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Hello. Glad you came. Adult ADHD demands that I ask everybody to stand up if you're able to stand, if you're not, just raise your hand.

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What we need to, you know, it's been three. It's, you know, body.

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Yeah. Just breathe a bit. Yeah, it's a bit.

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I appreciate. White people sit down.

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White people sitting down. Black folk, I'm talking to you hear this story that I'm sharing these excerpts.

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Yes. These excerpts that I'm going to read are the story of your blood and bone.

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Yes. The stories that I'm about to share come from your lineage.

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So I want you in particular to pay attention to what is shared, I know I only have 10 minutes, what?

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Probably nine and a bit.

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But take it in viscerally, especially if you're black and female, because I'm sharing stories drawn from the lives of Sally Bassett and Mary Prince.

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Two of our great martyred revolutionaries. Some of whose Ansett descendants are more than likely amongst those standing here.

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I'm talking about your family, so everybody clear about that. OK.

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Take a seat. OK.

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This is. My Lord.

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Yeah. You OK. I'm drawing a couple of excerpts from my upcoming book entitled A Tale of Two Women.

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Sally Bassett Married Prince in a True Story of Slavery because history is here.

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Hello. Yeah, it's good. OK.

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Because the WHO gets to tell the story is the story of Bermuda is contested ground.

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For so long, there have been writers and historians.

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At least they were the guides of writers and historians who spun a very specific story of slavery in Bermuda,

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which I feel is an affront to my ancestors. And part of my my moral obligation is to bring those ancestors stories into the room.

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So this is what I'm to share here. This is from the chapter is simply called Kill Them All Wherever whites and impose chattel slavery upon Africans,

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fierce resistance inevitably followed.

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Bermuda, a tiny subtropical backwater more than 600 miles east of the Carolinas, was not exempt from this trend.

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Some local and foreign historians have claimed that the relationship between the

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enslaved Bermudian and the Bermudian enslavement was comparatively amicable.

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They argued that the presence, the absence of the plantation system, combined with the fact that blacks and whites lived and worked closely together,

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somehow fostered a refreshingly collegial atmosphere that magically dissolved any enmity between the owners and their shackled property.

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These these historians repeatedly opined that relations between the races and Bermuda were so much better than in other, less enlightened locales.

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If we take their statements to be true, it would logically follow that such a tranquil and harmonious social climate would

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likely not trigger the viral spread of righteous bloodlust amongst the enslaved.

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So why then, would the island's blacks plan to embark upon a premeditated orgy of mass murder

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with the intention of slaying their white compatriots down to the last man,

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woman and child? Put another way How do you reconcile the image of the happy black slave and the gentle white

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master with the jarring reality of the conspiracy of seventeen sixty one in that year,

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more than half of the island's enslaved black population conspired to murder their way out of bondage by killing all of the white people,

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an action that would simultaneously abolish slavery in Bermuda and allow them to assume total control of the island.

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Now, this was 30 years before it was liberated.

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That's before they started the revolution that would lead to their their emancipation and the abolition of slavery,

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and for inciting the scope of the conspiracy reflected a great deal of planning.

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Firstly, poisoners would be enlisted to lace their owner's food and dwellings with poisons that would bring about their death.

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This initial strike would be followed by the systematic killing of owners and their children in their beds,

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along with the murder of those blacks who were adjudged to be on the side of the whites.

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By the end of the bloodshed, all of Bermuda's nearly 5000 whites would be dead and the 4000 or so enslaved Africans would be free.

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The unquestioned masters of the Realm.

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On the evening of the 12th of October, however, a secret discussion related to the uprising was overheard by a white seaman named John Vickers,

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who alerted others of the grave threat to white life posed by the plotting of the conspirators.

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Vickers raised any of the alarm the following morning,

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set in motion a series of events that the Whites desperately hoped would keep them out of harm's way.

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Martial law was declared and each parish was required by law to assign teams a watchman to monitor free and enslaved blacks.

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Legislation was also passed to further constrain the movement of the island's blacks and to facilitate the expulsion of free blacks from Bermuda.

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Of particular note? I think this is very important.

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Of particular note is that whether enslaved or free black Bermuda held its collective tongue,

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they refused to divulge any any details of conspiracy and its principal architects.

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In spite of repeated offers of manning mission and financial reward,

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and it is because of their willingness to remain silent that although the actual number of conspirators was surely greater,

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only six people, five men and one woman were eventually found guilty, lynched and burned.

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Yeah, now we're going to jump to a Mary Princess story, and I'm going to try to run through this quickly.

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How am I doing for time? By golly, OK.

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Both captain. This is called she stripped me and flogged me. He beat me till I was unable to stand.

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This is in benign, peaceful Bermuda with slaves and slave masters, which just happy all the time.

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Both captain Ingham and his wife, who was also named Mary,

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revelled in the violence that they inflicted upon the enslaved people in their charge in the Ingham household.

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Neither age nor sex could exempt the victims from their cruelty.

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Mary witnessed many instances where kept the captain's wife terrorised Jack and Cyrus, two little enslaved boys.

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Whenever she felt so inclined, she pinched them, peppered them with hard blows and beat them until the whip lacerated their flesh.

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Mrs. Ingham's penchant for sexual sadism, a perverse interest shared by her husband,

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revealed itself in the habit of torturing young Mary by stripping her naked, suspending her by her wrists and savagely whipping her.

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Indeed, Mary's descriptions of Mrs. Miss Ingham's many acts of savagery put to rest the unfounded belief that white women were

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not actively and enthusiastically engaged in carrying out the physical and sexual violence suffered by the enslaved.

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Captain Ingham proved himself to be his wife's equal in terms of his capacity to abuse the vulnerable.

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Mary describes in graphic detail the beating that he gave to the pregnant hatting,

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during which time during which he had to stop several times because the force and frequency

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with which he swung the whip and brought it down upon had it had his naked body left him.

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All but spent so severe was the beating that had he went into premature labour,

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ultimately giving birth to a stillborn baby whom she was not permitted to mourn with

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her body bloated by infection and a heart heavy with the catastrophic loss of a child.

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Hetty soon succumbed to her wounds.

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Mary herself almost met the same fate after Mrs. Ingham blamed her for breaking a clear jar that was, in fact, already badly cracked.

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For this crime, she whipped Mary unmercifully, only abandoning the assault when fatigue overtook her.

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Mr. Ingham, upon hearing Mary's offence, promised to beat her the next day and true to his word.

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At noon the following day, he whipped Mary until he was exhausted. He would likely have beaten to death after catching a second win were enough

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of the providential intervention of an earthquake and the resulting chaos.

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Mary was able to crawl under the steps of the veranda, where she remained clinging to life until morning.

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Now in again, in light of the time I wanted, so I wanted to make clear the fact that slavery was not benign.

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Never was it benign. When your humanity is ripped from you as a precondition for the establishment of what we know is Western civilisation.

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When you're immutable, humanity is the. Foundation upon which white wealth has been built, you cannot.

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Began a conversation talking about. The suffering of my ancestors, because I feel this very viscerally understand this,

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I feel it very viscerally as something that wasn't as bad as in the United States because they had plantation slavery.

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We are doing a disservice. In fact, we are doing a violence to our ancestors when we speak of their suffering.

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As anything other than hellish, I think that's very important, a very important point to make because Bermudian historians and writers,

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both Bermudian and foreign, have this habit of and I'll just give you an example of of minimising our suffering.

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This is by James E. Smith writing in slavery in Bermuda,

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he states that remediate black enslaved black comedians were treated more humanely than those in the Caribbean,

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and that Bermudian enslavement encouraged the degree of intimacy and personal contact between master and slave.

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I think Mary Prince would beg to differ. I'm fairly certain that Sally Bassett would as well.

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I'm absolutely positively sure that if they could speak their heads that were on

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affixed to the spikes along jemmied Island would would issue a dissenting opinion.

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Thank you, Dennis.