Today’s Kidnapped Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Historians have few sources on the initial reactions of captured Africans who were sold into slavery in the New World. Fortunately, there were a few African-born slaves who lived to recount stories of their enslavement. The most famous and revealing account of the process was written by Gustavus Vassa, or Olaudah Equiano. The son of an Ibo tribal elder, Olaudah was born in 1745 in a part of the Benin empire (located in what is now Eastern Nigeria). Olaudah and his sister were kidnapped when he was eleven. At first, they comforted each other. When they were separated, Olaudah cried and refused to eat for several days.
Olaudah was sold to European slave traders seven months after his capture. Arriving on the coast, he was terrified by the strange ship and the white men with “horrible looks, red faces, and long hair.” The boat was a veritable devil’s pit. The whites were “so savage” that he was sure they were going to kill and eat him. When he saw a pot of water boiling on the deck, he fainted. The billowing sails and the ability of the whites to make the ship start and stop at will filled him with wonder and convinced him the white men were evil spirits. The groaning men, shrieking women, galling chains, and nauseating, suffocating smell made the hold of the ship “a scene of horror almost inconceivable.” On the way to Barbados, two slaves, chained together, jumped overboard and drowned.Although he was anxious about his fate and terrified by the whites, Olaudah was consoled by some members of his own tribe who were on board. Still, the constant flogging of black slaves and white sailors and men dying daily were oppressive. “Every circumstance I met with served only to render my state more painful, and heighten my apprehensions and my opinion of the cruelty of the whites.” The voyage was a nightmare; the hold a den of horrors.
When the boat docked in Barbados, a new series of horrors began for Olaudah. Immediately, the blacks were painstakingly examined by the eager merchants. Again, the haunting fear of the cannibalistic tendencies of the whites returned, and Olaudah asserted: “there was much dread and trembling among us, and nothing but bitter cries…” This continued until some slaves came on board and explained that the Africans had been brought to the island to work for the whites. Taken off the ship and herded into a stockade, they were amazed by the brick houses of the whites and the horses they rode. The amazement turned to terror a few days later when the Africans were sold by the “shout” or “scramble.” Olaudah described the spectacle in the following words:
We were not many days in the merchant’s custody before we were sold after their usual manner, which is this: On a signal given, (as the beat of a dream) the buyers rush at once into the yard where the slaves are confined, and make choice of that parcel they like best. The noise and clamour with which this is attended and the eagerness visible in the countenances of the buyers serve not a little to increase the apprehensions of the terrified Africans… In this manner, without scruple, are relations and friends separated, most of them never to see each other again.
Most of the Africans were sold in Barbados, but a small group, including Olaudah, were taken to a Virginia plantation. Soon Olaudah was the only newly imported African left on the plantation. He was mortified by his inability to converse with anyone. “I was now exceedingly miserable, and thought myself worse off than any of the rest of my companions; for they could talk to each other, but I had no person to speak to that I could understand. In this state I was constantly grieving and pining, and wishing for death, rather than anything else.”
On the Virginia plantation he weeded grass and gathered stones for a few days. Then, called to the mansion to fan his master, Olaudah was terrified by the iron muzzle on the face of the black cook, mystified by the ticking of a clock, and convinced that a portrait on the wall watched his every move and would report any of his transgressions to his master who was asleep. Consequently, he performed his task “with great fear.” He spent “some time in this miserable, forlorn, and much dejected state without having anyone to talk to, which made my life a burden,” until an English sea captain purchased him.
Culled from: The Slave Community
Olaudah went on to purchase his freedom in 1766 and became an outspoken proponent of the British movement to end the slave trade. His autobiography, published in 1789 helped in the creation of the Slave Trade Act 1807, which ended the African trade for Britain and its colonies.
Olaudah Equiano
Ghastly: Jumpers Edition
The following is culled from Strange Days Dangerous Nights: Photos From the Speed Graphic Era.
Early in the morning on the last day of 1944, 30-year-old Kathleen Bokuske of South Minneapolis walked out onto the Lake Street – Marshall Avenue Bridge, climbed over the railing near the center of the span, and leaped to her death. Her “crushed body,” as the Pioneer Press described it, landed on a thin layer of ice coating the Mississippi River, and it took quite an effort by firemen using ropes, ladders, and toboggans to bring the body back to shore. In the manner of the time, the newspaper used arrows and a circle around the body to show exactly how and where Bokuske, who was said to be suffering from a “nervous ailment,” had gone to her death.
The photograph is grimly straightforward and very sad. Bokuske’s “ailment” would today almost surely be called depression, and as with all suicides, the scene conveys a deep sense of loneliness and loss.