400 years of slavery: Lagos obas, chiefs’ culpability

Bells tolled Sunday, 25 August at houses of worship, municipal buildings and national parks across the U.S. to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the beginning of slavery in the U.S.

The bell ringing is part of a national initiative to get Americans to recognize the historical importance of the arrival of the Africans in Virginia, then a British colony, at the end of Aug. 1619. It was the reason the United Nations also set aside 23 August to mark it.

The Washington National Cathedral, as reports indicated, rang its largest funeral bell for one minute starting at 3 pm (1900 GMT) to mark the anniversary. Churches in Boston, Atlanta and other major cities were expected to join, as was the U.S. National Park Service.

The bells were rung to recognise the strength of the Africans in the face of injustice and dehumanization, Reverend Randolph Marshall Hollerith, dean of Washington National Cathedral, said in a statement.

Several events were held in Virginia over the weekend to mark the arrival of the enslaved Africans who came from a part of the south-east coast of Africa that is now Angola.

That trade of the Africans for food at Point Comfort – now Fort Monroe, Virginia – is considered by many historians to be the beginning of slavery in the British colonies, a pivotal moment in American history that set the stage for the

U.S. Civil War, segregation, lynchings, race riots and struggles with race relations that continue today.

The National Park Service encouraged all 419 parks in its system to ring bells for four minutes – one minute for each century since the slave trade began.

However, without the culpability of Lagos Obas (and traditional rulers in Africa generally) Chiefs, rich men and women, the obnoxious trade in human beings would not have been successful.

In the story below, we present the roles of the above-mentioned individuals and how Bishop Ajayi Crowther and others helped to stop the obnoxious trade. The story, published on 24 December 2015, was entitled:

Lagos, Oshodi Tapa and inverted slaves

By Damola Awoyokun

My attention has been drawn to the press statement issued by the Oshodi Tapa family titled, “Oshodi Tapa wasn’t a slave of Oba Kosoko, says family” (The Guardian 6th May 2015) which is a response to my review of Prof Adeyemo Elebute’s magnificent biography: The Life and Times of James Pinson Labulo Davies: A Colossus of Victorian Lagos. The review was published as “Lagos, Slave Trade and the Founding Fathers” in The News, 9th December 2014. Read that story here: http://thenewsnigeria.com.ng/2014/12/lagos-slave-trade-and-the-founding-fathers/.

According to the family, when I said: “Prince Kosoko, who was Oba Eshilokun’s son, did not wait to be King before becoming a major slave trader. Princess Opo Olu, Kosoko’s sister owned 1400 slaves. Oshodi Tapa, Dada Antonio and Ojo Akanbi, like Ajayi Crowther, were former slaves, but unlike Crowther, they rose to become merchants themselves.” They reckoned I meant that Oshodi Tapa was a slave of Prince Kosoko. In that passage, I was listing the personalities who were slave traders and those who were ex-slaves; I was not listing who owned them. Ajayi Crowther was enslaved in March 1821 at his village of Oshogun 140km north of Lagos by Fulani slavers who capitalised on the weakened Oyo Empire to attack his village. Crowther, a boy of 12 years old was exchanged for a horse. The lady who brought him later exchanged him for tobacco leaves and a bottle of English wine from an Ijebu man who in turn sold him in Lagos to the Portuguese slave ship, Esperenza Feliz (meaning Free Spirit). Oba Eshilokun was the king at this time.

Click to read the rest here:
https://www.thenewsnigeria.com.ng/2019/08/slavery-anniversary-in-us-roles-of-lagos-obas-chiefs-in-the-trade/