On this Biafra Day, another heroic Igbo history apart from the Ekumeku Movement already tweeted about, I’d love to recall is the Igbo Landing. Which was made popular recently by music video by Beyoncé. A historic event where Igbos drowned themselves instead of becoming slaves

Igbo captives purchased taken by slave merchants John Couper and Thomas Spalding, arrived in Savannah, Georgia, on the slave ship the Wanderer in 1803. The chained slaves were then reloaded and packed under the deck of a coastal vessel,

the York, which would take them to St. Simons where they were to be sold. During the voyage, approximately 75 Igbo slaves rose in rebellion. They drowned their captors and caused the grounding of the ship in Dunbar Creek.

The Igbo were known by planters and slave owners of the American South to be fiercely independent and more resistant to chattel slavery.

According to Professor Terri L. Snyder, “the enslaved cargo “suffered much by mismanagement,” “rose” from their confinement in the small vessel, and revolted against the crew, forcing them into the water where they drowned”.

Led by their chief, the Igbos then marched ashore, singing. At their chief’s direction, they walked into the marshy waters of Dunbar Creek, committing mass suicide.

For centuries, some historians have cast doubt on the event, suggesting that the entire incident was more folklore than fact. The Igbo Landing has come to occupy great symbolic importance in local African American folklore.

But a post-1980 research verified the accounts Roswell King and others provided at the time using “modern scientific techniques to reconstruct the episode and confirm the factual basis of the longstanding oral accounts”.

The site was designated as a holy ground by the St. Simons African American community in September 2012. The Igbo Landing is also now a part of the curriculum for coastal Georgia schools.

The mutiny and subsequent suicide by the Igbo people have been called the first freedom march in the history of USA. This inspired many more chain of uprisings that led to fights against slavery and the abolishment of slavery. The Igbos started it. Biafrans! Let it be known!

So powerful is this story of resistance that it is often referred to in African American literature. Writer Alex Haley recounts it in his high acclaimed book, Roots, and it was the basis for Nobel laureate, Toni Morrison’s, novel, Song of Solomon.

Visual artists have also paid tribute to the Igbos who endured this event. Below is Jamaican artist, Donovan Nelson’s illustrations paying tribute to the event. They are on display at the Valentine Museum of Art.

Beyonce have also depicted and paid homage to the Igbo Landing in her music video; LOVE DROUGHT

The wildly acclaimed Marvel comic film, Black Panther, Killmonger, played by actor Michael B Jordan, refers to this event, saying, “Bury me in the ocean with my ancestors who jumped from ships, ’cause they knew death was better than bondage”. Igbos!!!!!