Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua: An Enslaved Muslim of the Black Atlantic, written by Paul E. Lovejoy and Nielson R. Bezerra
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Bezerra is also Director of Museu Vivo do Sao Bento.The book is being released now to bear witness to the lives of those who lived through slavery, and also to go against people who wish to act as if the Cross-Atlantic Slave Trade did not happen.For example, current Florida instructional standards teach students to believe that several Black people benefited from slavery because it taught them useful skills.That, indeed, is either a complete lie or an exaggeration.In addition, the State of Texas is pushing either to lower or eliminate completely its slave-owning past.Sadly, there is a massive effort either to whitewash or downplay the enslavement of Blacks (including African Americans).Thus, in the foregoing context, teaching that "some Black people benefited from slavery" while, at the same time, trying to downplay and even to avoid sharing its negative impacts, is similar to practicing deception as well as telling an outright lie.Meanwhile, other books that bear apt and truthful witness include Incidents in The Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs as well as They Were Her Property by Stephanie Jones-Rogers, and the memoirs of Nigerian-born Olaudah Equiano; if readers dig hard, there are also other books that confirm and speak to the existence of slavery and its negative impact on those, who endured it.About, their biographical subject for Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua: An Enslaved Muslim of the Black Atlantic, co-authors Lovejoy and Bezerra further explain: "This study explores Baquaqua's life.In doing so, it adds to the growing corpus of accounts of enslaved Africans … in Brazil, the United States and Jamaica", (Introduction; p. 4).According to the co-authors, he was unusual in another way as well, and that he became associated with the most radical abolitionists in the United States before the American Civil War.Also, while Baquaqua was not one of the prominent leaders of the abolitionists, he knew many of the leading abolitionists, and that he agreed with their interventionist strategies in combating slavery as well as championing a movement to return to Africa, just like Marcus Garvey once did.Perusing the seven-chapter Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua: An Enslaved Muslim of the Black Atlantic brings a lot to one's mind, especially at a time in
Source: African and Asian Studies
Author: Kwadwo S. Assensoh
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4409827617