Fighting for Freedom and Returning Home: How the African People Changed Their History

The Atlantic (or African) slave trade remains a dark stain on the West’s past. The general estimation of the number of slaves transported from Africa to the Americas and Europe from the early years in the 1400s (Barboza, 6) until its total outlaw by world authorities in the early years of the 1900s (African Slave Trade, 2005) is ten to fifteen million slaves in total (The Middle Passage, 2005). The voyage to the lands of their captors was horrific and inhumane for the human cargo. Africans were forced below deck, chained stiflingly close together and lying in their own waste (Haley, 167-168). Yet through this process many of the captives were able to remain strong, keeping their dream alive that they would somehow escape and return to their families. When they arrived in the West they were sold to the highest bidder and forced into lifelong servitude. Their children were sold from them, their women were raped and their moral was pounded into the dust as each morning they rose to work for another man’s livelihood. Yet despite a horrific past, today their descendants occupy some of the highest positions of political authority and are powerful figures in the private sector. Each year thousands of them return to the land of their ancestors to reconnect with a past that was stolen from them (Gorée Island, 2004). What made their ancestors have the strength to keep fighting for their lost freedom? What made those early Africans fight to return to their homeland and what force now drives their descendants to return to Africa? The answer lies in the character of the Africans themselves. Brotherhood and community are deep-set qualities of the African race. These qualities, coupled with perseverance and sheer will-power pull African Americans back to their continent of origin and are the same forces that allowed their ancestors to fight for the one intrinsic human right: freedom.

In Roots we read of an African American family who possessed an uncommon strength and bonded together to keep the dream of freedom alive. The first of this line was a man named Kunta Kinte. Kunta was a young Gambian man who cared deeply about his responsibility to his family and his village. When he was brutally attacked and packed into a slave ship’s hold, he became desperate, racking his mind to find a way to return to his younger brothers and help them grow to be men. He agonized over the pain that his family was enduring:

Kunta dissolved into sobs, his mind streaming with pictures of his family around a flapping white cockerel that died on its back as the village wadanela went to spread that sad news among all of the people who would then come to Omoro, Binta, Lamin, Suwadu and the baby Madi, all of them squatting about and weeping as the village drums beat out the words to inform whoever might hear them far away that a son of the village named Kunta Kinte now was considered gone forever (318).
Kunta wept because he felt deeply that he would “never see Africa” (173) or his family again. He was right. After the horrific journey to the United States, he tried numerous times to escape to his homeland. This effort ended in his capture by poor white men called “crackers” who cut off his foot for sport and to punish him for running away (263-264). After this incident, he came to the hard conclusion that there was no hope of his returning to his homeland. However, having a family was important to him, so he began his own. When his daughter was born he fell in love with her and trained her in her African heritage, teaching her words and stories from his Mandinka tribe (400).
Kunta cared so deeply for the people of his culture that he held on to his connection with Africans throughout his life. When he was first enslaved, in the deep, dank stench of the ships hold he and his battered comrades became a family, grieving together and experiencing one another’s pain. This began when one young man was beaten severely for killing the African “slatee”, or traitor that had been double-crossed by the white men he had helped and placed aboard the ship. An elder in the hold called out, “Share his pain! We must be in this place as one village!” (175)…and so they were. Later on in the voyage, Haley writes “Muttering among themselves for hours, the men developed a deepening sense of intrigue and of brotherhood. Though they were of different villages and tribes, the feeling grew that they were not from different places” (186). In a place of extreme suffering, the men in the hold discovered something powerful: African brotherhood. However, when Kunta arrived in America his new “village” was broken into a million fragments. It was a long time before he was able to speak with another African. When he finally met an African, he was overjoyed and the two men greeted each other “as if neither of them had ever left Africa.” He did not get a chance to speak with the man that night but when he did Kunta “felt as if he had been talking with his dear father Omoro. No evening of his life had ever meant more to him” (p. 327). Kunta had experienced once again the deep communion of two Africans, and it meant the world to him to be able to practice his customs freely, if only for one night.

Kunta’s descendants also held on to their heritage and to Kunta’s dream of being free. Kizzy, his daughter, began the tradition that would survive for centuries of telling her children about Africa and about their ancestor named Kunta Kinte. Her child was the product of her master raping her, but she “decided that however base her baby’s origins, however light his colour, whatever name the master forced upon him, she would never regard him as anything other than the grandson of an African” (465). In the next generation, Kunta’s grandson became a champion cock-fighter and saved his money to buy his family’s freedom. He was not able to achieve this, but when the slaves of the United States were emancipated, Tom, Kunta’s great-grandson led his family and other families to Tennessee. Even there they had to fight for racial freedom, but they persevered and became important figures in the town, role models for both black and white (700-701). Therefore, it is not surprising that Alex Haley, the author of Roots and great-great-great-great-great grandson of Kunta Kinte was able to endure years of gruelling research to pinpoint his ancestral village, inspired by the stories of Africa he had heard during his childhood. One of the most powerful moments he experienced while visiting the Gambia in West Africa was when the people of a village he was driving through on his way to the airport began calling out “Meester Kinte!” to him (722). “I just felt like I was weeping for all of history’s incredible atrocities against fellowmen, which seems to be mankind’s greatest flaw…”(p. 722). He was experiencing remorse for the pain his ancestors went through, and, in hearing himself being identified with the name of his ancestor, was feeling the loss of a heritage he could have had, had he not been born in America but in Africa. The loss he felt was a result of the heritage that was passed on to him through generations.

Many African Americans feel this loss. This is evidenced by the fact that each year, many of them travel to slave ports like Goree in Senegal and Elmina in Ghana to reconnect with the heritage that was stolen from them (Opala, 2005). A travel and tourism site comments, “Each February- designated ‘Black History Month’ in the United States- flights across the Atlantic from the USA to Sénégal are sold-out” (Gorée Island, 2004). Anna Rosalie Faye (daughter of the curator of la Maison d’Esclaves, a former slave house on Gorée) says that to Goréans these seekers are like long-lost family members (Barboza, 19). Africans welcome the children of slavery with their characteristic openness, recognizing that they are a part of Africa too.

The Amistad Event is a key point in African American history because the players in it were examples of African strength and brotherhood. These were key components in their final freedom. The Amistad Africans were a group of slaves illegally taken from West Africa by Cuban slave traders who intended to sell them to plantations in Havana. The Africans, led by a man named called Sengbe Pieh (or Cinquez, or Shinquau, depending on the source), were able to overthrow their captors through teamwork and forced the Cubans to direct the ship towards the rising sun and back to Africa (Myers, 31). However, the Cubans managed to steer away from Africa during the night, zigzagging till they reached Long Island in the U.S. There the Africans were found by Lt. Gedney and arrested for the murder of their captors (40). This recapture after a hard earned bought of freedom must have been devastating. However, when they realized that violence would not work in this land of words and men in powdered wigs, they followed their leader Sengbe’s example and cooperated. Sengbe was placed in a separate jail cell so that the other men could not talk to their chief (Tappan, 1839). Lewis Tappan, a noted abolitionist, wrote in the New York Journal of Commerce on September 9, 1839 that the Africans “appear to be in good spirits and grateful for the kindness shown to them.” They stayed strong in their hope through yet another disappointment. On January 13th, 1839 the district court ruled that they were free (Myers, 65). However, the decision was appealed to the circuit court and the Africans once again had to go to court (66). Once again, their freedom was dangled in front of their faces and then snatched away. Finally, on March 9, 1841 the Supreme Court affirmed the freedom of the Amistad captives (72) . They were transferred to a farm in Connecticut and then returned to Sierra Leone, three years after Sengbe was first captured in January of 1839 (88). Despite being disappointed time and time again, the Amistad Africans followed their chief, remained patient and did not lose hope. They stuck together and proved that Africans had dignity, even when the circumstances were unbelievably frustrating.

The Amistad Africans are only one example of those who used cooperation and unity to fight their captors and gain their freedom. Other Africans in the West, realizing that returning to their homeland was an unrealistic hope, united together to fight for an end to their bondage. On one website that details the history and issues surrounding the black slave trade, there is a link to twelve pages of known black revolts in the Americas, the Carribean and Europe (The MAAFA Timeline, 2005). One of the most important of these was in Brazil. In a sugar cane region (known as Pernambuco) in the 1600s a group of 40 Africans revolted. The slaves destroyed the plantation they were working on and killed all the white masters and workers (The MAAFA Timeline, 2005). The group then banded together to form a community high in the mountains that would grow to 20, 000 and last for a century even though they came from tribes that frequently went to war against each other in Africa (Story of Capoeira, 2003). They created a common language and religion and developed the first forms of the marshal art Capoeira, which would be used in numerous slave revolts and became a symbol of hope and freedom for the Africans of Brazil (The MAAFA Timeline, 2005).[1] The Brazil Africans were able to put aside their differences and form a brotherhood that became a force of freedom and hope for others like them.

In Jamaica, a woman who achieved a similar feat was Nanny of the Maroons. She was a figure of unity and freedom who was often described as a fierce Asante warrior. Using military techniques, she and the Maroons often outwitted the British in the First Maroon War from 1720 to 1739. She also was quite adept at organized her troops into guerrilla warfare to keep the British form penetrating their station in the mountains. She used the encouragement of African customs and song to instil pride and hope into her people (The MAAFA Timeline, 2005).[2] Once again, unity and heritage were able to continue the African slaves’ fight for freedom.

African Americans and their ancestors stand today as an example to us of a deep cultural bond that kept them strong in the face of dire odds and allowed them to fight of the right to freedom and the right to go home to Africa. The Kinte family used their family ties and deep heritage to pass on the dream of freedom until one day that dream came alive, and, not many generations later, one of their own was able to return to Africa. The Amistad Africans were also able to return to Africa through perseverance and teamwork. Nanny of the Maroons and the Africans of the Pernambuco rebellion encouraged African culture, helping to unite their people against their oppressors. Unity is something that Africans do best. Unity is what pushed them towards their ultimate goal: freedom. Through the treacherous Middle Passage, through the arduous years of slavery, and through numerous revolts and court battles, they have finally won that freedom. Today the descendants of these strong Africans travel to their home to celebrate the character that has sustained their people through hundreds of years of suffering.

In our modern world, the lessons of community and perseverance are valuable. As we look at our past and cringe, we should see more than just the mangled lives of the Africans, but we should also stand in awe at the way they fought against their oppression and gave their children the values they needed to be able to return to Africa. We have our own oppression...we have our own losses of heritage. With our millions of orphans, genocide victims, disease-ridden people, poverty stricken families and numerous injustices against humanity, we could learn something about brotherhood. If we took the ideals of community and applied them to our society, what couldn’t we achieve? Maybe we could stop the Unborn Holocaust (abortion). Maybe we could prevent the spread of AIDS. Maybe we could even give the orphans the care Jesus called us to give them...let them find their lost heritage, as African Americans are doing everyday. Maybe, just maybe, we could change history like the Africans did.



[1] Although break-dancing did not originate from this form of dance-fighting, it contributed to its early development. Yet another symbol of how African Americans today retain traces of their heritage (The History of Break Dancing, 2005).

[2] One website claims that courage ran in “Granny Nanny’s” family: her brother Cudjoe led a slave rebellion rebellion in 1738 (Nanny of the Maroons, 2001).