#slaveresistance

One and a half million slaves were transported in the transatlantic slave trade on boats that originated in Liverpool, and this makes the city an important location to house the International Slavery Museum. I was excited to discover that the very first piece which greets the museum-goer is a large salvage piece called the Freedom Sculpture by Haitian artists from the Atis Rezistans collective, including Jean Herard Celeur, whom I had the privilege of meeting on a previous trip to Haiti. This curatorial choice gives the first word to descendants from the only sovereign nation ever founded by rebel slaves, and this seems an important and thoughtful choice.  

The International Slavery Museum takes up a whole floor of a large warehouse on the Albert Dock. Although some of the exhibits were similar to those of the London gallery at Docklands (see my last post) like those demonstrating household objects that would have been owned by wealthy white slave-owners, the Liverpool museum was much more detailed in all of its treatments of the various subjects covered, and for the most part, more radical. The glossy book-length guide to the exhibit follows its description of Nat Turner with these words, “Those who resisted slavery were brave individuals because all acts of resistance, no matter how small, carried the threat of severe and inhumane punishment if discovered” (52).

Slave resistance is covered in the Liverpool museum in a variety of ways: in a video display in one corner, a Jamaican actress re-enacted slave testimonials; she told a story of a runaway slave and his capture and subsequent punishment, but she also related a story about a plantation master being angered by his slaves’ baptism ceremony of a newborn, highlighting that keeping to their African rituals could also be a form of resistance.  

Slave resistance was also mentioned in a variety of capacities: from highlighted text on informational panels about other topics, like the generalities of plantation life included in a three dimensional model of a Caribbean plantation; to a wall specifically devoted to slave resistance that included statuary and images; an audio narrative about the maroon Makandal of Saint Domingue, who orchestrated poisonings of the whites; to timelines of uprisings in various places in the Caribbean. The inclusion of audio, visual, and even tactile displays, as in an interactive exhibit on the Underground Railroad, (see again blog post “Feel the Weight of these Chains”) likely is meant to create an immersive experience, but I’m continually fascinated by the appeal to the senses in education about slave history (and particular the history of slave resistance) for what it may indicate about a contemporary willingness to participate in that history, or the sense that empathy is cultivated through participatory gestures.