Marking the end of the slave trade
published: Thursday | March 29, 2007

Martin Henry

On Sunday there was an emotional commemoration of the abolition of the slave trade, slave ship re-enactment and all. One of the world's foremost scholars of slavery and freedom, our own Orlando Patterson, a Harvard professor, has aptly described slavery as social death. We, children of slaves, will have a depth of feeling over our deliverance - our resurrection - which none other can share.

The Jamaica Military Band performed two explosively meaningful songs at the Kingston Harbour commemoration ceremony: The Psalm, 'By the Rivers of Babylon' and Marley's 'Redemption Song'. Their deeper meaning would have been missed by most. The Hebrews understood their Babylonian captivity to be an act of divine judgement for their sins, as their prophets thundered. And redemption is fundamentally a Judaeo-Christian concept which does not primarily mean deliverance from physical bondage or oppression but from sin.

African Hebrew

The 'African Hebrew' Ben Ammi [who was born Ben Carson in Chicago] in God the Black Man and Truth, fiercely argues with some pretty impressive data that black Africans are the true descendants of the Old Testament Hebrews scattered from their part of Africa, which Palestine is according to him, by a series of captivities. A Hebrew presence across the African continent is indisputable as several other scholars have shown.

Ben Ammi claims: "We turned our backs on God and he turned his back on us. We were left vulnerable and exposed to a host of evil, among them a divinely authorised and sanctioned chastisement at the hand of a terrible enemy. Slavery, discrimination and worldwide hatred are severe punishments that came about as a result of our disobedience to God."

Psalm 137, beloved of Rastas, ends with the verses: "O Daughter of Babylon [you devastator, you!] who [ought to be and] shall be destroyed, happy and blessed shall be he who requites you as you have served us. Happy and blessed shall he be who takes and dashes your little ones against the rock!" [Amplified Bible]

Not a pretty Psalm for either captives or Babylon.

There has to be a rational explanation for the affinity of blacks of the diaspora with things Judaic and things Christian. Native Rastafarianism, for example, is deeply rooted in the Old Testament. And why this New World black affinity to Christianity, the religion of the oppressor and part of the oppression so much of the time?

The Methodist Philip Sherlock and his writing partner Hazel Bennett sometimes went overboard in their legitimate Afro-centreing of Jamaican history in The Story of the Jamaican People; but Sherlock and Bennett crafted a brilliant patch [chapter 16, pp 177-182] on the role of the evangelical movement in the death of slavery. The converted William Wilberforce was the dogged leader of 'The Saints' in Parliament for first the abolition of the slave trade and then of slavery itself. "Wilberforce committed his talents, time and strength to persuading Parliament to abolish the slave trade", wrote Sherlock and Bennett. "And for the first time in their history the African Jamaicans discovered that they had allies and friends in the world of white power."

Power of revival

These historians trace the conscience-transforming power of the evangelical, or Methodist, revival which sprang from the preaching of the converted Wesley brothers and others like George Whitefield, the impact of the Bible and missionary societies which were founded, and the social and political changes which were pursued as a consequence. Anti-slavery societies were formed linking humanists of the enlightenment and Christians of the revival sometimes in the same persons, free blacks and whites, and men and women. Wilberforce was influenced by the converted slave trader turned Anglican minister John Newton and linked up with Thomas Clarkson, the great anti-slavery campaigner. Newton wrote what became perhaps the best known and best loved hymn in Christian hymnody, 'Amazing Grace, that saved a wretch like me', a redemption hymn with the deepest resonance for former slave trader and former slaves.