Paper long abstract:

As people in various parts of the world mark the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave, the question of how to counter myths and lies, often couched in the most scholarly, vivaciously “intelligent,” and often deviously unpersuasive manner, remains one that needs to be addressed. As recently as about a month ago, James Watson, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist of the discovery of DNA fame, was forced to resign as director of a major scientific lab because of clearly unscientific and certainly unverifiable remarks he had made in connection with the so-called intelligence of Africans. In Watson’s words, “"There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."1 (http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article3067222.ece)

For our present purposes, it must be pointed out that just as Watson fails to take into account the millions of Africans who continue to exhibit levels of intelligence comparable to those of other races of people, in many discussions of the abolition of slavery very few compelling references are made to Africans or descendants of Africans who decided to fight for their freedom in every conceivable way.

This essay, while acknowledging the extraordinary efforts made by non-African and non-black opponents of slavery (William Wilbefrorce, Granville Sharpe, and John Clarkson, among others) will use the genres of film (Amistad Revolt), poetry (“Nanny” by Lorna Goodison and “Bunce Island” by Roland Bankole Marke), and history (Rough Crossings, by Simon Schama) to show how some Africans and their descendants ignored the crushing weight and sweeping tide of convention to re-establish their basic humanity by fighting for it. This multi-genre, cross-continental approach interpretation of the fight for freedom will be a fitting way of commemorating the end of that most basic denial of human freedoms: slavery.