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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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