Pre-Colonial Slavery Among the Yorùbá People

[@jimthom1956]

Thank you for bringing attention to this, Aderonke. My personal feeling is that until Africans on both sides of the Atlantic deal with this subject, we will never completely be able to move forward. We also have to remember that while in the present day, Blacks world-wide often seem to be trailing European culture in terms of economics and technology, it was during enslavement and colonialism that the Western cultures advanced. What is called the Industrial Revolution in the USA and Europe occurred during the time of extreme oppression of Africans. In fact, many of the developments credited to Europeans were actually invented by Africans. Africans in the US, and I'm sure in other locations, often devised ways to make their work under slavery easier for them, and the Westerners took credit for these inventions because the Africans were usually in no position to patent their inventions. Even Blacks born free in the US rarely get credit for what they did. Benjamin Banneker was born free to a free Black mother, and a freed Black man born in Guinea. Benjamin became the apprentice for the French architect who was hired to design the city of Washington, DC. The Frenchman lost the job somehow (I've heard that he drank too much, but I can't say for sure that was the reason). Benjamin had memorized every minute detail of the architectural plan, and it was he who carried out the project to completion.
Many of us forever lost our family ties in Africa. I once had to explain this to a person who asked on a social media site about why so many Africans took on European names. I explained that in the US, this was forced on the Blacks; to resist the name change meant punishment or even death.
I'm still discovering more of the horrors that occurred to enslaved Africans; it seems endless. Black women were used as guinea pigs by doctors who probed their private parts, sometimes killing them. Families of slaves were separated if someone was disobedient. Black babies were used as alligator bait in the swamp-lands. It goes on and on.
Africans on both sides of the Atlantic survived all of these things and much more, and we are still making great contributions to the world today.

[@yorubalessons]

Thank you for this contribution! It is indeed painful, and since repressing the pain has not helped/will not help, it does need to be addressed more.

[@jimthom1956]

Hi again, Aderonke.
I don't want to upset you or anyone else who may read this, but I learned of this story shortly after my comment above. I'll understand if you delete this comment, since it's not directly related to your topic.Though it's not slavery related, it does show how brutally we are still being treated today, and how these horrible acts are being justified legally in the US. This is the story of a Nigerian man living in the US who was recently tased to death by 5 deputy sheriffs after he suffered some kind of mental disorder. This story didn't make news headlines nationally, just as so many other stories like this about "law enforcement" against Blacks are kept relatively hidden. These types of things happen almost every day. I only learned of this because I get updates from online petition sites that deal with Black injustices.
sfbayview.com/2018/10/chinedu-okobi-unarmed-black-father-tased-to-death-by-san-mateo-county-sheriffs/
This is the petition, in case anyone reading this would like to sign it, and hopefully get some justice for the family of Chinedu Okobi.
act.colorofchange.org/sign/justice-for-chinedu/?t=4&akid=19472%2E164611%2EBv_GUo

[@boladeokikiolu6173]

Ancient Yoruba slaves were allowed to own farmlands, and Yorubas had a saying "ona lo jin, eru ni baba" the road might be long, but a slave has a father. It goes to show the subtety of Yoruba slave owners towards their slaves

[@omggiiirl2077]

Slavery seemed more like serfdom in Europe. What made slavery so bad in the USA and other colonies was that it was based upon race. Doing this creates a cognitive dissonance and detaches a people from the reality that they are harming another people. The white people didn't see my ancestors as human beings so that's why the term slavery in Africa and other parts of the world is vastly different from white supremacy slavery. They couldn't succeed in enslaving native Americans so they started importing us, after getting a taste of African slavery from the Arabs. Then you have the early forms of the theory if evolution being corrupted with racism, and you have a whole system that didn't see us as even being fully human.

[@kf9926]

Some times it was served for a period of time, some people say it
‘seemed more like’ serving 7 years for a wife in the bible.

[@jimthom1956]

Hi Aderonke. I’m commenting on this video weeks after you posted it. Your most recent video (as of December 2018) about Oriki brought to mind a book I recently read. You may be interested in looking further into it.
The book is called “Barracoon”, by the late African-American author Zora Neale Hurston. Hurston was among many Black authors, poets, musicians, dancers, artists, etc, who are considered part of the “Harlem Renaissance”. In the early 1900’s, Harlem, in New York City, had the highest urban concentration of Blacks in the USA, and many Blacks were dedicated to expressing the African side of the culture they lived in.
Barracoon is about the last slave ship, the Clotilda, to bring slaves to the US. The ship actually was operating illegally, as the US had banned importing slaves in 1808, one year after Britain did the same. Enslavement itself continued, however, and many greedy traffickers found ways to smuggle slaves in from Africa. In 1860, the Clotilda carried about 115 Africans to Mobile, Alabama, in the southern US. One of the enslaved was a Yoruba man, Oluale Kossola, whose name was changed to Cudjoe Lewis when he became enslaved. Oluale was born around 1841. Though his name is said to be a royal name, he wasn’t descended from a royal line. His grandfather had a high ranking position in society. And lived among his people until about age 19, when he was abducted. He is said to have been of the Isha people of Bante, in present day Benin. In another of your videos, I commented on how the Berlin Conference of 1884 carved up Africa and separated ethnic groups.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cudjoe_Lewis
Zora also was a degreed anthropologist. She traveled to Haiti, Jamaica, and the southern states of the US, documenting how African culture still existed, and in some cases, had changed from its original form. She had several one-on-one interviews with Oluade, and she tells his story in his words as best as she could. He had learned to speak English, but couldn’t read or write it. At the time of the interviews, in the 1920’s, she didn’t have resource to Yoruba scholars such as yourself to transcribe words, so she tried as best she could to write down his Yoruba words as she heard them.
He tells her of his early life in Africa, then how the warriors of nearby Dahomey, including the female Mino (Amazons) attacked his village and killed many in very gruesome ways. A few escaped, but he along with others were captured and had to march to the coast of Dahomey, in present day Benin. He tells of being locked in the barracoons (barracks), then being put on a ship, and sailing to the US. The Clotilda sneaked into the Mobile Alabama area, and after unloading the slaves, was destroyed by its owners to hopefully erase any trace of the crime.
Oluade tells of his 5 years of being enslaved, then of the US Civil War, which made him free. He and other Africans joined forces to find work so they could buy land. They were successful, and the area was named Africatown, today’, Plateau, Alabama. He married an African woman, and had 5 children. He outlived all of them, including one son who was murdered by police. At the time of his interviews with Zora, he was in his late eighties. The book was only released this past year, though it was completed in the early 1930’s.
Other Yoruba founders of Africatown had these names (the spelling is often a best guess at the original name:Abila (Abilé), Abache (Abackey), Kanko (Kêhounco), Monabee (Omolabi), and Pollee/Kupollee
The book is about 160 pages, with Oluade’s transcribed story being about 70 pages, the remaining pages being notes and observations on the book. I was able to find the book in a local library.
Incidentally, though slavery was “officially abolished” in 1865, it still persists in many ways in the US. The 13th Amendment to the US Constitution supposedly ended slavery, but Section 1 also indicated that any person duly convicted of a crime was subject to being a slave. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
The US has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world today, with a high majority of inmates being Black or Latino. Many corporations today use inmate labor. As I looked for this link, I see that Whole Foods no longer uses inmate labor.
atlantablackstar.com/2014/10/10/12-mainstream-corporations-benefiting-from-the-prison-industrial-complex/
California has had a series of deadly wildfires recently. Many of the fire-fighters are inmates, who receive roughly 50 cents a day to train, and $1 to $2 a day to fight fires.
www.thedailybeast.com/the-inmates-fighting-californias-deadly-fires

[@theeizzy9754]

Thank you for your very informative post. I wonder where I could get the book from?

[@theeizzy9754]

I found the book online (of course lol) Thank you again

[@geoffreyjohnson3626]

Thanks for adding some nuance regarding the better slavery and the worse forms of slavery, I had not previously seen these distinctions made.

[@Oshimirri]

Blessings! Thank you for this very informative video, love your content, I've learned so much from you I truly appreciate you! Much love and blessings ❤️

[@keniawoniyi8486]

Thank you so much for these videos

[@abdulazeezbala5504]

Your opinions were nicely delivered in this video. What slavery movies were you referring to? Remember that portrayals in movies are almost always fictionalized. But, I am curious about which movies you were speaking of. Give me a list to check out. Thank you.

[@kennyamadi4809]

Thanks for the teachings Aderonke, who is the illustrator of the art works I see on your videos?

[@yorubalessons]

They all come from different artists, including Stephen Hamilton and Yusuf Grillo.

[@ifeayomirembe8275]

Love your teaching