Freedom: Retrospective and Perspective (review)

In March of 1807, England witnessed the passage of An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Two hundred years later, the Atlantic World commemorated its bicentennial through various celebrations, conferences, and publications. The University of the West Indies, Mona campus honored this bicentenary by making comparative slavery and emancipation the theme of their Annual Academic Conference in the Fall of 2007. Those conference papers comprise Freedom: Retrospective and Perspective.

Freedom is divided into five sections, with minor deviation from the original conference program. The first three chapters are the conference's keynote and plenary addresses, given by Ruth Simmons, Maureen Warner-Lewis, and Geri Augusto, respectively. These chapters speak to a larger historical complexity regarding history, memory, and the changing nature of African cultural identity in the Atlantic World, themes that are well represented throughout the book. In fact, the first section of Freedom, "Sustaining the Memory," addresses the idea of history and memory through examinations of the slave trade, emancipation, cultural retentions and reinventions, and literature. Perhaps the section's strongest chapter is Paul Lovejoy's assessment of the descriptions given by Venture Smith, Olaudah Equiano, and Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua regarding their experiences in the slave trade. Here, Lovejoy singles out the presence of something he calls "freedom narratives" as an important factor in understanding the African experience in this traffic. While slave narratives are important, "freedom narratives" recount the empowerment of survival that is a sometimes overshadowed component of the slave experience. Other chapters by Silvia Kouwenberg, Nadine Hunt, and Sébastian Sacré show an ever-changing slave experience defined by diversity, cultural syncretism, and the struggle to maintain an African cultural identity not only during the slave era but even in years that followed the post-Emancipation era.

Chapters by Heather Cateau, Mary Noel Menezes, and Jenny Jemmott in the second section entitled "Freedom Road," build upon these themes by focusing more on ideas of empowerment, agency, and family as they relate to larger ideas of freedom and citizenship. Menezes and Jemmott discuss the methods by which Africans and Amerindians interacted with Europeans to ensure their freedom and identity, while Cateau discusses the complex interactions between slaves, freedmen, and the planter class. Cateau's chapter is perhaps the most interesting in that she argues that the long road to freedom began long before 1834, as slaves manipulated the institution to their benefit and gained certain customary rights to property, improved working environments, and social activities. However, Menezes and Jemmot both attack prior misconceptions of Amerindians and black men as marginalized figures in the Atlantic World who are largely and unfairly painted in an unflattering light.

Sections three and four are two rather short sections, leaving one to wonder if they could not have been combined into one larger section. In "Rethinking Freedom" and "Legacy," the chapters contained therein examine the legacy of slavery as it relates to ideas of freedom and shared history. Chapters by Nick Shepherd and Anthony Bogues tackle the historical events that comprised South African apartheid and the Haitian Revolution through the lenses of Public History and Constitutional Law, while chapters by Sandra Gift and Juline Francis-Gordon discuss the importance education and clarity bring to the enduring legacy surrounding the slave experience before and after emancipation. Together, they speak to a larger idea of bringing the past to the present as a matter of preservation and prevention. By challenging the ideas and misconceptions of the past, as well as how they continue to endure in the present, one has the power to continue the discourse on freedom and empowerment to a new generation. Francis-Gordon rightly argues that despite the advancement of the black community in the Atlantic World, many are still held back due to the simple fact that they do not realize their own power to bring change, a sentiment echoing that of W.E.B. DuBois in the early twentieth century.

The final section, "Unfinished Business," contains chapters by Anne C. Bailey, Yasus Afari, and a co-authored chapter by Carole Narcisse and Judith Wedderburn...