Using Bob Marley’s lyrics as a guide on Jamaica’s Emancipation Day, this is the inspiring story of the nation’s triumph over colonialism and imperialism.
Assault rifle held at low ready against his military fatigues, the young man stepped aboard our bus.
He methodically made his way down the aisle, checking the identification of each passenger. Once he was within a few rows of our seats, I could make out the settings on his weapon: The selector was at three-round burst, and the safety was off.
This was not a drill.
It was February 2018, and my family and I were riding the Knutsford Express line westbound on Jamaica’s A1 highway. We hit the Jamaican Defence Force checkpoint only a few minutes outside Montego Bay, a popular cruise port of call on the northwest side of the island that’s world-renowned for its luxury resorts and pristine beaches. At the time, trouble was brewing in paradise.
A crackdown on skyrocketing gang violence was underway, and the camo-clad soldier standing smartly before us was on the frontlines. The U.S. Department of State had released a travel advisory for Montego Bay only a few weeks prior to our departure, warning Americans to stay away from several areas outside the tourist zone. The British were even more restrictive with their bulletin, telling citizens to remain within the insular confines of resorts.
The soldier asked for our passports, and his face told me he couldn’t be a day over 19. Yet here he was, already playing the bravest of roles in the latest chapter of his people’s centuries-old struggle, one that began when colonial slave ships first cleared the final horizon on approach to the “New World.”
Listen to the Music
“Won’t you help to sing
These songs of freedom?
‘Cause all I ever had Redemption songs”
So goes the chorus to “Redemption Song,” the final track on Bob Marley and the Wailers’ 1981 album Uprising. The song would prove to be the last for Marley, the incomparable reggae master and Jamaica’s beloved statesman. He died a year after its release at the age of 36.
“Redemption Song” is a sonic outlier when compared to the predominantly light, rhythmic catalog of hits from the Caribbean’s most famous musician. The ballad is all Marley, strumming an acoustic guitar and relaying a contemplative, cerebral set of lyrics. Like all transcendent artists, he was a storyteller of the highest order, and “Redemption Song” lays bare the deep intellect of the man as he reflects on the long, arduous journey from slavery to the civil rights generation’s triumphs and continuing challenges.
Destiny chose Marley to be Jamaica’s troubadour. As the tour staff at the Bob Marley Museum in the island’s capital city of Kingston so eloquently explains, his upbringing handed him the perfect foundation to tell his nation’s – better yet, his people’s – story through music.
Born to a teenage black Jamaican mother and a much older white British father, the former raised him after the latter disappeared from his life. His childhood gave him a unique perspective of his home island. His early years were spent in the beautiful Jamaican countryside, but he later moved to Kingston and the tough streets of Trench Town. The neighborhood, which Marley muses about in his song “Trench Town Rock,” had several talented performers.
Rising above the chaos of the inner city, he lost himself in the music, honing his vocal chops and guitar prowess. When the atmospheric conditions were right, he even managed to pick up radio broadcasts from the Gulf Coast of the United States. Those fortuitous airwaves carried the songs of stateside superstars like Ray Charles and Elvis Presley to his impressionable ears.
Marley’s own star turn came when he and his band the Wailers signed with Island Records in 1972. Fifty years later, his unmistakable reggae sound can be heard on virtually every summertime playlist in the Western world. Only former Olympic sprinter Usain Bolt, the world’s fastest man, has come close to rivaling him as the most popular celebrity to emerge from Jamaica. Even Bolt, though, will never match Marley’s status as an enduring icon.
Despite his fame, what’s sadly lost on so many in the West is the true genius of Marley. Drowned in the superficial fixation on his style, charisma, and island vibrations is the substance of his visionary activism and profound understanding of his people’s history. Beyond the grave, his lyrics melodically persist, ever willing to share his knowledge.
Fellow white people, oft-ignorant descendants of the colonizers, listen to the music.
Stolen from Africa
“There was a Buffalo Soldier
In the heart of America
Stolen from Africa, brought to America
Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival”
From “Buffalo Soldier” by Bob Marley and the Wailers
Christopher Columbus, sailing under Spanish flag, was the first colonial ship captain to lay eyes on Jamaica. In May 1494, he and his men attempted to land at St. Ann’s Bay on the northern shore of the island. The bay is situated in the same present-day parish as the birthplace and mausoleum of Marley, the inland village of Nine Mile.
Upon arrival, though, the indigenous Taino fought Columbus’s crew back to sea. It was a foretelling event; history has proven Jamaica as a land of fighters.
Around two centuries later, the English seized control of the island. African slave ships soon followed, carrying in their holds forced labor for plantations. Jamaica was made into a prolific producer of sugar and later coffee, and the resulting increase in slave numbers was staggering. According to Brittanica, there were only a few thousand slaves in Jamaica at the halfway mark of the 17th century. One hundred years later, that number had swelled to 300,000.
Folks, this is the part where I have a strong disagreement with how history, however accurately it might be portrayed in terms of statistics, is often dispassionately communicated. The numbers I gave you are just digits on a screen, cut neatly into impersonal sentences that turn atrocities like the one in colonial Jamaica into insidiously disconnected studies on metrics and cause-and effect correlations.
To be sure, judgements on historical events should be reserved until facts, figures, and timelines have been established. However, once data has been determined, a proper study of human history – particularly its most appalling chapters – requires a simultaneous dose of human emotion. Without empathetic connection to the persecuted, our species lacks the sustained motivation to change the future.
In summary, you must feel the past to learn from it.
This feature article is the first installment of a three-part series on the high and enduring costs of colonialism and imperialism in the Americas. Click to read the second part “Alabama: The Mystery of the Welsh Caves” or the finale “Peruvian Andes: The Violent Reckoning of Pax Americana.”
To come closer to comprehending the physical and emotional horror of the transportation of enslaved Africans along the Middle Passage, attempt to envision yourself in the pitch-black bowels of the westbound cargo vessels. Imagine rolling on the open ocean as the filth of human feces, urine, and vomit sloshed about, growing higher by the hour. Hear the inconsolable cries of agony.
Then, chained and naked in literal hell, think of the loved ones in your now faraway homeland that you will never see again.
The book Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston is a remarkably important historical account of the transatlantic slave trade in relation to the era spanning the end of slavery and the ensuing decades of hardship that faced the suddenly freed. It’s based on Hurston’s 1927 interviews with Cudjo Lewis, one of the last remaining survivors of the Coltilda, the final slave ship to reach America. At the time, Lewis was 86 years old and living his final days outside Mobile, Alabama.
“Soon we get in the ship,” Lewis told Hurston about the beginning of his voyage to America. “They make us lay down in the dark. We stayed there 13 days. They don’t give us much to eat. We so thirsty. They give us water twice a day. Oh Lord, we so thirsty.”
That was just the first two weeks of Lewis’s journey across the Atlantic; he and the other 129 Africans aboard the Coltilda spent 70 days on the ship. Just like Marley sang, they were fighting for survival. And Jamaica’s history tells that many of the enslaved were also literally fighting on arrival to the island.
As the state-run Jamaican Information Service website explains, the high number of slave rebellions on the island helped lead to the abolishment of the practice by the British in 1834. Runaways, termed “Maroons” by captors, were also numerous in Jamaica. Two Maroon villages, Maroon Town in formidable Cockpit Country in the northwest and Moore Town in the Blue Mountains and John Crow Mountains of the northeast, are still inhabited to this day.
A New Kind of Hell
“No chains around my feet but I’m not free,
I know I am bound here in captivity”
From “Concrete Jungle” by Bob Marley and the Wailers
Although slavery may have formally ended in the Americas in the 19th century, colonialism and its close relative imperialism continued to cast their menacing shadows over the millions of freedmen and freedwomen. Following the release of their captives, many of England’s old guard, much like Marley’s white British father, abruptly exited Jamaica. Their departure, however, did not spell the end of persecution.
The fading empire made sure there were enough loyalists left behind to continue its exploitative form of government. Black men and women in Jamaica were no longer forced to work the plantations, but they were now subjected to a fresh hell – destitution under the thumb of white rule.
The same fate fell on slaves in the U.S. who were freed later in the century. In his memoir The Life and Adventures of Nat Love, former slave and Wild West cowboy hero Nat Love details the desperation he and his family faced living in Tennessee after the conclusion of the American Civil War. Given a small amount of land to grow crops and with little or no job opportunities, many Black families soon stared down starvation and disease.
Love detailed his losses: First his father died, then his brother-in-law. This made him the only surviving male in his household at only 15 years old. His sister passed away as well, leaving behind two orphaned daughters.
One of the American West’s most capable figures, Love was born a man of action; he managed to secure a job to provide for his family. His wage, however, was an astonishingly low $1.50 USD per month. He eventually earned raises, albeit meager ones.
“With so many at home to provide for, my wages did not last long, but out of my three dollars I bought each of the children a book,” wrote Love, who would later earn the nickname “Deadwood Dick” for his legendary performance at the 1876 Deadwood rodeo in the Dakota Territory. “The rest went to provisions and clothing.”
Two identical strokes of luck handed Love a windfall. He twice won the same horse raffle, and twice sold the horse back to its owner. Now with $100 to his name, a large sum of money at the time, he gave half to his mother and rode west with the remainder.
Few former slaves were so fortunate, particularly those trapped on islands like Jamaica that are surrounded by the Caribbean Sea. Around the time Love and his family were struggling to survive in Tennessee, the cauldron of long-simmering tension between the white ruling class and former slaves boiled over in Morant Bay, a Jamaican town to the southeast of Kingston that serves as the capital of St. Thomas Parish.
The combination of recession, famine, and continued government neglect of the Black populous riled a furious group of citizens to violence on October 11, 1865. The Morant Bay Rebellion is a well-documented event in Caribbean history. As local government officials convened in the courthouse, several hundred Black people raided the police station, commandeered weapons, and confronted a volunteer militia that had been mustered to guard the meeting.
The confrontation quickly turned deadly.
The band of rebels killed 18 people, including justices and politicians, and 31 others were wounded. The rebellion spread outside Morant Bay to the wider parish. Two planters were killed, and threats were made on several more. The response to the uprising from the Jamaican government and its infamous governor John Eyre was nothing short of savagery: Hundreds of Black citizens, many of whom weren’t even part of the Morant Bay rebel party, were hunted down and murdered by de facto death squads.
Others were wrongfully detained and later executed, including the rebellion’s organizer Paul Bogle. Once word of the brutality reached England, the British government launched an official inquiry. The findings of the investigation were damning for Jamaica’s white ruling class. Eyre was fired, the island’s traditional assembly of politicians was disbanded, and authority was transferred to London.
In October 1965, exactly a century after the Morant Bay Rebellion, a statue of Bogle was erected in front of the town courthouse. It still stands today, serving as a sobering reminder of the ultimate price that African slaves and their descendants have paid for progress.
The monument went up at an especially notable time in the history of the Americas: The U.S. civil rights movement had reached its crescendo, and Jamaica had recently won its independence from imperialist power Britain in 1962.
Paraphrasing Bob Dylan’s 1964 song title from the same era – the times they were a-changin’.
Religion for the People
“We know where we’re going
We know where we’re from
We’re leaving Babylon
We’re going to our Father Land”
From “Exodus” by Bob Marley and the Wailers
If you’ve ever been in traffic in the Caribbean, you’re undoubtedly aware that motorists talk to one another with their car horns. You can find the same phenomenon in other corners of the globe, but it’s particularly prolific in the West Indies. Jamaica is certainly no exception: The bustling city streets of Kingston, Montego Bay, and Ocho Rios emit a continuous cacophony of honking, and it’s almost all in good nature.
Mixed in with the communicative car horns, you also frequently hear a unique greeting being traded by Jamaican locals through their rolled-down windows: “Rasta.” The meaning of this salutation is essential to understanding modern Jamaica and the nation’s impact on global Black culture.
Rastafari is a religion that officially began in Jamaica in the 1930s, but its conceptual origins date back to the beliefs of 18th-century slaves who were introduced to Christianity by colonizers. An inconvenient truth to many Christian zealots, colonialism and imperialism were championed, organized, and carried out in the weaponized names of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. A case in point is the 19th-century idea of American manifest destiny, which stated that the Christian God had ordained the U.S. to establish democracy across the North American continent.
As white America expanded westward, consolidated in the belief of divine right, an untold number of Indigenous peoples were slaughtered. Religions and cultural traditions, many of them thousands of years old, were lost forever. Peoples that survived were boxed into reservations, many which still exist on desolate, mostly forgotten land in the American West.
All of this was justified in God’s name.
Just like the Indigenous, African slaves were force-fed Christianity by colonizers to try and break their links with previous cultural identities. Many of them, however, had a different interpretation of Scripture than their captors intended. Instead of seeing the white man as God’s chosen race, they believed the Bible’s prophecies pertained to their own people’s present tribulations and future deliverance.
Later in the 20th century, a religious movement in Jamaica took some of these alternative views on Christianity and melded it with traditional mysticism and political awareness. The group believed that Africa was in fact Zion, and Ethiopia is the ultimate home of Black people and their God, called Jah. Emperor Haile Selaisse I, who ascended to the throne of Ethiopia in 1930, was declared the Second Coming of Christ and redeemer of Black people. Prior to his coronation, Selaisse’s name was Ras Tafari. Thus, the new religion was called Rastafari.
The belief system, with its empowering message to the Black community, became popular among young Jamaicans in the proceeding decades. One of those youngsters was Marley, who took music lessons in Kingston from Rastafarian Joe Higgs and later married singer Rita Anderson in 1964. Like Higgs, Anderson was also a follower of Rastafari, and the relationship only further ingrained the religion’s principles into the soon-to-be legend.
You can easily see Marley’s faith in the imagery. Rastafarians believe in natural hair, and his long locks are an integral part of his iconic look. Marley is often shown smoking ganja, which followers use to enhance meditation. Even his preferred clothing colors of red, green, gold, and black (symbolizing respectively the life forces of blood, herb, royalty, and “Africanness”) are substantial elements in the Rastafarian belief system.
As I mentioned earlier, though, Marley’s cultural impact wasn’t made through style but rather substance, and religious references are numerous throughout he and his band’s discography. As an example, the song “Exodus” is written about the return of Rastafarians to their promised land of Ethiopia. Others like “Forever Loving Jah” and “Jah Live” are tracks that are overtly dedicated to his God.
The influence of Marley’s authentic expressions among his people cannot be understated. Here was a globally celebrated Black musician unapologetically promoting a Black-centric religion through a Black-created genre of music. Throughout the 1970s, his reach traveled far outside Jamaica, reverberating across the Atlantic to his Zion.
From 1980 to 2020
“Every man gotta right to decide his own destiny
And in this judgement there is no partiality
So arm in arms, with arms, we’ll fight this little struggle
‘Cause that’s the only way we can overcome our little trouble”
From “Zimbabwe” by Bob Marley and the Wailers
While Jamaica achieved independence from imperialist Britain in 1962, Black revolutionaries in the present-day African nation of Zimbabwe were edging closer to conflict with their British rulers. The Second Chimurenga, also known as the Rhodesian Bush War, began in the mid-1960s and finally concluded in 1979 with a military stalemate. Compromises were made, and, after over a decade of guerrilla warfare, the Zimbabweans were suddenly independent.
Elections were held in February 1980, and Marley and the Wailers flew into the newly liberated nation in April for a celebration at the capital city of Harare’s Rufaro Stadium. He and his band played in front of 40,000 people on the first night, and the audience included foreign dignitaries like British Prince Charles and Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The next day, he performed for 100,000.
Thousands of miles from Jamaica, Marley had helped inspire an African nation to seek their own redemption. Forty years later in the American South, I witnessed his lasting influence firsthand. Some refer to the racial unrest in America during the summer of 2020 as the George Floyd protests, but I believe that’s an oversimplification of why millions took to the streets demanding change.
While the cell phone footage of Floyd’s murder under the knee of white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was the tipping point, it was a culmination of decades of white people – many of them in positions of authority – continuing a colonialist tradition of brutalizing and murdering Black citizens in the post-civil rights era that was the overarching reason for the outrage.
Just like with the slave revolts in 18th-century Jamaica and the later rebellion of freedmen and freedwomen at Morant Bay, Black men and women in the U.S. courageously stood in the face of power, charging their government to do better. Finally, after centuries of facing their tribulations alone, they were joined in significance by allies from history’s most prominent imperialist race.
I was one of the white folks in Charleston, South Carolina, protesting alongside the Black community during the summer of 2020. As I walked with them, I listened and observed.
Much like Marley, they have an exhaustive knowledge of their long history fighting colonial and imperialist oppression. You could hear it in their speeches and in their conversations. You could see it emblazoned on their clothing and written on their signs. Two years removed from our trip to Jamaica, I also couldn’t help but notice the presence of Marley.
Like a benevolent ghost, he was among his people, his lyrics of empowerment carrying through the speakers of several Black protesters’ portable stereos.
Here and Now
“Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.”
From Maya Angelou’s poem “And Still I Rise”
The Jamaican Defence Force soldier reviewed our passports. Once satisfied, he handed them back and continued down the aisle of the Knutsford Express bus, eventually clearing all passengers. The young man then walked to the front and stepped off, waving the driver forward. We spent a pleasant evening in Montego Bay, flying back home to the U.S. the next afternoon.
Our journey across the island, combined with the more recent stateside protests, has given me perspective regarding how far we have come in the West on the path toward racial equality. I can also say with conviction, though, that we have a long way yet to go before we reach equilibrium.
Six decades after the island gained independence from the British, the U.S. State Department continues to have travel advisories in effect for several parts of Jamaica. The warnings, just like when we were there in 2018, are related to violence and assorted criminal activity, and it’s not hard to correlate past colonial neglect and exploitation with Jamaica’s current domestic maladies. The nation, which is over 90 percent Black, is still trying to undo the damage caused by a few strategically placed white colonizers like Eyre.
In the U.S., social progress is finding strong headwinds from conservative nationalists, or, as I like to call them, neo-imperialists. Analyze political slogans such as “Make America Great Again” and “Take Back Our Country,” and you will understand my meaning. Hidden behind apparent benign nostalgia for yesteryear is an alarming reality: Every incremental recession of civil progress is a sinister step backward toward the Americas’ colonial past.
Despite the challenges that are assuredly ahead and the many who will stand in the way, I’m optimistic about the future of society. Mingling among protesters during the summer of 2020, I saw a multicultural force comprised of not only Black people, but other races my age and younger. The Millennial Generation and Generation Z have a strong plurality of young men and women who are committed to finding a more perfect civil union for all. Here and now, we are biding our time, waiting for our opportunity to take control of the levers of power.
That gives us – especially my fellow young white counterparts – the further opportunity to listen and learn from minority groups so that we are ready to effectively seek out and destroy the remaining institutional vestiges of racism in the West. Friends, our time is coming soon. With Marley and his people showing us the way, let’s continue down the road to collective redemption.
Related Content
– Click to read my feature article “Alabama: The Mystery of the Welsh Caves,” which is the second installment in this three-part series on the high and enduring costs of colonialism and imperialism in the Americas.
– Click to read my short story “Coconut in a Tree” about a daring act of kindness by a homeless man in Port Antonio, Jamaica.
– Click to watch my high-definition video of the sun setting on the Caribbean Sea in St. Maarten.