Prince Among Slaves

Tonight, at 7:00 in Twomey Auditorium, we host the second National Endowment for the Humanities event of the semester, this one being a part of the Bridging Cultures: Muslim Journeys grant.  This event is co-sponsored at UCM by the James C. Kirkpatrick Library and the Department of History and Anthropology.  Dr. Jessica Cannon will lead the discussion, which will follow a public viewing of the PBS film Prince Among Slaves.  The focus will be on Abdul-Rahman Ibrahima, an African prince who was captured and sold into slavery, spent forty years as a slave on a cotton plantation outside of Natchez, Mississippi, and eventually was given his freedom through an amazing twist of fate--John Cox, a white doctor whom his family had once saved along the African coast, runs into Ibrahima some twenty years later in America.  Through letters written to Africa and U.S. officials, including the President, Ibrahima is eventually freed and given passage back to Africa.

Ibrahima was not the only West African slave who brought Muslim religious traditions to the American South; some tens of thousands of enslaved individuals lived similar lives trying to acculturate to the Protestant south.  Nor is he the only slave to escape slavery, as the recent movie Twelve Years a Slave attests.  These lesser-known stories of resistance and individuality amid the destructive forces of slavery are beginning to receive long-deserved attention.

There are many additional resources to investigate if these topics interest you.  You can check out the PBS movie Prince Among Slaves from the JCK Library at UCM, along with the book by the same name from author Terry Alford.  There are several dozen other books and videos in the library as part of the Muslim Journeys Bookshelf you can also check out.

Online, an excellent resource is the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database which documents almost 35,000 slaving voyages between 1514 and 1866.  The website is: http://slavevoyages.org/tast/index/faces .