Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua

An Enslaved Muslim of the Black Atlantic

Paul E. Lovejoy, Nielson Bezerra

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN:
  9781469682457
  9781469682440
• eBook ISBN:
  9781469682464
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

A literate Muslim born between 1820 and 1830 in present-day Benin, Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua was enslaved in West Africa and forcibly moved to Brazil in 1845. During a trip to New York City in 1847, he escaped from his master and fled to Haiti, where he converted to Christianity. When he eventually returned to the United States, he enrolled in New York Central College. Baquaqua published his autobiography —the only known narrative by a former Brazilian slave— in 1854 and traveled to England with the intention of returning to Africa. He apparently achieved this goal by the early 1860s, when his paper trail disappears.

Lovejoy and Bezerra’s analysis of this remarkable autobiography—the only known narrative by a former Brazilian slave—illuminates what Baquaqua’s home in Africa was like and examines African slavery in mid-nineteenth-century Brazil. It also offers an Atlantic perspective on resistance to slavery in the Americas in the era of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter One. Born after Twins in Djougou
• Chapter Two. Twice Enslaved?
• Chapter Three. Under Slavery in Brazil
• Chapter Four. New York and Freedom
• Chapter Five. With the Free Will Baptists
• Chapter Six. Baquaqua’s Narrative of Freedom
• Chapter Seven. Return to Africa
• Conclusion
• Appendix A. Application for Writ of Habeas Corpus
• Appendix B. Haitien Mission 1849–50: Annual Reports of the American Baptist Free Mission Society
• Glossary
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index