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While reading the Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, I became really interested in Milkman's great grandfather Solomon who people believed had one day got so feed up with being a slave and missed his home so much that he "ran up some hil,spun around a couple times, and was lifted up into the air" (pg323) and flew away back to Africa. Leaving behind his wife and 21 children.

During one of our class discussions, we touched on the subject and talked about the myths' of African slaves and how some of them where believed to have been from tribes that had were believed to posses the ability to fly. This sparked my interest and so for my project I decided to do some research and try to find the origins of the story.

Morrison builds her book around a motif of flying by first introducing us to the story by having a man jump of the roof of a hospital, in attempt to try and fly. As the story progresses we read about different male characters flying off and leaving there female companions behind . Lastly, we have Milkman who jumps to what may have been his death in the ending of the book. We question whether or not he had died because we had learned that his great-grandfather had been able to fly because he had come from a tribe africans that could. Morrison hints that he had some how guided himself towards Guitar. Maybe by flying?

As it turns out, Morrison based her book around a historic event that took place here in North America. In the marshes of Dunbar Creek in St. Simons Island, Glynn County, Georgia,

A group of Igbo Slaves arrived after having been captured from their homes in West Africa, around where the country of Nigeria now resides. In may of 1803 a group of 75 Igbo slaves, started a rebellion and took control of their slavers ship. After having taking control of the ship they made for landed (in a site now know as the Igbo Landing) and not knowing how to navigate in Dumbar Creek, they end up grounded. Rather than risk capture and being made slaves once more, the fierce Igbo tribe men, lead by their chief, marched into the marshes singing, believing that their god Chukwu would protect them. But in the end some of them died by drowning and the rest where captured.

By willingly walking to the river, many slaves interpreted their actions as symbolic for of their flight back to Africa. Their souls once they died would return to their people. But their bodies remained shackled and where left behind to die, or be bound to slavery.

The Myth of the Flying Africans

By Cesar Diaz

Dunbar Creek

Sources:

  • Ciucevich, Robert (July 2009). "GLYNN COUNTY HISTORIC RESOURCES SURVEY REPORT". Glynncounty Georgia. The Glynn County Board of Commissioners. Retrieved 21 October 2014.
  • Powell, Timothy B. (15 June 2004) "Ebos Landing". New Georgia Encyclopedia. Retrieved 27 April 2013.
  • "Researcher has new version of legend". St. Simons African American Heritage Coalition. The Brunswick News. Retrieved 21 October 2014.
  • L. McDaniel. The flying Africans: extent and strength of the myth in the Americas.In: New West Indian Guide/ Nieuwe West-Indische Gids 64 (1990), no: 1/2, Leiden, 28-40

There are hundreds of variations to the story, mainly because it was passed on orally by slaves from one generation to the next. Some stories depict the Igbo slaves as having flown away, but other stories say that they could walk on water. Clearly the stories changed from one person to the next, and many of them can be found extending from North America to the Caribbean and many other former slave countries.

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