By Calvin G.Brown- This year, on December 27, Jamaicans will mark the 193rd anniversary of the Sam Sharpe War—a watershed moment in the fight against chattel slavery in the British Caribbean. The war, ignited in Kensington, St. James, on December 27, 1831, stands as a resounding symbol of the unyielding pursuit of freedom by enslaved Africans.
We stand in the shadow of a man whose courage broke the chains of an empire. In 1975, Sam Sharpe was declared a National Hero of Jamaica, but his story began far before that momentous recognition.
Sam Sharpe was born in 1801 and grew up to be a teenager at the Coopers Hill property now overlooking Jarrett Park and a stone’s throw from the Calvary Baptist Church located on Corinaldi ave.
He had moved from the grass gang into the great house as a domestic slave at an early age and was taught to read and write and to receive and entertain his master’s and mistress’ guests.
His master Samuel Sharpe Jr. instructed the driver on the estate, Bigga, to teach Sam how to ride the horse so he could be sent on errands.
Problems between his master and himself erupted when, in a private meeting, his master informed him he would be sold to a woman operating a guesthouse called the Stag on Strand Street which was then the MoBay waterfront, but he would not give up ownership of him.
His master warned him not to mention their private talk to anyone. Sam was Sold. As time passed he was again sold to the owner of Croydon plantation, T.G Grey Esq, near Catadupa – the father of his owner’s wife.
Sam’s mother, Mimba, who was a slave at Coopers Hill under His master’s father Sam Sharpe (snr), and who willed Sam Sharpe the slave to the Sharpe family, was sold from Copers Hill before her son was sold.
She was firstly a cook then head of the Jobbers Gang. That is the slave gang that the master would hire out to work on other plantations which were short of labour.
In one of her secret nightly visits to the estate to see her son, Mimba reminded Samuel that she is a big woman, and he should not worry for her as she can take deva of herself. They hugged warmly and shared a tearful departure.
Dove and Gardiner who were later to become two of Sharpe’s lieutenants were his fellow slaves at Cooper’s Hill. All three decided to borrow two horses from the property at Coopers hill and attend Baptist preacher Moses Baker church at Crooked Spring near Black Shop/ Sunderland.
At the religious meeting he met Moses Baker for the first time and would later come under his tutelage and influence.
Also of significance, he met a beautiful young lady named Nyami from Content Estate above Long Hill. ‘Nyami’ is the female Sky God of the Tonga People living in the Zambezi River Valley between Zambia and Zimbabwe.
She later bore him a daughter whom both agreed her African ancestral name would be Ruba which in Arabic means “green Hills”. It is timely to mention here that it was also at Moses Baker’s church in January 1824 That Thomas Burchell and Sam Sharpe met for the first time.
In his book “Daddy Sharpe, Fred W. Kennedy gave a narrative of the life of Samuel Sharpe, written by himself in 1832. It was the Methodist Preacher Henry Bleby who was allowed to roam freely, who regularly visited with Sam Sharpe in jail after he turned himself in. On His first visit to Sam Sharpe in Jail he urged Him to write the story of his life and this Sam Sharpe did for over three months.
Sharpe had very strong suspicions about Bleby’s motives, however the revolutionary used him to deliver his letters including a powerful missive to the British House of Commons.
Kennedy wrote about Sharpe’s marriage to Nyami and the birth of their daughter Juba in October 1824 – named in keeping with our tradition of Monday-born children in the areas of Liberia, Guinea Bissau, Guinea Cote ‘d Ivoire Zambia and Zimbabwe- speaks to his deep connection to our cultural heritage.
Sam Sharpe Day, designated by the Jamaican government, commemorates his enduring spirit of resistance.
The recognition of December 27 as Sam Sharpe Day was formalized in 2020, after Culture Minister Olivia Grange successfully petitioned the Governor General.
It honours the extraordinary role of Sam Sharpe, an enslaved Baptist preacher, who orchestrated a rebellion that reverberated across the British Empire.
The magnitude of this uprising is captured in Delroy A. Reid-Salmon’s seminal work, “Burning for Freedom.” Scholars have viewed it through various lenses: religious war, political uprising, or an industrial action that escalated into a violent revolution.Reid-Salmon, a theological scholar, argues that the revolt was a divine intervention, driving the cause of freedom, justice, and hope.
Meanwhile, Reverend C. S. Reid, in “Sam Sharpe, – From Slave to National Hero,” frames Sharpe’s mission as a hammer blow to the economic and social structures that powered Europe’s prosperity.
Even before the British Parliament formally moved to abolish slavery, the shockwaves from Sharpe’s war had already begun dismantling the entrenched system of forced labor.
Sam Sharpe’s actions accelerated the drive towards emancipation, securing his place in the social and political history of the 19th century.
The legacy of Sam Sharpe and the 1831 uprising was instrumental in precipitating the historic vote in the British House of Commons in August 1833, which led to the passage of the Slave Emancipation Act.
This landmark legislation signaled the beginning of the end for slavery within the British Commonwealth.
Yet, the financial disparities of emancipation were stark. Plantation owners received a colossal grant of £20,000,000, financed through nearly 40% of Britain’s national budget—a debt not fully repaid until 2015—while the newly freed population remained without land and earned scant wages on the very estates where they had been enslaved.
However, the Act also highlighted the financial disparities of emancipation. While plantation owners were compensated with a significant government grant of £20,000,000 for their ‘loss,’ the freed slaves received no such compensation. Britain allocated a staggering 40% of its national budget to this end, a debt not fully paid off until 2015.
Professor Verene A. Shepherd, historiographer of the Centre for Reparation Research at the University of the West Indies, Mona, has long underscored the significance of Sam Sharpe’s war. In her recent writings, she highlights how the uprising not only rattled but also threatened the economic foundation upon which Jamaican enslavement thrived.
Shepherd regards it as more than a mere rebellion: it was a watershed event in the British-colonized Caribbean—a war explicitly waged for emancipation from the horrors of chattel enslavement and the institutionalized terror that accompanied it.
That view is bolstered by the 1832 petition from enslavers to the Jamaica House of Assembly, which characterized the conflict as a “rebellion,” inadvertently revealing just how decisive the event had been. Shepherd’s analysis extends into present-day Jamaica, lamenting that even now, efforts toward complete emancipation are often perceived as symbolic.
She draws attention to the lingering ties to monarchy and calls for a republic, echoing Hilary Beckles in urging boldness—what she describes as breaking from “intellectual timidity”—to fulfill the mission of the ancestors.
This stance also resonates with Marcus Mosiah Garvey, another Jamaican National Hero, whose iconic declaration—popularized through Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song”—insists on the need for mental emancipation. True freedom, Garvey and Marley remind us, requires more than meşru liberation; it demands a complete reshaping of the mind.
Much of the renewed national recognition of Sam Sharpe’s pivotal role stems from the efforts of former South St. James Member of Parliament, Derrick Kellier. For more than twenty years, Kellier championed Sharpe’s legacy, partnering with the Wesley Fowles led Kensington Citizens Association, the South St. James Social and Economic Development Trust and the then minister of Local Government Arnold Bertram.
These collaborations gave rise to the Tulloch Castle memorial, featuring an amphitheater designed for annual Sam Sharpe commemoration events. Fittingly, Tulloch Castle was where the first flames of the revolt were lit, sparking a conflict that forever altered the course of Jamaican and British imperial history.
Kellier’s persistent advocacy culminated in the official declaration of December 27 as Sam Sharpe Day in 2020—a date now fully endorsed and supported by the Jamaican state.
While in office, he leveraged Community Development Funds and grants from cultural organizations to empower local youth and communities with knowledge of their heritage.
This included lessons about battles like the one at Montpelier, where enslaved Africans, armed with nothing but machetes and sticks, displayed remarkable bravery against heavily armed British forces.
The full emancipation of enslaved Africans in the British West Indies did not materialize until midnight on July 31, 1838, marking the conclusion of the apprenticeship scheme mandated by the 1833 Act.
This watershed moment signaled the true end of legalized slavery in these colonies. Yet, the road to freedom was anything but smooth. Resistance flickered across the Caribbean, manifested in uprisings such as the 1823 Demerara rebellion in British Guiana and the decisive spark in Western Jamaica on December 27, 1831, when the Tulloch Castle sugar estate went up in flames.
These “Flames of Freedom,” as they came to be known, embodied the dauntless spirit of the enslaved Africans and their descendants, burning their way into the annals of history.
The following is an excerpt from Sam Sharpe’s letter to the British House of Commons which he asked the Rev. Mr. Bleby to have delivered:
”The beast of the earth, the asses, the cows, the pigs, do not receive the harshness of treatment that we do.
Even though we are all the property of the landowner the animals in the pens are treated with more respect.
Their heads are not cut from their bodies and hang upon poles they are not flogged until they bleed, buckets of salt are not thrown on their open wounds.
They are not bound in chains and placed in stocks. To hold another in chain is against the laws of god.
I learn from my Bible that the whites had no more rights to hold black people in slavery than the blacks had to make white people slaves and for my own part I would rather die than live in slavery !”.
The choice of place for his hanging at the Albert Market and the manner of his burial by the Sea has powerful symbolisms intended for one who has rocked the foundations of the Jamaican economic system: the institution of slavery.
Sam Sharpe turned out to be no ordinary man. When he died, the sun took refuge behind the darkclouds.
The market square with its hundreds of onlookers were aghast at the darkness that came upon the land at high noon. And the rains fell.
As Jamaicans commemorate Sam Sharpe Day, they not only honor the sacrifices of the past but also shine a light on the continuing pursuit of equality.
Sharpe’s legacy, alongside that of countless other freedom fighters, reminds us of the bravery that defied oppression and laid the groundwork for the liberties we now hold dear.
Their struggles prompt us, in turn, to keep pressing for a society where justice is not merely aspirational but tangible. Even now, as we reflect on the Sam Sharpe War and its far-reaching impact, we recognize that the quest for a fair and equitable world endures.
The lessons of bygone generations compel us to look forward with renewed resolve, ensuring that the spirit of Sam Sharpe—steadfast in the face of tyranny—lives on. (WiredJA)