Jacob Blake III is the great, great, great, great, great grandson of Brassa Nchabra, who was born in Nhacra (modern day Guinea Bissau) around 1758. Brassa Nchabra’s family were Binham Brassa, the people who were called “Balanta” which means “those who resist”.
It is popular within the “woke” community to say “Black history did not begin with the slave ship”. In order to properly understand the aftermath of the shooting of Jacob Blake and to learn the real lessons, it is necessary to tell the story from the perspective of Brassa Nchabra and the Balanta people. What becomes clear is that the Blake family came from a fierce and proud tradition of the Binham Brassa, a people who, when attacked, WOULD ALWAYS COMPLETE A COUNTER-STRIKE AGAINST THE ENEMY. Being cut-off from the knowledge of this heritage and deliberately programmed to NEVER counter-attack the enemy, the Blake family’s response to the shooting of Jacob Blake - to plead for people to pray to Jesus and to protest peacefully instead of COUNTER-STRIKING, is EXACTLY the design of Reverend Charles Colcock Jones. Here is the story of the tragic effect of severing a people from their ancestral heritage.
THE MILITARY LEGACY OF THE BALANTA PEOPLE
In 1615, Manuel Alvares commented, “They [Balantas] have no principle king. . . . They excel at making assaults . . . taking everything they can find and capturing as many persons as possible.”
In the late seventeenth century, Capuchins noted that “Balanta and the Falup’ cause notable damages and seize every day the vessels that pass by . . . and this even though the vessels are well armed.”
In defense of their freedom, scholar Walter Hawthorne describes the Balanta military skill,
“In part, the Balanta and other coastal groups resisted enslavement by exploiting the advantages offered by the region in which they lived. Put simply, the coast offered more defenses and opportunities for counterattack against slave-raiding armies and other enemies than did the savanna-woodland interior. In the early twentieth century, Portuguese administrator Alberto Gomes Pimentel explained how the Balanta utilized the natural protection of mangrove-covered areas – terrafe in Guinean creole – when they were confronted with an attack from a well-organized and well-armed enemy seeking captives or booty: ‘Armed with guns and large swords, the Balanta, who did not generally employ any resistance on these occasions. . . . pretended to flee (it was their tactic), suffering a withdrawal and going to hide in the ‘terrafe’ on the margins on the rivers and lagoons, spreading out in the flats some distance so as not to be shot by their enemies. The attackers. . . . then began to return for their lands with all of the spoils of war’. Organizing rapidly and allying themselves with others in the area, the Balanta typically followed their enemies through the densely forested coastal region. At times, the Balanta waited until their attackers had almost reached their homelands before giving ‘a few shots and making considerable noise so as to cause a panic.’ The Balanta then engaged their enemies in combat, ‘many times corpo a corpo’. . . .
Having assembled in what the Capuchins called ‘a great number,’ Balanta warriors struck their stranded victims quickly and with overwhelming force. ‘Upon approaching a boat,’ the Capuchins said, ‘they attack with fury, they kill, rob, capture and make off with everything.’
Such attacks happened with a great deal of regularity and struck fear in the hearts of merchants and missionaries alike. Others also commented on the frequency of Balanta raids on river vessels.
On March 24, 1694, Bispo Portuense feared that he would fall victim to the Balanta when his boat, guided by grumetes, ran aground on a sandbar, probably on the Canal do Impernal, ‘very close to the territory of those barbarians.’ . . . .
Faced with an impediment to the flow of trade to their ports, the Portuguese tried to bring an end to Balanta raids. But they were outclassed militarily by skilled Balanta age-grade fighters. Portuguese adjutant Amaro Rodrigues and his crew certainly discovered this. In 1696, he and a group of fourteen soldiers from a Portuguese post on Bissau anchored their craft somewhere near a Balanta village close to where Bissau’s Captain Jose Pinheiro had ordered the men to stage an attack. However, the Portuguese strategy was ill conceived. A sizable group of Balanta struck a blow against the crew before they had even left their boat. The Balanta killed Rodrigues and two Portuguese soldiers and took twelve people captive.
According to John Horhn’s They Had No King: Ella Baker and the Politics of Decentralized Organization Among African Descended Populations,
“Furthermore, the Balanta were extremely mistrusting of outsiders not from their own lineage or tabancas. This was true even when applied to members of their own ethnic group and resulted in a culture that held loyalty to the tabancas above all else. Therefore, it was impossible for outside forces to gain influence over Balanta culture without direct conquest and the commitment of military resources. “
Hawthorne’s continues in Strategies of the Decentralized,
“In 1777, Portuguese commander Ignacio Bayao reported from Bissau that he was furious that Balanta had been adversely affecting the regional flow of slaves and other goods carried by boats along Guinea-Bissau’s rivers. It was ‘not possible,’ he wrote, ‘to navigate boats for those [Balanta] parts without some fear of the continuous robbing that they have done, making captive those who navigate in the aforementioned boats.’ In response, Bayao sent infantrymen in two vessels ‘armed for war’ into Balanta territories. After these men had anchored, disembarked, and ventured some distance inland, they ‘destroyed some men, burning nine villages’ and then made a hasty retreat back to the river. Finding their vessels rendered ‘disorderly,’ the infantrymen were quickly surrounded by well-armed Balanta. Bayao lamented that ‘twenty men from two infantry companies’ were taken captive or killed. Having sent out more patrols to subdue the ‘savage Balanta’ and having attempted a ‘war’ against this decentralized people, the Portuguese found that conditions on Guinea- Bissau’s rivers did not improve.’
Viewing the regional slave trade as a threat to their communities, the Balanta continued their raids on merchant vessels transporting captives and other goods. Such raids would tax Portuguese patience throughout the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century . . . . Thus, by garnering weapons and iron in regional markets and from Luso-African merchants, many Balanta communities, like those of other decentralized coastal societies, were not only able to stand up to threats posed by the slaving armies of Kaabu and Casamance, they were also able to withstand assaults by Portuguese who were attempting to profit by insuring the smooth running of the coastal trade routes that moved captives to area ports.”
So it is clear that the natural, historical and correct response to an attack on Balanta people is to retreat from the first strike and COUNTER-ATTACK with a retaliatory SECOND-STRIKE.
THE AMBUSH OF BRASSA NCHABRA
Sometime during the 1760’s or early 1770’s, during the period that Portuguese commander Ignacio Bayao complained about the Balanta COUNTER-ATTACKS, Brassa Nchabra, a young boy belonging to a free family and a community that dominated the local economy, was captured and trafficked across the Atlantic and brought to Charleston, South Carolina. Historian Walter Rodney writes:
“The earliest European reports disclose that the Balantas had a multiplicity of petty settlements consisting of family lineages (Fernandes, 80) . . . . The Balantas had quantities of prime yams…. The best farmers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries - the Balantas . . . - all had cattle and goats …. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Andre Dornelas pointed out that Balanta territory was free from heavy vegetation. It was these very Balantas who reared the most livestock in the area, and it was they who provided supplies of foodstuffs for their neighbors….That peoples who were far superior producers of food than the Mande and Fula are consistently dubbed ‘Primitives’ is due solely to the contention that they did not erect a superstructure of states. . . . It is only the Balantas who can be cited as lacking the institution of kingship. At any rate there seemed to have been little or no differentiation within Balanta society on the basis of who held property, authority and coercive power. . . . The distribution of goods, to take a very important facet of social activity, was extremely well organized on an inter-tribal basis in the Geba-Casamance area, and one of the groups primarily concerned in this were the Balantas, . . . In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Portuguese realized that the Balantas were the chief agriculturalists and the suppliers of food to the neighboring peoples. The Beafadas and Papels were heavily dependent on Balanta produce, and in return, owing to the Balanta refusal to trade with the Europeans, goods of European origin reached them via the Beafadas and the Papels. The Balantas did not allow foreigners in their midst, but they were always present in the numerous markets held in the territory of their neighbors. . . .”
Portuguese, French and English slave traders employed Bijago and Mandinka people to ambush Balanta women going to the markets. These Europeans were Christians who justified their actions in the name of God and Jesus. In this way, they seized Balanta women and children and sold them at the ports of Cacheu and Bissau. The result is that only 22% of the 6,534 Balanta who were trafficked to the United States were men. 78% were women and children. According to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, this forced removal of the child Brassa Nchabra from his family to the Blake family in the Carolina’s was an act of genocide that resulted in
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to the Brassa Nchabra family;
Deliberately inflicting on the family of Brassa Nchabra conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
We know that Brassa Nchbra’s family and the Balanta people continued to COUNTER-STRIKE against their enemies after the capture of Brassa Nchabra because of Commander Ignacio Bayao’s report in 1777. But what happened to the the descendants of Brass Nchabra in America?
THE TORTURE, TERRORISM AND GENOCIDE COMMITTED AGAINST GEORGE BLAKE
B’rassa Nchabra was captured and brought to Charleston, South Carolina as part of the illegal English slave trading in the area. According to the Negro Law of South Carolina (1740), Section I declared
“all Negroes and Indians (Free Indians in amity with this Government, Negroes, mulattoes and mestizos, who are now free excepted) to be slaves.“
However, Section 4 stated that
“The term Negro is confined to slave Africans (The ancient Berbers) and their descendants. It does not embrace the free inhabitants of Africa, such as the Egyptians, Moors, or the Negro Asiatics, such as Lascars.”
Thus, by this statute, B’rassa Nchabra, who was a free inhabitant at the time of his capture and came from a family lineage and people that had never been enslaved and were not subjects of any political authority, was wrongfully enslaved in Charleston through illegal English maritime activity.
Being so young, Brassa Nchabra had never completed the Balanta age-grade initiations which is described as “opening the doors’ of maturity and wisdom in the Balanta community.” Being so young and unable to speak English, he could not make a case in defense of his freedom upon his arrival to Charleston.
Brassa Nchabra was given the slave name “George” - named after George Washington, the infamous slave owner and traitorous leader of the Sons of Liberty terrorist group. Eventually, George was purchased and brought to Wake County, North Carolina and given to Dempsey Blake, the great, great grandson of the pirate Robert Blake. Robert Blake was himself a rebellious traitor, fighting against his King during an English civil war and defeating Royal General Prince Rupert in 1650. For this, Robert Blake was given legal sanction for his mercenary actions by being designated Commander-in-Chief of the English Fleet. He stole $14 million worth of goods from the Spanish fleet and used this money to send his sons to America and establish lucrative plantations. His descendants would become some of the largest slave owners in America.
LEGAL SANCTION OF GENOCIDE AGAINST BRASSA NCHABRA
From the time of his arrival in North Carolina until 1788, Brassa Nchabra was subject to the following genocidal laws:
1741 c 35 s 25 Runaw'ys to be committed to jail--notice to be given.
1741 c 35 s 26 27. Runaway may he hired out, when owner not known.
1741 c 35 s 28 When the owner appears runaway to be delivered to him.
1741 c 35 s 29 Iron collar to be put on runaway when hired out.
1741 c 35 s 30 and 31. Duty of Justice wh'n a runaway is bro't before him and also of the constable to whom he is committ'd.
1741 c 35 s 32 Penalty on Sheriff &c for employing runaway or keeping him longer than this act directs or for suffering him to escape.
1741 c 35 s 33 Keepers of ferries to give passage to constables conveying runaways
1741 c 35 s 34 Notice to be given by the jailor in certain cases in the State Gazette.
1741 c 35 s 40 R'naway slaves may be outlawed in certain cases.
1741 c 35 s 35, 36, 37. 1831 c 44 Slaves not to go armed.
1741 c 35 s 38 No slave to go off his masters pl'ntation without leave in writing.
1741 c 35 s 39 1779 c 152 s 1 Slaves not to raise stock.
1753 c 53 s 6 Slaves not fed &c. stealing corn &c. injured person may sue the owner.
1777 c 123 s 2 Penalty on slaves burning woods.
1777 c 115 s 42 1821 c 1123. Against whom slaves and other persons of colour may be witnesses.
1783 c 190 s 1 2, 3. Slav's f'r trivi'l offences to be tried before a justice of the peace.
1786 c 249. Penalty on bringing slaves from certain States.
1787 c 287 s 2 Free negroes &c. not to entertain slaves in their houses at certain times.
NEUROLOGICAL EFFECTS OF THE TORTURE, TERRORISM AND GENOCIDE COMMITTED AGAINST GEORGE BLAKE
According to neuroscience, when faced with a threat—real or imagined, physical or emotional—the most primitive parts of the brain go into action to determine if the threat is a credible one. If it finds that yes, the threat is real, it will then go into survival mode and determine if you should stay and fight or run away—whichever one will most likely result in survival.
After surviving the trauma of the middle passage, the most primitive parts of Brassa Nchabra’s YOUNG brain had already been triggered to enter the most extreme fight or flight condition which was both ACUTE and CHRONIC. Already in a state of physical, emotional and spiritual abuse and degradation,
the constant threat of violence made fighting and escaping both unsuitable choices for Brassa Nchabra’s survival.
For most of the African people disembarking from middle passage ships, submission and obedience proved to be the only choice likely to result in survival.
Over time these tactics become imprinted on your brain.
They become your brain’s go-to fix when it feels threatened. This then becomes your pattern. You don’t have to think about these tactics. They just become part of your comfort zone and your automatic response to feeling unsafe or uncomfortable.
These types of tactics are referred to as familiarity heuristic. In other words, your brain reverts to what it’s familiar with when faced with a threat. Remember, your brain’s job is to keep you safe and make sure you survive. What the brain considers safe is what is familiar. After all, what you’ve done to this point has kept you alive. You’ve survived so far, so as far as your brain is concerned, what it’s done to date to keep you safe has worked.
Thus, for the first time in the history of Brassa Nchabra’s family, submission and obedience entered into it’s pathological and epigenetic code.
Sometime around 1788, George’s son Jack was born with this new submissive epigenetic coding supported by environmental programming. He was the first member of Brassa Nchabra’s family to be born into captivity and slavery. He knew little to nothing about his Balanta heritage and all he knew was the trauma of the genocide committed against he and his father. In 1819, Jack had a son named Yancy and that same year both were given to Asa Blake, the son of Dempsey Blake who was the great, great grandson of the traitorous pirate Robert Blake.
Thus, three generations of Brassa Nchabra’s family were now enslaved and victims of genocide. None of them were Christian.
They were forced through the use of coercive power and a monopoly of violence justified by Christian ideology to OBEY their master Dempsey Blake and then Asa Blake. They were forced through the use of coercive power and a monopoly of violence justified by Christian ideology to use their slave names. In a state of unnatural terror and trauma, submissiveness and obedience for the sake of survival had become the Blake family’s automatic response to the genocide they were suffering.
NAT TURNER’S REBELLION AND REVEREND CHARLES COLCOCK JONES’ PLAN TO PREVENT ANY NEGRO INSURRECTION
The Southampton Insurrection, also known as Nat Turner’s Rebellion, took place in August, 1831. The insurrectionists killed between 55 and 65 people, at least 51 of whom were white. This happened across the North Carolina border just 129 miles from the Blake plantation were George, Jack and Yancey were enslaved. The total population of Raleigh, North Carolina at that time was almost 1,700, half black and half white. The whole of Raleigh, NC was placed under arms. The North Carolina militia was called out to assist in stopping the rebellion. The North Carolina General Assembly passed a law forbidding African American preachers to speak at worship services where slaves from different owners are in attendance, and forbidding anyone to teach African Americans to read and write. John Spencer Basset, writing in 1899 in his book, Slavery in the State of North Carolina, states,
“It was, indeed, in a harsh spirit that the law came at last to regulate the religious relations of the slave. In the beginning, when the slaves were just from barbarism and freedom, it was thought best to forbid them to have churches of their own. But as they became more manageable, this restriction was omitted from the law and the churches went on with their work among the slaves. . . . The change came openly in 1830, when a law was passed by the [North Carolina] General Assembly . . . .It was enacted that no free person or slave should teach a slave to read or write, the use of figures excepted, or give to a slave any book or pamphlet. This law was no doubt intended to meet the danger from the circulation of incendiary literature, which was believed to be imminent; yet it is no less true that it bore directly on the slave’s religious life. It cut him off from the reading of the Bible - a point much insisted on by the agitators of the North - and it forestalled that mental development which was necessary to him in comprehending the Christian life. The only argument made for this law was that if a slave could read he would soon become acquainted with his rights.
A year later a severer blow fell. The Legislature then forbade any slave or free person of color to preach, exhort, or teach ‘in any prayer-meeting or other association for worship where slaves of different families are collected together’ on penalty of receiving not more than thirty-nine lashes.’ The result was to increase the responsibility of the churches of the whites. They were compelled . . . to take on themselves the task of handing down to the slaves religious instruction in such a way that it should be comprehended by their immature minds and should not be too strongly flavored with the bitterness of bondage. With the mandate of the Legislature the churches acquiesced.
As to the preaching of the dominant class to the slaves it always had one element of disadvantage. It seemed to the negro to be given with a view to upholding slavery. As an illustration of this I may introduce the testimony of Lunsford Lane. This slave was the property of a prominent and highly esteemed citizen of Raleigh, N.C. He hired his own time and with his father manufactured smoking tobacco by a secret process. His business grew and at length he bought his own freedom. Later, he opened a wood yard, a grocery store and kept teams for hauling. He at last bought his own home, and had bargained to buy his wife and children for $2500, when the rigors of the law were applied and he was driven from the State. He was intelligent enough to get a clear view of slavery from the slave’s standpoint. He was later a minister, and undoubtedly had the confidence and esteem of some of the leading people of Raleigh, among whom was Governor Morehead. He is a competent witness for the negro. In speaking of the sermons from white preachers he said that the favorite texts were ‘Servants, be obedient to your masters,’ and ‘he that knoweth his master’s will and doth it not shall be beaten with many stripes.’ He adds, ‘Similar passages with but few exceptions formed the basis of most of the public instruction. The first commandment was to obey our masters, and the second was like unto it; to labor as faithfully when they or the overseers were not watching as when they were.’ . . All this was natural. To be a slave was the fundamental fact of the negro’s life. To be a good slave was to obey and to labor. Not to obey and not to labor were, in the master’s eye, the fundamental sins of a slave. . . . [Says Lunsford Lane] ‘There was one hard doctrine to which we as slaves were compelled to listen, which I found difficult to receive. We were often told by the minister how much we owed to God for bringing us over from the benighted shores of Africa and permitting us to listen to the sound of the gospel . . . . ‘ On the other hand, many of the more independent negroes, those who in their hearts never accepted the institution of slavery, were repelled form the white man’s religion . . .
Through the teachings of the church many were enabled to bend in meekness under their bondage and be content with a hopeless lot. There are whites to whom Christianity is still chiefly a burdenbearing affair. Such quietism has a negative value. It saves men from discontent and society from chaos. But it has little positive and constructive value. The idea of social reform which is also associated with the standard of Christian duty was not for the slave.
According to Dr. Carter G. Woodson in the Miseducation of the Negro,
“‘Prominent among the southerners who endeavored to readjust their policy of enlightening the Black population, were Bishop William Meade, Bishop William Capers, and Rev. C.C. Jones . . . The most striking example of this class of workers was the Rev. C.C. Jones, a minister of the Presbyterian Church. Educated at Princeton . . . . and located in Georgia where he could study the situation as it was, Jones became not a theorist but a worker. . . . Meeting the argument of those who feared the insubordination of Negroes, Jones thought that the gospel would do more for the obedience of slaves and the peace of the community than weapons of war. He asserted that the very effort of the masters to instruct their slaves created a strong bond of union between them and their masters. History, he believed, showed that the direct way of exposing the slaves to acts of insubordination was to leave them in ignorance and superstition to the care of their own religion. . . . He conceded that the Southampton Insurrection in Virginia in 1831 originated under the color of religion. It was pointed out however, that this very act itself was a proof that Negroes left to work out their own salvation, had fallen victims to ‘ignorant and misguided teachers’ like Nat Turner. Such undesirable leaders, thought he, would never have had the opportunity to do mischief, if the masters had taken it upon themselves to instruct their slaves. He asserted that no large number of slaves well instructed in the Christian religion and taken into the churches directed by White men had ever been found guilty of taking part in servile insurrections. . . . . . . ‘his [the Negro} instruction must be an entirely different thing from the training of the Cuacasian,’ in regard to whom ‘the term education had widely different significations.’ For this reason these defenders believed that instead of giving the Negro systematic instruction he should be placed in the best position possible for the development of his imitative powers - ‘to call into action that peculiar capacity for copying the habits, mental and moral, of the superior race.’ . . . Directing their efforts thereafter toward mere verbal teaching religious workers depended upon the memory of the slave to retain sufficient of the truths and principles expounded to effect his conversion.
Pamphlets, hymn books, and catechisms especially adapted to the work were written by churchmen, and placed in the hands of discreet missionaries acceptable to the slaveholders.
Among other publications of this kind were Dr. Capers’s Short Catechism for the Use of Colored Members on Trial in the Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina.; A Catechism to be Used by Teachers in the Religious Instruction of Persons of Color in the Episcopal Church of South Carolina; Dr. Palmer’s Catechism; Rev John Mine’s Catechism; and C.C. Jones’s Catechism of Scripture,’ Doctrine and Practice Designed for the Original Instruction of Colored People. . . .These extracts were to ‘be read to them on proper occasions by any member of the family’.”
What was Reverend Jones’ plan?
“They are an ignorant and wicked people, from the oldest to the youngest. Hence, instruction should be committed to them all, and communicated intelligibly. And that it may be impressed upon their memories, and good order promoted amongst them, it should be communicated frequently and at stated intervals of time.
The plan is this. The Planters form themselves into a voluntary association, and take the religious instruction of the colored population into their own hands. And in this way: - As many of the association as feel themselves called to the work, shall become teachers. An Executive Committee is to regulate the operations of the Society, to establish regular stations, both for instruction during the week and on the Sabbath, and to appoint teachers who shall punctually attend to their respective charges, and communicate instruction altogether orally, and - in as systematic and intelligible a manner as possible, embracing all the principles of the Christian religion as understood by orthodox Protestants
Specifically, Reverend Jones, in 1847, stated,
“The instruction must necessarily be communicated in a catechetical way, and with a few exceptions, the multitude of children and youth do not read. This is particularly the fact with those who live in the country. Let the teacher ask the question and repeat the answer; and explain it; and then continue asking the question until the answer is committed to memory, the scholars answering all . . . .The negroes are fond of singing, and it is a matter of much importance to their improvement and interest in the school; that hymns and psalms of a suitable character be taught. . . . These hymns and psalms will be sung by them in their religious meetings, and while they are engaged in their daily duties; and they will gradually be substituted for many songs and hymns, which they are in the habit of using, for the want of something better. . . . At the close, let the superintendent review the school on the lesson and hymns of the day, and explain and apply them; the object being not only to covey the form of sound words, but the substance and power also. Frequent reviews should by no means be omitted. . . . Take the following order of exercises, and it will about consume the time mentioned: - open with singing; read a portion of Holy Scripture - pray; after prayer, let the school repeat the Lord’s prayer, the creed, the commandments, select verses of Scripture; teach the hymn or a portion of it, which the school is learning, and making the school rise, teach, for a short time, the tune with the humn; review the last lesson - sing again - teach the lesson in the catechism for the day - give explanation and make an application; this should be done by each teacher privately to his class, and then by the superintendent to the whole school - and dismiss with or without prayer, and a dismission hymn or doxology. . . . Happy then shall we be, if we can increase the spirit of obedience in our Servants. . . . Happy shall we be if we can . . . . deliver their Masters from the pecuniary loss . . . consequent upon their negligence and crime. . . .There never will be a better state of things until the Negroes are better instructed in religion.”
And what would be the benefits of such religious instruction to the Negro? According to Reverend Jones:
1) There will be a better understanding of the mutual relations of Master and Servant;
2) There will be GREATER SUBORDINATION and a decrease of crime amongst the Negroes;
3) Much unpleasant discipline will be saved to the Churches;
4) The Church and Society at large will be benefitted;
5) The Souls of our Servants will be saved and,
6) We shall relieve ourselves of great responsibility.
Specifically, Reverend Jones stated that,
“obedience will never be felt and performed to the extent that we desire it, unless we can bottom it on religious principle.. . . It will be noticed that obedience is inculcated as a Christian duty, binding on the Servants, and thus the authority of Masters is supported by considerations drawn from eternity”
BENNETT BLAKE IMPLEMENTS REVEREND COLCOCK JONES’ PLAN TO THE NEGROES OF WAKE COUNTY, NC AND CONVERTS YANCEY BLAKE TO CHRISTIANITY.
According to Early Methodist Meeting Houses in Wake Country, North Carolina,
“Another Methodist pioneer was Bennet T. Blake, born in Virginia in 1800. While living in Petersburg, as a young man, Blake came under the influence of some prominent Methodist ministers including John Early who later became bishop. These ministers recognized a tremendous potential in the talented and capable young man and encouraged him to devote his life to the Methodist ministry. Blake joined the Virginia Conference in 1824, but gave most of his ministry to Wake Country where he began by serving in Raleigh in February, 1827. . . . .It was at this Conference that the famous Georgia slave-owning preacher, James O. Andrew, was elected bishop, a move that led to the division of the church. . . . [Blake] married the daughter of Needham Price, a prosperous land owner in southeastern Wake County, and made his home at Shotwell. After serving circuits down east, Blake filled the pulpit on Edenton Street in 1832, after Mellville B. Cox left for his missionary journey to Liberia. Three years he served as presiding elder in other districts, three years in educational work at Greensboro, but virtually the remainder of his thirty-year ministry was within Wake County. . . . He pioneered in a ministry to blacks, when this was not a popular thing to do. . . . Blake was also a delegate to the 1844 organizing Conference of the splinter group which called themselves the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Blake established the Neuse River Mission to People of Colour in 1844 and continued his work there for two years. This was the first Methodist appointment in Wake County established entirely for a minority race. . . . At the end of the first year he reported eight black members with this number doubling to 16 by the end of 1845. . . . Meanwhile at Edenton Street Church, Dr. Rufus T. Heflin held a revival early in his pastorate during 1849 in which more than 250 people were converted to swell the membership roll to 213 white and 232 black members. These numbers continued to increase proportionately. White members. . . were equally irritated and embarrassed by the strong black membership. Socially, economically and culturally, black membership in the progressive city church was incompatible with the expectations of the minority and plans were made for something to be done to remedy the situation. The remedy, announced as a satisfactory solution for all concerned, came in 1853 after the determination that the blacks should have a church of their own. People of both races worked to get money together to buy land and obtain a building. . . . For the purpose of an episcopal appointment, the black congregation was called the African Mission and Daniel Culbreth, or Uncle Culbreth as he was affectionately called, became the first pastor. . . . He was on the Raleigh Circuit in 1834 with Bennet T. Blake . . . [Blake] retired in 1854 and died at his residence near Shotwell on May 28, 1882.”
According to B’rassa Nchabra family oral history given by Eustace Blake on August 9, 1974,
"Our forefathers were George, Jack, Yancey. Yancey Blake married Melissa Page. Yancey begat nine children by Melissa. Two boys and seven girls. Boys: Yancey Jr and John Addison. During the civil war a group of Federal Soldiers came pass the house of my grandfather (Yancey Blake), Yancey Blake Jr. joined them and was never heard from anymore.”
Indeed, Yancey Jr., the son of Jack Blake, was born in 1847, the fourth generation of Brassa Nchabra and the third generation born into captivity, slavery and with the submissive and obedient epigenetic coding. In 1853, the year that the African Mission black congregation was established in Wake County, Jack Blake was emancipated and married the love of his life, a woman named Cherry. Jack’s son, Yancey was 34 years of age. Five years later, in 1858, Yancey had another son, John Addison.
In 1861, North Carolina lawmakers barred any black person from owning or controlling a slave, making it impossible for a free person of color to buy freedom for a family member or friend. Thus, Jack Blake was prevented from purchasing or obtaining the freedom of his children and grandchildren. Thus, Yancey Jr. ran off the plantation and enlisted in the the 40th U.S., Colored Troops. Military Service Records list him as "Henderson Blake", age 18, enlisted from 1863-1865.
Here, in Yancey Jr.’s willingness to risk his life for freedom’s sake, the Balanta epigenetic coding was fully expressed. Yancey Jr. returned to the military legacy of his Balanta ancestors and was willing to make a COUNTER-STRIKE against his enemies.
Meanwhile, in Wake County where Jack, Yancey and John Addison were living,
“240 black members would march out of the brick city church with a feeling of triumph and move into their new church home. Dr. Bassett, writing of the event, said, ‘They rejoiced because they had a building of their own and the whites rejoiced because the Negroes were out of their church.’ . . . The effect of the War Between the States and the resultant Conference attitude caused the members to unite with the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1866.”
One year earlier, almost 150 delegates attended The Convention of the Colored People of North Carolina held at the Loyal AME Church in Raleigh, North Carolina. The President of the convention stated,
“There had never been before and there would probably never be again so important an assemblage of the colored people of North Carolina as the present in its influence upon the destinies of this people for all time to come. They had assembled from the hill-side, the mountains, and the valleys, to consult together upon the best interests of the colored people, and their watchwords, “Equal Rights before the Law.”
Writing to the Convention, William Coleman stated,
“In the first place, you should be allowed to vote as a matter of right.
There was only one State refused you this right in its organic law at the adoption of the Federal Constitution. Congress has recognized it over and over again, and many of you recollect when free persons of color voted in North Carolina . The great and good men who founded the Government felt it no degradation that the ballot-box was open to free persons of color, nor did Gen. Jackson so regard it when he called them "fellow-citizens" in his Louisiana campaign. But, further, it can easily be shown by the severest logic, that if you are not to be allowed equality before the law, then the principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence, upon which our Government is based, are words "full of sound and fury," signifying nothing."
You are four millions of people, the bone and sinew of the Southern States. If they are ever to recuperate and regain the important position they once held in the commercial world, it will be due to your energy and industry. But you may well ask how this is to be expected, if yea are denied the rights of freemen, if you are still to remain a proscribed and degraded race? If you are to have no other motive to incite you than a bare struggle for physical existence, if you are to feel no weight of responsibility, to be moved by no feelings of honor and patriotism, are to entertain no hopes for the elevation and advancement of your children to a higher standpoint than you now occupy, then indeed I do not see with what heart you can go to work at rebuilding the future of these shattered States.
But then, you will pay a tax to the support of the Government. Your brethren in Louisiana have been paying one for a number of years on property at the assessed value of fifteen millions of dollars. Is the colored man to have no voice in the appropriation of his money? And this, too, in a Government claiming to be Republican, and founded, after a seven years' war, upon the principle of taxation and representation!
Nothing could be more preposterous, unless it be to refuse men the right of suffrage who bare undergone all manner of hardships and dangers far rise sake of the Government; who have volunteered in the ranks of its armies, and risked their lives upon the battle-field to maintain its integrity. There is something more than a jingle of words in the copulation of "ballot and bullet."
But there is even a more terrible calamity that you may be doomed to bear than the denial of suffrage. I mean the denial of justice in our courts of law. If you are not to be admitted to the witness stand, how are you to prove your contracts? You will be at the mercy of every scoundrel who has a white skin, and is disposed to swindle you. Of course, you can have no protection for your property. How about yer persons? You may be set upon, beaten into a jelly, and outright, and although fifty respectable colored sons might have seen it, you will be without .What is to protect your wives and daughters from, the brutal last of those who would select a time when no white witnesses were present to effect their devilish designs? Formerly, your masters protected you as property; now, you must protect Yourselves as persons; and, unfortunately, the prejudice is too strong against you (I fear) to expect justice from the State. And there are other feelings, by no means so excusable as prejudice, and a policy by no means national, which will operate to keep you down. Your only hope is an appeal to Congress.”
A year later, The Freedman’s Convention was held in Raleigh, North Carolina, from October 2nd to the 5th. There were 115 delegates from sixty counties. The representatives for Wake Country were J. H. Harris, Charles Ray, Wm. Laws, S. Ellerson, H. Locket, J. R, Caswell. Moses Patterson and Wm. High, honorary members. During the Convention, although many government officials of the state of North Carolina addressed the Convention, the convention was not informed of their legal status in international law. Specifically, they were not informed that the 14th amendment was not a grant of citizenship but merely an offer of citizenship that required an acceptance of rejection. The convention was not informed of the principle of jus soli, that America had the obligation to offer citizenship to the African born on American soil but that it could not impose this citizenship. Furthermore, the the United States government, under obligation to make the offer, also had the power to create the mechanism – a plebiscite-- whereby the African could make an informed decision, an informed acceptance or rejection of the offer of American citizenship. Indeed, Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment makes clear that Congress could pass whatever law was necessary to make real the offer of Section One. (Section Five says, 'The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.)
The first 'appropriate legislation' required at that moment -- and still required - was that which would make possible for the now free African an informed free choice, an informed acceptance or rejection of the citizenship offer.
Concerning the education that Jack and Yancey Blake received at the moment of emancipation, Imari Obadele states,
“The education offered him after the Thirteenth Amendment confirmed the policy of dehumanization. . . . Now, again following the Thirteenth Amendment, the education of the African in America seeks to base African self-esteem on how well the African assimilates white American folk-ways and values. Worse, the advice given the African concerning his rights under international law suggested that there was no option open to him other than American citizenship. For the most part, he was co-opted into spending his political energies in organizing and participating in constitutional conventions and then voting for legislatures which subsequently approved the Fourteenth Amendment. In such circumstances, the presentation of the Fourteenth Amendment to state legislatures for whose members the African had voted, and the Amendment's subsequent approval by these legislatures, could in no sense be considered a plebiscite.
The fundamental requirements were lacking: first, adequate and accurate information for the advice given the freedman was so bad it amounted to fraud, a second stealing of our birthright; second, a chance to choose among the four options: (1) US citizenship, (2) return to Africa, (3) emigration to another country and (4) the creation of a new African nation on American soil.”
Thus, the resolutions of the Freedman’s Convention and all the similar conventions held throughout the United States were all UNIFORMED resolutions, and therefore did not meet the standard of the plebiscite for self-determination. Neither Jack or Yancey made a free and informed acceptance or rejection of the offer of citizenship and thus their legal status in the United States of America became “colonized Binham Brassa (Balanta) people through forced integration.”
Brassa Nchabra’s Grandson Yancey Blake Returns to His Balanta Roots As A Farmer and Businessman in North Carolina.
By the time of Emancipation in 1865, then Brassa Nchabra’s grandson Yancey Blake had already been programmed never to revolt and miseducated into believing that there was no option open to him other than American citizenship. Yancey Blake thus returned to the Balanta vocation of farming. By the time of the 1870 Census, Yancey Blake was listed as farmer and the city directory showed that Yancey owned 12 acres of land. He was one of only two Negroes listed in the business directory. Certainly Yancey was exposed to Bennet Blake’s Neuse River Mission to People of Colour which became the African Mission under Daniel Culbreth in 1853 and eventually united with the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1866.
With his older brother Yancey Jr. lost to the war, John Addison was raised as the dignified son of a prominent black family in Wake Country.
Thirty years later, in 1896, John Addison Blake, great grandson of Brassa Nchabra, fully Christianized, established the Union Bethel African Methodist Church in Cary, Wake County North Carolina. His sister, Sallie married Arch Arrington Sr., a negro, one of the largest landowners and the first Mayor of Cary, North Carolina.
Thus was accomplished the conversion to and institutionalization of Christianity in the family of Brassa Nchabra now named the Blake family.
AFTERMATH OF JACOB BLAKE’S SHOOTING
It is now possible to view the response of the Blake family after the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, from the long, historical view of Brassa Nchabra and the Balanta people with a history that began BEFORE slavery.
When Brassa Nchabra was captured in the 1760’s, his family did not respond by appealing to the moral conscious of the attackers. They did not appeal to any foreign authority to bring the attacker to justice. They had no concept of peaceful, non-violent protest. They did not call for unity with those that kidnapped their son. Instead, they lived according to natural law which had only three restrictions:
You must not injure or kill anyone.
You must not steal or damage things owned by someone else.
You must be honest in your dealings and not swindle anyone.
When Brassa Nchabra was kidnapped, his family and community responded by organizing COUNTER ATTACKS. This is the normal, natural, spiritual response that had been encoded in their DNA for thousands of years.
Through the genocidal trauma, terror and the torture of seven generations a new mental programming was inserted that changed the brain structure, function and chemistry of Brassa Nchabra’s descendants. This new programming introduced the master-slave relationship that was foreign to the Balanta people. It made obedience to a God named Jesus a sacred duty that extended to the Christian slavemaster. Tolerating, suffering the master-slave relationship was imprinted on the brain and created the new familiarity heuristic of non-violence. This Christian indoctrination and behavior, so desired by the white slavemasters and particularly Reverend Colcock Jones and Bennet Blake, was institutionalized by John Addison Blake and has since been passed down to the Blake descendants, all of whom have a well-documented legacy in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church.
From this perspective, then, the Blake family’s calls for peaceful protest in the wake of the shooting of Jacob Blake, can be seen as the successful outcome of Reverend Colcock Jones’ plan to prevent insurrection and COUNTER STRIKES against the Masters of the American System and their armed enforcers (police).
Having been the only member of the family to return to our ancestral homeland and unlocked this portion of our genetic code, only I can tell the story from the perspective of our ancestors.