Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts

Quantitative historians who use statistical tools to study big-picture historical trends, created a vast database of research on more than 36,000 slave ship voyages that took place over four hundred years. They found that there was a revolt on at least one in ten of these voyages. That was a much higher number than anyone expected. Revolts were never easy, but revolts on slave ships in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean were basically suicide missions. Nonetheless, many captives chose death over this exceptionally horrid new kind of slavery. This type of resistance was so expensive and time-consuming for the slavers, these historians estimate that it prevented at least a million more people from being captured and entering the slave trade. So why would a revolt happen on one ship and not another? The quantitative historians couldn't find a clear pattern, other than that captives tried to revolt whenever they would. But one thing did stand out: The more women onboard a slave ship, the more likely a revolt. Let me emphasize this point: the more women onboard a slave ship, the more likely a revolt would occur.

They say that the trauma of our ancestors are stored inside us: in our bodies, our minds, our spirits. So too is our resilience.

History written by the victors always erases the resistance. And those of us who live in the wake/ruins learn that we're inferior and needed to be conquered and enslaved. This is the afterlife of slavery that the victors need us to inhabit. One in which we have always already lost and have accepted our fate a handed to us.

Ehen we go back and retrieve our past, our legacy of resistance through impossible odds, our way out of no way, we redress the void of origin that would erase us. We empower and bring joy to our present. This is ancestry in progress, and it is our superpower.

You think you are reading an accurate chronicle written at the time, but if we are and what we care about are deemed irrelevant, it won't be in there.

Is there any space left in these documents for the testimony of Sarah, Abigail, Lily, or Amba? No, only this: "Having said no more than she had previously said for herself." No one bothered to record what they had said before. This is one way history erases us. What we had to say was not even considered important enough to record.

But we hav always resisted slavery. Our constant resistance was central to bringing about slavery's end. I came here not only to recover then history of this resistance, but also to specifically find the women whose stories had been written out of slave revolts. After reading every scrap of every story about slave revolts, I came across ones that included women, but only if I read between the lines.

For hundreds of years, our ancestors were brutally silenced. I wasn't supposed to find their voices. But sometimes, when you thinking you're hunting down the past, the past is hunting you...

History written by the victors always erases resistance

We reach the final stage of healing from trauma when we integrate the past into who we are. It becomes a part of us that we acknowledge and provides understanding of our world [...] Our memories must be longer than our lifetimes.