December 27, 2021 marked the second observation of Samuel Sharpe’s Day. During the past summer, as Jamaica approached its 59th anniversary of Independence and 187 years of Emancipation, I heard an interviewee on Mello FM ‘s Sunday afternoon programme, who planned on “reimaging Jamaica’s national heroes” said that “Sam(uel) Sharpe would have received his inspiration from the struggles of the Maroons”. Such a comment revealed a lack of knowledge on the historical role of the Maroons in the suppression of most uprising of the enslaved against injustice and oppression. As a matter of fact, the disease of white supremacy is rooted in foundational support of the Maroons in assassinating prominent African revolutionaries from the period of Prince Tacky uprising in 1760 to the suppression of Sam Sharpe’s Christmas uprising in January 1833.

As we celebrate Sam Sharpe’s legacy that brought an end to slavery, we can recall the story of hope and inspiration about an 18-year-old Jamaican named James Williams (b ca 1819), who lived and worked as a slave under the British system of apprenticeship on the Pinehurst plantation owned by the Senior family in the parish of St Ann. As a 15 years old, in 1834, he had to participate in the newly implemented Apprenticeship programme and was subjected to work and live under conditions that were virtually the same as those that had existed under slavery.

Three years later, in January 1837, Williams was introduced to some British anti-apprenticeship activists who had been visiting Jamaica. One of them, Joseph Sturge, was a wealthy English businessman who contributed the money for him to purchase his freedom. Sturge also arranged to take Williams to Britain, where he published his experience as an apprentice labourer in a book, A Narrative of Events Since the First of August, 1834 — An Apprentice Labourer in Jamaica.

While in England, Williams worked with an amanuensis whom he had met in Jamaica to write the narrative. He was Dr Archibald Leighton Palmer, a Scottish medical doctor who co-authored the text, thus becoming the youngest (18 years old), and the first Jamaican, to write in patois (Jameikan). In his book he recorded the frequent abuses and punishments he experienced while apprenticed to the Senior family. The new law of 1833 enacted by Parliament to governed Emancipation and Apprenticeship in 1834 had changed the relationship between slaveholders and slaves, not only setting an end date to slaves’ terms of service, but also decreeing that punishments against slaves would be administered by magistrates, not slaveholders. However, this was not adhered to by the planters, and the system did not alleviate the physical abuses slaves suffered.

Williams’ goal in writing his narrative was to show that, “Apprentices get a great deal more punishment now than they did when they was slaves; the master take spite, and do all he can to hurt them before the free come” (p 1).

He also wrote that, “When I was a slave, I never [was] flogged… but since the new law begin, I have been flogged seven times, and put in the house of correction four times.” (p 1) Throughout the narrative he details the collaboration between apprentice-holder and magistrate to punish apprentices for petty injustices, imagined insolence, or actual protests as a tool of apprentice-holder control. Not only did apprentice-holders refuse to supply apprentices with such provisions as food or clothing, but apprentices like Williams were regularly sentenced by the magistrates to public floggings as well as work in the millhouse and on chain gangs for minor offences.

Millhouse work was especially severe, as apprentices were required “to dance the treadmill morning and evening” (p 6). Treadmills were common features consisting of “wooden steps around a hollow cylinder on which a prisoner was made to step as the mechanism turned”. The mechanism did not serve to produce any material good, but the planters insisted that exhaustively running on the mechanism for several minutes reformed and disciplined the slaves. It’s interesting to note that the “treadmill” has evolved into an instrument of physical fitness that is found in our gyms and homes.

During apprenticeship, however, it was those who were unable to keep up with the movements of the mill who suffered debilitating cuts to their shins by the machinery and were severely whipped on their backs to force them to keep moving. Weakened or injured prisoners were tied to the bars by their wrists and dragged through the treadmill, whipped as they were forced to work.

Williams also documented the cruel treatment of women. They were forced to “dance the treadmill” while having to tie up their clothes to keep them from getting caught in the machinery, not only exposing their bodies to view but also making them vulnerable to exploitation (p 6). Pregnant women and women with children were also particularly vulnerable, and Williams was angered that women “in the family way” are subjected to severe beatings regardless of their condition (p 18). Women must often took their children with them into the mill or prison, and they were denied opportunities to breastfeed, particularly if the children are free: “He don’t allow them to suckle the child at all, if it cry ever so much; him say the children free, and the law don’t allow no time to take care of them.” (p 15) Thus, not only were the women deprived of the right to care for their children, but drivers and apprentice-holders used the children’s free status as an excuse to coerce the women to surrender their children to forced labour: “I hear that many people begin to talk that the free child no have no right to stop on the property, and they will turn them off if the mothers don’t consent let them work.” (p 20)

Williams’ book was published in June 1837 and its success resulted in reprints in multiple editions and in newspapers throughout Britain and Jamaica. Williams’ narrative became iconic, though hardly known amongst our present generation. His name and detailed accounts of the abuses suffered by apprentices became a common reference in published debates of the period.

It was because this young man did not keep his mouth shut, but boldly defied the “authority” culture by speaking of the abuses within the Apprenticeship system that resulted in a commission of inquiry in September 1837 to examine the abuses of apprentices in Brown’s Town, St Ann. Over a period of three weeks evidence was gathered from a large number of witnesses, including more than 120 apprentices. The evidence verified the narrative’s truthfulness and accounts of the testimonies that had been published in pamphlets with such titles as James Williams’ narrative fully confirmed in the report of a special commission issued from the Colonial Office.

Like Sam Sharpe’s Christmas uprising of 1832 that hammered the last nail in slavery’s coffin in Jamaica, so too James Williams’ testimonial in the narrative became the main instrument used to unceremoniously break the back of the Apprenticeship system.

As we journey as a people to the year 2022, may we begin the conversations of Sam Sharpe’s legacy to end political oppression by our two main political parties in constituencies subjected to garrison phenomenon and gangs.

Dudley Chinweuba McLean II hails from Mandeville, Manchester, and is executive director of Associación de Debate Bilingüe Xaymaca (Adebatex),which promotes debating in Spanish in high schools. He is a graduate of Codrington College, The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or dm15094@gmail.com.