MARCH 25-1807 ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE ACT Tomorrow, Thursday, March 25, 2021 will mark 214 years since the British government passed the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act on March 25, 1807. The Abolition of the Slave Trade Act received its royal assent, abolishing the slave trade in the British colonies and making it illegal to carry Africans from the African continent in British ships to be enslaved elsewhere, but did not abolish slavery. The enslavement of Africans in the British Empire was abolished 27 years later, on August 1, 1834. For 400 years, Europeans from various countries forced Africans onto slave ships and transported them across the Atlantic Ocean. The first European nation to engage in the Transatlantic Slave Trade was Portugal in the mid to late 1400's. British captain John Hawkins made the first known English slaving voyage to Africa, in 1562, during the reign of the British monarch Elizabeth 1. Hawkins made three such journeys over a period of six years. He captured over 1200 Africans and sold them as goods in the Spanish colonies in the Americas. At first, British traders supplied Africans to the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the Americas and the Caribbean islands. However, as British settlements in the Americas and the Caribbean islands were established, often through wars with European countries such as Holland, Spain and France, British slave traders increasingly supplied British colonies with captured Africans. The exact number of British ships that took part in the Slave Trade is not known, however, in the 245 years between Hawkins’ first voyage and the abolition of the Slave Trade in 1807, there were approximately 10,000 voyages from Britain to Africa for the express purpose of capturing and trading in African men, women and children to enslave. It is estimated that “entrepreneurs” from other parts of the British Empire (including British North America/Canada) perhaps fitted out a further 1,150 voyages. In the 1660s, the number of Africans taken from the African continent in British ships averaged 6,700 per year. By the 1760s, Britain was the foremost European country engaged in the Slave Trade. Of the 80,000 Africans chained and shackled and transported across to the Americas each year, 42,000 were carried by British slave ships. Reportedly, only the Portuguese, who carried on the trade for almost 50 years after Britain had abolished its Slave Trade, carried more enslaved Africans to the Americas than the British. White British historian, Professor David Richardson, (the UK’s expert on the slave trade) has calculated that British ships carried 3.4 million or more enslaved Africans to the Americas. Based on records of voyages in the archives of port customs and maritime insurance records, it is estimated that the total number of Africans transported and enslaved by European traders, was at least 12 million people. The first record of enslaved Africans being landed in the British colony of Virginia was 1619. Barbados was the first British settlement in the Caribbean in 1625 and the British took control of Jamaica in 1655. The establishment of the Royal African Company in 1672 formalised the Slave Trade under a royal charter and gave a monopoly to the port of London. The ports of Bristol and Liverpool, lobbied to have the charter changed and, in 1698, the monopoly was taken away. The profits gained from chattel slavery helped to finance the Industrial Revolution and the Caribbean islands became the hub of the British Empire. The sugar colonies were Britain's most valuable colonies. By the end of the eighteenth century, four million pounds came into Britain from its Caribbean island plantations, compared with one million from the rest of the British Empire. The ports of Bristol and Liverpool in the UK became major ports through fitting out slave ships and handling the cargoes they brought back. Between 1700 and 1800, Liverpool's population rose from 5000 to 78,000. The Transatlantic Slave Trade provided many jobs for white people back in Britain. Every white person in Britain benefitted from the enslavement of Africans and their coerced, unpaid labour. Some worked in factories that had been set up with money made from the Slave Trade. Many trades-people bought a share in a slave ship. The coerced, unpaid labour of enslaved Africans also made goods, such as sugar, more affordable for people living in Britain. When the Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle spoke of her experience with racism in the now famous interview of March 7, 2021, she was vilified by many who doubted her lived experience as “woman of colour” in the UK. Perhaps those people do not know the history of the British monarchy’s involvement with the enslavement of millions of men, women and children who looked like Meghan Markle (enslaved people who were the products of African women and white men.) Perhaps those people do not know of the more recent (20th and 21st centuries) New Cross House Fire in southeast London on Sunday January 18, 1981, Brixton Riots of April 1981 brought about as resistance to the racist sus laws, the murder of Stephen Lawrence on April 22, 1993 or the Windrush Scandal of 2018. Murphy Browne © Tuesday, December 29, 2009 CMAST Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned; until the colour of a man's skin is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes; until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race; until that day, the dream of lasting peace and world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never attained; until all Africans stand and speak as free beings, equal in the eyes of all men, as they are in the eyes of Heaven; until that day, the African continent will not know peace. We Africans will fight, if necessary and we know that we shall win, as we are confident in the victory of good over evil. Excerpt from His Imperial Majesty, Haile Selassie I’s address to the United Nations in October 1963 (used by Bob Marley in his 1973 song “War”) When His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I spoke those now famous words immortalized in song by the Honourable Robert “Bob” Nesta Marley he was calling for world peace. We enter the year 2008 with some African nations destabilized by the machinations of greedy and unconscionable people who are not African but in many cases these non- Africans have manipulated and bolstered the regime of puppet leaders they have foisted on the people. These short sighted “leaders” do not seem to care that they are being used, as non- Africans loot and rape the resources of their countries in a manner reminiscent of years of the brutal slave trade when Africans were dragged out of the continent in shackles in the holds of filthy slave ships. The words of Selassie I still ring with confidence in our will to survive. We can take hope “that we shall win, as we are confident in the victory of good over evil.” As we enter this new year we can also take hope because our ancestors survived the middle passage and four hundred years of brutal enslavement. We are here as testament to their will to survive. During the year 2007 we commemorated the bicentenary of the abolition of the British Trans Atlantic slave trade. During the year of commemoration we were not surprised when the Canadian government ignored the bicentenary. We were not surprised that the British government tried to make the year a celebration of white so called abolitionists. We were ecstatic and proud when on March 27th in Westminster Abbey, our brother Toyin Agbetu called a halt to the British monarchy and government’s attempt to shirk their responsibility for the hundreds of years of brutal enslavement of Africans. He made them face their hypocrisy of celebrating their ancestors who had benefitted from the horrific slave trade as they refused to acknowledge the role that African freedom fighters played in the abolition of the slave trade. He was celebrated across the Pan-African world. Agbetu spoke out, in the spirit of freedom fighters like Nanny of the Maroons, Nana Yaa Asantewa of the Ashanti, Queen Nzingha of Angola and Kofi, Guyana’s National Hero who led the Berbice Revolution of 1763. During the year of commemoration our community in Toronto with the leadership of Dr. Afua Cooper and the members of the Committee to Commemorate and Memorialize the Abolition of the Slave Trade (CMAST) recognized the role of the freedom fighters of Haiti in the British decision to end the slave trade and eventually slavery. On January 1st 1804, formerly enslaved Africans living and toiling under French brutality in Haiti surprised the European world by defeating the combined armies of the USA several European nations and seizing their freedom. They became the first group of enslaved Africans to successfully overthrow their European enslavers. They founded an independent African controlled nation after a 13 year war in which several European nations and the USA tried to keep them enslaved. From 1791 to 1804, the Africans in Haiti united to launch such a massive, brilliantly executed war of liberation that the armies of France, Spain, England and the United States of America failed to defeat them. The Europeans were desperate to prevent the Africans from gaining their freedom and taking possession of the island where they (the Africans) had toiled to make it one of the most prized and coveted European possessions. Haiti at that time was the most prosperous colonial possession of any European power. The unpaid coerced labour of enslaved Africans had made France the envy of Europe. Famous for its prosperous plantations, by 1750 Haiti (Saint-Domingue) was the largest sugar producer in the world. Coffee, cotton, indigo, cocoa and ebony were also grown with slave labour and added to the profits the French used to build their elegant and extravagant palaces, chateaus and townhouses in France. The lucrative sugar cane industry also helped to make France the envy of other white nations and Haiti became the target of warring colonizing nations (Spain, France and Britain) who fought to own and control this “Pearl of the Antilles.” The enslaved Africans had been subjected to horrific unspeakable acts of terror and torture as France filled its coffers at the expense of African lives. The enslaved Africans were worked to their physical limit, literally worked to death, quickly replaced by other African bodies that would, in turn, be worked to death in an endless cycle of violence to body and spirit. It was because of these horrific and barbaric conditions that the Africans planned and executed the revolution which ended in success on January 1st 1804. The government of the United States of America, in 1804 the only other independent nation in this hemisphere and one of the most notorious of the slave owning countries, refused to recognize the new nation of Haiti believing that recognizing Haiti's independence would threaten its own inhumane system of slavery. Regardless, the success of the Haitian revolution caused shock waves across the white world and was the beginning of the end of the enslavement of Africans. Fearing similar scenarios in their colonies, the British ended their Trans Atlantic slave trade in 1807 and the Americans in 1808. The end of the Trans Atlantic slave trade did not bring an immediate end to the enslavement of Africans in America, Canada or the Caribbean. Slavery in Canada ended on August 1st 1834, in the Caribbean on August 1, 1838 and in the USA on January 1st 1863. We are free people because many of our ancestors never gave up the struggle to be free during four hundred years of brutal and horrific chattel slavery. We can never understand what they endured regardless of how many books we read about their experience as enslaved people. Sitting in a cramped seat during an 11 hour flight across the Atlantic I thought about what my ancestors endured in the filthy holds of slave ships (for weeks and sometimes months) to satisfy the greed of Europeans and realized that we have a duty to continue fighting white supremacy and racism wherever it rears it ugly head. We owe this to the memory of our ancestors and the future of our people. As we continue the battle for the right to have our children educated in African centred schools we must keep in mind the struggles our ancestors waged to ensure our future. We have a responsibility to secure the future of our children by any means necessary including the right to attend schools where they can thrive in a culturally appropriate environment. We must not be silenced. In a 1944 book edited by African American historian and Pan-African activist Rayford W. Logan, Mary McLeod Bethune is quoted: "If we accept and acquiesce in the face of discrimination, we accept the responsibility ourselves and allow those responsible to salve their conscience by believing that they have our acceptance and concurrence. We should, therefore, protest openly everything...that smacks of discrimination or slander." (Mary McLeod Bethune, African American educator and activist, 1875 - 1955) Murphy Browne © Tuesday, December 29, 2009 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpypYcMe16I THE GREAT INSURRECTION  Linton Kwesi Johnson: The Great Insurrection The Brixton Riots - bring it on! www.youtube.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuwxZSIS__4 ELECTRIC AVENUE  Eddy Grant-Electric Avenue another song form pineapple express www.youtube.com

CHLOE COOLEY MARCH 14-1793 CANADA

CHLOE COOLEY MARCH 14-1793 CANADA On March 14, 1793, Chloe Cooley an enslaved African woman made history when she fought for her freedom. Cooley was being sold once again (she had been sold at least twice before) and she vigorously resisted one more indignity to her sense of self, her humanity. She struggled against being tied up and sold, one more incident in a lifetime of indignities against her personhood. The result of Chloe Cooley’s struggle is responsible for the acclamation that John Graves Simcoe receives on the first weekend of August. When we celebrate Simcoe Day, we need to also remember Chloe Cooley whose valiant struggle to gain her freedom led to Simcoe’s effort to limit slavery in Upper Canada in 1793. On Wednesday, March 21st, 1793, Peter Martin appeared before members of the Executive Council of Upper Canada. Martin informed the Council that a violent outrage had occurred to an enslaved African woman named Chloe Cooley. Peter Martin was a member of the Black Loyalists who had moved to Canada after fighting on the side of the British during the American War of Independence (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783.) Martin had witnessed William Vrooman, who “owned,” Chloe Cooley trying to sell her to someone in New York State. She resisted, (three white men armed with ropes had to wrestle her into a boat) and Vrooman forcibly transported her across the Niagara River to her new owner. Martin said he knew of other enslaved Africans who had suffered a similar fate and he reported hearing that several other slave owners in the area intended doing the same thing with their slaves. Simcoe tried unsuccessfully to pass a law to end slavery in Upper Canada/Ontario. He was unsuccessful because 12 of the 25 members of Upper Canada's Executive Council, either owned slaves or had family members who were slave owners. Cooley’s struggle for her freedom gave the lie to the myth of the happy slave. During the four hundred years enslavement of Africans by Europeans there was a concerted effort to portray enslaved Africans as being happy with their lot. The image of the fat, always grinning “Mammy,” who loved the White family of her enslavers more than she loved her own life was used by White people to rationalize the inhumanity of slavery. To deal with the cognitive dissonance of holding other humans in captivity and exploiting their labour enslavers had to convince themselves that enslaved Africans enjoyed being enslaved and loved the people who enslaved them. Members of White families would brutalize enslaved Africans daily and then on Sunday attend church, so they had to convince themselves that as good Christians the brutality they meted out to the Africans they enslaved was justified. Slavery was a brutal institution that dehumanized a race of people. Female slave bondage was different from that of men. It was not less severe, but it was different. Sexual abuse, childbearing, and childcare responsibilities affected enslaved females’ pattern of resistance and how they conducted their lives. Women were less able to leave their chains and children behind. Deborah Gray White in her book "Aren't I a Woman?" wrote; "for those fugitive women who left children in slavery, the physical relief which freedom brought was limited compensation for the anguish they suffered." It is important for us as African people to recognize and celebrate the women in our community and ensure that “ourstory” includes the achievement of all people from our community regardless of gender. On March 8 we celebrated “International Women’s Day” and many of us took the opportunity to recognize and celebrate African women who went before us regardless of where they were born, when they lived or where they lived. We know the names of many African women who sacrificed much to move us forward as a people. Sometimes we forget what they endured and how they resisted. Some of us believing that the rights we have today were given to us. Whatever “rights,” we have access to in 2025 did not come easily. We need to pause and think about those women who went before us and the sacrifices they made to get us to where we are today. Chloe Cooley, Peggy Pompadour, Marie Joseph Angelique and many other enslaved African women whose names we do not know risked their lives in resisting their enslavement by any means necessary. The enslavement of Africans would have lasted much longer if women had not resisted in their own way. We must continue to tell the stories of our sheroes who resisted slavery and colonization.

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY MARCH 8-2025

Saturday March 8 will be celebrated internationally as International Women’s Day (IWD.) The day was first recognised by the United Nations (UN) in 1977 following a resolution calling for member states to proclaim a day for women’s rights and international peace. In adopting its resolution, the UN General Assembly recognized the role of women in peace efforts and development and urged an end to discrimination and an increase of support for women's full and equal participation. The theme for IWD 2025 is “For ALL women and girls: Rights. Equality.” International Women's Day is a time to honour and celebrate the achievements of women. To raise awareness of the work that needs to be done to ensure the full participation of women and girls and to celebrate the progress that has been made. Women across the globe, in various societies, have had to struggle for progress. Racialized women living in European dominated societies have had to struggle against sexism and racism. On April 7, 1973, at the National Congress of Black Women in Canada, Rosemary Brown said: "To be black and female in a society which is both racist and sexist is to be in the unique position of having nowhere to go but up." Rosemary Brown was the first African Canadian woman elected to any provincial legislative assembly in Canada, on August 30th 1972 in British Columbia. Rosemary Brown is one of many African women in the Diaspora who have achieved against great odds and whose names are not widely known. The African Proverb: “Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter” makes a profound statement about the lack of widespread knowledge of our African sheroes. In 2025, we do have historians who have documented some of the stories of the lives of pioneering African women on the continent and in the Diaspora. As a Pan-Africanist, the lives of African women globally have been of interest since childhood. As we approach IWD 2025 I think about the numerous African women who have inspired change. The history of those women has been researched and documented by our historians including Dr. Afua Cooper who published “The Hanging of Angelique,” in 2006) and Dr. Natasha Henry who published an article about Chloe Cooley (http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/chloe-cooley-and-the-act-to-limit-slavery-in-upper-canada/) Books about other African Canadian women who inspired change include “Sister to Courage” about Viola Desmond published in 2010 by Wanda Robson, the 1998 published “Mary Ann Shadd Cary: The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century” by Jane Rhodes and “Sylvia Stark: A Pioneer” by Alfred Ernest Jones, Torie Scott and Karen Lewis published in 1991. Some African women in the Diaspora and from the continent who inspired change in their communities during slavery and colonization did so in groups. They took collective action in sisterhood. During every struggle for equality and freedom from enslavement, colonization and occupation by foreign entities, women have participated. The women of Buxton Village on the East Coast of Demerara in Guyana and the Igbo and Ibibio women of Calabar and Owerri in southeastern Nigeria, resisted unfair tax laws imposed by British colonizers. Following the August 1, 1838, end of the “Apprenticeship system” in Guyana, groups of formerly enslaved Africans pooled their money together, bought abandoned plantations and established villages throughout the Guyanese coastland during the “African Village Movement.” Of the more than 100 villages established by Africans in Guyana, Buxton Village on the East Coast of Demerara is the most well-known. With the establishment of Buxton Village, there was resistance from the British colonizers who had formerly dictated every area of the lives of Africans. The former enslavers tried sabotaging the growth of the recently established village. The Buxtonians survived the deliberate flooding of their farms and other attempts to dislodge them from their homes. The final straw was an unfair taxation of their land by the colonial government. Several attempts to dialogue with the British governor were rebuffed. When the villagers heard that the governor would be passing by their village as he inspected the recently laid train tracks, it was an ideal opportunity to dialogue with the governor. As the train approached Buxton, the women of Buxton strode onto the train tracks putting their lives on the line. The men followed when the train was forced to stop and supported the women in immobilizing the train by applying chains and locks to its wheels. The Governor was forced to meet with the villagers who demanded that he repeal the exorbitant, unfair taxation of their land. Following that impromptu meeting at the train line, surprisingly, the governor did repeal the tax law. Buxtonians are famous throughout Guyana for their resistance to British colonization; every Guyanese knows that “Buxton women stop train.” In the Calabar and Owerri provinces in southeastern Nigeria, thousands of Igbo and Ibibio women organized in 1929, to resist the policies imposed by British colonial administrators. The women called their campaign the Ogu Umunwanye (Women’s War) and forced the colonial authorities to drop their plans to impose a tax on women. The “Women’s War” in Nigeria was considered the most serious challenge to British rule in the history of colonized Nigeria. It took months (November and December 1929,) for the British colonizers to suppress the “Women’s War.” British police and military were sent out to deal with the protesters and reportedly killed 100 women. The “Women’s War” sparked changes beyond the rescinding of unfair tax laws; it inspired the tax protests of 1938, the Oil Mill Protests of the 1940s and the Tax revolt of 1956. On Saturday, March 8, a group of African Canadian women will launch their recently published book “Reflections on Sisterhood: Voices from Black Canada,” at 1553 Eglinton Avenue West from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m.

AFRICAN HERITAGE MONTH FEBRUARY 2025

African American scholar/historian, Carter Godwin Woodson was the founder of Negro History Week in 1926 which eventually became Black History Month and now African Heritage Month, African Liberation Month etc. As we express our Kujichagulia/Self-Determination we name the month of February as we see fit and tell our story. The African proverb “Until the lion has its own historian, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter” comes to mind during this month. Our history has been ignored and even distorted for centuries, since the enslavement of our ancestors. Mutabaruka, an African Jamaican Rastafari dub poet, musician, actor, educator, and talk-show host, has famously said: “Slavery isn’t African history. It Interrupted African history.” Although slavery is not the entirety of African history or the history of the descendants of enslaved Africans, it has had a profound effect on us as a people. The enslavement of Africans whose descendants live in every corner of the earth are affected by the 400 years enslavement of their ancestors. Carter Godwin Woodson was an African American historian, author and journalist. He was one of the first scholars to study African American history. He founded the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) on September 9, 1915, to address the lack of information on the history, culture and accomplishments of African Americans. The effects of 400 years enslavement still haunt us almost 115 years after Woodson launched the ASALH. Woodson made the documentation and promotion of the history of Africans his life’s work. He wrote and published 19 books about African history and culture. His most popular book is “The Mis-education of the Negro,” which was published in 1933 where he addresses a problem that plagues our community to this day: "When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his 'proper place' and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary." Woodson was also a regular contributor to the publication of another African descendant who was very passionate about educating Africans about their history. Woodson frequently wrote articles for the weekly publication "Negro World" which was owned by The Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey. The two men shared similar values and thoughts on the condition of and how to improve the lot of Africans, “at home and abroad.” Woodson launched Negro History Week during the second week of February 1926, to honour Frederick Douglass. The history of Africans in Canada has been recognized and celebrated since the 1950s when the Canadian Negro Women's Association began the celebration of the community’s history in Canada. This work was continued by the efforts of Stan Grizzle and the Ontario Black History Society (OBHS) which led to the recognition province wide in 1979 of February as Black History Month. In December 1995, Canada's federal parliament officially recognized February as Black History Month. The motion, which was initiated by then Member of Parliament Jean Augustine, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, received unanimous approval. Dr. Augustine is the first African Canadian woman elected, 1993, to the Canadian Federal Parliament in its then 126-year history (established July 1, 1867.) The first national observation of February as Black History Month in Canada was February 1996. The Canadian government unveiled the theme for 2025 Black History Month on January 21st, Lincoln Alexander Day. The theme is: “Black Legacy and Leadership: Celebrating Canadian History and Uplifting Future Generations.” There has been an African Presence (enslaved and free) in Canada even before the country was named Canada. The first documented person of African descent to arrive in Canada is Mathieu DaCosta, in the 1600s. He was part of the 1603 expedition of French explorer Samuel de Champlain, as an interpreter for the French with the Mi'kmaq people. First launched in 1996, the “Mathieu Da Costa Challenge,” is a national contest for youth ages 9 to 18. The history of the enslavement of Africans in this country began in 1628 with the documented sale of six-year-old Olivier LeJeune in Quebec and ended on August 1, 1834, when slavery was abolished. The child who was sold in Quebec and given the name Olivier LeJeune was an African child who was kidnapped from the African continent. He was sold by David Kirke who was one of the English privateering Kirke brothers. During his life of enslavement in Quebec Olivier LeJeune was sold several times. He was buried on May 10, 1654, when he was approximately 32 years old. Enslaved Africans were not known for their longevity. We have come a long way since the days when Dr. Woodson established “Negro History Week.” During this month whether we name it Black History Month, African History Month or African Liberation Month we need to recognize and commemorate the global history of Africans. The theme for Black History Month 2025 is: “Black Legacy and Leadership: Celebrating Canadian History and Uplifting Future Generations.” Let us do that.

COUNTRY MUSIC WAS INFLUENCED BY AFRICAN MUSIC

COUNTRY MUSIC WAS INFLUENCED BY AFRICAN MUSIC Murphy Browne © May 10-2024 “I was wondering about our yesterdays, and starting digging through the rubble and to say, at least somebody went through a hell of a lot of trouble to make sure that when we looked things up we wouldn't fare too well and that we would come up with totally unreliable portraits of ourselves. But I compiled what few facts I could, I mean, such as they are to see if we could shed a little bit of light and this is what I got so far: First, white folks discovered Africa and they claimed it fair and square. Cecil Rhodes couldn't have been robbing nobody 'cause he said there was nobody there.” Excerpt from Black History/The World by Gil Scott-Heron In 1980, African American jazz poet, singer, musician, author and spoken-word artist Gilbert Scott-Heron released “Black History/The World” on the album: “Moving Target.” Gil Scott-Heron deconstructed colonialism, racism, and African history as told and documented by people who were not African. Those “historians” told their version of our story. In “Black History/The World,” Gil Scot Heron illuminated the African proverb: “Until the lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter.” Similarly, until the Africans from the African continent and in the Diaspora began documenting their own stories, everyone else told and wrote their version of African stories. Gilbert Scott-Heron wrote and performed “Black History/The World” in 1980. In 2024, several decades later some people who do not know the African stories are telling their version. I was reminded of Gil Scott-Heron’s “Black History/The World,” when I read about Asa Blanton, a white Indiana State University nursing student who said Beyoncé is "not country" because Beyoncé is not white. Blanton said in a video shared on TikTok: “I’m sorry, but if you’re Black, you’re not country. I don’t care, I wish I meant that in the nicest way, but babe, I know you were raised in the country or your grandparents were … but they was picking, OK? They wasn’t planting. Just keep that in mind. They wasn’t making money. They were getting sold for money. You ain’t country.” Asa Blanton and many others like her do not know of the historical African influence on country music, even during the enslavement of Africans. "In reality, just like most popular music genres, country music in the U.S. began with Black People.” The story of country music begins with the banjo. The modern-day banjo is a descendant of a West African instrument, made from gourds, called the Akonting. When Africans were taken from Africa and enslaved in America, the knowledge of making their instruments were with them. Enslaved Africans created their own music, hymns, spirituals, and field songs—all with roots in African music. The banjo was seen as an exclusively African American instrument. White people did not play the banjo during that time. In the 1850s, minstrel shows became popular with the racist satirical form of entertainment where white performers in Blackface mockingly used the banjo as a musical instrument as they imitated the music and dance of enslaved Africans. The minstrel shows brought the banjo to white audiences and gave rise to hillbilly music during the 1920s. Hillbilly music was renamed country and was claimed as the music of the south. The performers drew inspiration from slave spirituals, field songs, hymns, and the blues, which were African American music. In the 1920s and 30s, despite segregation, some white hillbilly performers collaborated with African American artists to record music. Patrick Huber, a White history professor at Missouri University of Science and Technology acknowledges, “Nearly 50 African-American singers and musicians appeared on commercial hillbilly records between those years — because the music was not a white agrarian tradition, but a fluid phenomenon passed back and forth between the races.” In 1778, James A. Bland, an African American from New York wrote “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny” which became the official state song of Virginia in 1940. An African American minister wrote a hymn “When the World is On Fire.” That hymn became a 1928 hit “Little Darling, Pal of Mine” by “The Carter Family,” a White family of musicians. That song inspired “This Land is Your Land” sung by White performer, Woody Guthrie. In Nova Scotia Canada on May 12, 1785, under the heading "Negro Frolicks" Prohibited: “Officials in Nova Scotia ordered "50 Handbills [to] be immediately printed forbidding Negro Dances & Negro Frolicks in [the] town of Shelburne." “Libya and Egypt used to be in Africa, but they've been moved to the 'middle east'. There are examples galore I assure you, but if interpreting was left up to me I'd be sure every time folks knew this version wasn't mine which is why it is called 'His story.'” Excerpt from Black History/The World by Gil Scott-Heron Murphy Browne © May 10-2024

TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE MAY 20-1743

Murphy Browne © May 20-2023 TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE MAY 20-1743 I send you with this letter a declaration which will acquaint you with the unity that exists between the proprietors of San Domingo who are in France, those in the United States, and those who serve under the English banner. You will see there a resolution, unequivocal and carefully constructed, for the restoration of slavery; you will see there that their determination to succeed has led them to envelop themselves in the mantle of liberty in order to strike it more deadly blows. You will see that they are counting heavily on my complacency in lending myself to their perfidious views by my fear for my children. It is not astonishing that these men who sacrifice their country to their interests are unable to conceive how many sacrifices a true love of country can support in a better father than they, since I unhesitatingly base the happiness of my children on that of my country, which they and they alone wish to destroy. Blind as they are! They cannot see how this odious conduct on their part can become the signal of new disasters and irreparable misfortunes, and that far from making them regain what in their eyes liberty for all has made them lose, they expose themselves to a total ruin and the colony to its inevitable destruction. Do they think that men who have been able to enjoy the blessing of liberty will calmly see it snatched away? They supported their chains only so long as they did not know any condition of life more happy than that of slavery. But to-day when they have left it, if they had a thousand lives they would sacrifice them all rather than be forced into slavery again. Excerpt from Toussaint L’Ouverture’s Letter to the Directory, November 5, 1797, published in The Black Jacobins by C. L. R. James 1963 François Dominique Toussaint L'Ouverture was an enslaved African born on May 20, 1743, two hundred and eighty years ago, on the Caribbean island of Saint Domingue (Haiti.) He is recognized as one of the leaders of the Haitian Revolution. The Africans who were enslaved in Haiti by a group of French men and women are the only group of Africans who seized and maintained their freedom from chattel slavery. They declared their independence on January 1, 1804, after years of armed struggle against European forces beginning in August 1891. L’Ouverture chose his last name sometime in 1793. He used the last name L’Ouverture for the first time when he wrote a letter dated August 29, 1793, in which he encouraged enslaved Africans to unite: “Brothers and friends, I am Toussaint Louverture; perhaps my name has made itself known to you. I have undertaken vengeance. I want Liberty and Equality to reign in St Domingue. I am working to make that happen. Unite yourselves to us, brothers, and fight with us for the same cause. Your very humble and obedient servant, Toussaint L'Ouverture.” He had carried the last name Breda at birth because like enslaved Africans everywhere he was given the name of his enslavers. His enslavers owned the Breda plantation where he was born. In 1797 when he wrote his Letter to the Directory L’Ouverture was 54 years old and had been free for about 4 years. For a man who had been enslaved for most of his life it was an extraordinary achievement to be able to read and write. In every society where Africans were enslaved by White men and women literacy was not encouraged for the enslaved Africans and in some places (USA) being literate was a death sentence for an enslaved African. L’Ouverture’s letter referred to the people who were determined to re-enslave the Africans in Haiti who had been freed by the French Revolutionary government on February 4, 1794. This declaration on paper that the enslaved Africans on plantations owned by French men and women were free did not happen because White people suddenly had an epiphany that enslaving other humans was wrong. They were forced to declare an abolition of slavery because the Africans in Haiti had seized their freedom three years earlier in 1791. In 1789 when the revolutionaries in France proclaimed the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen they did not care about the freedom or rights of enslaved Africans whose coerced labour made France one of the richest European countries of the time. Haiti was France’s Pearl of the Antilles. The late African Guyanese scholar and historian Walter Rodney in his 1973 published book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa included a quote from a presentation made in 1791 by Cardinal Maury, a member of the French National Assembly who urged the French National Assembly to maintain slavery in the French colonies: “If you were to lose each year more than 200 million livres that you now get from your colonies; if you had not the exclusive trade with your colonies to feed your manufactures, to maintain your navy, to keep your agriculture going, to repay for your imports, to provide for your luxury needs, to advantageously balance your trade with Europe and Asia, then I say it clearly, the kingdom would be irretrievably lost. Bishop Maury (of France): Argument against France’s ending the slave trade and giving freedom to its slave colonies. Presented in the French National Assembly, 1791.” The French Revolutionary government seized power from the French monarchy and the aristocracy and declared France a republic in September 1792, murdering their king the following year. After a blood bath popularly known as the Reign of Terror (September 5, 1793 – July 28, 1794) where French men and women marched their fellow citizens to the guillotine to be slaughtered by the tens of thousands, the bloodthirsty citizens settled down and turned their attention once again to the colonies. With the fighting and killing in France, White people did not have time to take care of business in the colonies, but they had no intention of losing all that unpaid labour that was provided by Africans. After dispatching tens of thousands of their tribe via the guillotine the French led by a Corsican (Napoleon Bonaparte) once more turned their covetous eyes to the riches of Haiti. Bonaparte drunk with power after defeating much of Europe declared himself Emperor of France even though he was not French. He then tried to retake Haiti from the Africans who had taken their freedom and established their independence as a nation. The French had reneged on their declaration of freedom for enslaved Africans and had re-enslaved Africans in their colonies. Under Napoleon’s rule the French passed a law on May 20, 1802, revoking the law passed on February 4, 1794, which had abolished slavery in the French colonies. On June 7, 1802, Bonaparte’s general LeClerc captured L’Ouverture after deceiving him by inviting him to a meeting with an offering to negotiate. Le Clerc realizing that he could not defeat the Africans led by L’Ouverture pretended to be willing to negotiate with L’Overture as the leader of his people. On June 15, 1802, the kidnapped L’Overture and his family were transported to France on board the French ship Le Heros. On his arrival in France L’Overture was imprisoned and on April 7, 1803, he transitioned to the ancestor realm, a victim of his belief in the non-existent honour of Bonaparte and the French. In 2023, the name Toussaint L’Ouverture is well known as Haiti’s liberator. Toussaint L’Ouverture was born 280 years ago on May 20, 1743. Murphy Browne © May 20-2023

JOSIAH HENSON AND NANCY HENSON OCTOBER 28-1830

Murphy Browne © October 26, 2021 “I was born June 15th, 1789, in Charles County, Maryland, on a farm belonging to Mr. Francis N, about a mile from Port Tobacco. My mother was the property of Dr. Josiah McP, but was hired by Mr. N to whom my father belonged. The only incident I can remember which occurred while my mother continued on Mr. N's farm, was the appearance one day of my father with his head bloody and his back lacerated.” From The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself by Josiah Henson published 1849. Josiah Henson was an enslaved African man who fled slavery in the USA and arrived in Canada 191 years ago, on October 28, 1830. Henson with his wife and four children arrived in Canada four years before slavery was abolished in Canada on August 1, 1834. In his 1849 published Narrative about his life, Henson documented the horror of living as an enslaved African man, including his only memory of his father (Henson was 3 or 4 years old) who was maimed as punishment for defending his wife against a White rapist. “His right ear was cut off close to his head and he had received a hundred lashes on his back. He had beaten the overseer for a brutal assault on my mother and this was his punishment. And though it was all a mystery to me at the age of three or four years, it was explained at a later period, and I understood that he had been suffering the cruel penalty of the Maryland law for beating a white man.” Henson would later describe in grim detail how his father was punished. “The day for the execution of the penalty was appointed. The Negroes from the neighboring plantations were summoned, for their moral improvement, to witness the scene. A powerful blacksmith named Hewes laid on the stripes. Fifty were given, during which the cries of my father might be heard a mile, and then a pause ensued. True, he had struck a white man, but as valuable property he must not be damaged. Judicious men felt his pulse. Oh! he could stand the whole. Again and again the thong fell on his lacerated back. His cries grew fainter and fainter, till a feeble groan was the only response to his final blows. His head was then thrust against the post, and his right ear fastened to it with a tack; a swift pass of a knife, and the bleeding member was left sticking to the place.” Henson’s father was eventually sold and he never saw his father again. Describing the last time he saw his father, Henson remembered “He was beside himself with mingled rage and suffering.” Henson could not remember much about his father before the horrific maiming, but he later learned that “Previous to this affair my father, from all I can learn, had been a good- humored and light- hearted man, the ringleader in all fun at corn- huskings and Christmas buffoonery. His banjo was the life of the farm, and all night long at a merry- making would he play on it while the other Negroes danced. But from this hour he became utterly changed. Sullen, morose, and dogged, nothing could be done with him. The milk of human kindness in his heart was turned to gall. He brooded over his wrongs. No fear or threats of being sold to the far south- - the greatest of all terrors to the Maryland slave- - would render him tractable. So off he was sent to Alabama. What was his fate neither my mother nor I have ever learned.” Years later Henson detailed the reason his father had been brutally punished, maimed and then sold away from his family. “The explanation I picked up from the conversation of others only partially explained the matter to my mind; but as I grew older I understood it all. It seemed the overseer had sent my mother away from the other field hands to a retired place, and after trying persuasion in vain, had resorted to force to accomplish a brutal purpose. Her screams aroused my father at his distant work, and running up, he found his wife struggling with the man. Furious at the sight, he sprung upon him like a tiger. In a moment the overseer was down, and, mastered by rage, my father would have killed him but for the entreaties of my mother, and the overseer's own promise that nothing should ever be said of the matter. The promise was kept- - like most promises of the cowardly and debased- - as long as the danger lasted.” While Henson was still a small child his enslaver Dr. Josiah McPherson, died and Henson, his mother and siblings were sold at auction. “My brothers and sisters were bid off one by one while my mother holding my hand looked on in an agony of grief, the cause of which I but ill understood at first, but which dawned on my mind, with dreadful clearness as the sale proceeded.” Henson as a 5- or 6-year-old became so ill after his mother was sold that he was eventually sold to his mother’s new enslaver Isaac Riley, “at such a trifling rate that it could not be refused.” Henson married Nancy, an enslaved African woman when he was 22 years old and the couple eventually had 12 children. When Henson was 36 years old his enslaver Isaac Riley, the man to who Henson and his mother had been sold, found himself in financial difficulties and to hide his “assets,” persuaded Henson to take 18 enslaved Africans (including Henson, his wife and their children) from Maryland to his brother Amos Riley’s plantation in Kentucky. The group of 18 enslaved Africans led by Henson, left Maryland in February 1825. While passing through the free state of Ohio, "colored people gathered round us, and urged us with much importunity to remain with them." Henson refused to remain a free man in Ohio, considering that it was more important to keep the promise made to his enslaver than to free himself, his wife, his children and the other enslaved Africans. Years later, as a free man living in Canada, Henson lamented that decision "I have often had painful doubts as to the propriety of my carrying so many other individuals into slavery again, and my consoling reflection has been, that I acted as I thought at the time was best. In the 1973 published Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films African American film historian and author Donald Bogle writes: “Always as toms are chased, harassed, hounded, flogged, enslaved, and insulted, they keep the faith, n'er turn against their white massas, and remain hearty, submissive, stoic, generous, selfless, and oh-so-very kind. Thus they endear themselves to white audiences and emerge as heroes of sorts.” Josiah Henson eventually made the decision to flee from enslavement on the Isaac Riley plantation in Kentucky and arrived in Canada on October 28, 1830. Henson did not make the journey to freedom alone. He brought his wife and the four children that they had at time, to Canada. The Henson family travelled on foot by night and hid in the woods by day. After a long and dangerous six-week journey, the Hensons arrived in Upper Canada/Ontario on the morning of October 28, 1830. In 1830, (Upper Canada) Ontario had become a refuge for enslaved Africans (beginning in 1793) who had escaped from the United States, even though slavery was practiced in the province and throughout Canada until August 1, 1834. In 1793, Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe passed An Act to prevent the further introduction of Slaves, and limit the Term of Contracts for Servitude within this Province. That law was enacted because of the resistance of Chloe Cooley, an enslaved African woman in Upper Canada/Ontario. On March 14, 1793, Chloe Cooley, an enslaved African woman in Queenston, was beaten, bound, thrown in a boat and sold across the river to a new owner in the United States. Her screams and violent resistance was brought to the attention of Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe by Peter Martin, a free African man living in Canada who had been a soldier in Butler's Rangers, and had witnessed the outrage. Simcoe tried to abolish slavery in the province. He was met with opposition in the House of Assembly, some of whose members were enslavers. A compromise was reached and on July 9, 1793, An Act to Prevent the further Introduction of Slaves and to limit the Term of Contracts for Servitude within this Province was passed that prevented the further introduction of slaves into Upper Canada and allowed for the gradual abolition of slavery although no slaves already living in Upper Canada/Ontario were freed. It was the first legislation that limited slavery and led to a freedom movement of enslaved Africans from the USA, that became known as the Underground Railroad. The Act did not prevent the buying and selling of enslaved Africans in the province as evidenced by the infamous advertisement on February 10, 1806, where Peter Russell, a member of the House of Assembly was selling Peggy Pompadour and her 15-year-old son Jupiter. The legislation did not end slavery in Canada or even in Ontario, but it did prevent the importation of enslaved Africans. This meant that any enslaved African who fled slavery in the USA and arrived in Upper Canada/Ontario was free. When the Henson family arrived on October 28, 1830, others had already made Upper Canada/Ontario their home, including Black Loyalists from the American Revolution and many other freedom seekers from the War of 1812. Henson became a leader in the community. In 1841, Henson and a group of abolitionists bought 200 acres of land southwest of the Town of Dresden and established Dawn, an African Canadian community where other enslaved Africans who fled slavery in the USA could settle. At its height, the Dawn settlement had approximately 500 residents, but many members returned to the USA in the 1860s after slavery was abolished there. Henson chose to remain in Canada and he and his wife supposedly spent the remainder of their lives in the two-storey house which today is on the Uncle Tom's Cabin Historic Site in Dresden, Ontario. The site was acquired by the Ontario Heritage Trust in February 2005, ironically, 180 years after Henson began that ill-fated journey (February 1825) from Maryland to Kentucky. Henson transitioned to the ancestral realm on May 5, 1883, at almost 94 years old. Murphy Browne © October 26, 2021