Queen Nanny: Ghanaian Woman Who Led the Liberation Army in Jamaica, by Owei Lakemfa

Nanny was a priestess, leader, and commander-in-chief of the rebel army who trained her soldiers in guerrilla warfare. She was so fierce in battle that the Europeans tried to pass her off as a myth created to rally the forces of the Maroons. But despite strenuous efforts, the Europeans could not pull it out of the history books.

Nanny, a young Akan woman from present-day Ghana, born around 1686, was captured with her four brothers and sold as a slave. They were taken on "The Voyage of No Return" across the Atlantic Ocean, part of the 12.5 million Africans forcibly transported by Europeans and Americans who wanted free labor to be exploited at profit-making purposes.

Unlike the other 1.8 million people who perished on this voyage and whose bodies were fed into the roaring ocean, Nanny, who would become known as the "Nanny of the Maroons" , and his brothers, survived the ordeal and made it to Jamaica.

They then escaped from slave plantations and fled to the mountains and jungles of Jamaica to become Maroons. It was the name of runaway slaves who banded together and fought for freedom, first for themselves and eventually for various countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, including Jamaica.

The names of the slaves, in almost all cases, have been lost. This was part of the depersonalization and dehumanization of the slave, who was forced to forget the past and live entirely at the whim of the slave owner, who wielded the power of life and death over his "property." . As such, it's not unlikely that her original name wasn't Nanny. It was most likely a corruption of the name Maame, which means "mother" in Twi. This would have been preferred to the names given to it by the slave masters.

By the mid-1550s, there were already runaway slaves in the Caribbean, who, with no way to find their loved ones, banded together to fight the slaveholders and establish their own communities. In Jamaica, as in some other countries, these freedom fighters were called Maroons, as mentioned earlier.

The word "brown" is derived from the Spanish word "Cimarron", which was originally used to describe runaway cattle. Since African slaves were not valued and treated any better than cattle, it came to be used for runaway African slaves. Maroon communities were usually located between mountains and swamps, making it difficult for raids by slaveholders and European countries.

This topography also provided secure bases for the Maroons to raid white plantations and organize guerrilla armies. They teamed up with local Native Americans to defend the ground. Today, Maroon communities still exist in various North and South American countries such as Venezuela, Brazil, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Suriname, Ecuador, and the United States, especially in areas from the Carolinas, Alabama, Florida and New Orleans. They also exist on the islands of the Indian Ocean.

After escaping from the plantations, Nanny and her brothers joined the Maroons. She later founded a maroon village with one of her brothers, Quao, in the Blue Mountains east of Jamaica in 1720. British Captain Stoddart said Nanny Town was "situated on one of the highest mountains of the island" and found the only way to that is: "steep, rocky and difficult, and not wide enough to admit the passage of two people abreast."

After escaping from the plantations, Nanny and her brothers joined the Maroons. She later founded a maroon village with one of her brothers, Quao, in the Blue Mountains east of Jamaica in 1720. British Captain Stoddart said Nanny Town was "situated on one of the highest mountains of the island" and found the only way to that is: "steep, rocky and difficult, and not wide enough to admit the passage of two people abreast."

This forced the invading army to form a single file and an easy target for the Nanny fighters. This part of...