John Brown

John Brown (c.1810 – 1876) was born into slavery in Virginia. He said in his life story that his father's father was an Igbo (written Eboe) man stolen from Africa. John Brown’s family was split several times by the time he was ten. He was later sold to people who tortured him for medical experiments, as was often done on many people of African descent. John Brown managed to escape and gain freedom and dictated his life story, published in 1855 as “Slave Life in Georgia: A Narrative of the Life, Sufferings, and Escape of John Brown, A Fugitive Slave, Now in England.”

August 2019 is 400 years since the beginning of the enslavement of Africans in the British Colony of Virginia which later became a US state. Virginia is also noted to have received a large amount of Igbo people during the 18th century.

Virginia Gazette (Purdie & Dixon), Williamsburg, September 3, 1772

WILLIAMSBURG, September 3, 1772. COMMITTED to James City Prison, on Monday the 31st of last Month, a Negro Fellow who says he is the Property of Colonel Cary of Hampton, and that he belongs to a Quarter in Albemarle; his Name is JOE, is an Ibo Negro, about fifty Years of Age, five Feet nine or ten Inches high, with three Scars on the right Side of his Face, the middle One the largest, and has on a Crocus Shirt and Trousers, and Negro Cotton Waistcoat. JOHN CONNELLY.

— John Connelly

Location: Williamsburg, Virginia | Date: September 3, 1772 | Credit: John Connelly