“BLACK THEOLOGY OF SLAVES - CREATED TO BE FREE"

By Dwight N. Hopkins

From 1619 to 1865 (the beginning and ending of slavery in North America), white Christians from England and eventually the United States of America, took millions of Africans from the West Coast of Africa and put them in slavery in the "New World" of North America. Throughout this era, the enslaved Africans, and then black Americans, created a new Christianity. They combined their (a) reinterpretation of the white slave masters' Christianity (i.e., "slaves obey your masters"), (b) memory of indigenous African religions, and (c) black people's every day, common sense wisdom. During 246 years of slavery by white Christians, blacks developed their own black religion. They specifically redefine the concept of freedom as a central tenet of black religion. We will examine the interviews of those African Americans who ran away from slavery or shared their Black Theology after the official end of the Chattel institution in 1865. From their own words, we will discover their gift of a new type of God-talk and God-walk.

 

Enslaved African Americans believed in their free state despite the terrible dangers of slavery, personal, and poverty. Poor folks, in tune with their created reality, realized that they were made to be free from the beginning of time. Accordingly their duty was to return to the path of a full spiritual and material humanity. Escaped bondman James Curry pronounced this theological conclusion at an anti-slavery rally.

 

Of course, no slave would dare say he wanted freedom in the presence of a white man. But between them, it's their constant theme. No slaves think they were made to be slaves. Let them keep them in such ignorance that it is impossible to impress upon them that they were created as slaves. I have heard some of the most ignorant I have ever seen say, "It will not always be so; God will bring them (white Christian slave masters) to account."

 

Tom Robinson, another black man who ran away for freedom, spoke forcefully about it. He emphatically says that man is created with a natural desire to be free. "Was I happy (as a slave)? Lord! You are anything. No matter how well you treat it - it wants to be free, you can treat it well and feed it and give it everything it wants you to opened the cage - If man is created in freedom, the unquenchable thirst burning in his soul compels that man to strive for liberation.

 

Despite all the seeming power, monopolization of capital and other resources that the ruling powers in this world possess, the bottom of society embraces the divine spark of freedom. The grip of various discriminations (ie caste, ethnic, racial, etc.) cannot forever contain the desire to be free. "When you open the cage - [victims] rejoice!" This is a deep-rooted desire of people who believe in and participate in freedom. And no amount of food, good treatment, and benefits can soothe or anesthetize the ache for freedom. When the time comes, the inner call of spiritual liberation will testify outwardly in material liberation.

 

Lucy Delaney made this very clear in her confessional writings. She remembered the escape, the capture and the imprisonment. But still she defiantly envisioned her inner desire: "My only crime was to seek the freedom that was my right!" To be born on Earth is to follow your natural instinct to have freedom. At birth, our desire to be free and to practice freedom comes as a gift within us. Thus Harriet Robison, a former chattel, recalled how during slavery one Mr. Isom was constantly running away from his white slaver. Once they caught him, "they gave him three hundred lashes and bless my soul, he ran away again."4 What enabled and empowered this poor black laborer to keep running and endure physical violence from the white owners of black meat? and run away again? The subversive impulse of freedom seeped into his identity and self. Restrictions could not touch this dimension of instinctual reality because racists were unable to beat out what they did not put into the victims of the system and replace it with white supremacy. In their view, every black man acquired a natural reflex of freedom at creation; however, whether or not the oppressed responded to this call was a different question. In this case, Mr. Isom answered the challenge in the affirmative and gained his freedom. Our purpose on earth is to give a resounding yes, as Mr. Isom did, to God's question as to which way we will turn in this world.

 

In addition, the answer to the question of what human beings are called to do and what they do presents other sacred duties. It requires that man carry himself as divinely created humanity and not live as a four-legged animal. This would require one to seek respect from others regarding one's natural human state of freedom. Tom Windham aptly expresses the feeling in his words: "We have been treated well. I think we ought to have freedom, for we are not pigs or horses—we are human flesh." The basic divide that separates God's two-legged animals as human beings from the four-legged creature of the kingdom inhabited by pigs and horses is the inner drive for liberation, which was given by creation as a birthright to mankind, especially oppressed mankind.

 

As such, the dynamic of flight or pursuit of physical freedom merely denotes the action of self-control in divinely ordained freedom. This action alone cannot replace the ultimate state that is inspired by the sacred urge to be free. A former chattel, Mingo White exemplified this epitome of life from a letter written by an escaped slave named Ned to his former master. White said: "Old Ned, after being severely beaten for his demand for freedom, crossed into the North to crush the Union army. After he got into the army, he wrote to Master Tom. In his letter he had this the words : 'I lie down, Master, and I rise, Master;' that is, he went to sleep when he pleased and rose "Praying for freedom becomes a necessary moment in the drama of freedom. Repeated attempts to reach a state of full spiritual and material existence are in the struggle vital to liberation. It is only when man returns to the original 'Edenic' space, time and consciousness that he can legitimately claim the advent of natural freedom; in this state man truly owns his own body, work, 'rest and rising', etc. The Practice of Freedom suggests that it is not necessary for our body to wake up to the alarm clock, which means time to work for tyrannical structures, so the prayer and struggle culminates in owning one's own desire to fall asleep and rise, and voluntarily decide what will be the daily agenda of freedom.

 

The final aspect of natural freedom, which follows the practical ownership and control of one's body and other things related to it, is the manifestation of ecstasy. Once one gets on the wavelength of one's own natural free self, without concern for the powerful of this world. He has turned to the calling of divine deliverance, joy springs from him; someone's bones. Ecstatic joy spills over into accepting that the human being is naturally free and trying to change the world to realize that freedom. Mrs. Mary Anderson recounted the experiences of enslaved African Americans once emancipation became real for them. "The Civil War (between abolitionist Northerners and slave-owning Southerners) had begun, and stories of war and freedom were emerging. Rumors spread from farm to farm, and while the slaves acted as usual, some were more moral than usual, but they wanted freedom...finally the Yankees (from North America) arrived. They called the slaves and said, 'You are free.' The slaves were screaming and laughing and acting like crazy."?