Journal One

803 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Overview of african culture

Dr. Iyelli Ichile visited the Molefi Kete Asante Institute to talk about the African cultural in the African Diaspora. She talked a lot about getting in touch with your ancestors and feeling the roots of your people. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to fully connect with what she was saying. I never think about my ancestors because they are so spread out and from many different nationalities. So, instead of trying to connect with what she said, I decided to try and understand what she was talking about. She brought up the Maroon people often during the talk, so I wanted to reflect on her speech by learning about these people and why she used them for comparisons so often.
The Maroon people started as early as the 16th century. Many slaves escaped Spanish slave traders and looked for residence in South America, primarily. Halfway through the 17th century, runaway slaves have developed communities all over inland Jamaica. One of the earliest recorded, and most prominent settlements, were founded around the turn of the 18th century, Nanny Town.
Nanny Town was founded by Queen Nanny, or Granny Nanny, along with a few recorded figures. Nanny was born to the Ashanti tribe of Ghana, but she was sold into slavery. It was believed that some of her family was involved in conflicts within her tribe which led to their tribes capture. When Nanny was sold to a sugarcane plantation in Saint Thomas Parish, Jamaica, she met many other slaves that would later help her become leader of a very influential town. She escaped the plantation with Accompong, Cudjoe, and Quao. Accompong founded a settlement in Saint Elizabeth Parish named Accompong Town. Cudjoe found a settlement in Saint James Parish named Cudjoe Town. Nanny and Quao went to Portland Parish ...

... middle of paper ...

...orm resisting communities. The reason that Dr. Ichile said that we should look towards our ancestors and be more like the Maroon people is because they stood up for their rights. They escaped slavery and formed colonies that fought against the very empire that enslaved them. I believe that the specific Maroon community that she says we should look towards is the Maroon people of Jamaica.
Even though the Maroon people of Jamaica signed treaties that forced them to turn away runaway slaves, they still defied the British Empire and helped slaves. The British Empire feared Cudjoe and his people due to Cudjoe’s excellent fighting tactics. The British Empire even recognized them as excellent fighters by making them agree to be protectors of the island. Cudjoe burned and raided most of the British sugarcane plantations and helped cripple the control they had over Jamaica.

Show More
Related

  • Black, White, and Indian:Race and the Unmaking of an American, by Claudio Saunt

    1111 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Tracing a single Native American family from the 1780’s through the 1920’s posed a number of challenges,” for Claudio Saunt, author of Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmaking of an American Family. (pg. 217) A family tree is comprised of genealogical data that has many branches that take form by twisting, turning, and attempting to accurately represent descendants from the oldest to the youngest. “The Grayson family of the Creek Nation traces its origins to the late 1700’s, when Robert Grierson, a Scotsman, and Sinnugee, a Creek woman, settled down together in what is now north-central Alabama. Today, their descendants number in the thousands and have scores of surnames.” (pg. 3)

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Allison Joseph's On Being Told I Don T Speak Like A Black Person

    687 Words  | 2 Pages

    addition, after WWI, there were many waves of Jamaican peoples that would come to America.

    Read More

  • Why Did Haiti Justified

    1329 Words  | 3 Pages

    The slave insurrection began in August 1791 in Saint-Domingue. Though many conflicts flared in Martinique and Guadeloupe a few years prior, they were not as well coordinated and massive. Not expecting so many to come and attack at once, white planters were overwhelmed.

    Read More

  • The Changing Duality of Race, Martha Hodes

    973 Words  | 2 Pages

    This week’s articles carry a couple related, if not common, themes of imagined, if not artificial, constructs of race and identity. Martha Hodes’ article, “The mercurial Nature and Abiding Power of Race: A Transnational Family Story,” offers a narrative based examination of the malleable terms on which race was defined. To accomplish this she examines the story of Eunice Connolly and her family and social life as a window into understanding the changing dimensions of race in nineteenth-century America and the Caribbean, specifically New England and Grand Cayman. While Hodes’ article examines the construction of race in the Americas, Ali A. Mazrui’s piece, “The Re-Invention of Africa: Edward Sai, V. Y. Mudimbe, and Beyond,” looks at the construction of African identity. Although different in geographic loci, the two articles similarly examine the shaping influences of race and identity and the power held in ‘the Other’ to those ends.

    Read More

  • Pros And Cons Of Slave Insurrection

    723 Words  | 2 Pages

    Petite maroonage occurred when a slave often in a large sugar plantation would runaway for period of days. The slave running away may have been triggered to leave by a particularly brutal beating, the sale of spouse or children, or some unbearable humiliation. Grand maroonage occurred when the slave did not return but instead stayed in a maroon community of other runaway slaves. Grand maroonage was a central feature of Cuban slavery and resulted in the formation of palenques or cumbes. 4 However creating and maintain a maroon community free of colonial interference was very difficult. Colonies would often enlist the help of maroons to put down slave revolts in exchange for their freedom to live in their community without threat of a colonial intervention. Asserting the quote by journalist Jerry Pournelle “Freedom is Not

    Read More

  • Night Journal

    1127 Words  | 3 Pages

    Journal Entry #1 Wiesel says this because he wants to keep the Holocaust from happening again. He probably meant that it is selfish to keep something to yourself when it is important and you can prevent it from happening. When he was being tortured, the other citizens did nothing to help. Maybe he just wants to make up for what others did not do for him. I agree and disagree with his statement.

    Read More

  • The Autobiography Of Afrocentrism

    1093 Words  | 3 Pages

    “You remember your roots, Aliyah” she said “because one day, that’s all you’ll have left.” I remember my great-grandmother would chant this to me often, she’d usually do so before she’d unfold some story that illustrated the history of my culture. Rocking back and forth in her chair she’d witness to me, about the misfortunes of our ancestors, and the debasement of our race. She’d speak of things that were all result of the darkness of our skin, and how our strong complexion resisted being kept within the shadows of segregation and misunderstanding. She’d often refer back to Africa in these lectures, differentiating between nicknames for the sacred continent, names such as the “Motherland” and “Mama Africa”. This stuck with me, and although I hadn’t known a name for her gospel when I was younger, as I got older and obtained more interest I’d realized she shared the same views of those of an “Afrocentric” follower. This intrigued me to further understand the way she thought, and where she learned these things from.

    Read More

  • West African Culture

    1341 Words  | 3 Pages

    From the 1500s to the 1700s, African blacks, mainly from the area of West Africa (today's Senegal, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Dahomey, Togo, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Gabon) were shipped as slaves to North America, Brazil, and the West Indies. For them, local and tribal differences, and even varying cultural backgrounds, soon melded into one common concern for the suffering they all endured. Music, songs, and dances as well as remembered traditional food, helped not only to uplift them but also quite unintentionally added immeasurably to the culture around them. In the approximately 300 years that blacks have made their homes in North America, the West Indies, and Brazil, their highly honed art of the cuisine so treasured and carefully transmitted to their daughters has become part of the great culinary classics of these lands. But seldom are the African blacks given that recognition.

    Read More

  • Slavery: The Role Of Cultural Resistance In America

    2491 Words  | 5 Pages

    “In the Caribbean and in many slave societies in the Americas, one of the most important aspects of resistance to slavery was the retention of African culture or melding African, American and European cultural forms to create new ones such as the Kweyol languages (Antillean Creole).” (“Resistance and Rebellion”) Despite the forcing of European culture on slaves, most of if not all of the of African culture of colonial slaves has been preserved and passed on through the generations. “The importance of African culture – names, craftsmanship, languages, scientific knowledge, beliefs, philosophy, music and dance, was that it provided the psychological support to help the captives resist the process of enslavement. The act of enslavement involved attempts to break the will and ignore the humanity of slaves in what was known as ‘seasoning’. (“Resistance and

    Read More

  • Cherokee Tribe: Beyond Stereotypes and Misconceptions

    1481 Words  | 3 Pages

    When a person today thinks of Native Americans, the immediate image that emerges in one’s mind is the ‘typical Indian’, a person wearing a headdress of vibrant feathers and whom lives in a teepee. However, for members of the Cherokee Tribe this depiction could not be further from the truth or more offensive to the people of today or those who came before them (speakers). Throughout the book Blood Politics, Circe Sturm seeks to allow those outside the tribe to see the true race, culture and identity of the Cherokee people as both the past and present are explored.

    Read More

  • The History of Jamaican Slavery

    1004 Words  | 3 Pages

    Adding to the unrest of the island was the existence of the Maroons. When the British invaded the island they demanded that the Spaniards surrender. In miscalculation, however, they gave them time to consider the offer. The Spaniards fled the island, but not before setting loose their cattle and freeing their slaves. These freed slaves then retreated to the mountains and developed their own threatening communities in the wild mountain interior of Jamaica (Hamshere 140). Often they terrorized the English by setting fire to homes and buildings or by murdering soldiers. The Maroons were not truly a vicious people, however they did feel the need to defend their freedom from the British by any means necessary.

    Read More

  • The Connections Between Judaism and Rastafarianism

    3663 Words  | 8 Pages

    "The Rastafarians emerge as a loosely organized inspirational group (or groups?) of men and women concerned at the plight of black people, especially the plight of those whose ancestors were forcibly removed from Africa to become the slaves of the white man on his plantations in the islands of the Caribbean"(Cashmore, 1). The English takeover of Jamaica in 1660 started the terrible beginning of the African Diaspora. Millions of Africans were stolen off of their continent and were shipped over to the Caribbean where they were fashioned to do slave labor so the Europeans could make money. Over 80 million Africans died in the process of departing to the islands. The slaves were denied any form of religion and were treated like animals. They were also denied food and were made to grow their own food so they could feed themselves. Many years went by till the slaves started to rebel. The 'Maroons' were a group of runaway slaves who started a powerful group of guerrilla warriors who lived in the most dangerous woods in Jamaica. But the Maroons gave in and signed a peace treaty in 1738 and were paid to catch the runaway slaves and became supporters of slavery.

    Read More

  • Light Skin, The Right Skin

    1268 Words  | 3 Pages

    Gabriel, Deborah. Layers of Blackness: Colourism in the African Diaspora. London: Imani Media, 2007. Print.

    Read More

  • Politics of Jamaica

    1766 Words  | 4 Pages

    The political and economic history of Jamaica is based upon its foundation as a slave colony. From the beginning, the colony was under Spanish rule that relied upon native slave laboring in the sugar fields. The first law to be implemented upon the island under Spanish rule was the Repartimiento, introduced by Governor Esquivel, the first governor of Jamaica. The law enabled colonists to apply for and receive special permission to use the natives for a period of time; forcing them into labors such as planting and logging (Bennett 70). Francisco de Garay, who became governor in 1514, enacted an other set of regulations called the Requermiento (The Requirement) (Bennett 70). This system was implemented with the basis that the colonists had to convert the natives to Christianity; Garay was hopeful that in doing so, the natives would “be tractable, properly maintained and live and greatly multiply” (Sherlock 70).

    Read More

  • The Rise and Impact of Rastafarianism in Jamaican Culture and Politics

    7642 Words  | 16 Pages

    Colonialism in Jamaica established a lasting social and economic hierarchy that benefited the white minority at the expense of the black majority. The colonization of Jamaica began with the Spanish occupation of the island in the early 1500’s. The Spanish set up small-scale plantations on the island, while focusing on piracy as the key to profit. The Spanish effectively committed genocide upon the native Arawak population by the time English gunboats won the rule of Jamaica from the Spanish armada in 1655. The British immediately increased the slave trade in order to establish a thriving plantation economy (Lake, p.

    Read More

More about Journal One

Open Document