MAMA, WHERE YOU KEEP YOUR GUN?
Phillip B. Williams
If I had my way I’d have been a killer
—Nina Simone
In a box of baby pictures and green books,
old issues of Jet grave-stacked above.
Death at bay or death come close.
Next to the Bible full of obituaries haints ride
from here to Virginia, from now to 1676.
At the temple of my enemies wearing the face
of my enemies wearing the face of their fathers.
At the bay where the last indentured servant
kissed saltwater before taking notice, taking aim.
As a gris-gris between banknotes and abandoned bras.
Didn’t know when but knew I would.
In the closet, beneath cobwebs wide as sails
above the first ships carrying the thirst of us.
Death at the bay. Death come close.
Where I mind my Black-ass business at.
A breeze the smell of salt seeps from the muzzle.
I keep it thus I is the crime.
Where rebellion evolves the tantrum.
In a lockbox under my bed
where the past writhes and births our semblant present-future
where to reach for the gun
is to reach for safety
in retrograde.
1699–1704
THE SELLING OF JOSEPH
Brandon R. Byrd
Samuel Sewall, a white businessman, recorded the transaction in his typical fashion: “October 12. Shipped by Samuel Sewall, in the James, Job Prince, master, for Jamaica: ‘Eight hogsheads of Bass Fish.’ ” The date of departure. The ship carrying his specified goods. The captain ensuring their safe arrival. Their final destination. His book of receipts repeated the mundane rhythms of his ships, of the seas.
The insatiable hunger for slaves lurked in its banality.
The whole business with the West Indies was simply unfortunate, Samuel thought. He had “been long and much dissatisfied with the Trade of fetching Negros from Guinea.” He even “had a strong inclination to Write something about it.” That the feeling “wore off” was no indictment of his godliness. Weren’t “these Blackamores…of the Posterity of Cham, and therefore…under the curse of slavery”? Did their masters not bring them “out of a Pagan Country, into places where the Gospel is Preached”? Samuel felt some relief when his West Indian partners reminded him that there were reasons, both divine and natural, for the enslavement of Black people. A part of him wanted, all of him needed, to accept that “the Africans have Wars with one another: our Ships bring lawful Captives taken in those Wars,” and to take comfort in the knowledge that “Abraham had servants bought with his Money, and born in his House.” The idea of bondage as ancient and foretold, as divine and redemptive, quieted more troubling thoughts. It put his mind momentarily at ease.
The opening of the African trade, the breaking of the Royal African Company’s monopoly, removed the comfort of abstraction. The growing number of enslaved people made Samuel recoil. “There is such a disparity in their Conditions, Color & Hair, that they can never embody with us, and grow up into orderly Families, to the Peopling of the Land,” he wrote in his diary. These strangers will be the end of our experiment, he predicted.
But were they not men, “sons of Adam,” too? Up close, Samuel could not help but notice enslaved people’s “continual aspiring after their forbidden Liberty.” His doubt resurfaced, the questions rose, until he began to buckle under the weight bearing down on his conscience. Had men misinterpreted the Scriptures, manipulated the stories of curses wrought and servants bought by the ancient prophets? Was the promise of conversion merely an apology for maintaining property in men? He suspected that the defenses of slavery might not hold up to scrutiny, that “the Numerousness of Slaves at this day in the Province, and the Uneasiness of them under their Slavery, hath put many upon thinking whether the Foundation of it be firmly and well laid.” He had the feeling, the budding hope, that he was not alone in his suspicions.
He was thinking of ships laden with human souls, of the hundreds of lives bought and sold in Boston, when someone named Brother Belknap rushed in with a path to salvation. The petition being prepared for his General Court called “for the freeing of a Negro and his wife, who were unjustly held in Bondage.” It was a portent. Providence. I am called of God, Samuel knew at once. He began writing his apology—the defense of the negroes that no colonist had dared to write before.
Samuel’s plea for the slaves, his admonition to any freeman who would hold their fellow men as slaves, came as it had to, in the form of a sermon. Like any good preacher, he began with his argument: “FOR AS MUCH as Liberty is in real value next unto Life: None ought to part with it themselves, or deprive others of it, but upon most mature Consideration.” His elaboration called on scripture to show that “all Men, as they are the Sons of Adam, are Coheirs; and have equal Right unto Liberty, and all other outward Comforts of Life.” He reminded his fellow Christians that “GOD hath given the Earth [with all Commodities] unto the sons of Adam…And hath made of One Blood, all Nations of Men, for to dwell on all the face of the Earth.” He summoned the story of Joseph, sold into slavery by his brothers although he “was rightfully no more a Slave to his Brethren, than they were to him.” He lamented that “there should be more Caution used in buying a Horse, a little lifeless dust; than there is in purchasing Men and Women: Whenas they are the Offspring of GOD, and their Liberty is, Auro pretiosior Omni.” More precious than gold.
Samuel understood the terrible doubts that plagued the minds of the men he hoped to sway. He remembered his own willingness to accept that God had made slaves of negroes, pagans, and the posterity of Ham. So he answered the objections of the skeptics to his attack on slavery. He showed the way to their own salvation, toward that elusive state of grace. Repent. Release your slaves. Stop the trade in men. “To persist in holding their Neighbours and Brethren under the Rigor of perpetual Bondage, seems to be no proper way of gaining Assurance that God ha’s given them Spiritual Freedom.” Man-stealing was assuredly a path away from Heaven.
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Samuel Sewall wrote the advertisement in his typical fashion.
Several Irish Maid Servants