Igbos Are Resilient People -By Gloria Ogo

Have you heard of the Igbo landing?

The mass drowning of captured Africans who walked into the sea to their death than live as slaves.

To keep history alive, I depicted similar scenes in my book, #BlackOpal.

The Igbo Landing occurred when Igbo slaves who had taken control of their ship marched into the water and drowned at Dunbar Creek on St. Simons Island, Glynn County, Georgia.

After surviving the rigours of the Middle Passage, the 75 Igbo slaves who were being bought for labour on the plantations of John Couper and Thomas Spalding for 100 dollars each were chained and put aboard a small ship to be transported to their destinations. During this voyage, they took control of the ship and grounded it, drowning their captors in the process.

The sequence of actual events is unclear as most of the historical incidence was passed down by oral tradition.

A common version is that the slaves, once ashore, walked into the creek in unison, singing and chanting in Igbo under the direction of someone who seemed to be like a high priest among them.

This mutiny has been referred to in some quarters as the first major freedom march in America’s history.

For over two hundred years, the event was considered myth and legend and nothing more. However, research has verified that there is factual and historical basis to the event.

There is no official historical marker at the site, but it is still visited routinely by historians and tourists. The event has also been included in the history curriculum of schools in coastal Georgia.