Broken Shackles: Old Man Henson From Slavery to Freedom [Paperback]

Old Man Henson, given the name Charley Chance at birth on a plantation near Baltimore, Maryland, was born a slave, although grandson to an African Chieftain's daughter. She had been kidnapped in Africa and shipped to America where she was sold as a slave. She was ever mindful of her birthright - and never fully bent to slavery's yoke. She claimed to have received more than 2000 lashes before she died.

Deeply intelligent and exceptionally articulate, James Henson, known in Owen Sound as "Old Man Henson," was also a man of astonishing strength and great resourcefulness. The Book follows his life in his own words.

Two striking features - at least for this reader. (1) The joyfulness and the paradoxical freedoms many slaves enjoyed, in spite of the privations and the horrors of a world where they could be (and often were) bought and sold like cattle. (2) The incredible number of acts of brutality recounted within a circle of farms and plantations that reached a 10 mile (16 Kil) radius from the farms on which Henson laboured. That perhaps should not be a surprise, for human nature has ever shown a tendency to exploit the weak, yet the documentation here, following after many vibrant and joyful stories, is all the more shocking because of the underlying joyfulness and upbeat attitude of the story-teller.

The joyfulness did not come because slavery left them free from worries. The whip was a constant shadow over the lives of almost all slaves on the farms and plantations that surrounded him. His stories recount deaths from whippings and beatings, as well as premature births as mothers close to their due-dates were flogged. His stories also recount "murders" of savage over-seers and brutal owners. The "Justice" of the day chose hanging, while ignoring the repeated bloody beatings that led to slaves finally turning against their masters. The joyfulness came in spite of those things, from an irrepressible nature that sounds from the stories like it was much more widespread than just Henson, though he may have possessed it in greater measure than most.

I have read many books of historic significance, and because of a deep and growing interest in history, have found the stories gripping. Yet I must confess I have read them usually in spite of the writing quality, rather than because of the writing quality. It was with the same expectation I first sat down with this book. What a treat to find the writing quality approached some of the great novels I have read. The combined talents of James Henson, John Frost and Peter Meyler, storyteller, author and editor respectively, have produced a book I will proudly keep on my shelf and undoubtedly re-read before many years have passed.
A winner by any standard I apply to it.