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I

BY OR. JOHN T. REIL

WEST AFRICAN SENGBE PIE

~ KNOWN IN THE STATES AS

I JOSEPH CINOUE, LED A

SLAVE REVOLT ABOARD

THE LA AMISTAD.

L lhe whites did not kno

they would die that nigh

They slept peacefully itheir beds, secure in ttknowledge that they we]

in control. Their tomorrows would 1:the sam~ as their yesterdays. At ttbreak of (lay they would be awakenetfed, bathed, dressed and pampered ttheir black slaves, who lived anlabored only to please and profit thenThis was the design of God and naturwhich made whites supreme ovcblacks. But die they did, hacked 1pieces and burned to a crisp by ttsame Africans who had attended thelhumbly the day before.

"Brethren, arise! Arise! Strike f(your lives and liberties. Now is the daand the hour. Rather die free men tha

be slaves. Let you~motto be resistanceResistance! Resistance!"

This was the battle cry of thesedaring black rebels. The date was 1526Their cry echoed from a source 30(years older than the 1839 revolt aboar<the slave ship La Amistad, whiclSteven Spielberg and Debbie Allelfaithfully recreated in the new filnII Amistad." The place was a 16th cen

tury Spanish settlewent.in the southern region of Amerir:a, the first whit!settlement to contain slaves. Within ,year the blacks drove those oppressorout of the country and thereby signailed the bloody fate of slavery iIAmerica: slavery would end by violence.

In years to come, over 250 blacJinsurrections exploded within U.S. ter

2 :Feb/Mar/Apr 1991

S'"ttj ~ ~ t ~o I+~ tR I W E ~[ ~ iI I~fr(n ~,

Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey ofCharleston in 1822 and Nat Turner ofSouthampton in 1831 rallied largebands of slaves to destroy slavery andits white perpetrators. Then came theCivil War in which blacks fought for4eedom as bravely as their black ances-tors had done in the 1776Revolutionary War for American inde-pendence. ;c

After achieving emancipation,blacks struggled body and soul againstthe Klan, Jim Crowism, segregation,inequality and lynchings. Thoughdenied equal benefits of Americandemocracy, blacks distinguished them-selves as soldiers in the War of 1812,Spanish American War, the War of thePhilippines, World War I, World War II,the Korean War, the Vietnam War andDesert Storm to defend this democracy.

The Amistad i~surrection, the hun-dreds of other slave rebellions and themany national wars that Africandescendants in America bravely foughttell us the obvious: blacks have been awarrior people who loved freedom.Thus, contrary to popular racist myths,blacks were ill-suited for slavery anddomination by whites. Far from damp-ening their African spirit of rebellion,their American experience helped tofuel it. Why? continued on page 30

JOHN BROWN. HUNG

LEWIS LEARY, HUNG

OSBORN PERRY

ANDERSON, ESCAPED

ritories. Instances of this were murder-ous uprisings of blacks either alone orwith allies of Indians or white inden-tured servants in Connecticut in 1657,Virginia in 1663, Long Island in 1708,New York in 1712, Massachusetts in1723, and South Carolina in 1739.Many others occurred in the BritishWest Indies, such as Barbados in 1816,Demerara in 1823 and Jamaica in 1831.In South America blacks waged fullscale wars against whites and some-

ctimes established independent states,such as the legendary PalmaresRepublic in Brazil, to govern them-selves. Wherever blacks were enslaved,they rebelled.

African descendants in Americawere by nature and culture an heroic,self-deterrnining people. Perhaps themost successful insurrection was theHaitian/San Domingo rebellion led byFrancois Dominique ToussaintL'Ouverture against the French in1791. After brilliantly mobilizing thou-sands of blacks, he destroyed the plan-tation aristocracy and took control ofthe nation. Of equal significance, heinspired slave revolts throughoutNorth and South America.

For instance, in 1~00 GabrielProsser, a Virginia black df great statureand shrewd intelligence, organized sev-eral hundred slaves to attackRichmond, kill the whites,overtake the arsenals, armthe black population andwage war on slavery through-out the region. His bannercopied that of the Haitianrebels, "Death or Liberty."Prosser declared with greatdignity and candor, "1 havenothing more to offer thanwhat General Washingtonwould have had to offer hadhe been taken by the Britishand put on trial by them. Ihave adventured my life inendeavori~g "to obtain theliberty of ~ cduntrymen,and am a willing sacrifice totheir cause."

The spirit of Prosser'sstatement echoes throughJohn Quincy Adams' defenseof the Amistad blacks in thefilm's Supreme Court scene.Blacks have always fought fortheir freedom. Following

DANGERFIELD NEW BY,

HUNG

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continued from page 24

America idealized freedom despiteher racist practices. Guns and gutswere America's primary means ofachieving this freedom.- When gunswere not available, blacks had noshortage of guts. Where they couldnot deal lethal blows against theiroppressors, they struck back in subtleand covert ways. Their defiance wasevident in how they would slow downthe pace of their labor, make deliber-atea~!dents and fake stupidity or ill-ness to frustrate overseers.

Also, blacks created stories, songsand religious practices that preservedtheir dignity, vented their resent-ments of whites and communicatedplans for escape and resistance:

I fooled Old Master seven years,Fooled the overseer three.Hand me down my banjo,And I'll tickle your bellee.

From historical uprisings, such asthe Amistad rebellion, down to themore contemporary 1992 Los Angelesinsurrection, blacks have shown thatslavery, racism and discrimination didnot subdue them as whites mighthave hoped. If anything, these evilsalong with the lip service America haspaid to liberty, justice and equalityhave firmed the resolve of blacks to be

free, boosted their warrior spirits andsharpened their killing instincts.

These facts require that the historyof blacks should not be read as an easyadjustment to a bad situation. Ratherit shoutdbe seen as a neverendingstory of militant resistance and rebel-lion to attain a freefclife. Blacks shouldbe seen as the defiant, warrior peoplethey have been. Their story hence-forth should be told as an heroic epic.It would be learned with pride by newgenerations of Americans of Africandescent. TP

Dr. John 7: Reilly is professor, AfricanAmerican Studies/English, LoyolaMarymount University, Los Angeles.

Turning Point

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