Dominican Professor, Center for Igbo Studies Commemorate Historic Act of Slave Resistance

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Dominican University’s Center for Igbo Studies helped organize a recent three-day event commemorating the anniversary of a historic slave revolt.

The 220th Igbo Landing Commemoration, held May 26-28 on St. Simons Island, Georgia, recognized the group of Igbo people who, after arriving in America following their capture in West Africa in 1803, took control of their slave ship and committed mass suicide by drowning to avoid a life of enslavement.

The area where the May 1803 revolt occurred, at St. Simons Island, became known as Igbo Landing. Last month’s gathering was the very first public gathering to commemorate the revolt held there, said Dr. Nzuki Nnam, director of the Center for Igbo Studies and a professor of philosophy at Dominican who was involved in the planning the commemoration.

“We cannot lose the message of all this — that a group of Africans were brought here and they would rather die than be enslaved,” Nnam said. “That is the message those enslaved Africans wanted to convey: The concept of resistance and freedom for our people. This was one of the first slave revolts in America.”

The commemoration included guided tours of Igbo Landing, a series of lectures on Igbo culture and the significance of the 1803 resistance, traditional Igbo and Gullah Geechee dance performances, and a gathering and public blessing at a local church.

The event was held in collaboration between Dominican’s Center for Igbo Studies and St. Simons African American Heritage Coalition, St. Simons Land Trust, Morehouse Mellon Public History and Digital Humanities Project, the Robert S. Abbott Race Unity Institute, the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, and the Coastal Georgia Historical Society.

About 200 people participated, including Dr. Myiti Sengstacke-Rice, president and CEO of Chicago Defender Charities and keynote speaker for Dominican’s 2023 Black Achievements Ceremony.

Nnam and the Center for Igbo Studies would like to see Igbo Landing designated as a national historic memorial site and for the anniversary of the slave revolt to be acknowledged annually.

“I want people to know what those innocent people did, that their lives did not end for nothing,” Nnam said. “They really sacrificed their lives for our freedom. To memorialize their plight is the one thing we can do for them.”

The Center for Igbo Studies at Dominican University was established in 2019 at the request of the Igbo Studies Association, a global organization dedicated to promoting and encouraging the study of Igbo history, culture, language, literature, social movements, science and technology.

The Igbo are an ethnic group originating from Nigeria, with a sizable population in the United States and the Chicago metro area.

Dr. Nkuzi Nnam, right, with Sidney Davis, Jr., of the Igbo Landing Project, stand at Igbo Landing at St. Simons Island, Georgia.

Artwork dedicated to the memory of all Africans who perished in the waters from Igboland to all the Igbo landings in the Americas.

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“Igbo Landing” Sculptor Kevin Pullen’s depiction of Igbo captives going into the waters of Dunbar Creek intoning as they prayed: ~Orimiri Omambala bu anyi bia. Orimiri Omambala ka anyi ga ejina~ “The Water Spirit Omambala brought us here. The Water Spirit Omambala will carry us home.”

Artist and sculptor Kevin Pullen standing with his miniature scale “Igbo Landing” sculpture slated to be constructed on the shore of Dunbar Creek at St. Simon’s Island.

Artist and Sculptor Kevin Pullen of St. Simons Island with Sidney Davis (Eluemuno Eri)

BREAKING NEWS! LOST SUMERIAN CITY OF AKKAD FOUND IN IGBOLAND!

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PRESS RELEASE

THE LOST SUMERIAN CITY OF AKKAD RULED BY SARGON THE GREAT HAS BEEN FOUND! IT WAS EXCAVATED IN 1950 BUT WAS MISTAKENLY OVERLOOKED FOR WHAT IT WAS!! 

In 1950 a young British archeologist fresh out of the university undertook his first major archaeological dig. A town in Igbo land, South-Eastern Nigeria had become notorious for its ancient bronze, copper and exquisite pottery and beaded wares which the villagers accidentally excavated while digging wells, cisterns and graves. For as long as the villagers could remember, their ancestors had always dug up exquisite and highly ornate archaeological goods from their farmlands and from the foundations of buildings. Digging up buried goods had become a local pastime because the beautiful goods fetched good money from Arabs, Fulanis, and Europeans who paid handsomely for them. In 1950 the Nigerian National Commission for Antiquities got wind of the trade. The British colonial officer in charge of Antiquities sent a young British archeologist fresh out of the university to undertake an excavation. Thurston Shaw worked on the Igbo Ukwu site for several months but only excavated three pits some of them under the foundations of buildings, and recovered enough artifacts to fill three museums. This was a civilization outside living memory of the natives. Perhaps mistakenly or out of political reasons, as Shaw himself is quoted to have said, the excavated goods were given a date of 9th Century A.D. 

23 years of studying the Sumerian phenomenon and its Pre-Cuneiform inscriptions and comparative research into the Igbo Ukwu archaeological artifacts have revealed that what Thurstan Shaw excavated in Igbo land was the lost Sumerian city of Akkad ruled by ‘Sargon the Great’ circa 3,500 B.C.! Royal seals of Sargon the Great and of his sons Menes or Manus Tutu (who became the first Pharaoh of dynastic Egypt), Naram Enzu and Bag Eri, to name a few, as well as artifacts bearing the names of Sargon, his sons and his gods are easily discernible among the goods excavated in Igbo Ukwu, written in Pre-cuneiform pictographs, symbols and letters. 

Assyriologists believe that Sargon was the historical representation of Biblical Nimrud, for both were first Post-Deluge kings of Sumer. 

In 23 years of consistent research on the Sumerian phenomenon, the Catherine Acholonu Research Center has come up with three major publications and a plethora of articles. One of the publications – They Lived Before Adam: Prehistoric Origins of the Igbo, The Never-Been-Ruled – won the 2009 International Book awards in USA, and was featured in C-Span Book TV, New York in 2009 as a groundbreaking publication (see U-Tube Video online). The highly deteriorated limb-bones and skull of a monarch buried in Igbo Ukwu was also taken to the British Museum. He wore a copper crown with Sargon’s pictograph engraved all round on it, a bronze breast-plate, several rows of copper wires on his ankles, two beaded armbands, and most surprising of all, a regalia strung with a whooping one hundred and eleven thousand beads!!! Sumer was the world’s first in bronze, copper and iron technology, writing, astronomy, agriculture. All the major hallmarks of her civilization are represented in the few pits that Shaw opened. Igbo Ukwu and Oraeri (the neighboring town) are still teeming with archaeological goods yet to be excavated. 

We call on the British Museum to allow a reexamination of the Igbo Ukwu excavation, and we invite the international media to a series of World Press Conferences to be held in Abuja, Nigeria and in major cities in the world from the month of April onwards to share our discoveries with the world. Please contact us by email or by phone to get the itinerary for the press conferences.

 Dr. Sidney Louis Davis, Jr.

Senior Research Fellow Catherine Acholonu Research Center

http://www.carcafriculture.org

+1 617-548-7208

Omambala River

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Omambala River

The project is called Ebo Landing in commemoration of the heroic death of African women and men of Igbo/Ebo extraction who drowned themselves in the St Simmons Island Creeks singing “Orimili Omambala bu anyi bia, Orimili Omambala ka anyi ga eji na”, meaning “Omambala River brought us hither and it will carry us home”. Omambala river is actually located in Enugwu Aguleri, Anambra state, Igboland. Here is the river. – Catherine Acholonu