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Shannon LaNier visits Monticello in Virginia and makes a discovery about the nature of his ancestor Sally Hemings' relationship with Thomas Jefferson, and how he tried to hide the fact he owned slaves while living in France. Trisha Goddard investigates how slaves have been traded across the Indian Ocean for millennia the incredible journey of an 18th-century classical musician who was enslaved twice before finding freedom is also featured.
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00:01on the charge sheet of human history few things create such an indelible stain as slavery
00:08the idea that i am not human that i have no soul that i'm a beast brand me burn me
00:18whatever
00:19and no recourse nothing yet few histories are more important for us to understand
00:28it's power to know what happened to you in the past because if you don't know what happened to
00:33you in the past you can't stop it from happening again in this series many well-known faces with a
00:39direct and often surprising link to this thousand years story are embarking on journeys to different
00:46corners of the globe they'll uncover the truth about their past and tell the story of oppression
00:54and exploitation and even how a very different trade saw women sold at market by their own
01:01fathers human flesh was traded alongside carpets nuts spices as recently as 150 years ago which
01:09blows my mind with expert knowledge from across continents their journeys will be complemented
01:18by descendants celebrities and historians to tell the bigger story of the enslaved peoples of the
01:27world the enslavement of africans changed our language it changed what we eat what we wear what
01:33we drink and created a force that still divides us today yet slavery also inspired resistance and
01:41rebellion from a brave but doomed uprising in jamaica i stand on the shoulders of giants i'm proud to be
01:50who i am and i'm proud where i come from and who i come from to a long overdue reckoning
01:58in our own
01:59lifetime black lives matter this is the thousand-year story of how slavery stained our past and shaped the
02:18world in this episode we investigate the stories of three people whose forced journeys determine the
02:25course of their lives and those of their ancestors i'm making the same journey as my own great-great
02:33grandmother 150 years ago from the atlantic to the indian ocean they reveal a hidden world of
02:41exploitation and survival just looking into the faces on those photos that really got me our travelers
02:49uncover their own direct links to slavery and how it was shaped by religion racism and greed
03:08urasian cairn gipson is the conductor of the london-based kingdom choir they performed at the wedding
03:14of prince harry and megan markle she grew up in london the daughter of guyanese parents and has been
03:22called britain's godmother of gospel
03:28Karen is travelling to Lisbon to find out more about the extraordinary life of Joseph Emedy,
03:34a talented 18th century African musician.
03:37His enslavement led him on a 6,000-mile journey to the Portuguese capital via Latin America.
03:46The history of this Negro musician, Emedy, is too remarkable to be passed over in silence.
03:52He was born in Guinea on the west coast of Africa, sold into slavery to some Portuguese traders,
04:00taken by them to the Brazils when quite a boy.
04:03I think we can't talk about the history of slavery without talking about South America.
04:09The vast majority of people who were enslaved and taken from their homelands were brought to Brazil.
04:16What really needs to happen is this broader viewpoint that looks at slavery's role in making the modern world.
04:26South America becomes a deeply, deeply important part of that system of enslavement.
04:34Too young for heavy work, Emedy was probably enslaved in a wealthy household in Rio.
04:40He showed a talent for music and, when his master returned to Portugal, he took Emedy with him.
04:50He manifested such a love for music that he was supplied with a violin and a teacher,
04:55and in the course of three or four years, he became sufficiently proficient to be admitted
05:00as one of the second violins in the orchestra of the opera at Lisbon.
05:08It's amazing to think that at the age of 16, Emedy ends up here at the Lisbon Opera House.
05:15I mean, what a journey.
05:18It beggars belief, really.
05:19How do you make that transition?
05:22How do you go through that trauma and that adversity and still achieve that level of success?
05:29It's absolutely incredible.
05:33Karen is meeting Professor Rodriguez King-Dorset to get an insight into Emedy's extraordinary rise as a musician.
05:41How did Emedy come to be playing second violin at the Royal Opera House in Lisbon?
05:47I think it was very unusual, but I think that Emedy's talent was such that his former master
05:56would look and say, if they teach him the rudiments of the violin and the flute, for instance,
06:04he then becomes a skillful fashion item.
06:08So there's a bit of a one-upmanship for the masters and the mistress to show him off.
06:12And remember, at this point, he is technically a free man.
06:18The moment he stepped foot in Lisbon, he's a free man.
06:23Why do you say that?
06:24Because when he's in Brazil, he's a slave.
06:29In 1761, in Portugal, slavery was abolished.
06:36Emedy may have been technically free, but his freedoms would have been limited, and he still
06:41had to sing for his supper.
06:43It's assumed that black people have more musical ability.
06:47And that's partly because the people who could, that's how they were visible in white society,
06:52and that's how they ate.
06:54Black folk can do everything.
06:58It's simple as that.
06:59We can.
07:00But it's not seen or accepted that we can.
07:05They can be absolutely brilliant, but they mustn't get above this station.
07:11There is so much that has been lost because of the inhumanity of slavery.
07:18Millions of people who were lost aboard ship.
07:22But culture is what helps us reclaim them.
07:28As a youngster, I myself played classical music.
07:32I played the piano and the oboe, and I would say that it gave me a sense of purpose.
07:36It gave me identity.
07:39And I wonder if it was the same for the young Emedy at 16 years old.
07:43I wonder if music was an escape or gave him a sense of solace.
07:53Slavery may have been abolished in Portugal, but the slave trade was still thriving all over the world.
08:01Africans continued to be transported across the Atlantic, but also across the Indian Ocean from East Africa.
08:09Coming up, Tricia Goddard discovers the cruel fate of children enslaved in East Africa.
08:17They were just taken from one kind of slavery to another.
08:22And Rachel Johnson uncovers her own family's connection to a very different form of slavery.
08:28Women were traded like any other commodity here in Venice, you know, silk or spices.
08:42Venice, jewel of the Renaissance.
08:46Prosperous, sophisticated.
08:48Yet beneath the refinement lurks a dark and surprising history.
08:53This is an absolutely beautiful city.
08:56But Venice is built on the sweat of thousands of slaves who've been trafficked into this city.
09:03The gateway between East and Western Europe, Venice became a leading naval power for centuries
09:10and relied on maritime trade for its survival.
09:15Writer Rachel Johnson, sister of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, has come to Venice to discover the truth about a family
09:23story.
09:24A story which reveals her great-great-grandmother was a victim of a form of slavery.
09:29Very different from what was taking place thousands of miles away in the New World.
09:36I feel actually quite stunned by it.
09:39I really do.
09:42Venice was at the centre of a very peculiar type of slave trade in the Renaissance.
09:47Whilst Venice was the place you would go to buy rare brocades and Middle Eastern silks,
09:53Venice is also the place where you buy someone that can stitch them into clothes.
09:58Until the 9th century, Venetian merchants were engaged in a thriving trade,
10:05indiscriminately selling captive men and women to Islamic nations.
10:09But in 840 AD, a treaty outlawed the sale of Christians to Muslims.
10:14Venetian traders began to look east to fill the demand, selecting captives not by race, but by religion.
10:23Ships docked and unloaded their cargo along today's river Sceavoni, shore of the Slavs.
10:31The word slave derives from Slav.
10:34I had this childish binary idea that it was all slaves trafficked from Africa to the New World.
10:43Some of the enslaved were sold to wealthy Venetians.
10:47They became valuable assets and were treated accordingly.
10:52The overwhelming majority of people who came here as slaves were coming from the Black Sea area.
11:03And so they were Russian, Tartar, Circassians.
11:06When they come here, they were converted to Christianity.
11:10So they were assimilated to the family, especially with women, became very intimate.
11:17You weren't chained.
11:18You didn't have to go and break boulders in the field.
11:23No, they must be protected during their lifetime because they had a huge value.
11:30And so it means good health, a good treatment.
11:33Apparently, ciao has also, it's etymologically to do with slavery.
11:38Yeah.
11:39It's a Venetian word.
11:41Schiavo in Venetian, schiavo in Italian.
11:43It was a very polite way to say hello at that time to say that I'm your slave.
11:52In Venice in the 1400s, slaves were important as a status symbol.
11:58A major staple of luxury would have been a Circassian slave.
12:02The Circassians, white Muslims from today's southern Russia, were highly prized as luxury workers.
12:09Rachel's great-great-grandmother came from Circassia and was sold by her own family as a girl.
12:17I'm seeing this city in a very, very different light now.
12:21Women were a commodity.
12:23They were traded like any other commodity here in Venice, you know, silk or spices.
12:28To find out what life might have been like for her great-great-grandmother, Rachel has come to the Venice
12:34State Archive.
12:37It holds records of enslaved people traded here.
12:41This is an act of notary, stilated in Venice in July 1433, in which we see a sale of a
12:55slave.
12:56A slave, a slave, a Circassian slave.
13:00A slave.
13:01A slave.
13:27This was one of the crucial differences between slavery and medieval Venice and the forms
13:33of slavery that developed in the new world, in which the children of enslaved women were
13:38born into enslavement.
13:41In 876 AD, a law was introduced in Venice that banned all slave trading, but the law
13:48was flouted.
13:49The profits from slavery were so great that it was worth paying the penalty for if you
14:02were caught.
14:03Si.
14:05Even though it was officially banned, the city was so addicted to the luxury, the leisure
14:12and pleasure of having slaves that slavery carried on for the next 500 years.
14:17The victims of Venetian slavery were people of different races.
14:22Skin colour did not mark a person out as free or enslaved.
14:25As a result, the descendants of Venetian slaves, unlike the descendants of enslaved Africans,
14:32have not had to face the centuries of racism and discrimination.
14:36That history of the trafficking of Africans into slavery began far further back in time
14:42than many people realise.
14:44And not in the Atlantic, but on the other side of the African continent.
14:48The Indian Ocean slave trade is probably the oldest of the slave trades and transported
14:57more human beings and it was multidirectional.
15:03Exports of the enslaved from the Indian Ocean to the Muslim world grew exponentially after
15:09Arab traders won control of the Swahili coast and sea routes in the 8th century.
15:15The trafficking of millions of human beings from Africa's east coast led to the emergence
15:21of African diaspora communities, like the Shidi in Pakistan and India and Afro-Iraqis
15:28in Basra.
15:29Islamic law does not permit slave trading.
15:34Many Muslims throughout the Indian Ocean world ignored those rules.
15:39And so they plundered and captured Africans, Indians, Southeast Asians, usually non-Muslims.
15:52Both Christianity and Islam asserted the value of a person as created by God, yet both religions
15:59accepted the capture, sale and ownership of men, women and children from Africa.
16:05The Atlantic trade to the west centred on labour and shipped at least two men for every woman.
16:13The Indian Ocean trade to the east centred on services and included soldiers, cooks and
16:20concubines.
16:21It shipped roughly two women for every man.
16:25The key location was in modern day Tanzania, the island of Zanzibar, under control of the
16:31Armani Arab empire from the 17th century.
16:34For 200 years it specialised in three things, ivory, spices and slaves.
16:46British TV journalist Trisha Goddard moved to East Africa with her family in the 60s before
16:52returning to England at the age of nine.
16:56I spent a few years of my childhood in Tanzania and I've got to say they were the happiest
17:03years of my childhood.
17:06It was the beginning of the 1960s.
17:10Tanzania was newly formed.
17:13My father wanted to go and help a newly formed African state.
17:19In 1807 Britain finally turned its back on the slave trade.
17:24Royal Navy warships were dispatched to the Atlantic to suppress the slave trades of other nations.
17:31Some of the Africans freed from slavery were resettled in Freetown in Sierra Leone.
17:38Others were sent to work in the West Indies.
17:42Over the course of the 19th century, thousands of British sailors died, intercepting foreign
17:48slave ships.
17:50And the mission to end the slave trade led the Royal Navy into the Indian Ocean and into
17:56direct conflict with the slave traders of Zanzibar.
18:01Now living in the US, Trisha has come to Greenwich, Connecticut to find out more about
18:07the history of the slave trade through Zanzibar.
18:11Professor Bernard Freeman is a leading expert on slavery in the Indian Ocean.
18:17He has a rare series of 19th century photographs taken by the British Royal Navy.
18:22So what's that, Bernard?
18:25Well, this is a photo that's taken on the deck of a British naval ship called the London.
18:33And this is probably taken somewhere near Zanzibar.
18:38All of these black people in the center of the photo are rescued slaves.
18:43And as you see...
18:44The children?
18:45There's so many children.
18:46Yeah, there's mostly children and boys and girls and some teenage boys as well.
18:52Under pressure from the British, the slave trade was banned in Zanzibar in 1873 by Sultan
19:00Barghash bin Syed.
19:01But, unofficially, slavery continued.
19:06After Barghash abolished the slave trade between Zanzibar and the mainland, an illegal trade sprung
19:14up and the British Navy instituted a patrol.
19:20The Royal Navy paid a bounty for the capture of a slave ship.
19:25Oh.
19:25So the sailors got cash for capturing the slave boat.
19:32Bernard has a newspaper article from the Anti-Slavery Reporter, published in London in 1877.
19:39It shows what life was like for the enslaved freed by the Royal Navy.
19:45Most people don't know this.
19:47Instead of being repatriated with their families and in their villages in East Africa, they were
19:53sent to labor camps.
19:56But would families, if there were families, would they be kept together?
20:00Probably not.
20:01Some of it was based on demand.
20:03Who needed workers?
20:05So oftentimes they would be shipped to the Seychelles, to South Africa, to Mauritius, which
20:11had big sugar plantations.
20:13It's really not much different or it could even be worse than slavery.
20:20So instead of getting a wage at the end of the month, the liberated African would get
20:25a bill for the food, for the housing, for the medical care.
20:31And so you would never work off that debt.
20:34They were just basically taken from one kind of slavery to another?
20:40That's correct.
20:42Just looking into the faces on those photos, that really got me.
20:48It's just the inhumanity.
20:50I'm still trying to find out about my own ancestry.
20:53My mother came from the island of Dominica.
20:56One of my loved ones could be many of those faces on any ship, in any photo.
21:02It's a really sobering and scary thought.
21:05The enslavement of Africans, taken as a whole, over hundreds of years, changed the world.
21:11It changed our language.
21:12It changed the demographics of the world.
21:14And it took this idea of race, based on something as meaningless as skin color, and it created
21:21this fissure, this divide, this fracture, that still shapes the world today.
21:26We are living and navigating in the ruins of the empire of slavery.
21:32Having learnt of Emedy's emancipation and musical career in Lisbon, Karen Gibson now wants to
21:39find out what happened next.
21:40She is retracing Emedy's footsteps on the night he lost his freedom for the second time.
21:48Emedy has just finished giving one of those magnificent performances that he's been known for.
21:53He would have packed his violin, and he would have made his way out this exit stage door.
22:00Unbeknown to Emedy, there was a ship that was anchored just 300 yards down the road there.
22:08Captain Pellew, who was in charge of that ship, and two of his lieutenant's decided that they needed a fiddler
22:15for their ship,
22:16and Emedy was their man.
22:18So as soon as Emedy came out of the door, one of them would have knocked him out, and then
22:22bundle him on the ship,
22:24and then for the next four years, he was their fiddler. They had got their man.
22:28So essentially, he was kidnapped?
22:29He was kidnapped.
22:31At any time during the day, you could have a bag thrown under your head, and wake up on a
22:35ship to be sold back.
22:37And even when you did get free, you could be sold back into slavery. So you were constantly terrorised.
22:43Slavery was meant to dehumanise, and only if you can get people in that frame of mind could you then
22:50make them do absolutely what you wanted them to do.
22:53Poor Emedy was thus forced against his will to descend from the higher regions of the music in which he
23:00delighted,
23:01Gluck, Haydn, Cimarosa, and Mozart, to desecrate his violin to hornpipes, jigs, and reels, which he loathed and detested.
23:14As the months go by, and the years go by, they would have broken his soul.
23:20The captain's duty is to keep up the morale of his crew, and Emedy was part of that.
23:26And if Emedy was not up to it, they would have, in no uncertain terms, have kipped his black ass
23:34with that violin.
23:35I can't imagine what that must be like, to be able to have to give away, over and over again,
23:44the thing that you love,
23:45and the thing that means something to you, to somebody who has no respect for you.
23:54The story of Emedy constantly brings me back to the story of my own family.
24:01My great-great-grandfather was also brought over from West Africa to Guyana as a slave.
24:10I'd love to know the story. I'd love to fill in the missing pieces.
24:17And maybe that's why this story of Emedy so resonates with me.
24:26Next, Rachel Johnson travels to Istanbul to uncover more of her family history.
24:32And American TV host Shannon Lanier investigates a very personal connection to U.S. President Thomas Jefferson.
24:42He's the man who wrote that all men are created equal.
24:46Yet he's also the man who owned at least 600 people.
25:03He's also the man who owned at least 600 people.
25:04Rachel Johnson has come to Istanbul, once the capital of the Ottoman Empire,
25:09to search for the truth about her great-great-grandmother.
25:14My name reflects my very mixed heritage.
25:17I've got Muslim, Christian and Anglo-Saxon and Jewish grandparents.
25:23And Johnson is actually the name that we were given when my grandfather, who was half-Turkish, naturalized.
25:31You know, my grandfather, he never talked about the fact he was Turkish.
25:35And I don't think it was much spoken of that my great-great-grandmother was a slave.
25:41That was a cause of shame and embarrassment.
25:45And he, of course, changed his name from Osman Ali to Wilfred Johnson.
25:49There can be no bigger statement of, really, of cleansing the past.
25:57I feel that if I find out about my great-great-grandmother, I will necessarily find out more about myself.
26:08Like Venice, most slavery in the Ottoman Empire is a lot more niche, is about skills.
26:13So we're going to have prostitution, we're going to have accountants, we're going to have translators,
26:18we're going to have craftsmen.
26:20Rachel believes her great-great-grandmother was sold in a market here in the mid-1800s,
26:26not by a slave trader, but by her own father.
26:30So I've been told that somewhere around here, between the mosque and the Grand Bazaar,
26:34human flesh was traded alongside carpets, nuts, spices, silver, baklava, you name it,
26:43as recently as 150 years ago, which blows my mind.
26:50Captive men and women came from all over the empire.
26:54The North African Barbary states, allies of the Ottomans, enslaved people from all over Europe.
27:01But the most valued slaves came from the Black Sea,
27:04from where the Ottomans took roughly two and a half million Circassians.
27:09Rachel is meeting her cousin, Sinan Kuneralp, a diplomatic historian and publisher,
27:15in the hope he can shine light on the life of their ancestor.
27:18Our forefather, Hadjah Ahmed, was a self-made man, basically.
27:23And his first wife died early.
27:25And so he applied to a middleman, saying that,
27:29I am in the market for a young, fairly nice, good-looking bride-to-be.
27:36There was a network of people who would provide brides from Circassia.
27:41It was a region famed for the beauty of the womenfolk.
27:47And it was a supply for Istanbul harems.
27:50Because they were tall, blonde, blue-eyed women with very forceful character.
27:58This gentleman, very fierce-looking, is Haniva's father.
28:03The man who sold his daughter.
28:07He's a tribesman, a warlord, a brigand.
28:11Hanifa is here.
28:14This is one of her daughters.
28:16There's a, would I say, a Johnson look?
28:21Hadjah Ahmed, Andy, would have been 43 when he married this 13-year-old.
28:2913.
28:30In today's context, it sounds completely unnatural.
28:34Considering the conditions in the small villages of Circassia,
28:38where existence was very tread-bare and very frugal,
28:43becoming the wife of a wealthy trader or merchant is definitely an improvement.
28:50Were Hanifa Frida's slave origins a source of pride or shame?
28:55Or maybe both?
28:57Shame? Certainly not.
28:58Because considering that the sultans were all sons of slave girls.
29:07Hanifa went on to have four children.
29:10Her first-born, your great-grandfather Ali Kemal, who became a politician.
29:15Minister for the Interior.
29:16Minister for, in the Turkish context, Minister of Interior, Home Secretary.
29:20So a very important man.
29:21Absolutely.
29:27Ten days in a boat, crossing the Black Sea.
29:30To meet a man she'd never met.
29:32Three times her age, who she was going to have to marry.
29:36I mean, what a future, what a scary future for her.
29:43The loss of her family, of her homeland, of her own choice of husband,
29:47of choosing who to have your children with.
29:50These are the main things in a human being's life.
29:53And those were things that she never had.
30:01In the Ottoman Empire, slavery was comparable to what you would see in many other countries around the world.
30:08However, there were some differences.
30:10One of the main differences was that as a slave, it was possible for a person to rise in power
30:19and esteem.
30:21But in the colonies of North America, a different type of slavery had been emerging.
30:27Drawing on the brutal slave code of Barbados, enslaved Africans were legally defined as chattel or personal property, with no
30:35right to life or liberty.
30:38In Virginia in 1790, over 39% of those working in tobacco fields were enslaved.
30:45This was more than a decade after the US Declaration of Independence claimed all men are created equal.
30:52It deliberately, purposefully, intentionally and literally made human beings into objects, into commodities.
31:00It literally dehumanised them.
31:08All right, let's go.
31:10Shannon Lanier is one of America's most successful TV hosts.
31:14He has come with his family to Monticello in Virginia.
31:18This 5,000-acre plantation was home to US President Thomas Jefferson, who owned more than 600 slaves.
31:27When he was growing up, Shannon was told by his relatives that he was a descendant of an enslaved woman
31:34and the president himself.
31:36So when I was in second grade, I proudly stood up and told the entire class,
31:41Thomas Jefferson is my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather.
31:45And the teacher said, sit down and stop telling lies.
31:49Of course, the whole class laughed and I was devastated about it.
31:54Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemings, captured in this artist's impression, was denied for almost two centuries, until DNA evidence proved
32:04the link in 1998.
32:06It's important that we don't push away our history and cherry-pick what we want to tell.
32:11It'll help us understand our past and where we come from and how to improve the future.
32:17Shannon is meeting Professor Christa Dirkscheid, a Jefferson scholar at the University of Virginia.
32:24Shannon knows that Sally spent time with Jefferson in Paris, but he's not sure how that was possible when slavery
32:31was illegal there.
32:32So I've got a document to show you, Shannon, that I think says a lot about your ancestors when they
32:39were brought by Jefferson to Paris.
32:41And I think you'll see there on the list of wages that Jefferson's paying people in his household.
32:47Do you recognize any names there?
32:49I see Sally here, Sally Hemings, and her brother James Hemings.
32:54This is from 1788.
32:56Yep. Sally Hemings had arrived for the first time in Paris.
32:59And we see that Jefferson is paying her and her brother wages, which would have been the first time that
33:05they're receiving money and income from Jefferson, their owner.
33:09Now, why do you think he did that?
33:11Well, because slavery was illegal in France at this time, so Jefferson didn't want to draw attention to the fact
33:18that he had human property within his household in Paris.
33:21So paying them was a way of making them look more like servants.
33:27Because he knew it was wrong.
33:29Yes.
33:30Paris in the 1780s was a bustling cosmopolitan city, a world away from the plantation state of Virginia, where Sally
33:38grew up.
33:39It was here that Hemings and Jefferson's relationship began.
33:43I think these wage books really show us part of the kind of freedom and mobility that James and Sally
33:50Hemings would have experienced in Paris.
33:53Sally Hemings was learning French, so she was accompanying Jefferson's daughters out in Parisian society.
33:59Jefferson bought her very fine clothes, so she would have known that she was on free soil.
34:05And I know it was there because she was free that her brother James wanted to stay in Paris, and
34:11he was like, stay with me, Sally, because we're free here.
34:14But she decided to come back with Thomas Jefferson.
34:17He promised her that however many children they had together, that he would free them at the age of 21
34:22if she returned with him.
34:23Yes.
34:24Unlike other generations of enslaved women, she would break that cycle, and her children would actually be free.
34:31That's one of the things that bothers me about Jefferson is that he knew slavery was wrong.
34:37He even tried to put it in the Declaration of Independence that, you know, the slaves should be freed, and
34:41yet he did nothing to help further it here at his plantation or anywhere else.
34:47Christa is taking Shannon to Mulberry Row. Sally would probably have lived here when she returned to Virginia from France
34:55in 1789.
34:58This long driveway was really the hub of industry on this enormous plantation.
35:04I know a lot of the Hemmings receives preferential treatment here at Monticello.
35:09Part of the agreement is that she would be able to be with her children as they grew up.
35:14And this is so different than the vast majority of enslaved children at Monticello in Virginia.
35:21Thomas Jefferson fathered at least six children with Sally. Four survived to adulthood.
35:27Two were freed in Jefferson's lifetime, the other two when he died in 1826.
35:32You know, a lot of people ask me about the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings because it lasted
35:38over 38 years and they like to romanticize it.
35:42It's definitely easier for some family members to not think of their great grandmother being raped for 38 years,
35:47but I just don't think it could have been a love relationship based on the dynamics that she was, you
35:53know, 14, 15, 16 at the time and she was a slave.
36:00Sally Hemmings was a teenage enslaved African-American girl. What bargaining power did she have?
36:07It was rape.
36:12Thomas Jefferson, founding father, third president of the United States and author of the Declaration of Independence.
36:20He's the man who wrote that all men are created equal.
36:25Yet he's also the man who owned at least 600 people.
36:33Next, Rachel Johnson finds out the value put on her great-great-grandmother.
36:39I was really shocked that her life was really so cheap.
36:44And Karen Gibson discovers what became of the twice enslaved violinist Joseph Emedy.
36:51After all he suffered, you know, he wins in the end.
37:06In Istanbul, writer Rachel Johnson is tracing the history of her family's connection to slavery.
37:14She's meeting Hakan Erdin, an expert on Ottoman slavery.
37:18She wants to find out what value would have been placed on an enslaved teenage girl.
37:23So this is my great-great-grandmother as a middle-aged woman.
37:28She was sold, I think, when she was 15.
37:30Have you any idea how much she might have commanded in a marketplace?
37:35Well, you know, the million-dollar question.
37:38Because after the Russians, when they defeated the Circassian Confederation in 1864,
37:44they immigrated to Ottoman Empire en masse around a million and a half.
37:51And about 10% were slaves.
37:54I mean, an article that appeared in New York Daily Times,
37:59there's an absolute glut in the market.
38:01And in former times, a good middling Circassian girl was told we're cheap at 100 pounds.
38:08But at the present moment, the same description of goods may be had for 5 pounds.
38:13So, but her warlord father, then, was really not making a lot of money.
38:18Probably he lived through dire straits and he was compelled to sell the daughter.
38:23But I'm sure he negotiated a good place for his daughter.
38:29Because she married the very rich, wealthy trader of tallow candles.
38:35He had to, in a way, protect his daughter from poverty, starvation, God knows what, in Circassia.
38:43Yeah.
38:43So, the only option there was, really.
38:47I was really shocked when Hakan said that my ancestor was probably sold for very little money.
38:55And it made me feel sad that her life was really so cheap.
39:02I hesitate to say that being sold into slavery and having to marry an older man was a good thing.
39:08But it was the best available option to her.
39:13It's an incredible story.
39:15And I feel actually quite stunned by it.
39:19I really, I really do.
39:25Back in the UK, Karen Gibson has been doing more research into the life of Joseph Emmerdy,
39:32a talented African musician, press-ganged aboard an English naval ship by Captain Pellu.
39:41After four years at sea, Emmerdy was finally able to leave the ship when it returned to England.
39:47It was 1799.
39:50He was 24.
39:52It didn't take long for his musical talent to shine through.
39:56He first began by going out to parties to play the violin,
40:00which he did to a degree of perfection never before heard in Cornwall.
40:04This led to his being engaged as a teacher and then a leader at concerts,
40:09so that by degrees he made rapid progress in reputation and means.
40:16Emmerdy soon became known as a talented multi-instrumentalist and composer.
40:23He went on to lead a symphony orchestra, ironically,
40:27in the same town where Captain Pellu was educated.
40:31You may not have seen this before, but this is Truro Philharmonic Society
40:36and there is Joseph Emmerdy himself leading the orchestra.
40:41Wow, amazing. I have not seen this.
40:47How good was Emmerdy's music that he wrote himself?
40:50We can only guess, really.
40:52But probably the best clue we've got is a quote from Silk Buckingham,
40:57who said that given the right opportunities,
41:01Emmerdy could have been another Mendelssohn or another Beethoven.
41:05But his colleagues thought that Emmerdy's race would be against him.
41:09Wow.
41:11Why do you think we don't have any copies of his music today?
41:16It seems to me, likely, that at the time he was simply unappreciated.
41:22Probably when his wife died,
41:25then the music was just cleared out and bundled away.
41:28Very sad, but that's the situation we're left with.
41:32Joseph Emmerdy's story only survives
41:35because it was documented by his friend, James Silk Buckingham.
41:39With no-one to record them,
41:41the stories of millions of other enslaved people have been lost.
41:47I feel, in some way,
41:50that in being able to retell Emmerdy's story
41:55is that I'm claiming something back.
41:59Not just for him,
42:00but for us all of the African diaspora
42:05whose ancestors had their freedom taken.
42:09Some whose names you will never know.
42:11Some whose stories long ago
42:15buried and forgotten.
42:18But I feel that every time we resurrect a story,
42:21we're telling all our stories.
42:32Here lie deposited the mortal remains of Mr. Joseph Antonia Emmerdy,
42:39who departed this life on the 23rd of April, 1835.
42:42He was a native of Portugal,
42:46which country he acquitted about 40 years since,
42:50and pursuing the musical profession,
42:52resided in Cornwall until the close of his earthly career.
42:57They have described him as a native of Portugal.
43:03But he wasn't a native of Portugal.
43:06Actually, he was a native of Guinea.
43:08That's where he was born.
43:10I would hope that he found peace within himself.
43:14He was successful, and he was happy,
43:16and he lived a peaceful life.
43:21After all he suffered, you know, he wins in the end.
43:27That's what I feel.
43:31When we think about figures like Joseph Emmerdy,
43:34we have to imagine that what they are
43:37are fleeting glimpses of the human costs of the slave trade.
43:42A handful, tiny number, of people who were the victims of slavery
43:46were able to find freedom, to find education,
43:49and then find the opportunity, critically,
43:51to express their talents and their abilities and their humanity.
43:55We think about them, and then we think about the millions,
43:57whose lives were just consumed on plantations
44:00in America, in the Caribbean, in Brazil.
44:09Next time, actor Ray Fearon discovers how the enslaved,
44:13on some of those plantations, rose up in rebellion
44:17and helped finally put an end to slavery.
44:21They fought for their freedom.
44:23And I am here and a product of that freedom.
44:27And the daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
44:30remembers how her father continued that fight for freedom
44:34and full racial equality.
44:35My daddy was saying, we're going to keep doing what we're doing,
44:39because this is the right thing.
44:45And you can see that next Tuesday at 10.
44:48Bettany Hughes reveals the undiscovered stories
44:50of victims of the historic eruption at Mount Vesuvius.
44:53Pompeii, Secrets of the Dead is brand new Thursday at 9.
44:56The party's over for revelers after the break
44:58after a terrifying incident at a nightclub.
45:01We join the paramedics racing to help in ambulance code red next.
45:04Once upon A Nightclub and the
45:10The 21st Code of Revelation
45:10It's the Wild Um
45:10The Wildural
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