A Slave Called “Prince”

The legacy of Prince Abd al Rahman Ibrahima lives on in Natchez and far, far beyond

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In a genealogical study conducted in 2007 by Natchez historian David Dreyer, he estimated that there must be hundreds, and likely thousands, of living individuals across the world whose veins flow with the blood of warriors and kings, as well as American slaves. This is because their ancestor, Prince Abd al Rahman Ibrahima, was all of these things. His descendants are rooted, with each their own histories, across the historic trail that his tragic life followed: from the kingdom of Futa Jalon (what is now Guinea) to the cotton fields of Natchez, Mississippi and across the American South, and then finally to Liberia, where his journey came to an end.

The story of Natchez’s West African Prince has long been told as part of the city’s plentiful trove of fascinating histories, especially in recent years as the town has increasingly made more concentrated efforts to incorporate African American narratives into its renowned presentations of the American South. Terry Alford’s 1977 biography on Ibrahima, Prince Among Slaves: The True Story of an African Prince Sold into Slavery in the American South was the first to offer a comprehensive and contextual picture of the life of Natchez’s somewhat mythical Prince.

The story has been revived in contemporary conversation in New York Times best-selling travel writer Richard Grant’s The Deepest South of All, released on September 1, which comes in the wake of a national civil rights movement calling for an honest reckoning with America’s past to more effectively address racial inequalities and injustices in the present.

[Read our review of Richard Grant's The Deepest South of All here.]

As Grant explores in his book, Natchez itself exists as a fascinating and convoluted microcosm—or as Grant puts it “a barrel-strength distillation”—of America’s grappling with its own history, how that history has been told, and why it has been told this way. A city that has built its cultural identity around its claim to possessing the greatest concentration of antebellum homes in the South, Natchez’s long-held historical narrative has, for over a century, often strategically omitted the less elegant and pleasant-seeming elements of its past, such as the enslaved people who built those homes and the wealth they represent—both of which are still in large part held by the city’s white families.

With such a deeply entrenched and widely dispersed version of history to deconstruct, the road to racial unity in Natchez—which must necessarily begin with an acknowledgement of history as it was, rather than what white people would prefer for it to be––is predestined to be an arduous and complicated one. But as Grant posits in The Deepest South of All, the work has begun. Over the course of the last decade, intentional efforts have been initiated by the city’s leaders to bring to light the role of slavery in Natchez history through tours, presentations, signage, and adjustments to existing programs to better incorporate African American history.

“I think it is interesting,” said Grant in a recent interview. “The nation is having all of these conversations right now, but Natchez has been having them far before all of this."

“I think it is interesting,” said Grant in a recent interview. “The nation is having all of these conversations right now, but Natchez has been having them far before all of this. People say that Natchez is stuck in the past, and in some ways it is. But they’ve been talking very seriously about African American history and how to incorporate slavery into the town’s narrative for ten to fifteen years. They were somewhat ahead of the game.”

These efforts, though, have been met by challenges that include continued racial tensions, resistance from traditionalists, and a series of well-intentioned but poorly-considered clashes of efforts to simply insert the horrors of slavery into existing programs designed around the beauty and civility of what some still perceive as “the good old days” before the Civil War.

Another challenge, of course, is the fact that history from the time period Natchez most often retells was written by white men; before the Civil War most Black people were prevented from becoming literate. Alongside the troves of archives documenting the lives of Natchez’s slaveholders, there is almost nothing on what life was like for the tens of thousands of men and women who were enslaved there.

“Natchez, to me, seemed more haunted by slavery than anywhere else I had been in America,” said Grant. “I wanted to know what it was like to be enslaved there. I wanted to know that point of view, and I couldn’t really find it anywhere.”

Ibrahima stands as the exception. “His reputation as a celebrity brought him to be interviewed at length by several different people,” said Grant. “And there are newspaper accounts, letters, all brought together thanks to Alford’s remarkable research.” His status as one of the only Natchez slaves whose life’s details are knowable is what ultimately brought Grant to place him at the forefront of his book.

From Africa to Natchez, and Back 

When Abd al Rahman Ibrahima arrived in New Orleans in 1788—coming off of the slave ship Africa after a harrowing transatlantic voyage with 170 other men, women, and children—he, as Grant writes, was rather unimpressed with America. The highly educated warrior prince, then aged twenty-six, had studied everything from astronomy to law in the great Islamic cities of Jenne and Timbuktu. He was fluent in five African languages, and could read and write in Arabic. In comparison to even his own kingdom of eight thousand in Futa Jallon, one of the most prominent, highly-developed kingdoms in West Africa, the outposts along the Mississippi River felt primitive.

After being captured in battle, marched one hundred miles, and sold to a European slaver as cargo of the Africa, the heir to the Fulani throne arrived in the new world chained and hungry, his entire identity effectively erased and seemingly irretrievable. He was transported from the Windward Islands to New Orleans, and then finally to Fort Panmure de Natchez, the Spanish headquarters of the Natchez district, where he was purchased by a tobacco farmer named Thomas Foster, a man exactly his age and far less educated. Together with his former military commander Samba, who had been captured with him, Ibrahima’s price was $930.

When he tried to explain to Foster who he was, and that his father would pay mightily for his return home, Foster hardly blinked. When he looked at the man in front of him, all he could see was property. After a failed attempt at escape, Ibrahima surrendered to his fate, drawing on his Islamic belief that this was all part of Allah’s will. For the next forty years, Ibrahima, who came to be known as “Prince,” became a valuable asset to Foster’s plantation, alongside a slave population that eventually numbered over one hundred other Africans.

Perhaps even more remarkable than the story of how a West African prince became a slave in Natchez is how, despite all odds, he made it back to Africa. With the help of Natchez newspaper editor Andrew Marschalk, who he impressed with his ability to read and write in Arabic, thus convincing him of his royalty, Ibrahima was able to attain the attention of two of the most powerful men in the world at the time: Secretary of State Henry Clay and President John Quincy Adams. At Marschalk’s urging, they agreed to purchase “Prince” from Foster and see him returned to his home country. On April 8, 1828, Ibrahima and his wife, an American-born slave called Isabella, departed from Natchez for the last time.

For the next year, traveling through Northern cities, he gained notoriety across the United States as the “Prince of Timbuktu” and took advantage of the attention, hoping to raise enough money to purchase freedom for his thirteen children before leaving for Africa. In the wake of the election of President Andrew Jackson, though, he was ultimately unsuccessful and departed for Africa with Isabella aboard the Harriet on February 7, 1829.  They arrived on the Liberian coast thirty-seven days later, but Ibrahima would never see Futa Jalon, nor any of his children, again. Only four months after their arrival, he died of illness in Monrovia.

Shortly after his death, with the funds he had raised before his departure, his and Isabella’s two eldest sons, Simon and Levi (or Lee) were purchased from the Fosters and sent to Liberia, where they met their mother and lived out the rest of their lives in freedom.

Ibrahima's Royal Legacy

One hundred and fifty years later, against the tumultuous background of the Liberian Civil War, a thirteen-year-old Liberian child listened to his great-great-grandmother tell the stories of his ancestors, of the warrior prince sold into slavery in America, then returned. And how his son, Simon, also their ancestor, became a great leader in the new country of Liberia.

As an adult, Artemus Gaye immigrated to America, and eventually began to seek out details of his family history. Searching for information about his ancestor Simon, he quickly learned the ugly nature of American slavery: as property, there would be no true record of the man beyond bills of sale and a list of passengers on a ship bound for Liberia in 1830. He did, though, eventually come across Alford’s book. “It was incredible,” he said in a recent interview, of discovering Ibrahima’s story. “It is the history of our family and it is the history of our world.” From there, Gaye was on to Natchez.

In a 2003 interview with Voice of America, Gaye said of the pilgrimage, “God, it was like a sacred moment in my life. As if I’d been longing, unconsciously, to come to that place. I could almost feel the presence of my ancestors and my grandmother with me. And I tell you, my experience in Natchez brought a deep sense of connection to the history of Africa and the history of America.”

In the spring of 2006, Gaye organized a “Freedom Festival” in Natchez, marking the 175th anniversary of Ibrahima and Isabella’s emancipation, and invited every known descendant of not only Ibrahima and Isabella but also the Fosters and anyone else involved in the story, including Beverly Adams.

Adams said that her descendance from the Foster family had been long known, if slightly disdainful. But with the making of the 2007 documentary based on Alford’s book, which actively sought out the descendants of both the Fosters and Ibrahima, she learned that she was also a descendant of Ibrahima’s son, named in reclamation of the title with which he was mocked as a slave, Prince.

“Knowing that legacy gave me a sense of pride, but also gave me a sense of who I am as far as what my purpose in life is, what I am to do.”

 —Beverly Adams

“It filled in some gaps,” she said. “Some of the things we eat, some of the things my mom heard as a child, would ring a bell. Like we had all heard of Timbuktu, but didn’t really know why or what it was. Knowing that legacy gave me a sense of pride, but also gave me a sense of who I am as far as what my purpose in life is, what I am to do.”

Though she no longer lives in the area, for years Adams was deeply involved in the Natchez community, especially when it came to race relations. She’s taken part in reenactments, tours, and discussions on this part of Natchez history, and has a forthcoming children’s book on the subject, titled Chronicles of the Life of Prince Abdul-Rahman Ibrahima: A Journey through Slavery, from Timbo to Natchez.

“It started because I was doing the tours and wanted to hand out a brochure, but it ended up becoming this little book,” she said. “I want to be able to continue the work of telling this story.”

The prince’s life is not remarkable simply because he was a prince. His life is remarkable because he was a slave, and his story—unlike the stories of the hundreds of thousands of other enslaved peoples—survived despite it.

As places like Natchez—places of stories—are challenged to critically re-examine their historical narratives, telling stories like Ibrahima’s, as rare as they are, is imperative. The prince’s life is not remarkable simply because he was a prince. His life is remarkable because he was a slave, and his story—unlike the stories of the hundreds of thousands of other enslaved peoples—survived despite it. It survived to be passed on for generations and to serve as a testament to the cruelty of American slavery, even to the mighty. Ibrahima is more than the novelty of Natchez’s West African Prince. He is an example of the lengths a man of color, even one with education and power, had to go to convince anyone he and his children were worth something more than their capacity for labor.

But Ibrahima’s story also survived for his ancestors, and for all the ancestors of the Africans who lost everything in the name of American slavery. It survives as a legacy of majesty, dignity, and perseverance in an archive of so many irretrievable legacies.

“I want little Black children, and big ones and adults, to know that we weren’t just slaves,” said Adams of her book. “We weren’t always second-class citizens. We were kings and queens in another country, which we were taken from. And even though a terrible circumstance brought Ibrahima to be enslaved, he persevered and survived, and through it all maintained his honor. There’s pride for us in that.”