Bussa

Who is Bussa?

Bussa was an enslaved man, likely born in West Africa and of possible Igbo or Coromantee descent, who was transported to Barbados and worked as a "ranger," a senior officer among the enslaved workforce, on Bayley's Plantation in the parish of Saint Philip. That position gave him unusual freedom of movement, which he used to help plan the largest slave rebellion in Barbadian history. Alongside collaborators including the free man Joseph Pitt Washington Franklin and the enslaved couple John and Nanny Grigg, Bussa organized an uprising that began on Easter Sunday, 14 April 1816, and drew roughly four hundred rebels, most of them born in Barbados. The rebellion lasted three days before being crushed by the superior firepower of the colonial militia, and Bussa was killed in the fighting. Though defeated, the revolt was the first of three major slave uprisings in the British West Indies that shook public confidence in slavery and helped push the empire toward abolition. Bussa is honored today as a National Hero of Barbados, commemorated by the Emancipation Statue in Bridgetown, which depicts a man breaking his chains.

Sources: Bussa's Rebellion, The National Archives (UK) education resource · BlackPast.org, "Bussa Rebellion (1816)" · Caribbean Reparations Commission, "Two Hundred Years Since the Heroic Barbados Slave Rebellion"