In 1474, Queen Anacaona was born in Yaguana, which is now modern day Leogane, Haiti. Yaguana was the capital of Xaragua, a heavily populated kingdom which was also very prosperous. Anacaona means “Golden Flower” in the native Taino language; she was the younger sister of the king of the Xaraguas’, Behechio. In 1494 Christopher Columbus visited the Xaragua kingdom for trade and was met by Anacaona and the king. Anacaona was seen as an equal negotiator with the king. She and her brother were able to successfully and peacefully negotiate trade with the Spaniards. She was held in high regard with her people even before she became queen, her legendary beauty and leadership made her popular and memorable. She would later marry the king of Maguana, Caonabo, which helped expand her influence over the Tiano people of Xaragua and Maguana.
After she married Caonabo he was kidnaped by Christopher Columbus’ troops and deported to Spain, he was accused of leading an attack on La Navidad (a settlement on the northern part of the Island for the Spanish); Caonabo died on the ship sailing to Spain. Meanwhile Queen Anacaona was able to escape death by leaving Maguana and returning to her home in Xaragua. Upon arriving to the Island the Spaniards began to dominate and conquer the Taino people, led by their queen the Tainos stood and fought for their land and their freedom. Xaragua was the only remaining kingdom that the Spanish had not overtaken, but that would soon change. In 1502 Spain shipped a new governor to the Island, Governor Nicholas Ovando. Upon arrival he brought with him 2,500 Spanish troops. In 1502 Governor Ovando requested a meeting with Queen Anacaona, which she kindly accepted.
The meeting evolved into a reception by Anacaona and the noblemen of the Xaragua, during the reception Anacaona and her noblemen were ambushed by the governor and captured. All of the noblemen were killed and Anacaona was taken to Santo Domingo, where she was killed by hanging, at the age of 29. Queen Anacaona was fierce and beautiful, a queen of many talents and a symbol of freedom. She was known for her ballets, poetry, plays and ornaments her royal court often displayed. She was the first known woman to be of significance amongst the Tianos, she stood in solidarity with her people to the death; even after being offered a position as a concubine for the Spanish. Anacaona was amongst the first of the Tianos to fight off the Spanish conquerors when they arrived on the Island of Hispaniola, although she was defeated she will always be remembered as a brave warrior and a champion of freedom. Revered by her people because of her fearless actions, and leadership, she is often thought of as a myth rather than an actual historical person. Queen Anacaona, we proudly, stand on your shoulders.
J.A. Ward.
Mary Jane Grant Seacole was an early nurse in the British Empire during the 19th Century. Born in Kingston, Jamaica as Mary Grant, she was the daughter of a Scottish officer and a black mother. Mary’s mother ran a hospital/boarding house in Kingston and she, after a brief period as a servant, returned to her family home and worked alongside her mother. It was during this period that Mary’s skills as a nurse were first recognised and she spent a good deal of time travelling throughout the Caribbean providing care. Mary Jane Grant married Edwin Seacole in 1836 but he died eight years later.
In 1850, Mary Seacole resided briefly in Panama with her half brother, Edward, where they ran a hotel for travelers bound for Gold Rush California. Seacole’s reputation as a nurse grew as she provided care for these mostly American travelers during several outbreaks of cholera.
In 1853, when Great Britain declared war on Russia, initiating the Crimean War, Seacole traveled to England to offer her services. The British government and the Crimean Fund initially rejected her offer of assistance. An old friend and distant relative, Thomas Day, however, provided Seacole with the necessary funds to travel to the Crimea and set up a hospital and boarding house for convalescing officers. In the 1850s Crimea was part of the Russian Empire. After the break up of the Soviet Union, it became part of Ukraine and only in 2014 was it annexed to Russia again.
On arrival in Turkey, Seacole sought out Florence Nightingale and offered her services. Nightingale refused but Seacole continued on to the Crimea despite having no official support. When she arrived in the Crimea she constructed her hotel near the British lines surrounding Sevastopol out of driftwood and packing crates and opened its doors in March 1855. The “British Hotel” as it was called, soon thrived.
Nightingale continued her unfriendliness to Seacole’s efforts. She later described the hotel as no better than a brothel because Seacole, without outside funds, sold alcohol to support her work. Seacole, however, endeared herself to British soldiers and became famous for going to the battlefields to treat wounded men, often under fire. To identify herself as a non-combatant to Russian soldiers, she wore brightly coloured clothes and ribbons in her hair. When Sevastopol fell to British forces, Mary Seacole was the first female nurse into the beleaguered city. There she treated both British and Russian troops.
When the Crimean War ended in 1856, Seacole left the Crimea almost penniless. On her return to England, she was declared bankrupt and only the intervention of Queen Victoria’s nephew, Prince Victor of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, saved her from destitution. The Prince helped set up a charitable fund for Seacole that people from across Britain donated to, including, surprisingly, Florence Nightingale.
In 1857 Seacole attempted to raise funds to travel to India to assist with the wounded in the Indian Rebellion. Her business partner, Day, persuaded her otherwise. By 1860 Mary returned to Jamaica. Short of money once more, she received support from patrons including the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh who provided her funds to purchase land and build a modest home in Kingston. By 1870 Seacole had returned to London where she treated, amongst others, Alexandra, Princess of Wales for rheumatism. Mary Seacole died in Paddington, London on May 14, 1881. She was 76 years old.
Despite her name being almost forgotten for over one hundred years, today Mary Seacole is recognized as a pioneer in British nursing. A number of cities and universities have hospital buildings named after her including Salford, Birmingham City, and Thames Valley Universities. A much larger number of hospitals have Mary Seacole wards. In 1991 she was awarded the Jamaican Order of Merit and a few years later she was named as one of the 100 Greatest Black Britons.
In the article below Clarence Spigner, DrPH., Professor of Health Services in the School of Public Health, University of Washington, Seattle, briefly describes the saga of Henrietta Lacks whose cells have been used without her family’s permission for over sixty years of bio-medical research. Dr. Spigner teaches a course in the University of Washington’s Honors’ College based on the book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
Henrietta Lacks was born August 1, 1920, into a family of impoverished tobacco farmers in Roanoke, Virginia. She died at the age of 31 from the effects of cervical cancer on October 4, 1951, after treatment in Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. But Henrietta Lacks’s cells did not die. A sample taken from her without permission became the immortal He-La cell line used for extensive bio-medical research and then commodified in a multi-million dollar industry. Henrietta Lacks’s story was resurrected in magnificent detail in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the 2010 best seller by freelance science author Rebecca Skloot.
Born Loretta Pleasant (it is not clear how Henrietta became her first name), Henrietta’s mother, Eliza, born in 1886, died in childbirth in 1924. Henrietta’s father, John Pleasant (1881-1969), took the children to Clover, Virginia to be raised among relatives. Henrietta married her first cousin, David “Day” Lacks (1915-2002) in 1941 when she already had two children, Lawrence and Elsie. Henrietta had her first child at age 14. Following the Depression and between the two World Wars, opportunities for African Americans opened in the steel mills in Bethlehem, Maryland, near Baltimore, and in 1941, Henrietta and David left tobacco farming with the two children and joined the Great Migration. They bought a home in Turner Station, which is now Dundalk, Maryland.
Henrietta and David had five children, Lawrence (1935- ), Elsie (1939-1955), David aka Sonny (1947- ), Deborah (1949-2009), and Joseph aka Zakariyyan Bari Abdul Rahman (1950- ). Oldest daughter Elsie was mentally disabled. When around eleven years old, Elsie was committed to what was then called the Hospital for the Negro Insane, now Crownsville State Hospital. Receiving horribly inadequate and outdated treatment for mental illness at this hospital, Elsie lasted five horrendous years before dying. Deborah, Henrietta’s youngest daughter, searched for her older sister while relentlessly seeking understanding and justice about her mother’s “immortal cells.” These elements formed the core themes of Skloot’s exceptional book.
In 1951, Henrietta Lacks was diagnosed with cervical cancer and was treated at the segregated Johns Hopkins Hospital with radium tube inserts, a standard treatment at the time. As a matter of routine, samples of her cervix were removed without permission. George Otto Gey (1899-1970), a cancer researcher at Hopkins had been trying for years to study cancer cells, but his task proved difficult because cells died in vitro (outside the body). The sample of cells Henrietta Lacks’s doctor made available to Gey, however, did not die. Instead they continued to divide and multiply. The He-La cell line was born. He-La was a conflagration of Henrietta Lacks.
Permission for doctors to use anyone’s cells or body tissue at that time was traditionally not obtained, especially from patients seeking care in public hospitals. The irony was that Johns Hopkins (1795-1873), an abolitionist and philanthropist, founded the hospital in 1889 to make medical care available to the poor. Informed Consent as a doctrine came into practice in the late 1970s, nearly three decades after Henrietta Lack’s death. The new practice grew out of the embarrassment over World War II Nazi medical experiments and the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment of 1932-1972.
George Gey attempted to protect the privacy of the deceased Henrietta Lacks. Thus the origin of the cells was alleged to have come from Helen Lane or Helen Larson, or even from Austrian-born American actress, Hedy Lamarr (1913-2000). Gey was the consummate professional biologist and used Henrietta Lacks’s cells in the sole interests of finding a cure for cancer. With no desire for profit, he made the He-La cells available to all interested in biological research, including virologist Jonas Salk (1914-1995). The He-La cell line in turn allowed the discovery of the Salk vaccine which led to the near world-wide eradication of polio.
Why didn’t Henrietta Lacks’ cells die in-vitro (outside her body)? Biologists have their own answers about smallest living unit, but the immortality of Henrietta Lacks’s cells probably had to do with telomerase which protected the cell chromosome from deterioration. Telomerase blocked cell division in the body, which is a good thing, in that when cancerous cells divide, they push out the good cells and produce tumours. Henrietta Lacks had cervical cancer and those cells ultimately killed her. Yet, those same cancer cells continued to divide outside of her body, allowing them to be studied for medical advancement. Skloot pointed out that more than 60,000 studies were published by researchers who used the He-La cells, thus advancing their careers and professional prestige of the institutions which employed them. He-La cells were shot into space to test the effects of gravity on the human cell. Research on Human Papillomavirus (HPV) and on apopotsis or programmed cell death (PCD) was also advanced because of Lack’s still living cells.
The genetic revolution exploded almost immediately following her death. Molecular biologist James B. Watson (1928- ) and geneticist Francis Crick (1916-2004) created the double-helix model in the discovery of Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) in 1953, a year before the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education which is generally credited with launching the black-led Civil Rights Movement. The eventual commodification of the He-La cells was never George Gey’s intent. While he may not have been interested in money, researchers survive in educational institutions and research laboratories by advancing knowledge, and access to the He-La facilitated public and private grant-funding for these researchers. Medical doctors are bound by the Hippocratic Oath which requires its takers to practice medicine ethically and honestly. No such oath is required of medical researchers whom the public often confuse with physicians. Successful research brought recognition from colleagues, the institutions, the medical industry, and the general society. Ironically the cancer cells cut from the cervix of an impoverished 20th century African American woman generated far greater financial rewards than the effort of Lack’s enslaved ancestors to produce a child in antebellum Virginia to enrich the family’s slave owner.
The triumph of 21st century free market biotechnology, the medical-industrial complex, and continuing health inequalities by race were all epitomized by the ongoing exploitation of Henrietta Lacks’s cells. By 1993, her only surviving daughter, Deborah Lacks-Pullum, was fighting to understand the continuing existence of her mother as the smallest unit of life. She had to confront the mind-bending cultural incompetency and insensitivity of the bio-medical profession. Researchers “communicated” with Lacks family members in what can only be described as academic gibberish. She wrestled with inadequate and misleading information, such as statement that what was the very essence of her mother, through cell-fusion, could now be combined with plants and animals.
Evolutionary biologist Leigh Van Valen (1935-2010) reported the He-La cells had developed into a new species and was no longer human. To Deborah, such crude unqualified information meant her mother was somewhere in a man-made hell. The stress such comments generated drove Deborah to suffer at least two strokes. Rebecca Skloot, a freelance science writer finally broke though the understandable mistrust of Deborah and the rest of the Lacks family, setting a course towards determining the truth about her mother’s cells.
Meanwhile, bio-technology laboratories and academic research institutions grew rich from the continually dividing He-La cells while the Lacks family endured continuing poverty and deprivation. The ethical contradictions of their mother’s cells having been taken, studied, sold, and resold in the free-market was tested in the U.S. Supreme Court case of Moore v. Regents of California (1990). John Moore had visited the University of California Medical Center in 1976 seeking treatment for hairy cell leukemia from Dr. David W. Golde, who took cell samples. By 1983, Golde had created a cell-line from Moore’s T-lymphocytes without Moore’s knowledge. Dr. Golde named himself and colleague Shirley G. Quan as the inventors of the new cell-line and entered into agreements with Genetics Institute, a bio-tech corporation engaged in the development of commercial applications for its research. As part of the agreement Golde was named a paid consultant and quickly grew wealthy from stock options in the bio-tech company. Upon discovering Golde’s deception, Moore, a well-educated, middle class white man, hired an attorney and sued for a share of the profits gained from his own bodily tissue. The California Supreme Court, however, reasoned that Moore had no right to any of the profits, even if derived from his own “discarded” body-parts. The Court concluded that bio-medical research would be undermined if individual patients (or research subjects) had the power of profit from medical advancement as a result of research done from their own body parts. It said nothing about the ability of researchers to profit from those same parts. The Moore decision gave medical researchers and institutions the unlimited right to manipulate body tissue of unsuspecting patients for private gain.
The life and death of Henrietta Lacks is a cautionary tale that reflects the inherent contradiction between the stated purpose of medical research to provide benefit to human kind and the reality of blatant profiteering in the name of the advancement of science. Rebecca Skloot was not the first writer to investigate institutional racism in medicine and this treatise should not be taken as a thorough review of her impressive research for The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Yet since the book’s publication in 2010, bio-medical institutions have successfully adopted the tactics of politicians and movie stars when caught engaging in bad behavior. Slick websites under bio-medical sponsorship which pay homage to Henrietta Lacks, have sprung up like weeds in a garden. Self-invited speakers come forth admitting institutional shortcomings but never institutional guilt. Carefully worded statements crafted by well-paid attorneys declare that the academic research institutions they represent made no money from the Lacks cells. They fail to mention the incredible amount of prestige and grant-funding the He-La line brought and continues to bring those institutions. The tragedy of the Henrietta Lacks saga should remind all of us, and especially those of us in the medical profession, that we have a responsibility to protect, not profit from, the bodies of those we serve including the smallest piece of those bodies, the human cell.
But even though the U.S. District Court Eastern District of Virginia lawsuit – Lisa Cypress v. PNC Bank and the Northampton County Board of Supervisors – may appear to be a divisive action, Cypress intends for the outcome to benefit and bring unity to the entire community.
“This is not a division thing, it’s a unifying thing,” Cypress said in an Aug. 13 interview with the Eastern Shore Post.
The Accawmacke Indians – many of whom were “Negroid” in appearance, Cypress notes – also were known as the Gingaskin Indians, but Cypress generally avoids calling the tribe by that name because it has no root in the English language and forms an anagram that contains a racial slur.
An Accawmacke Indian reservation existed in Eastville from 1640 until 1813, when the reservation was legally terminated. According to Northampton court records, the land was divided into 27 lots of 25.5 acres each and deeded to the remaining tribe members in 1814.
Cypress can trace her family history back more than 250 years, to her fifth great-grandparents, Edmund Press and Rachel West, both Accawmacke Indians who were deeded land in 1814.
Cypress is a blood relative of six Accawmacke Indians who owned land on the former reservation. However, she is suing for the land of only two family members, Molly West (whose husband was William West) and Ebby Press (who was married several times and was named Ebby Francis when her land was deeded).
The land deeded to Molly West is the current location of PNC Bank’s Eastville branch. The lands that belonged to Ebby Press, by both deed and inheritance, are now known as Indiantown Park, approximately 50 acres owned by the Northampton board of supervisors.
The Northampton County courthouse contains two plats of the Accawmacke Indian land surveyed in 1813. One is found in Plat Book 2, 1808-1833, and the other is in Plat Book 35, 1808-1816, pages 257-533.
Both plats show Indiantown Road running west and east and its intersection with Seaside Road, running north and south, roughly as they are today. The Accawmacke Indian land appears to be bounded on the west by Courthouse Road and on the east by the water.
If Cypress was granted the PNC Bank lot, its fate would be up to negotiation, but she would favor the bank remaining on the property, as it is economic development, she said.
The Accawmacke Indians have a three-phase development plan for Indiantown Park, which would begin by transforming the existing building into a “historical, economic, agricultural indigenous learning center,” Cypress said.
Her long-term vision for the land includes a museum, gardens, a petting zoo, sweat lodges, and a tea shop with tea made from homegrown herbs like sassafras.
Later build-outs could include overnight lodging similar to a longhouse, and additional activities offered could include archery and learning about Accawmacke Indian crafting skills and herbal healing.
She also would like to see an herb-bottling plant similar to a facility currently operating in North Carolina.
The Accawmacke Indians were the “first documented herbologists,” she said.
“We want to actually be able to tell the historical truths and be able to give people an experience they cannot receive any other place in the world,” Cypress said.
Eventually there also would be water access for canoeing and other activities. Connection to the water is “essential,” said Cypress, who recently participated in an impact study by the University of Virginia on the effects of the Accawmacke Indians being landlocked for decades.
Tourism will play a role in the area’s economic growth, but development will be carefully planned to keep tourist attractions and residential areas separate.
“That will protect the agricultural and historic nature of the area because … tourism is not every day. People come and they leave, which is a good thing.”
“It enables you to have a sense of normalcy and it doesn’t necessarily invite an influx of people that changes the entire area,” Cypress said.
Indiantown Park’s existing commitments to host events and activities, such as soccer games, would be fulfilled during the transition period, she said.
The park would become a business incubator, complete with its own credit union so “people can invest in each other,” she said.
The community also would have a storehouse – similar to a food pantry – for people in need, but Cypress hopes no one would be in need because everyone in the community would either have a job or own a business.
“The focus … is to actually grow the area and create opportunities for not just our people but all the people that have not been able to have it for all this time,” she added.
The project will be inclusive of all Eastern Shore citizens, particularly the disadvantaged, whether they have darker complexions like indigenous Accawmacke Indians, or they appear European.
“Accawmackes, we love everybody. That’s just the way we are.”
The legal action being taken “is a mechanism to actually grow the area for everyone. And trust and believe that most of the people who have long genealogies here are related, whatever their complexion or so-called race may be classified as,” Cypress said.
“Eastville doesn’t get love. … People are not moving and throwing their money into Eastville,” she observed.
“The real goal is to actually bring resources to the area in a way that no one else can. … The county couldn’t do it. No one else can actually do this.”
Northampton County court records relating to Accawmacke Indians may appear accurate to someone unfamiliar with genealogy, but many of the documents are “faulty,” Cypress said.
Through the years, the land records have been muddled as names were changed (for example, referring to “Mary” as “Molly”), coordinates were rewritten, or boundary lines were redrawn.
But landmarks can’t be moved. Indiantown Creek is shown on the plat of the Accawmacke Indian land survey of 1813, bordering the Ebby Francis property, lot number 26. It’s the same creek that can be seen from Indiantown Park today.
Both PNC Bank and the Northampton board of supervisors have responded to the lawsuit, with the board of supervisors requesting to dismiss the case based on grounds that Cypress deems “frivolous,” such as Cypress representing herself.
Northampton supervisors also stated the case was filed in the wrong jurisdiction, but Cypress said the Eastern District of Virginia, a federal court, is the correct court because the case involves parties in two different states – Cypress currently lives and works in Georgia.
She will file an amendment to her claim and the defendants again must respond. Cypress is confident the lawsuit will not be dismissed but proceed.
“The land theft throughout hundreds of years is horrific,” she said. Indiantown Park even contains Accawmacke Indian burial grounds. But her lawsuit is a means to “restore some of what was taken … and also build and move forward,” she said.
“I feel like the Eastern Shore is where everything happened … the world just really starts there. So I feel like when we can get it right, there’s hope for everybody else to get it right.”
The Accawmacke Indians operate a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, American Indigenous Accawmacke Indians. For more information, visit their Facebook page of the same name or accawmacke.org
Historical accounts and images of the indigenous Hawaiin people. Although the evidence is minimal, according to Kalamu ya Salaam, Africans arrived in Hawaii as a result of extensive exploration long before the Europeans began their global expeditions.
The first Hawaiians and their royal counterparts were dark-skinned with very distinct African facial features.
Queen Liliʻuokalani was known as the last black royal of Hawaii and was the first and last female to rule between 1891 and 1893.
Queen Lydia Lili’u Loloku Walnia Kamaka’eha was born on September 2, 1838. Her father was the High Chief Kamanawa II who was the great-grandson of one of the Kona chiefs in Hawaii. Currently, there is a tribe in Nigeria called the Jukun Kona tribe, there could be some connection as the Jukun-Kona tribe members are known for migrating to other parts of the world but there is no historical evidence of this.
After the death of her youngest brother in 1877, Liliʻuokalani became the heir to the throne. She was crowned princess and attended a Royal training school.
Liliʻuokalani developed a keen love for classical literature and music, she eventually became a professional composer and writer. She eventually married an American statesman named John Owen Dominis.
Princess Liliʻuokalani was crowned queen in 1891 after her elder brother King Kalākaua passed away.
Queen Liliʻuokalani made a significant impact during her short reign as queen. She modified laws and introduced new legislation that favored women. She launched savings account schemes for women, opened orphanages and established the Liliʻuokalani Educational Society to provide educational training for black girls from low-income backgrounds. She also created a financial aid scheme for young black women who wanted to enrol in training courses.
Queen Liliʻuokalani worked tirelessly to regain majority power for the monarchy of Hawaii after they lost power to the U.S government through the Bayonet Constitution.
Liliʻuokalani was overthrown by American and European business owners alongside U.S Minister John Stevens and the U.S Marines on January 17 1893.
Queen Liliʻuokalani penned a letter that read:
I, LILIUOKALANI, by the Grace of God and under the Constitution of The Hawaiian Kingdom, Queen, do hereby solemnly protest against any and all acts done against myself and the Constitutional Government of the Hawaiian Kingdom by certain persons claiming to have established a Provisional Government of and for this Kingdom.
Now to avoid any collision of armed forces, and perhaps the loss of life, I do under this protest and impelled by said force yield my authority until such time as the Government of the United States shall upon the facts being presented to it undo the action of its representative and reinstate me in the authority which I claim as the Constitutional Sovereign of the Hawaiian Islands.
In 1895, the queen was arrested for encouraging protests. She was placed under house arrest where she surrendered and gave up her crown in exchange for the release of innocent civilians that had been placed under arrest.
Liliʻuokalani attempted to re-establish the monarchy of Hawaii but all attempts failed. She lived under strict surveillance for the rest of her life until a stroke ended her life in 1917.
Queen Liliʻuokalani made a powerful impact during her reign as queen, providing many opportunities for underprivileged women in Hawaii. She is also remembered for her talent as a musician and writer. She penned her autobiography, the story of Hawaii while under house arrest after being overthrown by the Americans.
Charley Patton, born in Hinds County, Mississippi near the town of Edwards, is by consensus the Father of Delta blues and one of the most important American musicians of the 20th century. Legendary bluesmen Son House, Howlin’ Wolf, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, and Elmore James all trace their blues style back to Patton.
In addition to being a bluesman of the highest order, Patton might have also been the first rock and roller. He played the guitar loud and rough, often playing behind his knees and back and leaping about like a man possessed. One can begin with Patton’s protorock roots and see them extend to Howlin’ Wolf, then into Little Richard, James Brown, and ultimately Jimi Hendrix.
Although generally considered to be African American, Patton’s ancestry was a mixture of white, black and Cherokee. One of his grandmothers was full blood Cherokee. Patton described that mixed heritage in “Down the Road Blues,” singing of having gone down to “the Nation” and “the Territo” which was the Cherokee Nation of Indian Territory (now the eastern half of Oklahoma) where a number of black Indians tried to obtain entry to the Indian rolls and thus claim land, a legal battle which continues to this day.
When he was a child Patton’s family moved from the Mississippi hill country to the Delta to work on the Dockery plantation. It was here that both John Lee Hooker and Howlin’ Wolf came under the influence of Patton. Here he also came into contact with Henry Sloan, one of the earliest Delta bluesmen.
By age 19 Patton had become an accomplished performer and songwriter. Patton hoboed around the Delta playing parties, one-room juke joints, and levee camps, often with guitarist and friend Willie Brown. Patton finally got a chance to record in 1929 after he auditioned for Henry Speir, a white music store owner. Spier contacted Paramount Records and set up a recording session in Richmond, Indiana. On this session Patton recorded fourteen sides, one of which, “Pony Blues,” became his first released recording and ultimately his trademark tune.
Patton’s second session took place at Paramount’s studio in Grafton, Wisconsin with Delta fiddler Henry “Son” Sims. In 1930 Paramount issued thirteen Patton records and Patton became a certified country blues star. Often performing with Son House, Patton took House, Willie Brown, and pianist Louise Johnson with him to Grafton for his third recording session in 1933.
In 1934, despite failing health, Patton traveled to New York City to record for the American Record Company. One of the songs he cut, “Oh Death,” was tragically prophetic. Just a few months later, Patton died of a heart condition. He was forty-three years old. Charley Patton was inducted into the Blue’s Foundation Hall of Fame in 1980.
Nanny, known as Granny Nanny, Grandy Nanny, and Queen Nanny was a Maroon leader and Obeah woman in Jamaica during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Maroons were slaves in the Americas who escaped and formed independent settlements. Nanny herself was an escaped slave who had been shipped from Western Africa. It has been widely accepted that she came from the Ashanti tribe of present-day Ghana.
Nanny and her four brothers (all of whom became Maroon leaders) were sold into slavery and later escaped from their plantations into the mountains and jungles that still make up a large proportion of Jamaica. Nanny and one brother, Quao, founded a village in the Blue Mountains, on the Eastern (or Windward) side of Jamaica, which became known as Nanny Town. Nanny has been described as a practitioner of Obeah, a term used in the Caribbean to describe folk magic and religion based on West African influences.
Nanny Town, placed as it was in the mountains away from European settlements and difficult to assault, thrived. Nanny limited her attacks on plantations and European settlements and preferred instead to farm and trade peacefully with her neighbors. She did however make numerous successful raids to free slaves held on plantations and it has been widely accepted that her efforts contributed to the escape of almost 1,000 slaves over her lifetime.
While Nanny lived, Nanny Town and the Windward Maroons thrived and multiplied. The British colonial administration became embarrassed and threatened by the successes of the Maroons. Plantation owners who were losing slaves and having equipment and crops burned by Maroon raiders demanded that colonial authorities act. Hunting parties, made up of British regular army soldiers, militiamen, and mercenaries (many from the free black community), scoured the Jamaican jungles.
Captain William Cuffee, known as Captain Sambo, is credited as having killed Nanny in 1733 during one of the many and bloody engagements of the war. The war itself lasted from 1720 until a truce was declared in 1739; Cudjoe, one of Nanny’s brothers and a leader during the Maroon War, was the driving force behind the treaty. After Nanny’s death, many of the Windward Maroons moved across the island to the more sparsely inhabited Western (or Leeward) side of Jamaica. Nanny Town was eventually captured by the British and destroyed in 1734.
Nanny’s life and accomplishments have been recognized by the Government of Jamaica and she has been honored as a National Hero and awarded the title of “Right Excellent”. Currently, there are only seven such National Heroes and Nanny is conspicuous as the only woman. A modern portrait of Nanny, based on her description, appears on the Jamaican $500 note, the largest banknote in circulation in Jamaica.
Adolf Badin, also known as Adolf Ludvig Gustav Fredrik Albert/Couschi, was born in St. Croix, Danish West Indies in 1747, and died in 1822 in Sweden. Badin came to Sweden a slave but became a titled person in the courts of King Fredrick and Queen Ulrika during their reign (1751-1771). Badin married twice: first to Elisabet Svart in 1782, and then to Magdelena Eleonra Norell in 1799; he had no children. Badin has been described by his many court functions: assessor, page, footman, jester, diarist, servant, chamberlain, court secretary, ballet master, book collector. However, he preferred to call himself “farmer,” as he eventually owned two small farms, one in Svartsjolandet and the other in Sorunda.
Badin’s real last name was Couschi, but he was christened as Badin, which signifies “prankster.” He’s also been referred to as “Morianen” which was the colloquial name for African Diasporians in Europe at that time.
At the age of seven, Couschi was purchased in St. Croix and taken to Europe by a Danish sea captain who gave the boy to Queen Louisa Ulrika of Prussia (Queen of Sweden, 1751-1771) as a gift. Aristocratic ladies of that time considered it fashionable to have black pages in their palaces. Eva Engblom, a Swedish amateur scientist, who examined evidence of Moors (North and West Africans) in Europe, estimates that between 50 and 100 people of African descent were brought to Sweden during this time.
Queen Louisa Ulrika reigned during Sweden’s Age of Liberty (1718-1772), a period of political and scientific enlightenment. She founded the Swedish Academy of Science, which studied provocative thinkers of this era. Carl Linnaeus, the father of modern taxonomy, and Jean Jacques Rousseau, the major Western political and educational philosopher of the era, both captured the Queen’s attention. Some say that Badin was her experiment in that she wished to prove Rousseau’s theories of educational development including the then radical idea that children learned best by experiencing consequences rather than by coercion. Badin was allowed to roam freely in the royal palaces and was mentored and trained to become as highly educated as any European aristocrat of that period. He learned and spoke German, French, and Latin fluently. He was treated as a sibling of the Queen’s four children including Sofia Albertina who later became Badin’s patron. Consequently, Badin enjoyed intimate familiarity with Swedish royalty for the duration of his life.
At the age of 21, Badin was christened in the Chapel of Drottningholm Palace outside Stockholm and given all of the names of his listed sponsors: Adolf, Ludvig, Gustav, Fredrik, and Albert. He now accompanied the Queen on diplomatic missions and became a roving ambassador for the Swedish court. He also managed three royal palaces, collected books, and kept extensive journals. His diaries, written in French, are now archived in the library of Uppsala University. Badin’s book collection, numbering 800-900 volumes, was sold upon his death. Some historians note Badin as the first recorded book collector of African origin.
In 1782, upon Queen Ulrika’s death, Badin served three successive Swedish monarchs beginning with his childhood friend, King Gustav III who was murdered in 1792, Gustav IV (1792-1809), and Karl XIII (1809-1818). Despite his respect and devotion to Swedish royalty, Badin was rarely mentioned in Swedish history texts. He died in 1822 in Stockholm at the age of 75. His remains are buried in the Katarina Cemetery in Stockholm.
JACK D. FORBES
The Use of the Terms "Negro" and "Black" to Include Persons of Native American Ancestry in "Anglo" North America
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