On May 8, 1803, 75 Igbo captives from what is now southeastern Nigeria, who had been transported across the Atlantic in chains and listed as property on a bill of sale, made a collective decision to seize their ship at Dunbar Creek, Georgia, drown the crew, and walk into the water together, choosing their own sovereignty and dignity over continued enslavement; this event, documented through insurance claims and court papers filed by slaveholders John Cooper and Thomas Spalding, represents the first recorded mass freedom act on American soil and demonstrates how enslaved people exercised agency and chose their own terms of liberation.
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May 803, St. Simon's Island, Georgia.
A slave [music] ship docked to Dunar Creek.
[singing] 75 ebo captives were brought from West Africa.
[singing] They were already in chains. [music] They would not stay that way.
Yeah.
[singing] >> The year is 803, [music] the month of May, the place of Georgia Shore.
[music] The ship arrived at Dunbar Creek, a waterway [singing] in St. Simon's, nothing more.
75 ebo men and women had been taken from the land, [music] shipped across the Atlantic in the middle passage, shackled [music] hand to hand. [singing] The Igbo people came from what is now southeastern Nigeria.
A civilization with governance, with language, with clear social order.
They were seized [music] by slave traders forced below the deck in cargo hoes. Star changed [music] and stripped of everything, their names, their homes, their own. [singing] The vessel landed on the Georgia [music] coast for transfer and for sale.
[singing] John Cooper [music] and Thomas Bald and had purchased them wholesale [singing] [music] before they could be dispersed to plantations and separated for good.
The captives made a decision that changed the record [music] as it stood.
>> They were not cargo. [music] >> They were not property.
>> They were evil.
>> They chose their own sovereignty.
>> Evil landed.
>> Maya free. [music] >> 75 souls took back what was theirs.
>> Their dignity. They seized the ship.
[music] They drowned the crew. They walked into the sea. Singing [music] it.
>> The water brought us. water.
>> The water sets us free. [music] The uprising began on a vessel while still docked at the creek. The captives overpowered the slavers. [music] The outcome was not unique in their will to seek.
>> They drowned the ship's [music] captain and crew members in the water right there. Historians confirmed the revoke was coordinated deliberate, not despair.
[music] After taking control of the vessel, they [music] did not attempt to sail or flew by boat. Instead, they stepped off that ship and in the dumbar creek that is on record. Take note.
They waited into the water together. All 75 as [music] a single body singing in the language. Unified in voice, unified in [music] resolve and clarity.
The phrase recorded in oral tradition translates directly.
>> The [music] water brought us here.
>> The water WILL CARRY US BACK HOME.
>> That is what the witnesses report they could [music] hear.
Several bodies were recovered from the creek and the surrounding marsh ground.
[music] >> The site today is recognized as a sacred historical landmark on that sound.
>> They were not [music] defeated.
>> They were not broken. Their last that was chosen.
>> Their last words [music] were spoken.
>> It all landed. [singing] Radio.
>> 75 souls [music] took back what was theirs.
>> Their dignity.
>> They seized the ship. They drowned the crew. They walked [music] into the sea.
Singing in [singing] a boat.
>> The water brought us.
>> The water [music] sets us free. Yeah.
This is the first recorded mass freedom [music] suicide on American soil documented [music] by slaveholders recorded in deeds insurance and toil.
[music] The financial loss was noted.
Cooper and Spalding file claims that day. The human cost was not recorded by them. History [music] found another way.
The equal belief system taught that death returns [music] the person to the ancestral homeland.
This was not desperation.
This was theology, a doctrinal state. In [music] egro cosmology, the spirit travels back across the water after death. So what the slave holders [music and singing] call suicide? The ebo call reclaiming breath.
>> St. Simon's Island sits in Glen County on the Georgia coast today. Dunbar [music] Creek still runs through it. The water has not gone [singing] away. In 2002, the state of Georgia placed a historical marker at the site. The Igbo Landing Heritage Trail now [music] documents what happened that night.
[music] >> 75 names were never recorded by those who held the pen, but the act was recorded.
>> [music] >> deeds and lost reports in the creeks and fence. The Igbo landing [music] of 803 is a documented historical event, >> not a legend, [music] >> not a myth.
>> It happened. It is permanent.
>> The water at Dumbar Creek [music] still moves.
>> The record does not erase.
>> 75 people [singing] >> chose freedom on their own terms [music] >> in their own space.
>> [music] >> Georgia 1803 a creek [singing and music] a ship 75 people who crossed an ocean in chains [music] >> and decided at Dunar creep >> that they would not take [music] one more step is property.
[music] >> Yeah.
Yeah.
>> Yeah. [music] They came from equal land in the southeast of what is Nigeria today.
A people with their own courts, their own tongue, their own way. [music] Yeah.
Captured, traded, loaded [singing] beneath the deck of a transatlantic ship.
The middle passage [music] took months.
Disease, starvation, darkness, no grip.
They arrived at St. Simon's Island, Georgia in the month [music] of May.
John Cooper and Thomas Spalding had already agreed on what to pay. [music] 75 human beings were listed as lifestyle on a bill of sale. [music] But before those papers could be unearthed, the captive shifted the scale.
They overpowered the crew while the vessel still [music] sat at the dock.
>> Oh yeah. The ships overseer drowned [music] in that creek that is in the historical block.
>> Not one of the 75 ran, not one of [music] them scatter fled.
They made a collective decision and [music] they followed instead [singing and music] by >> St. Simon all the three.
>> Say it all three.
>> 75 [music] captives chose the terms of being free.
>> They walked into [music] that water >> with their voices to still sing [singing] it loud.
>> The water carried us here.
>> The water carries us back. They [music] said it proud. [screaming] The eo cosmology held one specific truth above all other law.
>> That death is [music] a doorway back to the ancestral land without a flaw.
>> The spirit crosses [music] the water and returns to where it first began.
So what [music] slaveholders recorded as mass suicide was part of a larger plan.
They waited in [music] together all 75 singing in Igbo as they went. The phrase TRANSLATES [music] THE WATER BROUGHT US. THE WATER is our descent. [singing] [music] Several bodies were pulled from the marland by those who held the deed. [music] INSURANCE CLAIMS WERE FILED. Financial loss is recorded. That is how we can read. [music] The event survived in written history because it cost the slaveholders money. [music] The names of the 75 were never written. The ledger found that funny. [screaming] First recorded mass [music] freedom act of its kind on American ground.
>> NOT a rumor, NOT A FOLK TALE.
DOCUMENTED, RECOVERED, FOUND.
[music] The state of Georgia >> placed a marker there in 2002.
>> Dunar Creek still runs.
>> The record is permanent. The [music] 75 were true.
>> No rebellion on American soil [music] before this date match what they did.
>> They did not [music] negotiate.
>> They did not petition.
>> They did not stay here.
>> They seized the ship. [music] They silenced the crew.
>> They stood on Georgia land. Uh then [music] they turn back to the water and return by their own hands.
>> The Egoland and Heritage [music] Trail now marks the sight for those who seek home.
Blink County holds [music] the coordinates. THE MARSH, THE ISLAND, THE CREEK.
75 people, one creek, one morning in May.
[music] They are the first chapter >> in a record that did not go away.
>> Dumbar [music] Creek remembers what no slave holders could contain.
>> 75 [music] >> able souls who refused >> and walked home through the rain.
[music] [singing] >> Hey [music]
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