The Slave's Rebellion: Literature, History, Orature

Conclusion: What is the Meaning of Slave Rebellion

172 Conclusion What Is the Meaning of Slave Rebellion In the late spring of 1841, about the time the U.S. Supreme Court freed the Amistad slave rebels, a wealthy, free black man from Philadelphia, Robert Purvis, commissioned Nathaniel Jocelyn to paint a portrait of the leader of the revolt, Singbe Pieh, also known as Cinque. On the day Purvis received the painting, he had a visit from Madison Washington, a slave whom Purvis had helped escape to Canada two years earlier. He was headed south to smuggle his wife out of Virginia, and sought the abolitionist’s aid. During the visit, Purvis displayed Cinque’s portrait, telling the story of the Amistad Incident. Washington became “intensely interested. He drank in every word and admired the hero’s courage and intelligence .” (Alexander 48) The listener-response to this story of rebellion was almost immediate. Later aboard the Creole, after his plans to free his wife had gone awry in Virginia, Madison Washington found himself aboard a slaving vessel, where he, like Adeeko, Slave's Rebelion 5/5/05 3:56 PM Page 172 conclusion 173 the Amistad Africans, mutinied. Like Singbe Pieh, he demanded that the slave ship be steered to a free port rather than to New Orleans. Washington and fellow rebels reached free land in the Bahamas without the tortuous detour suffered by Singbe and his comrades. In this instance, the purpose of retelling stories of slave rebellion is so apparent as to need no glossing. With a few provisos, the most significant being that slaves were predominantly illiterate, it could be said that Robert Purvis’s instruction in self-liberation reflected the intention of antebellum stories of rebellion analyzed in the opening chapter of this book. Purvis’s narration of the Amistad rebellion and his portrait of Singbe Pieh facilitated, like the novels discussed above, a cultural exchange that presented to Madison Washington a model of action. After Emancipation, stories of rebellion have to serve purposes other than directly urging slaves (who do not exist, in theory, any more) to imitate narrative heroes. The new function can be illustrated with an episode from Steven Spielberg’s movie Amistad. As the story moves toward closure in the U.S. Supreme Court, John Quincy Adams briefs Singbe Pieh on what the court may do: Adams: The test ahead of us is an exceptionally difficult one. Cinque: We won’t be going in there alone. Adams: Alone? Indeed not. No. We have right on our side. We have righteousness on our side. We have Mr. Baldwin over there. Cinque: I mean my ancestors. I will call into the past, far back to the beginning of time, and beg them to come and help me at the judgment. I will reach back and draw them into me. And they must come, for at this moment , I am the whole reason they have existed at all. The screenwriters probably intended this dialogue to nativize Singbe Pieh’s understanding of the trials and to present him as a full participant in the defense of his own cause. In court, Adams represents the rebel’s words as a sign of anthropological specificity: “When a member of the Mende . . . encounters a situation where there appears to be no hope at all, he invokes his ancestors . Tradition. See, the Mende believe that if one can summon the spirit of one’s ancestors, then they have never left, and the wisdom and strength they fathered and inspired will come to his aid.” A lot more than mere cultural belief is at play in this conversation, although the contrast between Adams’s conception of a person and Singbe Pieh’s would cause a viewer to pause and recognize, following Adams himself, the depth Adeeko, Slave's Rebelion 5/5/05 3:56 PM Page 173 the slave’s rebellion 174 of Singbe Pieh’s mind. In relation to the goal of post-Emancipation narratives of slave rebellion, Singbe Pieh’s language of invocation indicates a selfwilled effort to claim an ancestral legacy of freedom. Ancestors are symbols of inspirational antecedence that can be summoned when needed. They also signify the integrity of the line of communication between the past and the present. The present is meaningful because ancestors existed; without them the future is unimaginable. That present actions promise a free future means that ancestors (or the past) are not (and cannot...