process by which it was made: Handwritten

Current location: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI), Belfast.

Further Reading

Elizabeth A. Dolan and Ahmed Idrissi Alami, “Muhammad Kabā Saghanughu’s Arabic Address on the Occasion of Emancipation in Jamaica,” The William and Mary Quarterly 76.2 (2019): 289-312.

Elizabeth A. Dolan and Ahmed Idrissi Alami, “Emancipation address as creole testimony: Muhammad Kabā Saghanughu, a formerly enslaved Muslim in Jamaica,” Slavery & Abolition 41.2 (2020):1-21.

Paul E. Lovejoy and Yacine Daddi Addoun, “Muhammad Kabā Saghanughu and the Muslim Community of Jamaica,” in Paul E. Lovejoy (ed.), Slavery on the Frontiers of Islam (Princeton: Markus Wiener, Publisher, 2004): 201-20.

Paul E. Lovejoy, Jihād in West Africa during the Age of Revolutions (Athens, Ohio, 2016).

Ghada Osman and Camille F Forbes, “Representing the West in the Arabic Language: The Slave Narrative of Omar Ibn Said,” Journal of Islamic Studies 15.3 (2004): 331-343.

http://www.artsrn.ualberta.ca/amcdouga/Hist446/reading_assignments_2010/slave_narratives/narrative_omar_ibn_said.pdf 

Information contributed by Elizabeth A. Dolan and Ahmed Idrissi Alami.

Settlement Negotiation for the Sierra Leone Company

Courtesy of National Archives, London.

The terms of a settlement between the Sierra Leone Company and a group of Maroons.

Creators: The Sierra Leone Company founder Henry Thornton sent The Terms in a letter to William Henry Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland and Home Secretary, in October 1799. Sierra Leone colony Governor Thomas Ludlam, Maroon Superintendent George Ross, and Maroon captains Montague James, Andrew Smith, Charles Shaw, John Palmer, Thomas Johnstone, and a captain named only as Baily discussed revisions to The Terms on October 2, 1800

Date of Creation: 1799-1800

Place of origin: England and Freetown, Sierra Leone

Physical measurements: 2 pages, one covered on both sides and one single-sided

Materials: Paper and ink

Process by which it was made: Handwriting

Current location: National Archives, Kew, London, United Kingdom

Further Reading 

Kenneth M. Bilby, True-born maroons (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005).

Ruma Chopra, Almost Home: Maroons between Slavery and Freedom in Jamaica, Nova Scotia, and Sierra Leone (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018).

Mavis C. Campbell, The Maroons of Jamaica, 1655-1796 (Amherst, MA: Bergin & Garvey Publishers, Inc., 1988).

Barbara Klamon Kopytoff, “Jamaican Maroon Political Organization: The effects of the Treaties,” Social and Economic Studies 25, no. 2 (June 1976), 87-105.

Cassandra Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and their Global Quest for Liberty (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006).

Information contributed by Rachel B. Herrmann.

Lady Frankland’s Recipe Book

Courtesy Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts of the University of Pensylvania.

A recipe book containing the handwritten culinary and medicinal recipes used by a slaveholding family.

Creator: Sarah Frankland (nee Rhett)

Date of Creation: 1750-1825

Place of origin: England

Physical measurements: 60 leaves : paper ; 181 x 111-192 x 154 mm. bound to 199 x 155 mm.

Materials: Paper, parchment, ink

Process by which it was made: Handwriting

Current location: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts of the University of Pennsylvania

Further Reading

Judith A. Carney, Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002).

Elaine Leong, Recipes and Everyday Knowledge: Medicine, Science, and the Household in Early Modern England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018).

Marcy Norton, Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008).

Michael W. Twitty, The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South (New York: Amistad, 2017).

Peter H. Wood, The Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina From 1670 through the Stono Rebellion. (New York: Knopf, 1974).

Information contributed by Marissa Nicosia.