My Ancestors Were Not Slaves, But Survivors: Reframing The Lie Of Slavery

To be enslaved is a condition imposed upon a victim; to be a slave, however, is the true identity of the oppressor, one that has been falsely placed on the oppressed. Our ancestors did not wake up longing for bondage; they were dragged into it by force. This distinction matters, because language is power. When we misname the oppressed, we unknowingly lend credibility to the worldview of those who oppressed them.

It takes slave mentality to surrender one’s thought to wickedness and covetousness. No reasonable soul would applaud a kidnapper while shaming the kidnapped. African men, women, and children, were farmers and philosophers, artisans and scientists, engineers and parents, warriors and traders, healers and thinkers. They were human beings with names, cultures, spiritual traditions, and moral codes. Being deceived, captured, sold, beaten, and exploited did not erase their humanity, nor did it redefine who they were. Violence may restrain the body, but it can never rewrite identity.

A great man who opens his heart to a stranger remains great, even when that trust is betrayed and he is forced into captivity.

One of the clearest examples of this survival is found in the story of the Buffalo Soldiers. After emancipation, Black men who had endured bondage, or were the sons of those who had, were recruited into the United States Army and sent west. They fought in Indian Territory, guarded settlers, built roads, protected rail lines, and enforced the very expansion of a nation that had once enslaved them. These soldiers were not fighting because America loved them. They fought because survival demanded adaptation in a land that offered few mercies to Black bodies.

The name “Buffalo Soldiers”, given by Native American tribes, was not an insult. It was recognition. The buffalo was sacred, resilient, strong, enduring harsh conditions, refusing to disappear even as it was hunted nearly to extinction. The name acknowledged something the nation itself would not: that these men carried dignity, discipline, and courage forged in suffering.

Yet even in uniform, they were not free in the way freedom is often imagined. They were paid less, given inferior equipment, stationed in the harshest territories, and denied the respect afforded to white soldiers. They protected others’ rights while being denied their own. Still, they endured. Not because the system was just, but because survival has always been a skill passed down through African bloodlines. Africans were not broken into submission; they were pressed into systems designed to exploit their labour, strength, and resolve. Slavery did not make them slaves, it revealed the moral slavery of those who needed domination and thievery to feel whole.

The enslavers, past and present, in invasion or in colonial garment of shame, were bound by something far more limiting than chains: an inability to access empathy. To deny a fellow human his humanity requires a shrinking of the soul. It requires emotional illiteracy so severe that violence becomes normal, cruelty becomes policy, and avariciousness becomes legal business practice. That is not freedom. That is captivity of the spirit. No truth can be truer than the truth. It is the true definition of a slave.

The true slave is the enslaver, not the one enslaved.

Every oppressed person is a victim of injustice, but the oppressor is the one truly enslaved to fear, to greed, to a false belief that life is a competition rather than a shared existence. This same mindset justified human bondage, land theft, genocide, and the ongoing exploitation of animals and the Earth itself. It is a worldview that cannot see beyond immediate gain, even at the cost of long-term destruction.

The Buffalo Soldiers stood at a painful crossroads of history, descendants of the enslaved, used by power, yet never stripped of their humanity. Our ancestors were never slaves. They were survivors on plantations, on battlefields, on frontiers that tested their bodies but could not conquer their humanity. And their legacy asks us to remember this: freedom is not granted by systems built on oppression. It is carried forward by those who remain human in the face of inhumanity.

“If you know your history, then you would know where you coming from. Then you wouldn’t have to ask me, Who the heck do I think I am?” Bob Marley.

– Ambassador Ezewele Cyril Abionanojie is the author of the book ‘The Enemy Called Corruption’ an award winner of Best Columnist of the year 2020, Giant in Security Support, Statesmanship Integrity & Productivity Award Among others. He is the President of Peace Ambassador Global.