The Library of Congress has acquired the Omar ibn Said Collection, including an exceptional artifact, the autobiography of Omar ibn Said, written in ancient Arabic by an African enslaved man. In this article, I analytically examine the role of literacy in Omar ibn Said's life as informed by African cultures, ethnicities, histories, languages, and literacies in the Senegambia region, and the history of Black literacy access in the United States. In Arabic, Omar ibn Said stealthily applied sophisticated literacy skills to contest living under anti-Black racism and chattel enslavement through his rhetorical and strategic use of Qur’anic surahs and verses. Early translations and interpretations of his autobiography, filtered through Eurocentrism and White supremacy, failed to discern Omar ibn Said's proclamation of his humanity and bold condemnation of chattel enslavement. Africanist, Islamist, and Muslim scholars valorize his resilience as an African Muslim man who remained faithful to Islam under anti-Black racism, the horrors of chattel enslavement, and attempts at Christian conversion. They also provide knowledge about centuries of literacy among people of African descent; expose the pervasiveness of White supremacy; and unveil the roots of deliberate anti-Black literacy laws, policies, and practices, historically and contemporaneously. Omar ibn Said's autobiography dismantles prevailing assumptions about people of African descent as sub-human, without culture, history, intellect, language, or literacy. To create an equitable and ethical approach to literacy: We must transcend the past and present, respect humanity, acknowledge literacy as a global construct, understand literacy as a human right, cultivate a critical consciousness, and require authenticated knowledge.
AlryyesA. (2011a). Introduction. “Arabic Work,” Islam, and American literature. In AlryyesA.SaidO. (Eds.), A Muslim American slave: The Life of Omar Ibn Said (pp. 3–46). University of Wisconsin Press.
3.
AlryyesA. (2011b). The life of Omar Ibn Said, written by himself. (Trans. A. Alryyes). In AlryyesA.SaidO. (Eds), A Muslim American slave: The Life of Omar Ibn Said (pp. 47–80). University of Wisconsin Press.
4.
AlryyesA.SaidO. I. (2011). A Muslim American slave: The Life of Omar Ibn Said. University of Wisconsin Press.
Anonymous. (1825). Prince Moro. Christian Advocate (3), 152–158. Methodist Episcopal Church.
8.
AnsleyF. L. (1997). White supremacy (and what we should do about it). In DelgadoR.StefancicJ. (Eds.), Critical White studies: Looking behind the mirror (pp. 592–595). Temple University Press.
9.
AustinA. D. (1997). Muslims in antebellum America: Transatlantic stories and spiritual struggles. Routledge.
10.
AustinA. D. (2011). Contemporary context for Omar's Life and life. In AlryyesA. A. (Ed.), A Muslim American slave: The life of Omar Ibn Said (pp. 133–151). University of Wisconsin Press.
11.
BirdI. (1861). The life autobiography of Omar Ibn Said, slave in North Carolina, 1831. In AlryyresA. A. (Ed.), A Muslim American slave: The life of Omar Ibn Said (pp. 81–94). University of Wisconsin Press.
12.
BovedaM.BhattacharyaK. (2019). Love as de/colonial onto-epistemology: A post-oppositional approach to contextualized research ethics. Urban Education, 51, 5–25. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-018-00493-z
CothealA. (1848). The life autobiography of Omar ben Saeed, called Morro, a Fullah slave, in Fayetteville. North Carolina, owned by Governor Jim Owen, written by himself in 1831 and sent to Old Paul, Lahmen Kebby, in New York in 1836. Alexander Cotheal.
16.
DavisB. D. (1966). The problems of slavery in western civilization. Cornell University Press.
DioufS. (1998). Servants of Allah: African Muslims enslaved in the Americas. New York University Press.
19.
DioufS. A. (2011). “God does not allow kings to enslave their people”: Islamic reformist and the transatlantic slave trade. In AlryyesA. A. (Ed.), A Muslim American slave: The life of Omar Ibn Said (pp. 162–182). University of Wisconsin Press.
DwightT. (1864, January). Condition and character of Negroes in Africa. Methodist Quarterly Review, 46(4), 77–90.
23.
FanonF. (2004). The wretched of the earth(R. Philcox, Trans.). Grove Press. (Original work published 1963).
24.
FanonF. (2008). Black Skins, White Masks(R. Philcox, Trans.). Grove Press. (Original work published 1952).
25.
GrandeS. (2008). Red pedagogy: The unmethodology. In DenzinN. K.LincolnY. S.SmithL. T. (Eds.), Handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies (pp. 233–254). Sage.
26.
HartmanS. (2019). Wayward lives, beautiful experiments: Intimate histories of riotous Black girls, troublesome women, and queer radicals. W.W. Norton & Company.
27.
HunwickJ. (1970). “I wish to be seen in our land called Afrika”: Umar B. Sayyid’s appeal to be released from slavery (1819). Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies, 62–77. https://doi.org/10.5617/jais.4572
28.
IncetasY. (2022, September 13). Personal communication.
JamesonJ. F.(Ed). (1925). Autobiography of Omar ibn Said, slave in North Carolina, 1831. The American Historical Review, 30(4), 787–795. https://doi.org/10.2307/1835670
LoM.ErnestC. W. (2020). The 1850’s photographic portrait of Omar Ibn Said: The eloquence of resilience. The Hartford Seminary, 110, 428–450. https://doi.org/10.1111/muwo.12343
MotenF. (2003). Resistance of the object: Aunt Hester’s scream. In In the break: The aesthetics of the Black radical tradition (NED-New edition, pp. 1–8). University of Minnesota Press.
37.
NietoS. (2022, November 14). Personal Communication.
38.
OsmanG.ForbesC. F. (2011). Representing the West in the Arabic language: The slave narrative of Oma ibn Said. In AlryyesA. (Ed.), A Muslim American slave: The life of Omar Ibn Said (pp. 182–195). University of Wisconsin Press.
39.
Pérez HuberL.RoblesG.SolórzanoD. G. (2023). “Life was brought back to my body”: A critical race Feminista analysis of racial microaffirmations. Race Ethnicity and Education, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2023.2165514
40.
RobinsonC. J. (2000). Black Marxism: The making of the Black radical tradition (2nd ed.). University of North Carolina Press.
SinghM. V.LeonardoZ. (2023). Educators as decolonial intellectuals: Revolutionary thought from Gramsci to Fanon. Critical Studies in Education, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2022.2146150
SolórzanoD. G.Pérez HuberL. (2020). Racial microaggressions: Using critical race theory to respond to everyday racism. Teachers College Press.
45.
WillisA. I. (2015). Literacy and race: Access, equity, and freedom. Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 64(1), 23–55. https://doi.org/10.1177/2381336915617617
46.
WoodruffJ.NawazA. (2019, April 23). How the autobiography of a Muslim slave is challenging an American narrative. Public Broadcasting Station. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBQelGvwkhE
