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| Celebration of Emancipation Day in Richmond, Virginia, 1905. |
Juneteenth, June 19
th is now a federal holiday in
the U.S.. In fact, it has been celebrated, especially in Texas, to
commemorate the original announcement there, two and a half years late, of The
Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. Although the holiday name is new to
some, it has long been viewed as a major celebration, especially for
and by black Americans. Interestingly, I noticed on the
Merriam-Webster website [an impeccable source!] evidence of
considerable and consistent use of the word since the late 19
th
century.
“Last
Wednesday the citizens of this city and vicinity, native Texans,
assembled in the fair grounds to commemorate the thirtieth
anniversary of the liberation of the bonded Afro-American of Texas.
...Closely
following the speakers an animated game of baseball was witnessed,
when this happy throng repaired to their homes expressing themselves
as highly pleased with their first Juneteenth celebration.”
Parson’s
Weekly. [Parsons KY] 22 June 1895.
Sherman
people celebrated the Juneteenth at the beautiful Fred Douglas school
grounds and the handsome Wood Lake park pavilion, midway between
Sherman and Denison, on the electric railway.
Freeman
[Indianapolis IN] 27 June 1908.
June
19th,
or, as it is humorously referred to, ‘Juneteenth’ is the day the
news of the emancipation proclamation reached Texas, so annually the
day is celebrated much as we do the Fourth of July.
Chicago
Defender, 3 July 1915.
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| Tennessee has just banned Critical Race Theory from its schools. |
My
only surprise at the above quotations is that Texas has never seemed
the most non-racist, diversity-encouraging, liberal state! And indeed, it wasn't; the formal Emancipation announcement was imposed on Texas by the Army. I
am beginning to write this on Juneteenth, a celebratory date of which
I had not heard until perhaps two or three years ago. What recently
drew my attention to it was reading that Republicans are setting out
to ban Critical Race Theory from school syllabi. I think that
Critical Race Theory [CRT] is an academic theory that underlines the
critical effect of race on identity and on law-making in America. I would guess that
there is a much more extended and sophisticated academic explication
of CRT but that is the basis. And that basic truth seems undeniable
in any country but overwhelmingly so in America.
That all said, I had a mind,
this Juneteenth, to explore Bristol, in England, where a statue of
Edward
 |
Edward Colston now housed in
Bristol Museum. |
Colston, a prominent slave trader and municipal benefactor, was toppled from its plinth
and thrown into the harbour during a Black Lives Matter demonstration in
2020. I am humbled, and aghast, at my discovery of a whole library of
slavery information about Bristol and its eminent men of wealth
during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Slaves became an
increasingly important commodity during the 17th |
| Aboard a slaving ship. |
century
as the British colonisation of the Caribbean and the Americas progressed
rapidly; cheap labour was urgently needed for various colonies to
work on sugar, rum, tobacco and cotton plantations. The Society of
Merchant Venturers, an organisation of elite merchants in Bristol,
wanted to participate in this lucrative commerce and eventually, in
1698, they managed, with help from business-men with similar
commercial interests in Hull and Liverpool, to break the trade
monopoly of the Royal African Company, a powerful London-based group
which had controlled all trade between Britain and Africa between
1672 and 1698. As soon as the monopoly was broken, Bristol commenced
its participation though there is some evidence for Bristolian
illegal slave trade before that date. The first legitimate slave ship
from Bristol was the Beginning, owned by Stephen
Barker, which purchased and ferried a cargo of enslaved Africans and
delivered it to the Caribbean in 1698. In her will of 1693, Jane
Bridges bequeathed her share of £130 in this ship, to her grandson,
Thomas Bridges and her will indicated that the ship then belonged to
the city of Bristol. A full-rigged ship was the essential technology which enabled the transatlantic slave trade to flourish. |
| Selling slaves in a slave market. |
Bristol became one of the
biggest centres of the transatlantic slave trade between 1725 and
1740 when up to an estimated 20% profits were made from slave-trading
from the city. By the 1730s an average of 39 slave ships left Bristol
annually and between 1739 and 1748, there were 245 slave voyages from
Bristol, an estimated 37.6% of the whole British slave trade. In the
later years of slave-trading, Bristol’s share decreased to 62
voyages while Liverpool’s share increased to 62% or 1,605 voyages.
An estimated 2108 slaving traders departed from Bristol between 1698
and 1807 with the average number of slaves per ship believed to be
around 250. Thus in a century plus, Bristol’s merchants trafficked
more than 500,000 enslaved Africans to the Caribbean and North
America. But, it must be added, that estimates suggest that up to half of each ship's slave cargo would perish en route, due to the harsh conditions aboard and the overcrowding. In any event, not a figure to be proud of!
The so-called triangular trade
describes the route followed by English merchants from Bristol [or
Liverpool or Hull] to north-west Africa, the Caribbean and America during
the same period, i.e. 1698-1807. Bristol ships traded their goods
for enslaved people from south-east Nigeria and Angola, exchanging
goods like copper and brass as well as gunpowder which were typically offered by Bristolian merchants and manufacturers, as
payment for shares in the slaving voyage. The ships then sailed to
St. Kitts, Barbados and Virginia to supply English colonies requiring
cheap or free labour, with the enslaved Africans to work on sugar, cotton and
tobacco plantations. In addition to slaves, the British colonies were
supplied with a wide range of goods for the plantation owners, such
as guns, agricultural implements, soap, candles, ladies’ boots, and
food stuffs plus ‘Negro cloth’ for the slaves. At the same time,
the slaving ships imported goods produced in the colonies. Thus the
British economy was inextricably linked to slave-produced Caribbean
goods such as sugar, rum, indigo and cocoa. The imported goods were
used in sugar refining, tobacco processing and chocolate manufacture,
all important local industries in Bristol which employed thousands of
working class people from Bristol and its surrounding areas. Thus the slave trade and its associated commerce was embedded in effect, in the
British economy.
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| Various implements to secure and direct slaves. |
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Neck rings and chains with a gun in case ......
|
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| Cotton plantation. |
