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8. African Voices
- University of Pennsylvania Press
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Chapter 8 African Voices My bosom, at the same time, glowed with gratitude—and praise toward the humane—the Christian—the friendly and learned Author of that most valuable book.—Blest be your sect, and heaven’s peace be ever upon them! —Ignatius Sancho, Letters (1782) The writings and deeds of Anthony Benezet had a profound influence on men and women of African descent. Although only a few Africans who were transported to Europe or the Americas had learned to read and write, by the mid- to late eighteenth century Ignatius Sancho, Quobna Ottobah Cugoano, Olaudah Equiano, and James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw wrote about their experiences and about the injustice of slavery. Equiano, Cugoano, and Sancho were all influenced by the work of Benezet. These African-born men in turn influenced the thinking of others, both black and white, in Britain, France, the American mainland, and the Caribbean, although their work was more appreciated and had more influence in Europe than in the British colonies. Equiano, Cugoano, Sancho, and Gronniosaw went through many stages in their search for identity. They were first Africans, then enslaved Africans, or mere chattel slaves. Next they had to prove themselves to the whites to be God-fearing and worthy human beings. But to be considered as such, they had to become British. As they became British, they ‘‘rediscovered’’ in part their African identities and became Afro-Brits. They then moved between two worlds, perhaps more, as they came to accept and to proclaim their African past openly. Thus Gronniosaw became ‘‘An African Prince,’’ Sancho, ‘‘An African,’’ Cugoano, ‘‘A Native of Africa,’’ and Equiano, ‘‘The African.’’ Yet most whites still considered these men to be beneath them, and in reality they were often just one step above slavery. They experienced the ‘‘half-freedom’’ that Frederick Douglass would later write about—a freedom that brought with it the constant fear of reenslavement and transportation . Douglass wrote that ‘‘our path was beset with the greatest obstacles; and if we succeeded in gaining the end of it, our right to be free was yet 188 Chapter 8 questionable—we were yet liable to be returned to bondage.’’1 In many ways these men experienced what W. E. B Du Bois labeled ‘‘double consciousness ’’ long before Du Bois had written about the phenomenon. In his Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois wrote, ‘‘One ever feels his two-ness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unrecognized strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.’’2 James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw Gronniosaw’s A Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars in the Life of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, an African Prince, As Related by Himself underwent twelve editions between its initial publication in 1771 and 1800.3 ‘‘By representing himself as ‘an African Prince,’’’ in the words of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ‘‘Gronniosaw implicitly ties his narrative to the literary tradition of the ‘Noble Savage.’’’4 Being a ‘‘prince’’ also negates the classic Aristotelian definition of the legitimate slave, born to slavery. Cugoano and Equiano also claimed descent from ‘‘nobles,’’ in part rhetorically, for the same reason . This is not to say that they did not descend from men of high status, but it is an interesting coincidence. Gronniosaw’s work was first published when the author, who was born in what was then called Guinea but is now Nigeria, was sixty years old.5 Like Cugoano and Equiano, he married a white woman. Like Phillis Wheatley, he had come to the attention of the countess of Huntingdon, a philanthropist and an associate of George Whitefield and John Wesley. He dedicated his book to ‘‘To the Right Honorable The Countess of Huntingdon ’’ and signs it ‘‘An obedient Servant, James Albert.’’ The Gronniosaw Narrative appeared first in 1772, the year after Benezet’s 1771 work on Guinea but ten years after his Short Account of That Part of Africa, first published in 1762.6 Benezet, in fact, owned a copy of Gronniosaw’s narrative .7 Both Benezet and Gronniosaw cited the work of the minister Richard Baxter (A Call to the Unconverted to Turn and Live [1658]), who in the seventeenth century was an early opponent of slavery and the slave trade. Gronniosaw wrote that his master had given him a copy of Baxter’s work and that ‘‘he began to relish the book’’ and ‘‘took great delight in it.’’8 His mistress had...