Ibn Said’s autobiography, in spite of being a story of violence, and in spite of being a story of slavery, is also the story of a devout man who maintains his faith in a higher power. Ibn Said converted to Christianity, but his hand does not waver in recounting his earlier devotion to the Muslim faith. He writes of his devotion to “Mohammad, the Apostle of God,” of his yearly pilgrimage to Mecca, and of his morning walks to the mosque. Ibn Said, at the time in his early 60s, writes of having a father, and a mother, and siblings in his homeland. In his own hand, and in the Arabic words he could remember and recover after over 20 years of forced slavery in America, Ibn Said tells the story of his life. Ibn Said’s Muslim background makes his narrative particularly rare. The digitized collection also includes an 1860 English translation of the highly educated Ibn Said’s short autobiography. One of these is a narrative by West African Omar Ibn Said, whose 1831 Arabic manuscript is currently being featured by the Library of Congress. Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave has been widely published and studied, but other unpublished narratives are waiting to be discovered. While many of us have seen Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, and the television adaptation of Alex Haley’s Roots, most of us have little to no exposure to black autobiography in the antebellum era of legalized slavery. From an autobiography to black-epic poems, I hope the works below inspire insight into the dignity at the heart of black survival, intellectual life, and narrative. This Black History Month, I suggest we allow black voices within the Americas to speak for themselves. Woodson, packaged the inaugural “Negro History Week” as a celebration that included the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, founded in 1915 by historian Carter G. Since February 1926, we have recognized some version of what we now call Black or African-American History Month.
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