The Top Five Reasons Why Black People Were Not United Against Their Enslavement
“Shipping Slaves Through The Surf, West African Coast. A Cruiser Signaled in Sight“
(From a Sketch by a Merchant on the Coast)
1856
(Source: The Church Missionary Intelligencer: A Monthly Journal of Missionary Information, Volume 7, via Slavery Images)
Black people have been through it all.
We have been through the thick and the thin; the pain and the gain; the highs and lows; the sunshine and the rain.
But even while we endured these trials together, we were never a fully unified people.
Here are some of the primary reasons why we were not united in the time of our greatest adversity: universal enslavement.
5. Divide and Conquer
In most of the world’s history of conquest, divide et impera was the name of the game.
The case was no different for Africans, many opposing the progress of other African people.
Africans assisting in the capture of other Africans
From Progress of a Race (1897)
(Source: The New York Public Library)
At the height of the slave trade, African people were in a constant state of war – not against the European or Arab invaders, who came seeking the spoils of war, but against each other.
Rulers who were envious of their rivals’ possessions took advantage of the weapons, horses, and other equipment introduced in the coastal markets in order to claim what that they wanted though force.
Even regular locals who held grudges against their neighbors were not averse to scheming for their neighbors’ capture and sale.
Once captured, what could the poor victims do?
Based on a series of reports by European travelers, English bibliophile John Nutt (?-1716) published several volumes on the history, the cultures, and the geographic features of the known world. Writing on slave life in early 18th century Barbados, Nutt explained that African captives were conquered according to their pre-existing divisions. Before the coming of the White man, African people were already separated along social, political, and cultural lines. These natural differences guided the selection of souls for enslavement in the Americas.
With the introduction of foreign technologies, feelings of distrust and common hostilities between African peoples developed into full-blown wars. In the ensuing struggles, wealthier and more powerful nations gained the upper hand.
Pre-existing distinctions, suddenly more accentuated, continued between African people in captivity. Thus, uprisings were not usually spontaneous – that is, African prisoners of war, while in mass numbers, were not quick to rise up against their captors. It is not that the captives themselves were in agreement with their enslavement, but that they were often in disagreement with each other.
Nutt wrote:
Though the Negroes outnumber the Whites by far, ’tis impossible they should master them, because the English have many forts for their security, and [because] the slaves, being brought from several places in Guinea, are of different languages, so that they cannot converse freely; and if they could, they hate one another so mortally, that some had rather die by the hands of the English than join with their countrymen in a mutiny.
Nutt continues to say that from their departure to their arrival, African captives were less likely to stage a revolt for another reason: not only did they encounter difficulties in understanding the violent outbursts and mumbled expressions of the people around them, but few, if any, were privy to the language of their captors.
By deliberately lumping a variety of distinctive nations together; by refusing to inculcate these people with a proper understanding of European syntax; and by conditioning them to a constant cache of crude curses as an introductory framework for all future conversations, European traders were better able to establish and to maintain their dominance over the people they held captive.
Eric Robert Taylor, in his book If We Must Die: Shipboard Insurrections in the Era of the Atlantic Slave Trade (2006), noted that it was customary for captains on the Middle Passage to mix Africans of different backgrounds as an effective hindrance against revolts. One captain insisted that this was the best way ‘to keep the Negroes quiet.’ Another captain remarked that the task of formulating any plot of insurrection in the ensuing chaos was like ‘finishing the tower of Babel.’
It is easy to understand why even a handful of these captives harbored feelings of ill will towards each other. Some recognized the scars and colors of enemy tribes as they were dragged into the dungeons and ship holds. There are recorded instances in which African middlemen, who had been doing the capturing, were captured themselves. On occasion, these crooks were literally chained to people they recently sold.
Nutt’s use of the word ‘mortally’ as a descriptor for the hatred that many captives harbored towards each other suggests to us that cases of strangling among them might have been more common if certain liberties had been granted to vengeful slaves. But Nutt makes it clear that slaves out for blood were constrained from taking such actions because they were not even allowed ‘to touch arms without the Master’s command.’
It is a wonder that cases of fighting among African captives were not more common. Perhaps, we can infer that the captives, recognizing their common condition, and the risks associated with such performances, valued their lives enough to restrict these urges to a bare minimum. In cases where there could be no reconciliation, silence was the ultimate resolution.
All of this tells us that communication was the biggest determining factor in the likelihood of organized resistance against slavery. The concrete measures that Europeans implemented to enforce their authority were only part of the equation. There are known cases in which African people were able to circumnavigate these obstacles when they worked together. But organized resistance called for unity. As most African captives could not freely comprehend each other, and many did not care to try, 90 to 98 percent of slave ships arrived in the colonies without serious incident.
The language barrier, says Taylor, was such a profound impediment to the success of slave revolts that it made the planning process ‘nearly impossible’ even when numbers almost certainly guaranteed a victory and all were in favor of rebellion. Furthermore, a pervasive paranoia on the continent fomented feelings of hatred and mistrust between members of enemy tribes, causing some to side with the captains against the conspirators, going as far as to betray their intentions beforehand.
Out of 27,000 documented voyages, the international team of researchers working on the critically acclaimed project Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database were only able to identify insurrections on 338 of those voyages (that is just around 1.3 percent) when the database was first published in 1999. Now, out of almost 34,500 total documented voyages, 467 are known to have been involved in insurrectional activities (that is, 1.4 percent). These numbers include planned, but thwarted rebellions. When we factor in the number of voyages attacked by Africans on the shore and the cases where the ships were cut off for undeclared reasons, that number jumps to 565 (0.4 points shy of 2 percent).
As recently as 2018, researchers with the same project concluded, after examining the records of roughly 11,000 voyages, which were restricted entirely to locations within the Americas, that ‘far fewer rebellions are documented for the intra-American traffic than the transatlantic trade.’
Caste was certainly a factor in the resistance to collectively resist.
Among the crewmen were African and Mulatto overseers. Not all of them wielded whips. Taylor writes that most were spies posing as friendly sailors who greeted newcomers in their own language and quieted the captives’ fears concerning the ultimate intentions of the White traders. With few exceptions, these hired hands proved an absolute boon to their masters, informing them of every scheme that was whispered in their hearing.
In this regard, slave ship dynamics were mirrored closely with plantation arrangements in the New World. It was on these ships that American racism was first codified in the African conscience. However, Africans had known powers of caste long before their encounters with White men.
While some arrivals were servants in their homeland, others had been masters. Some of these masters, in early times, had even brought their servants to the colonies with them.
Thus, we have records of full-blooded Africans in all three centuries of enslavement in the Americas who were not averse to enslaving their fellow continentals.
In the U.S. South, especially in the lower slave states, color distinctions among the Black and Mulatto populous were exploited to maintain divisions between free Blacks and those who were enslaved.
Mulattoes, being the offspring of White masters, were more likely to inherit the master’s wealth in property – including slaves. They were also more likely to inherit the patronizing habits of their White fathers towards those who were darker in complexion than themselves.
Historian Larry Koger reflected upon Black slave-ownership in South Carolina by saying:
…the attitudes and actions of Colored masters appeared to be similar to those of the White slaveowners. In essence, free Black masters embraced many of the attitudes of the White community even while they remained on the fringe of the society.
As UNC Professor Loren Schweninger wrote in The American Historical Review of 1990, the Mulatto slave-owners of the Lower South – especially in Louisiana – were determined to live exclusively to themselves, while free and prosperous Blacks in the Upper South ‘mingled’ freely with other Blacks regardless of status.
Edwin C. Holland, a prominent White South Carolina editor noted in 1822 that the free Mulattoes were tightfisted with their wealth and were greatly averse to the thought of making business with darker Blacks who typically occupied a lower caste in society.
So far as we are acquainted with their temper and disposition of their feelings, [they] abhor the idea of association with Blacks in any enterprise that may have for its object the revolution of their condition.
Furthermore, he and other Whites noted that these Mulattoes served the White community both financially and as informants against planned uprisings by Black slaves.
The free Mulattoes, he said, would ‘keep them [the Black slaves] on watch and induce them to disclose any plans that may be injurious to our peace.’
The most infamous case of a thwarted revolt on behalf of the enslaved was that which was orchestrated by a wealthy Black preacher named Denmark Vesey in South Carolina. The entire plot was betrayed first by Peter Desverney Prioleau, a slave (and later slave-master) goaded on by the enterprising Mulatto master William Pinceel, then by a loyal Mulatto slave and informant named George Wilson, whose timely testimony proved the more damning.
Pinceel was one of many Mulattoes whose membership in exclusively mixed race societies afforded them privileges that other Blacks were denied. The subject of color prejudice and slave-ownership in these organizations is addressed at length by anthropologist and pan-African scholar Obiagele Lake in her book Blue Veins and Kinky Hair: Naming and Color Consciousness in African America (2003).
4. Petty Benefits of the System
Nutt identified what may have been the primary benefit which enticed some of the earliest Africans in colonial North America to support the very system that enslaved them.
Enslaved men, he says, were allowed to have two or three wives. This privilege had nothing to do with an insistence on the part of African people who wanted to preserve their former heritage. After all, Nutt identified that polygamy, in this context, was not meant for the benefit of the enslaved, but simply to ‘increase the planter’s stock.’
The recollections of slavery’s survivors are replete with examples of masters encouraging perpetual procreation among their slaves all while undermining the bonds between them by selling families apart and punishing those who placed their duty to their community before their supposed commitment to multiplying the master’s money.
As Nutt identifies, New World Africans amongst themselves – even in the midst of polygamous arrangements – considered adultery ‘the worst of crimes.’ But under the compulsion of a rapacious master, any slave was forced to break from these mores at any given time.
The Black male was thus played against the Black female. He was pitted against her dreams and desires in favor of the White man’s wants and wishes. When compounded with the value the master placed on fertile slaves and the perks associated with a promiscuous lifestyle (ex: notoriety and more favorable treatment), the slave, under these pressures, acquiesced to them.
Besides the lure of unbridled sex, two other comforts of slave life identified in Nutt’s notes were the slaves’ supposed obsession with food and their alleged addiction to entertainment.
Around the same time, Jean-Baptiste Labat (1663-1738), a White priest living in the West Indies, added another dimension to what we read from Nutt, asserting that the Africans in the French colonies had a penchant for the taste of alcohol and for the lure of a good party.
They love games, dancing, wine, brandy, and their passionate temperament makes them very partial to women. This last fact makes it necessary to marry them early, in order to prevent them from lapsing into serious licentiousness. They are jealous and will take extreme measures when they feel offended on this point.
Dance is their favorite passion, there is no people in the world more attached to it than they are. When their master does not allow them to dance on the plantation, they will travel three or four leagues after leaving work at the sugar mill, Saturday at midnight, to be somewhere where they know there is a dance.
The freedom to gather for these dances, said Labat, was so vital to the continued enslavement of African people that whenever that freedom was suppressed, there was only an increased risk for an uprising among the slaves.
…It is practically impossible to prevent them, because of all their entertainments this is the one that pleases them the most and to which they are most sensitive.
He also wrote that the one thing that was most effective in disciplining the African slaves was to threaten them with the removal of a precious gift. This gift took the form of a commodity with just enough profitability for a little peace of mind but not nearly enough power to grant them their freedom.
Nothing will hold them and prevent them from escaping more than to take measures so that they have something they can profit by, like fowls, pigs, a garden of tobacco, cotton, pasture or something similar.
If they leave and don’t return within 24 hours by themselves or accompanied by some neighbor or some friend who asks pardon on their behalf, which should never be refused, one has only to confiscate whatever property they might have.
For them this is a severe penalty and returns them to their senses far faster than ordinary punishments, no matter how severe. One such example of confiscation is enough to prevent all the slaves of a plantation from perhaps making a similar mistake.
The caricature below is a representation of Black freedom through a White British lens. The implication is clear. When they were not plotting against their masters, slaves were expected to be passing their time doing the two things that they enjoyed most: eating and dancing to their heart’s content.
The demise of the oppressor meant freedom for the oppressed. It meant freedom from labor. And the one thing that White observers of the enslaved thought excited slaves any more than activities which would lead them on a path to liberation were moments in which they were able to relax, no matter how vain, how temporary the moment of freedom.
“Abolition of the Slave Trade, or The Man, The Master”
May 26, 1789
London
(Source: The John Carter Brown Library)
Detail from “Abolition of the Slave Trade, or The Man, The Master”
May 26, 1789
London
(Source: The John Carter Brown Library)
There is nothing in the physiological nature of the Black race to indicate a peculiar weakness for licentiousness, for overindulgence, for dipsomania or for buffoonery.
On their own, human vices are limited in their potency, but when wielded as tools of control by members of the dominant society, they were weapons of mass destruction.
The lethality of those weapons continued to haunt the Black race in common stereotypes of the post-slavery era. They were widely propagated in the political cartoons of the 19th century. The idiotic Negro became the mascot of Southern marketing. And, with the advent of the motion picture industry in the 20th century, the lusty and slothful glutton of Blackface minstrelsy commandeered a global audience.
3. Overzealous Religiosity
Christian slaves used religion to condemn other slaves.
Seeing themselves as ascended to a more enlightened state of existence than they had been accustomed to in heathen Africa, slaves who were effectually indoctrinated into the European brand of Christianity looked down upon those of their race who were still in “spiritual darkness.”
Jean-Baptiste Labat wrote about the role that Christianized slaves had in the subjugation of new arrivals from West Africa.
In order to better train, instruct and integrate them into plantation life, it is good to start the new slaves off in the huts of older slaves.
These will take them in willingly, whether they are from their country or not, they take pride that the slave given them is best cared for, best instructed and in better condition than that of their neighbor. They take all possible care of them and treat them as their child, but they have them eat separately and sleep in a different room from them; and when the newcomer notices this separation and asks why they tell him that since he is not Christian he is too beneath them to eat and sleep in their room.
These ways give the new slaves an exalted idea of the position of Christians; and since they are naturally prideful they endlessly beg their masters and priests to baptize them; so that to satisfy them, one takes whole days to teach them the doctrine and prayers.
Beyond the catechism, which is normally done morning and night in the best-ordered households, as are nearly all the plantations of the Lesser Antilles, a well instructed slave is ordinarily set aside to teach the doctrine individually to new slaves, beyond the fact that those with whom they are lodged take marvelous care to teach them, if only to be able to say to the priest or to their master that the slave entrusted to them is ready to be baptized. They usually stand as godparents.
Black Christians were undoubtedly the most vital resource in the arsenal of the European for the conversion of the Black race to their own cultures and values.
But it is important to note that these offerings of salvation from one African to another were often intended quite literally. When the efforts of these converts failed to produce the desired results, White masters like Labat resorted to crucifying their slaves until they pled the blood of Jesus.
In the early colonial period, baptism was viewed as a voluntary process through which enslaved Africans were able to secure their freedom. In later years, as slavery was evaporating from the French Commonwealth, baptism reemerged as a rite of passage from slavery to freedom.
Baptism of slaves in Martinique
summer 1848
(Source: The J. Paul Getty Museum)
While at times, religion was used against them, religion played a major part in the struggles of African people against their oppressors, most notably in Haiti. The record of events leading up to the Haitian Revolution demonstrates that it was the cultivation of indigenous African belief systems that mobilized the people towards their ultimate freedom.
In this context, freedom was not only achieved through a resistance to French colonial identity but also to the constraints of European religion in favor of an untethered African spirituality.
2. Pride in What Their Enslavers Thought of Them
“Dealers inspecting a Negro at a slave auction in Virginia”
From The Illustrated London News, February 16, 1861
(Source: Slavery Images)
The Black abolitionist William Wells Brown (1814?-1884) wrote the following in his 1880 autobiography:
Strangers to the institution of slavery and its effects upon its victims, would frequently speak with astonishment of the pride that slaves would show in regard to their own value in the market. This was especially so, at auction sales where town or city servants were sold.
“What did your marser pay for you?” would often be asked by one slave of another.
“Eight hundred dollars.”
“Eight hundred dollars! Ha, ha! Well, ef I didn’t sell for mo’ dan eight hundred dollars, I’d neber show my head agin ‘mong ‘spectable people.”
“You got so much to say ’bout me sellin’ cheap, now I want to know how much your boss paid fer you?”
“My boss paid fifteen hundred dollars cash, for me; an’ it was a rainy day, an’ not many out to de auction, or he’d had to pay a heap mo’, let me tell you. I’m none of your cheap niggers, I ain’t.”
“Hy, uncle! Did dey sell you, ‘isterday? I see you down dar to de market.”
“Yes, dey sole me.”
“How much did you fetch?”
“Eighteen hundred dollars.”
“Dat was putty smart for man like you, ain’t it?”
“Well, I dunno; it’s no mo’ dan I is wuf; for you muss’ ‘member, I was raised by de Christy’s. I’m none of yer common niggers, sellin’ fer a picayune. I tink my new boss got me mighty cheap.”
“An’ so you sole, las’ Sataday, for nine hundred dollars; so I herd.”
“Well, what on it?”
“All I got to say is, of I was sole, to-morrow, an’ did’nt bring more dan nine hundred dollars, I’d never look a decent man in de face agin.”
These, and other sayings of the kind, were often heard in any company of Colored men, in our Southern towns.
This sketch of slave discourse, from Brown’s own recollections, bears testimony to the fact that the wounds of enslavement went deeper than the lashes on a slave’s back.
Slavery was as much a mental impediment to Black progress as it was physical.
That brings to mind a skit by the comedic duo Key & Peele titled “Auction Block.”
1. Conniving Opportunists
While on foreign soil, African captives and their descendants had to contend with people like themselves, struggling in similar situations, for their advancement in society.
Before each wave of that Trans-Atlantic tide reached the shores of North America, there were Africans whose determined and deliberate actions sealed their fate.
The despicable conduct of these insatiable imbeciles was enough to convince a multitude of White Americans that slavery – even under the worst of conditions – was completely acceptable in the societies of the people whom they enslaved. The more evidence that could be presented in support of this theory was the more that White enslavers felt justified in their ways.
Newly arrived African captives for the Caribbean slave trade. In the foreground a women is whipped. Several groups of newly arrived slaves are leaving the port area in coffles as they start life in a new land.
Late 18th century engraving
(Source: Everett Collection – *Used With Permission*)
Brown related a story about the attitude of a slave he knew who often put his own interests above those of his fellow slaves:
While entertaining some of his purchasers at the hotel, Walker [a White slave-holder] ordered Pompey to hand the wine around to his guests. In doing this, the servant upset a glass of wine upon a gentleman’s lap. For this mishap, the trader determined to have his servant punished. He, therefore, gave Pompey a sealed note, and ordered him to take it to the slave prison. The servant, suspecting that all was not right, hastened to open the note before the wafer had dried; and passing the steamboat landing, he got a sailor to read the note, which proved to be, as Pompey had suspected, an order to have him receive “thirty-nine stripes upon the bare back.”
Walker had given the man a silver dollar, with orders to deliver it, with the note, to the jailor, for it was common in those days for persons who wanted their servants punished and did not wish to do it themselves, to send them to the “slave pen,” and have it done; the price for which was one dollar.
How to escape the flogging, and yet bring back to his master the evidence of having been punished, perplexed the fertile brain of Pompey. However, the servant was equal to the occasion.
Standing in front of the “slave pen,” the Negro saw another well-dressed Colored man coming up the street, and he determined to inquire in regard to how they did the whipping there.
“How de do, sar,” said Pompey, addressing the Colored brother. “Do you live here?”
“Oh! no,” replied the stranger, “I am a free man, and belong in Pittsburgh, Pa.”
“Ah! ha, den you don’t live here,” said Pompey.
“No, I left my boat here last week, and I have been trying every day to get something to do. I’m pretty well out of money, and I’d do almost anything just now.”
A thought flashed upon Pompey’s mind–this was his occasion.
“Well,” said the slave, “ef you want a job, whar you can make some money quick, I specks I can help you.”
“If you will,” replied the free man, [“]you’ll do me a great favor.”
“Here, then,” said Pompey, “take dis note, an’ go in to dat prison, dar, an’ dey will give you a trunk, bring it out, an’ I’ll tell you where to carry it to, an’ here’s a dollar; dat will pay you, won’t it?”
“Yes,” replied the man, with many thanks; and taking the note and the shining coin, with smiles, he went to the “Bell Gate,” and gave the bell aloud ring. The gate flew open, and in he went.
The man had scarcely disappeared, ere Pompey had crossed the street, and was standing at the gate, listening to the conversation then going on between the jailor and the free Colored man.
“Where is the dollar that you got with this note?” asked the “whipper,” as he finished reading the epistle.
“Here it is, sir; he gave it to me,” said the man, with no little surprise.
“Hand it here,” responded the jailor, in a rough voice. “There, now; take this nigger, Pete, and strap him down upon the stretcher, and get him ready for business.”
“What are you going a to do to me!” cried the horrified man, at the jailor’s announcement.
“You’ll know, damn quick!” was the response.
The resistance of the innocent man caused the “whipper” to call in three other sturdy Blacks, and, in a few minutes, the victim was fastened upon the stretcher, face downwards, his clothing removed, and the strong-armed White Negro-whipper standing over him with uplifted whip.
The cries and groans of the poor man, as the heavy instrument of torture fell upon his bareback, aroused Pompey, who retreated across the street, stood awaiting the result, and wondering if he could obtain, from the injured man, the receipt which the jailor always gives the slave to takeback to his master as evidence of his having been punished.
As the gate opened, and the Colored brother made his appearance, looking wildly about for Pompey, the latter called out, “Here I is, sar!”
Maddened by the pain from the excoriation of his bleeding back, and the surprise and astonishment at the quickness with which the whole thing had been accomplished, the man ran across the street, upbraiding in the most furious manner his deceiver, who also appeared amazed at the epithets bestowed upon him.
“What have I done to you?” asked Pompey, with a seriousness that was indeed amusing.
“What hain’t you done!” said the man, the tears streaming down his face. “You’ve got my back cut all to pieces,” continued the victim.
“What did you let ’em whip you for?” said Pompey, with a concealed smile.
“You knew that note was to get somebody whipped, and you put it on me. And here is apiece of paper that he gave me, and told me to give it to my master. Just as if I had a master.”
“Well,[“] responded Pompey, “I have a half a dollar, an’ I’ll give that to you, ef you’ll give me the paper.”
Seeing that he could make no better bargain, the man gave up the receipt, taking in exchange the silver coin.
“Now,” said Pompey, “I’m mighty sorry for ye, an’ ef ye’ll go down to de house, I’ll pray for ye. I’m powerful in prayer, dat I is.” However the free man declined Pompey’s offer.”
“I reckon you’ll behave yourself and not spill the wine over gentlemen again,” said Walker, as Pompey handed him the note from the jailor. “The next time you commit such a blunder, you’ll not get off so easy,” continued the speculator.
Pompey often spoke of the appearance of “my fren’,” as he called the Colored brother, and would enjoy a hearty laugh, saying “He was a free man, an’ could afford to go to bed, an’ lay dar till he got well.”
This incident reminds me of a scene in the second episode of the 2016 historical drama Underground involving the field slave Noah (played by Aldis Hodge) and an assistant overseer named Cato (Alano Miller).
Noah and several other slaves began plotting an escape on the Macon plantation. Cato caught wind of their plans and demanded a part. Thinking that he was going to be the one to steal a much-needed weapon, Cato soon learned that the roles had been reversed. He was to take Noah’s place in providing a distraction while Noah went to retrieve the gun from the big house instead. After being forced to perform sexual favors for the drunken mistress, Cato begrudgingly expressed his full solidarity with Noah’s leadership in the escape plot.
In this case, trickery was the means through which a path to freedom was secured for all.
However, we find in the historical record that the incentive was far greater for slaves to keep others of their own race in captivity rather than to unite with their brothers and sisters against the system that held them all in bondage.
So much has been done to keep African people divided and conquered. Even now in the 21st century, it is nearly impossible to unite African people on any singular platform or agenda. Whether or not that project is one that is completely within our own interests, there is the ever-present threat of untimely interruptions by conniving opportunists, comfortable with the meager benefits of the present system of oppression, prideful of outside approval, and deeply convicted by ideologies that originated with their oppressors.
The question is…how do we deal with these swindlers?
And how can we be more unified today?
This article was originally published at The Black Researcher.
You can see the original post here.
Omri Coke
Omri is a history and science buff with a passion for research.
Through his research, he hopes to inspire others like himself on their own path of self-education and self-development.