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Story Archives: Discussion, documentary on Prince Abdut Rahman set
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Discussion, documentary on Prince Abdut Rahman set
By David S. Dreyer
(Special to the Sentinel)
Across the Mississippi beyond "Giles Island" on Pine Ridge along today's Steamplant Road, was a large plantation once known as "Foster's Fields".
There an African Prince from the nation of Futa Jallon in today's Republic of Guinea toiled with his wife and children for 40 years during the terms of the first six Presidents of the United States.
Captured in tribal warfare in 1788, Prince Abdut Rahman, son of Ibrahima Sori the Great, was sold to a planter named Thomas Foster recently arrived in the Natchez District from the Carolinas during Spanish rule of Natchez.
The Prince so insisted on his royal lineage that Foster decided to give him the slave name "Prince", which was sometimes also attached to the name of his father, Ibrahima, which meant "Abraham".
Different authors have written about the Prince. James Pipes Register of Natchez who once worked at Forty-Acre Store in Spokane on Lake St. John in Concordia Parish, wrote a vivid, if not florid, story of his life entitled simply "Jallon."
However, it was Dr. Terry Alford of Indianola, MS, who in 1977 published a definitive history of Abdul Rahman entitled "Prince Among Slaves". Thirty years later, that book was turned into a documentary which won the prize for Best Film at the Black Film Festival in Los Angeles, and also appeared on "American Experience" on Public Television (PBS).
This Sunday, June 5th, at 2:30 p.m. in the City Auditorium in Natchez, at the corner of Canal and Jefferson Streets, the author of the book. Dr. Terry Alford, will introduce a showing of this one hour documentary followed by a discussion of that film led by Amadou Shakur, founder of the Center for the African Diaspora in Charlotte, NC.For the full story, subscribe to the The Concordia Sentinel's NEW E-Edition! |
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