'Judgement Day': an appropriate conclusion

Marcia Rowe, Gleaner Writer

With abolition of slavery in the air in the Americas, and more Africans purchasing their freedom, as well as an expanding union, it was Judgement Day for Southerners who continued to cling to an increasingly unpopular enterprise. It was by far the most gripping of the four chapters in the United States Embassy's documentary series, which had been going on every Wednesday since the beginning of Black History Month.

Every Wednesday, the embassy hosted, for free, a part of the documentary, Africans in America, after which there was a discussion lead by a university academic.

Last Wednesday that discussion was particulary engaging and showed that the audience had gleaned more than they had bargained for.

"I was almost in tears," remarked a member of the audience. While another found the series interesting. And as if they did not want the series to come to an end, they engaged Dr Matthew Smith, senior lecturer in the Department of History and Archaeology at the University of the West Indies and moderator for the evening, in the longest (approximately 40 minutes) discussion session of the weekly, monthlong screening.

The occasion was the showing of the concluding chapter of the documentary, Africans in America: Judgement Day, at Jamaica College, located on Old Hope Road.

Judgement Day, spans the period 1831-1865. Without the subtitles that plagued the previous chapters, it highlights the intense fight by blacks and some white abolitionists to end slavery. The struggle unfolds through the narratives of various individuals including Pierce Butler, a white plantation owner and his wife, Fanny Kemble; African Americans, Harriet Jacobs, Dred Scott and abolitionists John Brown (white) and a former slave Fredrick Douglas.

slave owner

The Butlers story symbolises the mood and the direction of the country. Butler, a slave owner sees no problem with how his slaves on Butler Island, the source of his wealth, were treated. His wife, an abolitionist, on the other hand was offended by what she saw. They eventually divorced and Butler, in a financial dilemma, made the largest sale of slaves on the mainland. Their relationship and marriage epitomises the simmering battle between North and South that eventually escalated into a civil war that took the lives of more Americans than all the country's previous wars combined.

And over 30 years after their counterparts in Jamaica were emancipated, Africans in America gained their freedom. But while constitutionally they were free, they were not equal.

In spite of this major set back, it is in Douglas' narrative that the progression from slave to a black man in the White House of the United States of America begins to take shape. Born in slavery, Douglas moved to the North after his freedom. There, he started his own newspaper called the North Star. And thus became the voice of those who were still enslaved. After the abolition of slavery, he became the first black American to serve in the diplomatic corps. Douglas went to Haiti and even visited Jamaica while in his role as part of the corps.

But two of the most compelling narratives were that of John Brown, who died trying to help a black man free his family as he could not buy their freedom; and Dred Scott who ran away to Chicago but was found and taken back to the South by his owner.

The ordeal of Harriet Jacobs who in an effort to escape spent seven days in a dingy, dark and rat-infested hole before she was able to leave the South provided some food for thought.

The post-documentary session showed connections to the happenings on the screen and kept Smith fully engaged.

Comparisons were made between the use of infanticide in Jamaica and America as a form of resistance; the loss in value of sugar cane as a contributory factor to the end of slavery in the British territory, as opposed to the viability of cotton to the Union; adjustment of the freed slaves in the industrial North, literacy among slaves, and limited revolts.