Aspects of African Diaspora: Blood Letting or Transfusion?

Keynote Speech Delivered at a Celebration of the

Life and Work of Professor Lemuel Johnson

At Kuenzel Room, Michigan Union

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan

Friday March 12 2004

The great dispersal of our species homo sapiens started in Africa. Without either pride or arrogance I quote from the UNESCO General History of Africa:

African societies developed independently over centuries and recorded history picks up contacts between Africa and Europe from the eighth century when Africans appeared on the Iberian peninsular alienated from their settled societies as slaves, servants, soldiers and menials of various kinds. By the fifteenth century Blacks were organizing themselves into communities for the promotion of their own self interest and soon some outstanding African figures were distinguishing themselves in European societies as generals, scholars, priests and members of other professions:

One of the most influential of these Africans in European society was John Leo Africanus (originally Ibn Wezas) who unlike these other Africans had acquired his scholarship in Africa before coming into contact with Europe. When he was captured and sold into slavery to become a prote?ge? of Pope John Leo the tenth, he had already written his History and Description of Africa in Arabic. Under his patron, the book was translated into Latin and subsequently into French and English. His work had great influence among English men of letters particularly after John Pory produced an English translation in 1600. Englishmen of letters, Puttenham, Robert Greene and Ben Jonson knew the work while almost certainly it influenced Shakespeare's portrayal of Othello.

Similar figures in this African Diaspora in Europe with their descendants have left their mark on European history and culture. The general, Alexandre Dumas, led a line which produced distinguished French authors while in Russia another general was the ancestor of yet another literary giant, Pushkin. The character of this Diaspora was of people more or less forcibly transported from their settled societies who had to adapt to alien cultures as under-privileged menials, some of whom however triumphed over adverse circumstances to become distinguished citizens of their new societies. Africa itself with its wonders and myths as perpetuated by classical writers like Herodotus and Pliny, merging with actual encounters by European sailors with real people — Kings, traders etc. — inspired the imagination of writers to produce images and fictional characters of which Shakespeare's Othello crowned a whole line. This African Diaspora in Europe is usually left out of account when the term Diaspora is commonly used and the concentration has been on the greater Diaspora brought about by the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade which from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century saw the mass depopulation of African societies and the transportation of millions of Africans into the plantations of North and South America and the Caribbean Islands.

The general pattern of this Diaspora is not dissimilar except in its more massive scale and its greater cruelties perpetrated on the victims from that of the European Diaspora. It was harder to rise from the harsher and more dehumanizing conditions of the plantations into social prominence but where conditions permitted figures like the young Guinean slave girl who became the American poet, Phyllis Wheatley, benefited from kindly patronage. A similar product was Benjamin Banneker who became a distinguished mathematician and astronomer. Contemporary black studies have been producing more and more information on black slaves and their descendants whose contribution to American life had remained unrevealed or deliberately suppressed over large periods of American history. Some of these figures, by a fortunate irony, themselves participated in the struggle which eventually led to the abolition of the Slave Trade.

The life of Olaudah Equiano is an outstanding example of a personal evolution from captured slave to human liberator. Equiano who had been captured as a slave at the age of ten from Benin would have completed a remarkable cycle by returning to Africa as a free man, but for an unfortunate incident which led to his dropping out of the expedition in 1787 to found the colony which became Sierra Leone as a settlement for freed slaves from England. This remarkable man endured the perils of slavery, got himself an education, bought his freedom and went on several expeditions to the Mediterranean, the Arctic and Central America before settling in England to become a writer, lecturer and advocate for the abolition of the Slave Trade. He was appointed a Commissary for Stores for the Black Poor going to Sierra Leone to found the settlement when he discovered the corrupt practices of an agent which he tried to expose but was himself undermined through the influence of the agent and he was dismissed from his post. He therefore missed the opportunity of returning to Africa although his honesty was subsequently vindicated with a payment by the Right Honourable the Lords Commissioners of his Majesty's Treasury but all too late for his return to Africa. Not the least of Equiano's accomplishments was his mastery of English prose as illustrated in his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa the African and particularly his perfectly argued and styledpetition on his own behalf to the Lords Commissioners. (Equiano's Travels, ed. Paul Edwards, London, Heinemann Educational Books, 1967).

Equiano did not complete the cycle by returning to Africa but from the early years of the nineteenth century there were moves for the return of black people from the Americas to Africa. In 1814 for example, an enterprising black sea captain, Paul Cuffee, son of a freed African father and a Red Indian mother, sailed his own ship to Sierra Leone with thirty-eight black freed men to set up trade links with Europe and America in association with Thomas Clarkson and others whose company had brought the founders of the Sierra Leone settlement from England to Freetown in 1787.

The Freetown settlement of 1787 or the Province of Freedom as it was originally called, was one of the great experiments resulting from the abolition of the Slave Trade. The Black Poor as the first liberated men from England were called, were joined by the Maroons and Nova Scotians who, uniting with the greater numbers of Africans who were liberated on the high seas and settled in Sierra Leone became one of the great civilizing movements in Africa. It must be acknowledged that the work of Christian missions in England made a tremendous contribution to the success of the Sierra Leone experiment in spreading western education and the Christian religion throughout West Africa and sowing the seeds which later led to the emancipation of the British West African region from colonial rule. The Church Missionary Society founded the first schools quite early in the nineteenth century even before the abolition of slavery was formerly declared. The most remarkable of such institutions was Fourah Bay College which was founded in 1827 under that name, but which actually grew out of an even earlier foundation of a school in the village of Leicester in 1816. Thus while the Slave Trade was still being actively carried on this great institution was already founded. Indeed, it is believed that the roof timbers of the original Fourah Bay College building were constructed from the masts of recaptured slave ships whose human cargo was deposited in Freetown to form part of the Sierra Leone settlement. Because of its unique contribution to African education, but also because of its link with the great African scholar, Lemuel Johnson, whom we celebrate today, I will dwell a little on the history and influence of Fourah Bay College.

The first name on the College Register in 1827 is that of Samuel Adjai Crowther, a Yoruba boy who had been captured as a slave, was rescued on the high seas by the British navy, brought to Freetown and graduated from the school at Leicester Village to Fourah Bay College in 1827. Crowther's life remains symbolic of the achievement and influence of early Fourah Bay College which both drew to itself seekers of learning from outside the country and sent many back as learned men, as pioneers in education, evangelisation, officials in the Civil Service, and functionaries in commercial and industrial organizations, as well as doctors, lawyers and politicians who paved the way to statehood for the British West African Colonies.

What perhaps needs emphasising is the context in which all of this was taking place. What was the state of the world when Fourah Bay was founded and during its early years of struggle and triumph? The Slave Trade, even though it had been formally abolished in some countries, was still thriving and the Court of Mixed Commissions was active well into the Nineteenth Century, processing men, women and children who had been recaptured on the high seas and brought to Freetown. The Slave Trade had been defended not only with references to Holy Writ but also with bogus psychological and philosophical assertions to the effect that black men were incapable of learning, sometimes of learning altogether and sometimes of learning particular disciplines. Let me quote from The Church Missionary Intelligensia And Record published in 1876:

So all Africa, indeed all black peoples of the world, are indebted to the pioneers of Fourah Bay College, who persisted in their faith in the intelligence of the black man as well as to those early students who by their performance, vindicated this faith. Fourah Bay College was one of the institutions which, through the performance of its students put an end to this myth which was sometimes deliberately cultivated to justify the oppression and enslavement of black people. As late as 1876, when it was proposed that at its first Jubilee, the College was to be affiliated to England's third oldest University, Durham, the London Times always opposed to the work of the Church Missionary Society in this part of the world, scoffed that it would not be much longer before the University was affiliated to the Zoo.

The relevance of the College to its environment was indisputable. Its early aims envisaged an evangelisation of the peoples of that part of the world, an essential ingredient in which was the study of the indigenous languages. This became a central part of the curriculum and Fourah Bay College soon became an international centre for the study of African languages. Under the guidance of linguists like Koelle, Schon and Reichaert and with the assistance of many Africans who contributed information on their particular languages, and African scholars like Adjai Crowther who produced the first Grammar and Lexicon of his own language, Yoruba, Grammars and Dictionaries of Foulah, Temne, Yoruba and several other languages flowed from the Institution. The work of Koelle was remarkable. His Polyglota Africana published in 1857 still remains a linguistic classic in which using informants among the hundreds of speakers of African languages, settled in Freetown as a result of the liberation movement, a comparative vocabulary of over a hundred languages was put together. This work was re-issued by the modern Fourah Bay College in 1963 under the editorship of a modern Fourah Bay linguistic historian, Paul Hair.

Adjai Crowther, first student, then teacher and for a time Acting Principal of Fourah Bay, later became the first black Bishop of the Anglican Communion and the first Bishop of the Niger, thus illustrating the College's capacity, not only to receive, but also to give back. Readers of Ake will no doubt recall the ghostly face of the revered Bishop appearing among the bushes of the missionary compound in Abeokuta in the fervid imagination of Wole Soyinka. (This section largely culled from an unpublished lecture, Eldred Jones, "Fourah Bay College - Athens of West Africa"). It is worth remarking here that Professor Lemuel Johnson's maternal grandfather, The Rev. Canon S. S. Williams graduated from Fourah Bay College and, like Crowther before him, went to Nigeria as missionary priest and teacher, returning to his native Sierra Leone after many years to continue his ministry there. The great Sierra Leone experiment which I have just treated was followed by another great return of freed slaves, this time from America, to form the settlement of Liberia — another injection of fresh blood into Africa from the Diaspora. There were smaller returns from the Americas. Until recently — it probably is still there — was a quarter in Lagos, Nigeria, with a distinctly Brazilian style of architecture which marks the site settled by returnees from that country.

A chronicle of the achievements of Africans in the Diaspora, South America, Caribbean and North America would be a vast encyclopaedic enterprise which I am not attempting here. It would include the names of generals, world authors, scientists, explorers etc. They have and are still making contributions not only to their own particular societies of which they have become an integral part but also to world development. What I would like to refer to here is the new Diaspora by which talented Africans trained in their own countries in many disciplines emigrate to more developed economies where they find greater opportunities. This movement is by no means confined to scholars and other highly trained persons; it includes large numbers of lesser trained people who frustrated with poverty and lack of opportunity strive often with the greatest threat to life and health, to seek a better life outside the continent. Africa is thus once again, a source of human talent ranging from cheap labour to the highest rungs of academic excellence. This Brain Drain is usually portrayed in its negative aspects and it is true that our hospitals, schools, universities and public services in Africa are the poorer because of this over generous export of trained manpower but it also has its positive aspects. Thousands of African families survive the worst consequences of poverty in their own country by the remittances from Africans of the Diaspora but even more significantly, because they have been able to make maximum use of the greater facilities available to them in richer economies, many African emigrants have achieved an international stature that may have been closed to them had they remained in their own country. Who, for instance, can grudge the world the eminence of an Ali Mazrui whom I feel justified in singling out for special mention here because of his own connection with the University of Michigan? It is another such scholar, Professor Lemuel Johnson, whose life and work we celebrate today.

Like Ali Mazrui, Lemuel Johnson may have been physically removed from Africa for much of his academic career but he never lost touch with Africa either as a family man or as a scholar. Indeed, Lemuel interrupted a brilliant academic career in the United States by returning to his native Sierra Leone and teaching for a number of years at the historic Fourah Bay College in Freetown in the 1960s. He returned at intervals to take part in particular events such as in the celebration of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of Fourah Bay College in 1977. I remember his brilliant presentation in which in his typical allusive style, he radiated outwards from his central document, one of his grandfather's sermons, into a wide ranging exposition of history and culture almost universal in its scope. Professor Lemuel Johnson, and some other African scholars abroad, have mitigated the loss of their permanent presence within their own countries by keeping in touch through visits and other contacts, not the least of which is support for their distant families and other home institutions. Let me suggest that by the use of the new technologies, particularly the Internet, African scholars of the Diaspora can continue to make a significant impact on the institutions from which they are now separated. This would be another source of new blood into an Africa in dire need.

The eminent scholar, critic, poet and teacher whom we celebrate today is an example of the best aspects of the Diaspora by which Africa has left its mark on world culture and learning. He was a child of the Diaspora, descended as he was, from that rich amalgamation of talents consisting of freed slaves from the Americas and Britain who had experienced the agonies of slavery but had survived into emancipation, and the greater thousands of men, women and children rescued from slavery on the high seas before they had reached destinations across the Atlantic and liberated in Freetown to produce the Krio of Sierra Leone, Lemuel's people. They in turn, like Lemuel's grandfather in Nigeria, and himself from his base in America gave to the world a unique gift of scholarship which has left world culture richer. Professor Lemuel Johnson's extraordinary facility with languages, both African and European, enabled him to experience the riches of diverse literatures which with his inimitable skill he wove into his densely textured criticism of the literatures of the world. His simultaneous grasp of different literatures enabled him to see into the essence of the human condition and made him as a person, an example of deep humanity and a life of conscience. Lemuel in all his physical and mental roaming never forgot his roots. He was tied in spirit to his native Sierra Leone and particularly to his ancestral village, Regent, one of the first settlements of liberated Africans in Sierra Leone. Typically, he decreed that his ashes should be distributed between Mexico and Sierra Leone and thus like the scholarly colossus that he was, he bestrides in death the Atlantic Ocean as he did in life. His library he has generously bequeathed to Fourah Bay College which he served and the contributions to his memorial fund, to the rebuilding of Holy Trinity Church in Freetown destroyed during the recent troubles in Sierra Leone and in which his beloved grandfather is still remembered as a charismatic preacher and vicar. Professor Lemuel Johnson has indeed completed a remarkable cycle.