Review: WAKE:THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF WOMEN LED-SLAVE REVOLTS

It was not until I was reading the acknowledgements that I was reminded that I’d helped in a very small way to make this important and wonderful book happen - Rebecca Hall’s WAKE:THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF WOMEN LED-SLAVE REVOLTS  with illustrations by Hugo Martînez published June 2021.  Rebecca writes ‘I also joyfully thank all of Wake’s supporters on Kickstarter’ I was one of those supporters in 2018.

   

 Wake's Kickstarter Proposal (2018)

The book’s subtitle, for me, uses the descriptor hidden for Black history correctly. All too often Black history is described as hidden, forgotten, untold and so on , implying some agency denying the history being  brought to light when all that’s required is an enquiring mind and a few moments with Google. However in this case Rebecca’s history is really hidden – the history of Black woman. I know this from the work on my presentation on the Queen of Sheba from the Bible and Andromeda from the Classics both women were Black but were actively denied their Black identity - Misogynoir and the History of The Image of the African Woman in Western European Art
 

Rebecca tells a real hidden history one in which the deeds of men - Black and white – are noted while the acts of Black women most times go unrecorded. It’s in that unreceording, traces, clues are left of Black women’s presence and agency. Rebecca looks at eighteenth records of enslavement in institutions -  academic and commercial - on both sides of the Atlantic in an attempt to bring that Black women’s presence  to life, from delving into the uncatalogued records of the New York library to be being thrown out of the Lloyds of London archives being told ‘we decide who can see our records and for what purpose.’ 

It was the response of Lloyds that intrigued me, I was minded of the NY Times 1619 Project discussing the links between capitalism and enslavement  where it says: A majority of credit powering the American slave economy came from the London money market. Years after abolishing the African slave trade in 1807. I’ve written to Lloyds to find out more about that statement, more of that if and when Lloyds get back to me. 

She tells her journey to find the truth of the Black women’s presence, with as she says ‘with a measured use of historical imagination’ to tell the story behind the statistic that at least one in ten of the slave ships had a revolt on board and ‘the more women onboard a slave ship, the more likely the revolt. 

The book talks of the barbarity of the trade to women and their bodies. Rebecca writes of pregnant enslaved Black woman sentenced to death by hanging having her execution ‘delayed until after she gave birth because that baby was someone’s property.’ Of the heroism of the on-board revolts and of the ultimate self-sacrifices – the suicides of the Middle Passage. Stories, brilliantly and emotionally brought to life, then and now as we move in our mind’s eye from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century thro Hugo’s innovation in telling the story in graphic form.

Hugo’s illustrations artfully tells Rebecca's story innovatively, often with much emotion and realism. For example, relating her lived experience as Black woman on the streets of New York, being forcibly brushed aside by an anonymous twentieth first century suited White business man, hurrying by, brief case in hand, who doesn’t break his stride, rushing on, ignoring the incident; contrasting that with an eighteenth century White man doing exactly the same thing but with a whip in hand,  eerily reflected in a window.

 

Rebecca in deed tells a hidden history and thru Hugo’s innovation in illustration the story is brought to life. Wake’s an emotional, challenging, thought provoking book. I was profoundly caught in its wake, the wake Rebecca describes of the victors’ version of history which erases resistance. Hugo on every page of Wake makes that resistance visually real as Rebecca brings it back to life through her measured historical imagination. To conclude, I’m feeling quite pleased with myself, that in a small way I have helped make this very important and highly readable book happen – a must read.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Review: Chater, Kathleen. (2021) Henry Box Brown: From Slavery to Show Business,

Review Chater, Kathleen. (2021)  Henry Box Brown: From Slavery to Show Business, McFarland & Company, Jefferson, North Carolina, USA

Kathy’s highly readable latest book is the biography of the African American, fugitive slave, abolitionist and entertainer – Henry ‘Box’ Brown - born around 1815 into slavery on a planation in Richmond Virginia from where he conceived an ingenious  plan to escape enslavement – he would be mailed to freedom in a box to the free North. His plan worked, hence that middle name. Kathy describes how he wrote his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, and commissioned a panorama, a series of anti-slavery images along with a depiction of his escape.

He toured with his box, the Narrative and panorama in the Northern free states before fleeing to Britain in 1850 following passing of the Fugitive Slave Act. Britain became his home for 25 years, where he married again and had a second family. Before the Civil War he toured Britain becoming a celebrated abolitionist, speaking out against slavery and its horrors. After the American Civil War, when his abolitionist anti-slavery message was no longer needed, he reinvented himself in order to earn a living, using the acting and enteraining skills he had developed touring to create Prof. H. Box Brown, King of the Mesmerists and The African Prince mesmerist and conjuror acts. He returned to America in 1875 and continued touring. He died in 1897 in Canada.

 

The book’s contents page reads like a play, making the book easy to follow and read, as well as to dip into. Kathy divides his life into three acts which each act having a number of scenes. Act 1 Liberty describes his early years, his escape to freedom and the start of anti-slavery touring, escaping the Fugitive Slave Act to Britain, ending with how he has to reinvent himself in the face of difficulties; Act 2 Partnership tells of his marriage, more touring and more changes as he develops other lecture subjects, including the Indian Mutiny, and finally Act 3 Magic tells of his life after slavery ended in America and his abolitionist story no longer needed to be told.

 

There are some nice personal touches such as when discussing why there are so few ‘women of colour’ to be found in the crime records. Kathy tells us this is ‘partly because women were (and are) more law abiding’ (my emphasis). As well as giving her opinion ‘The Welsh…tend to regard everything that comes from England as culturally inferior.’ 

 

Henry Box Brown is a very enjoyable book to read, diligently researched with an authoritative scholastic air yet still very accessible. Her many quotes and references are backed by detailed endnotes and a comprehensive bibliography. I particularly like the way Kathy uses sub headings to break the story up including  a Betteridge headline showing her journalist roots – ‘[Henry Box Brown] the First Magician of Colour?’  - I leave you to guess the answer.

 

If you are looking for an accessible introduction to understanding Henry Box Brown’s life and how a fugitive slave survived, even thrived on the anti-slavery lecture and presentation circuit in Victorian England alongside others such as Ellen and William Craft, William Wells Brown and Frederick Douglass, then this is the book for you. #Recommended.

The Black King a slave ? No!

Twice I re ent times I have read that image of the Black King has its origins in slavery both times from leading white Western institutions who appear to have only one lens for the observation of  Black history - slavery. All Black history leads back to slavery in their eyes. This is wrong. The Black King in Adoration images does not have its roots in slavery, The image has a rich and complex history which rooted in bible study, courtly practice and artistic tradition.

FIRST TIME...

The first time was a piece in the Guardian which included the statement:

The emergence of a realistically portrayed black character in Renaissance art reflected ….. a seismic shift in global events as European ships, led by Portugal and Spain, explored the Atlantic and established trading – and slaving – outposts on the African coast. 

The Guardian Jonathan Jones Mon 21 Dec 2020 

I was so incensed by this poorly researched and ill-informed piece I wrote a lengthy tweet which sought  to correct the piece's error.

Myrrh mystery: how did Balthasar, one of the three kings, become black? https://t.co/Uar9QsuYVu #JonathanJones @guardianartbot @guardian 
A miss-informed article - Portugal, Spain & slavery had no part in the origins of image of the Black Magus - follow thread for actual story

— Michael Ohajuru (@michael1952) December 22, 2020

SECOND TIME...

The second time was Getty Museum blog post about their exhibition Balthazar A Black African King in Medieval and Renaissance Art (November 19, 2019–February 16, 2020):

[I]t would take nearly 1,000 years for European artists to begin representing Balthazar, the youngest of the three kings, as a black man. Why? The explanation can be found through a closer look at the history of this period—specifically, in the rise of the African slave trade in mid-1400s.

Getty Museum Blog May 9, 2019 , updated November 19, 2019 

No tweet this time I will respond to the closing sentence of their blog post  (sic) We invite your input on this work, our approach, and what we have shared here.

The idea that one of the three Magi could be Black, predates White Western European chattel slavery - the Atlantic trade in enslaved African people dates from the 15th century. Equally the Black magus image predates that trade as it first recorded in the mid 14th century Holy Roman Empire Bohemia.

The image was not a response to what the Guardian calls a "seismic shift in events led by slavery"'  nor was it as the Getty museum says due "specifically, [to] the rise of the African slave trade in mid-1400s." Its origin is complex, on the one hand  rooted in the age old conflict between church and state - Pope and Emperor - on the other what can only be called  Renaissance cognitive dissonance as ideas and images became conflated.

The Roman theologian Tertullian was the first  to suggest that the Magi were kings basing his idea on an interpretation of Psalms 72:10-11 ‘The kings of Tarshish....the kings of Sheba and Seba will present him gifts. All kings will bow down to him and all nations will serve him’.  There were other Adoration prophesies to be found in the Old Testament though more obscure -  Queen of Sheba visiting Solomon and ‘three mighty men’ visiting David. Solomon and David were both kings of the Jews.

The emergence and development of the black Magus was complicated by myths and themes around two other blacks - Prester John, the mythical Ethiopian King and the Queen of Sheba – their iconography complicated and contaminated that of the black Magus.  It is safe to say is that Cologne played an important role in the mid fourteenth century and perhaps earlier in portraying one of the Magi as black : the patron saint of the city was the black Saint Maurice whose representation perhaps, has its origins in the Ethiopians Frederick II (1194-1250) met on his Crusades; the city also also had the three Magi represented on its coat of arms and its Cathedral contains the shrine of the three kings.

So to say that the image was a response to slavery or was specifically related slavery is incorrect and ill-informed,  its origin predates the transatlantic slave in enslaved Africans. Essentially the Adoration composition celebrates all earthly Kings coming together to pay homage  to the heavenly King - Jesus God made man, King of Heaven and Earth. 

To conclude the images of the Black Magus  has a history which began before the trade in enslaved people,  part of a very different story - slavery is NOT the only lens to consider the Black image and its  history.