José Antonio Aponte

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bodegaborinquen:

“José Antonio Aponte started the first national abolitionist conspiracy in Cuba also known as “Black” José Aponte, he died April 9, 1812 in Havan was a Cuban activist, military officer and carpenter who organized one of the largest slave conspiracies in his time, known as the Aponte Conspiracy of 1812. He had formally been first corporal in Havana’s black militia. His objective was to free people of color in Cuba from Spanish tyranny. He gained a considerable following amongst black Cubans and was proclaimed by some as a suitable King of Cuba. Aponte assumed leadership of the Afro-Cuban religious fraternity, Cabildo de Santa Barnara in around 1810, and they met in his home, plotting to overthrow the Spanish.

Aponte provoked an uprising by the Afro Cubans and those sympathetic to the cause in February 1812, but eight of his cohorts were caught and imprisoned and he was eventually caught and hanged on the gallows on April 9, 1812 and decapitated, his head placed in an iron cage and showcased in front of the house where he lived and his hand went on display in another street. The heads of his co-conspirators, both black and non blacks, were also placed around Havana after they were executed.

Via http://guajirita.tumblr.com/post/44133671234/bodegaborinquen-jose-antonio-aponte-encabezo

New Database Allows Britons To See If Ancestors Owned Slaves

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Britain Slavery Database

LONDON — A new database launched Wednesday lets Britons uncover uncomfortable information: whether their ancestors owned slaves.

Researchers at University College London spent three years compiling a searchable listing of thousands of people who received compensation for loss of their “possessions” when slave ownership was outlawed by Britain in 1833.

Some 46,000 people were paid a total of 20 million pounds – the equivalent of 40 percent of all annual government spending at the time – after the freeing of slaves in British colonies in the Caribbean, Mauritius, and southern Africa.

Their descendants include writers Graham Greene and George Orwell. Orwell’s real name was Eric Blair, and the trustees of his great-grandfather, Charles Blair, were paid 4,442 pounds for 218 slaves on a plantation in Jamaica.

Research associate Keith McClelland said the project would help show how the legacy of slavery still affects Britain.

He says 10 percent of wealthy 19th-century Britons were directly connected to the slave trade, and proceeds helped build railways, businesses, buildings, and art collections that still exist today.

“You are talking about a very important component of the British economy from the 17th century onwards,” McClelland said.

Britain’s Parliament abolished the slave trade in 1807, but slavery itself was not outlawed in its colonies until 26 years later. The United States followed in 1865 and Brazil in 1888.

In 2006, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair expressed “deep sorrow” for Britain’s role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, though some felt that fell short of a full apology. The next year he said: “I have said we’re sorry and I say it again now.”

http://newsone.com/2252377/university-college-london-slavery/

Mighty Gabby

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Mighty Gabby is a Pan-African and calypsonian from Barbados. Aside from being one of the most accomplished singers in the Caribbean he was also made a Nigerian chief. In Nigeria he was also given the name Omowale (“the son has returned home”).