Black History Month: Remembering Igbo Slaves That Committed Mass Suicide In United States

Warrior symbol in ancient Igbo system of writing: Nsibidi

The month of February is marked in the United States as the Black History Month. It is a time to recognize and celebrate those that have made impact in the race relations in the United States and more importantly worked for freedom and equality of all races. They include those that fought for civil right and for the right to vote by Black Americans.

This is therefore the right time to remember the Igbo slaves, who were forcefully taken to United States, and who haven realized the fate that had befallen them decided to commit suicide instead of being slaves in America. History has recorded them as the first major resistance to slavery. They paved the path with their blood and sowed the seed of resistance against slavery. They symbolize the fight for civil rights that characterized the contemporary history of Black America and the United States in general.

Interestingly, these Igbo slaves come from a culture that does not celebrate suicide in any form. In Igbo cosmology suicide is a taboo. There is no excuse for suicide. Whoever committed suicide is deemed to have desecrated the land and is never buried like other citizens. However what these Igbo slaves deed thousands of miles from home has been considered bravery, courageous and exhibition of indomitable black power that refused to be conquered by those who want to enslave them. They were noble men, who could not exchange their nobility for slavery in cotton fields of America.

Let us remind ourselves what these Igbos did and how they changed the history of black America forever. It is recorded in history as the Igbo Landing in United States.

Igbo Landing is a historic site at Dunbar Creek on St. Simons Island, Glynn County, Georgia.

In 1803 one of the largest mass suicides of enslaved people took place when Igbo captives from what is now Nigeria were taken to the Georgia coast. In May 1803, the Igbo and other West African captives arrived in Savannah, Georgia, on the slave ship the Wanderer. They were purchased for an average of $100 each by slave merchants John Couper and Thomas Spalding to be resold to plantations on nearby St. Simons Island. The chained slaves were packed under deck of a coastal vessel, the York, which would take them to St. Simons. During the voyage, approximately 75 Igbo slaves rose in rebellion, took control of the ship, drowned their captors, and in the process caused the grounding of the ship in Dunbar Creek.

It is known that the Igbo marched ashore, singing, led by their high chief. Then at his direction, they walked into the marshy waters of Dunbar Creek, committing mass suicide.

Roswell King, a white overseer on the nearby Pierce Butler plantation, wrote the first account of the incident. He and another man identified only as Captain Patterson recovered many of the drowned bodies. The deaths signaled a powerful story of resistance as these captives overwhelmed their captors in a strange land, and many took their own lives rather than remain enslaved in the New World.

The Igbo Landing gradually took on enormous symbolic importance in local African American folklore. The mutiny and subsequent suicide by the Igbo people was called by many locals, the first freedom march in the history of the United States. Local people claimed that the Landing and surrounding marshes in Dunbar Creek where the Igbo people committed suicide in 1803 were haunted by the souls of the dead Igbo slaves. The story of Igbo, who chose death over slavery, which had long been part of Gullah folklore, was finally recorded from various oral sources in the 1930s by members of the Federal Writers Project.

In September 2002, the St. Simons African American community organized a two-day commemoration with events related to Igbo history and a procession to the site of the mass suicide. Seventy-five attendees came from different states across the United States, as well as Nigeria, Brazil, and Haiti. The attendees designated the site as a holy ground and called for the souls to be permanently at rest.

The Igbo Landing is now part of the curriculum for coastal Georgia schools. The Igbo resistance in America inspired Haiti to lead the first ever slave revolt in the western hemisphere defeating armies of French, Spaniard and American. This is another example to show that Igbo people hate injustice and subjugation of any kind. They were also at the forefront of the resistance against colonialism in Nigeria.