The author, who visited Cuba around 1866, writes of African-born enslaved people in Havana and their Sunday festivals. “And as all secret assemblies are against the law, these people meet in rooms together, which they call cabildos, or assembly rooms … The visitor need not have the slightest hesitation in entering, for he will always be treated with great respect by those present … who are only too happy to have [an] audience”. Note musical instruments, banjo, drum.
Dance or Festival, Havana, Cuba, ca. 1866; Image Reference LCP-05, as shown on www.slaveryimages.org, sponsored by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and the University of Virginia Library.
Themes
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Plantation Conditions
Understand the harshness of daily life on the plantations, the oppression used to exert control, and the profits…
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Legacies
Understand how the 1807 Abolition Act ended the British involvement in the slave trade but not slavery, how British women pushed for full…