What do they know of freedom, who only freedom know? This maxim may, at first blush, appear paradoxical, hyperbolic or oven nonsensical. That's probably if one tends not to "count one's blessings" until one considers existing or pre-existing paradigms that compare unfavourably with one's own situation. So it's only natural that, approaching the anniversary of emancipation in these parts, there would be more than the usual interest in the institution of slavery as well as how the slaves adapted to their then "new situation" and the sort of human resources which they drew upon together with the survival strategies employed. According to CLR James, God alone knows where the "primitive" label came from and why it was assigned to Africans, generally, African slaves in particular, and, by extension, their progeny.
James found the odious "label" not only repugnant but totally unjustified. He referred to a quotation from the Moyne Report (1938). James claimed that the report was produced by a number of excellent English gentlemen and ladies, sympathetic to the West Indies. The repugnant quotation referred to: "Negroes were taken from lands where they lived no doubt in a primitive state." CLR explained that the members of the Moyne Commission were not hostile to the West Indies but were merely profoundly ignorant of what they were dealing with. Said James, "I don't know where they got that 'primitive' label from because the early Portuguese and the rest who discovered Africa did not find very much difference between the Negro civilisations they met and the great masses of the peasantry they had left at home.
In many respects, many Africans were more advanced." Gad Heuman took CLR's point a bit further with his report, "The slaves' work on their grounds and in the markets demonstrated a high degree of initiative and enterprise, particularly since slaves had to tend their crops outside the long days devoted to the plantations. Yet white stereotypes of slave behaviour depicted them as Sambos or Quashees, who were inveterately lazy, irresponsible, inefficient, dishonest, childish and stupid." Gad Heuman asks, "But how accurate is this depiction of the slave in his community?" Answering his own question, "However debased slavery was, slaves resisted it at home, in their communal life with other slaves, and in their maroon societies. Their religion, culture and songs attest to their independence within an oppressive system."
Lawrence Levine suggested that those factors, alluded to by Heuman, probably prevented legal slavery from becoming spiritual slavery. The notion that slaves were largely resigned to their abysmal lot in life and their yearning for freedom was largely extinguished seemed very much at variance with known facts. There are those, of course, who'd have us believe that, subconsciously, the slave virtually told him/herself that "I've got plenty of nothing, and nothing is plenty for me." CLR's umbrage to the "primitive" label appears to have been based on his exception taken to a racial slur. However, where the master/servant, owner/property power relationships are concerned, pejorative characterisations seem inevitable to justify or rather rationalise the asymmetrical perverse equation. A young slave, Frederick Douglas–who later became prominent–and whose master was also his biological father, was hired out and ended in some physical confrontation where he got a beating.
He was subsequently mortified to find out that his father/master was less concerned about his well-being than an infringement to his (father's) property rights." This is not as absurd as it sounds because when slavery was abolished in this part of the world, my understanding is that the slave owners were compensated for "loss of property"–the loss of liberty or services rendered by slaves being a non-existent consideration. It's not that I'm attempting to trivialise the situation, but simply reflecting on the existing moral framework at the time. As they say, "Hope springs eternal in the human breast," and we have no reason to suppose that it was any different with "the shackled ones." I was somewhat intrigued by some reference to runaway slaves escaping bondage in the southern states in America and wending their way north to freedom by way of the "Underground Railroad."
Little did I realise that it was not a system of underground caverns and natural tunnels, as I had hitherto imagined. It was composed of a loosely organised group of people who offered food and shelter or a place of concealment to fugitives who had set out on the long road to the North and freedom. I might add that those who collaborated with the fugitives were doing so at great risk to themselves.
Ironically, they were, in the main, whites (yes, whites) whose religious persuasions caused them to regard slavery as profound, abhorrent. In her little book, Ann Perry calls Harriet Tubman "conductor to the Underground Railroad, a shining star and a genuine heroine." Yearning for freedom was apparently in Harriet's blood. At the age of six (yes, six) she was hired out as a slave. She was not exempted from whipping. This remarkable woman not only escaped but returned again and again to lead over 300 black men, women and children to freedom through the dangerous escape route.
