#10 - Queen Nanny of the Maroons
Jamaicans can boast of the folkloric tales of Queen Nanny, an Akan woman who was captured in West Africa and sold into slavery in Jamaica. She and her brothers ran away from their plantation and escaped to the hills in Jamaica’s known as the Blue Mountains. After establishing a free community for maroons, Nanny set up a community similar to that of Akan culture in Ghana. For a period of over 30 years, she freed over 800 enslaved Africans, much like her American parallel Harriet Tubman. Known as an “obeah” woman, or Akan priest, her infused her spirituality into her ideology and practices. The area where she settled became known as Nanny Town. Because of its strategic location, the maroons were able to defend themselves from British colonizers.
She was Asante! :)
(via commonright)
