"The Heroic Slave" - Kwai Imhotep

Ancestor Frederick Douglass was so impressed with the real life bravery and courage of MADISON WASHINGTON that he wrote a short story about him in the 18th century, titled "The Heroic Slave"

{We know from study that the euro enslavers had the habit of naming our ancestors after their presidents and Greek historical characters; thus Madison Washington was labeled with the names of two presidents}

 

I first came across Madison Washington's story about 7 years ago while researching the history of revolts against enslavement in this country led by our ancestors, and subsequently chronicled some of that research in our essay "Our Ancestors 2nd-Hell Trip".  Here we are beginning a short series of essays to highlight other real-life histories of our very courageous ancestral Heroes & She-roes, many of whom were enslaved, but yet still waged the fight for our liberation in theor own individual ways.

 

These are the stories that should be made into movies and videos to uplift, educate and inspire our people to greatness.  These are stories of triumph over euro imposed enslavement of our ancestors; unlike the repetitive trash that fills the screens and really serves to subliminally glorify white people and their culture of oppression over us.  Not that all stories of our ancestral enslavement are going to be victorious, most of them are not.  But, we protest the lack of balanced coverage of our history in this regard, and so we go forward with history such as this essay.

 

Much of Madison Washington's life, we don't know; such was the fate of so many of our enslaved ancestors in that their lives were often annotated with asteriks.  But, we will use our knowledge of euro enslavement and our own Afrikan history to partially reconstruct his early beginnings.  Of course, the pivotal part of his life, for which Douglass wrote his novel, is known to some extent.

 

Perhaps Madison was born in Mozambique and was captured,by euro enslavers who had begun to invade into the bush -the interior of Afrika after the invention of quinine protected the euros from deadly malaria, for prior to this event, Afrika was known as the 'white mans grave yard'.

 

Being forced marched across the Afrikan interior, separated from his village, his family, his roots, stumbling over the decaying remains of other Afrikans who had died on the trail, our hero arrives in Ghana and is forced into the dungeons of Elmina Fort (not a castle as euros want you to believe) along with other Afrikan captives from other parts of Afrika.

 

Soon herded through the 'door of no return' our hero is shoved down into the 'slave decks'---3-feet high pens in the deep holds of the ship where he is forced with many others to basically lie, half-sit in darkness and high heat amidst the stench of human feces for the duration of the hell trip (not some romantic sounding middle passage)  which could take as long as 30-60 days to complete.

 

Having survived this torture, our hero is soon ushered onto the trading blocks in Norfolk, VA, where it is his fate to be probed like an animal and ultimately 'sold' to, let's say George Washington.

 

After a few years of hard labor from 'can't see in the morning to can't see at night', our hero has become somewhat acclimated to existence as some pale face's 'property', and he doesn'tlike it at all.  No 'happy slave' here.  Our hero still remembers vaguely his early life in Afrika being free as the wind.  Being initiated into manhood in his early teens, he still retains the learned knowledge of survival and martial skills he learned in Mozambique.  Skills passed down throughout Afrikas from the ancient Nuba people who developed the martial arts, and where stone carvings in KMT still attest to their primal fighting skills; skills that were passed through Afrikans who inhabited early India and were taken into Asia by Bodurhama who taught them to the priests of Shaolin.

 

Having been 'sold' by Washington to a VA enslaver, our hero now finds himself being herded into the holds of yet another enslavement ship called the Creole, sailing out of Norfolk to Louisiana in 1791.

 

It seems, the euros having depleted the nutrients from the soils in the states of VA, NC, SC and other areas from over planting, had found new arable land in the deep south, then under the control of Spain, France, Mexico, and Indigenous nations..

 

Desiring to start new prison farms there, growing sugar cane, rice, etc, they began a campaign of force marching our enslaved ancestors overland from the mid-Atlantic states to the deep south to build and work new and very profitable sugar cane prison farms.  New Orleans, thus became the wealthiest city in the USA on the backs of our enslaved ancestors un-paid and very deadly labor.  For the average life span of our ancestors working the very labor intensive sugar cane prison farms was only 7 years!!

 

Our hero, being shipped out of Norfolk, was one of the few who was not made to literally walk at a brisk pace from Norfolk to New Orleans.

 

On board the Creole, our hero, together with about 130 other Afrikan captives begin the trip in the familiar 'slave decks' in the holds of the ship.  Allowed to briefly come on deck for fresh air, our hero and other Afrikans seized the time, overpowering the pale crew of the ship through much effort, our hero leads his Black brothers and sisters to take control of the Creole and forces the pale crew to sail it to Nassau just off the Florida coast.

 

There, they encounter the British, then in control of the island and are liberated since Britain had outlawed enslavement in Nassau.  Although the euro owners of the Creole protested to Britain and demanded that their 'property' be returned to them, Madison Washington and all but a few Afrikan captives are formally liberated.  Some, however, decided to remain captives, for what ever reason, and were shipped on to New Orleans.

 

 Madison Washington's heroic story is just one of the very few documented instances in which our people were victorious over enslavement, and it is worthy of being shouted from the mountaintops, and so we do:

 

LONG LIVE THE SPIRIT OF MADISON WASHINGTO-AN AFRIKAN HERO!!     Kwasi Imhotep