SPECIAL REPORT

‘I Am
Omar’ A quest for the
true identity
of Omar ibn Said,
a Muslim man
enslaved in the Carolinas

RANDOLPH LINSLY SIMPSON AFRICAN-AMERICAN COLLECTION/YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

STORY BY JENNIFER BERRY HAWES

PHOTOGRAPHS BY GAVIN MCINTYRE
This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center

D
AKAR — Dust rolling in from the Sahara Desert journalists, explain the importance of the author.
cloaks the horizon, shrouding the clay structures Draped in folds of royal purple, Sy leans over to grasp the packet.
ahead and disorienting the band of strangers as He has never heard of this Omar ibn Said.
they approach. Yet they come to this ancient vil- That’s not surprising. Omar wrote his most historically impor-
lage in search of clarity. tant text, a brief autobiography, 190 years ago, and it spent much
Imam Amadou Baîdy Sy, among the most learned men in the of the last century forgotten in an old trunk in Virginia.
area, welcomes the unexpected guests into his home. Gathering When he wrote it, Omar was 61 and more than two decades into
around him on colorful mats and tapestries, they clutch two Ara- a long enslavement in America — first in Charleston and then
bic texts, each laden with a trans-Atlantic mystery. North Carolina. He lacked the freedom for candor, though he’d
The documents contain words written two centuries ago by a become a minor celebrity for his exotic script and born-again zeal
man captured somewhere out here in the sand-swept expanse of for Jesus.
northern Senegal. The visitors, who include two Post and Courier Or so they said.

STORY CONTINUES ON PAGE 3

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story originally published in May 2021 and is being reprinted in conjunction with the long-delayed ‘Omar’ opera premier.
S2: Sunday, May 29, 2022 The Post and Courier

‘I Am
Omar’
in Schools

Teachers: Looking for ways to share

the life and legacy of Omar ibn Said with your students?
You can find a lesson plan developed by the Pulitzer Center
at pulitzercenter.org/omar, and learn how to connect
your class with The Post and Courier journalists
who reported Omar’s story.
And it’s all free!

By reading, analyzing, and discussing ‘I Am Omar,’

students will expand their knowledge of Muslim Africans
who were enslaved in the United States, and explore questions
of identity and representation in history.

This lesson plan includes key vocabulary,

printable comprehension and discussion questions,
and extension activities that engage a variety of skills.
Students will be able to use writing, photography,
and mapping to connect the story
to their own lives.
The Post and Courier
‘I AM OMAR’ Sunday, May 29, 2022: S3

“A big army came, and they killed a lot of people.

They caught me and … sold me to the hand of the Christian man.”
Omar’s autobiography, translated by Abdoulaye Gueye
Arabic teacher and translator in Senegal

GAVIN MCINTYRE/STAFF
Two fishermen pull their net from the Senegal River where it splits into the Doué to form the Isle of Morfil, a 100-mile-long piece of land within the Futa Toro region. In his autobiog-
raphy, Omar ibn Said wrote that he came from Futa, “between two rivers,” which local imams and historians say refers to this area.

‘My place of birth is Futa Toro’

OMAR, from S1
Omar ibn Said’s capture
Despite memorizing the Quran during his Omar ibn Said’s
Omar was kidnapped capture
from Senegal, then hauled across the ocean to Charleston. INVESTIGATIVE
youth here in this region called Futa Toro, Omar
He waswas kidnapped
enslaved in and
there 1807infrom hisCarolina.
North village in Senegal,
Post andthen soldjournalists
Courier to slave traders.
traveled FUND
Omar apologized when he wrote. He had for- there
A shipand around
hauled Senegal
him to searching
Charleston, for clues
America’ about
s busiest hisport.
slave life.
gotten much of his people’s script and hoped 1 year of I-Team coverage
they wouldn’t laugh at him should they
somehow, miraculously, ever read it. About GOAL: $500,000
4,200
Now, the imam holds those words in his Charleston mile If you would like to contribute, simply go
s
hands. to postandcourier.com/donate and click
Perched on a high-back wooden chair, Sy on “learn more” about the Investigative
flips quickly through the pages, scanning Atlantic Reporting Fund and Endowed Fund. You
them. At the last one, he pauses. From a can also send a check to the Coastal Com-
Ocean munity Foundation, 1691 Turnbull Ave., North
171-year-old photograph, Omar stares out Senegal
wearing a headwrap and a gaze of wisdom. Charleston, SC 29405, and write “Post and
Sy smiles back. Courier Investigative Fund” in the subject line.
0 1,000 mi
Then he returns to the start of Omar’s sto-
ry. The room falls silent as he reads, save the
sounds of tea pouring and children giggling
and songbirds chattering as they fly in and Coppe of which are places in Futa Toro.
Dimat Walo
out of his home. N.C. Barobe Sy has no trouble reading it.
Sy is among the first people living in Futa Fayetteville “Fî makân al bahri yusummâ Coppe.”
Toro to read Omar’s autobiography in full. He shows it to his nephew sitting nearby.
He can understand Omar’s meaning in a way “Coppe,” his nephew agrees.
only someone who lives here can.
Wilmington SENEGAL Abdoulaye Gueye, the Arabic teacher, looks
S.C. Dakar
Omar wrote that he was 37 years old when surprised. “This is a revelation, eh?”
“infidels” attacked his village. They slaugh- Mamarame Seck, the professor, agrees.
tered many people and dragged him away to
Ga. Charleston
“That is a big, new revelation!”
a slave ship that hauled him across the Atlan- 0 100 mi 0 100 mi Sy reads what appears to be the same place
tic Ocean. The ship landed in Charleston, the name in Omar’s autobiography. “They took
nation’s busiest slave port. me to Coppe by the river, and they sold me to
SOURCE: ESRI BRANDON LOCKETT/STAFF
During the 56 years of captivity that fol- the White people.”
lowed, Omar wrote at least 15 surviving Coppe is in Futa Toro, he adds, right on the
texts in Arabic, although nobody around about Omar also are in the works. And bring his writings home. Senegal River.
him could read them. They include letters, Charleston artist Jonathan Green created a But where exactly that home was remains a It’s not far. He will help us get there.
Muslim and Christian verses, and the only coloring book about him. great part of Omar’s mystery.
known surviving autobiography written in They all seek to answer the most basic He mostly wrote religious passages, not
Arabic by someone still enslaved in America. question: Who was Omar, really? For two personal details, although twice he wrote
Given that perhaps one in five African cap- centuries, his story has morphed based on what looks like a specific place name. Know- PART 1
tives brought to the U.S. was Muslim, the who was telling it. And why. ing where the place is could reveal much CHARLESTON
rarity of such texts speaks to a great loss of That question drove the group of guests sit- about him: his home, his family, his people,
faith and learning. ting with Sy, in his village called Dimat Wa- where he was captured and from which Sen- The closing door
Even today, despite its historical signifi-
cance, relatively few Americans have read
Omar’s autobiography. The Library of Con-
lo, to embark on this quest. If few Americans
have read Omar’s words, even fewer Senega-
lese have — and fewer here in Futa Toro.
egalese port a slave ship took him.
Omar likely spoke Pulaar, which Sy also
speaks. But he wrote in Arabic, an alphabet
I t’s hard to grasp why slave traders would
buy a smallish man pushing 40, already
older than the average life expectancy at the
gress bought it in 2017, digitized its pages Seated around the imam are the two jour- lacking letters for some sounds in Pulaar. time, and think he’d draw a decent price at
and shared it with the world. nalists from South Carolina, a professor of Writers like him improvised, such as using an American auction.
Omar’s story sprang from obscurity. linguistics from the Senegalese capital, his the “b” to represent a “p” sound. Omar also Unless you understand their desperation.
Spoleto Festival USA, an international arts French graduate assistant, two Senegalese sometimes wasn’t clear about vowels. By 1807, Southern planters had pushed
event held in Charleston each year, then drivers, and an Arabic teacher who hails He wrote the place name in an 1819 their luck. Due to their gluttony for slaves,
commissioned Grammy Award-winning from Futa and descends from one of its great letter imploring, “I wish to be seen in our Congress had passed a law that would ban
music star Rhiannon Giddens to write an intellectuals. land called Africa, in a place on the river the importing of new African captives. At
opera about his life. With a nearly all-Black Given Omar was enslaved when he wrote, called …” year’s end, the door would slam shut.
cast, it will premiere at the 2022 festival amid he wasn’t free to reveal his deepest self, his Scholars have surmised the next word That launched a frenzied race to fill the
the country’s reckoning with race and the true faith or wishes. This team embarked on might be read as Kaba or Kabya, perhaps
vestiges of slavery. Several scholarly books a quest to better understand him — and to even Gambia, as in the Gambia River, none Please see OMAR, Page S4

Opera about Omar’s life to debut at next year’s Spoleto Festival

A fter the Library of Congress purchased
Omar ibn Said’s autobiography in 2017
and made it available to the world, Spoleto
each year from all over the world.
The opera could mark Charleston’s 350th
anniversary, point to the new International
Giddens to write the libretto and score.
Michael Abels would co-create the
score. Charlotte Brathwaite would direct.
Then, the coronavirus hit. The opera was
postponed to 2021.
Festival planners postponed it again this
General Director Nigel Redden got an idea. African American Museum and shed light Festival Resident Conductor and Director of spring due to pandemic concerns.
Redden envisioned an opera exploring on the little-known but large number of Af- Orchestral Activities John Kennedy would Now, “Omar” will debut at next year’s fes-
Omar’s complex life to be staged as part of rican Muslims enslaved in the United States. conduct. tival.
Spoleto Festival USA, a 17-day performing The festival commissioned Grammy Excitement flourished. “Omar” would
arts event that brings people to Charleston Award-winning musical artist Rhiannon debut at the 2020 festival. — Jennifer Berry Hawes
S4: Sunday, May 29, 2022
‘I AM OMAR’ The Post and Courier

“We came to a place called Charleston in the Christian language.

They sold me. Then a puny, weak,
wicked little man named Johnson bought me.”

OMAR, from S3

final slave voyages. Ships lined up along West

Africa’s coast. Among the key ports was
Saint-Louis at the mouth of the Senegal River
— a liquid highway for commerce, including
gold and slaves.
That put villages like Omar’s at particular
risk. Futa Toro hugs the Senegal River for 250
miles, and raiders often plundered its banks.
Omar was born there at a time of upheaval.
Islamic revolutions spread across the re-
gion, led by religious men determined to stop
the instability and violence that the slave
trade was sowing. Given Islam’s laws forbid
one Muslim from enslaving another, it held
strong appeal.
Around 1776, Futa’s new leader banned the
practice.
Omar and his 10 siblings lost their father
then, likely killed in the fighting. About
6 years old, Omar was just starting his
Quranic education with other little boys in
Futa. The region’s hot air filled with their
chanting until the entire book rooted deeply
into their memories — should they ever find
themselves without a copy.
Omar proved a skilled student. As he grew
up, he traveled to religious schools in Futa,
then left on a quest for the mystical secrets
of Sufi Islam. A master had to receive and
initiate him, said Gueye, the Arabic teacher,
whose grandfather went on a similar journey.
“The learner must be not only intellectually
mature but also of impeccable moral integ-
rity,” Gueye said. In time, Omar received
the Ilm al-Asrar, or “knowledge of secrets,”
learning to construct amulets and talismans
that could seek from Allah blessings of
health, good fortune and protection from
others.
At 31, Omar returned to his village. For six
years, he lived with his fellow Muslim faith-
ful, heeding the call to prayer five times a day
and giving alms of sheep, rice and gold.
Then, three key events took place.
On March 2, 1807, President Thomas Jef-
ferson signed the law banning slave importa-
tion.
The next month, Futa’s leader was mur-
dered.
And that year, “infidels” attacked Omar’s
village.
“A big army came,” he wrote, “and they
killed a lot of people.”
Men captured Omar and dragged him
away. His home, his loved ones, receded into
the distance.
The invaders likely put him onto a smaller
boat and hauled him up the Senegal River
to Saint-Louis. There, its waters slip around
a long barrier island to reach the Atlantic
Ocean.
In the waves, a ship waited.
Omar’s captors sold him to “a Christian
man who bought me and walked me to the
big ship in the big sea,” he wrote, according YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
to a translation by Ala Alryyes in his book “A Omar’s 1819 letter to John Owen, and Owen’s church community, quoted Muslim passages and included a talisman.
Muslim American Slave: The Life of Omar
Ibn Said.”
Of the more than 12 million people taken
from Africa during the slave trade, roughly a notice: “The importation of Slaves from
400,000 were shipped to North American Africa, ceases this day, according to act of
ports. Congress.”
About 40 percent of those sailed into It listed the total captives sold in town by
Charleston. year.
Omar was among the last. In 1804, the number was 5,386.
By 1807, it soared to 15,676.
In all, arrivals averaged about 10,000 a year,
The din of Babel or roughly half of the entire population of
The fabric of Charleston, of any place really, Charleston at the time, itself one of Ameri-
gets conveyed on the coarse wood pulp of the ca’s largest cities.
day’s newspaper pages. Others put the number much higher.
In 1807, the city’s news filled, as usual, Omar didn’t write the ship’s name that car-
with ads touting “Prime Negroes” for sale in ried him or precisely when it arrived. But he
batches large and small. Runaway slave no- did provide two critical clues that help pin-
tices ran alongside ads for Black wet nurses, point a few possibilities.
the latest theater shows, fine silver, horse Given he was in Futa Toro, he likely was
saddles, and merchants hocking brandy and taken from the Senegal River. And he wrote
rum. that he spent “a month and a half” at sea, or
A feature called Ship News announced the about 45 days.
day’s vessels. And their cargo. Slave traders kept almost no records of cap-
Those ships docked at a city teeming with tives’ names or family ties. But international
White merchants and the enslaved laborers researchers have been piecing together the
who comprised its majority. Carriage horses scant clues that survive to build a database
plodded along narrow lanes past fine ante- called Slave Voyages.
bellum homes and shops. Church steeples A search of it shows three possibilities in GAVIN MCINTYRE/STAFF
sprouted all around the thin peninsula, 1807. The last one to arrive, the Carolina, The schooner Pride sails through the Charleston Harbor past The Battery. The ship is a
which was laced with wharves. slipped in just nine days before the deadline. reminder of Charleston’s commercial business on the waterfront during the 1800s. In
Omar didn’t write details about the Middle It had spent 42 days at sea, then landed with 1807, Omar ibn Said was on board one of the last slave ships to sail into the city.
Passage he endured. But others described 130 captives on board, two dozen fewer than
their journeys. it took from the Senegal River.
A man named Olaudah Equiano, who was The ship docked at Gadsden’s Wharf a few
captured in Nigeria as a boy, later recounted days before Christmas, then began advertis-
his first moments aboard a slave vessel. ing sales of its cargo starting Jan. 11. That
“When I looked round the ship too and day, nine ships advertised loads of enslaved
saw a large furnace of copper boiling, and a Africans for sale at the wharf, crammed with
multitude of black people of every descrip- thousands of captives.
tion chained together, every one of their A British visitor described the scene: “The
countenances expressing dejection and sor- din raised by slaves, sailors, sellers, and buy-
row, I no longer doubted of my fate and quite ers was akin to the Old Testament Babel.”
overpowered with horror and anguish, I fell Omar stood before the probing eyes of po-
motionless on the deck and fainted.” tential buyers.
Crewmen branded and shackled the cap- “In a Christian language,” he wrote, “they
tives, then stuffed them into the hull. As days sold me.”
and weeks at sea passed, people lay in each
other’s waste. Disease flourished. Nothing
deterred sexual predators among the crew. Flight for freedom
“The shrieks of the women, and the groans As he stepped off the ship, inhaling the
of the dying, rendered the whole a scene humid air of this new world, Omar surely
of horror almost inconceivable,” Equiano was naked and chained. He carried only the
wrote. Quran stored in his mind’s eye.
A surgeon who worked aboard slave ships “Then a puny, weak, wicked little man
described similar conditions. The average named Johnson bought me. He was a big dis-
mortality he witnessed reached 15 to 20 per- believer and did not fear Allah at all,” Omar ed escape were men in their 20s. But fear navigating bays, rivers, swamps and the
cent. In Charleston, so many bodies washed wrote, as Gueye translated it. drove Omar. White man’s maritime traffic.
ashore that the city passed a rule against Omar didn’t include Johnson’s first name “I was afraid to stay with such a wicked He crossed about 220 miles, then ap-
dumping them in the water. or describe the plantation he owned. But little man who committed a lot of sins. So I proached Fayetteville, N.C. There, he spotted
Into this world, a ship carrying Omar coastal South Carolina was notorious for its escaped,” he wrote. some structures.
lumbered up the glittering currents of the rice operations, where enslaved laborers of- If he fled on foot from the Lowcountry, “I went in there to pray,” he wrote.
Cooper River. It steered toward Gadsden’s ten died young. Omar traversed hundreds of miles of forest Did he enter a vacant house? A church?
Wharf, already crowded with slave vessels. About four years after disembarking in and plantation country — not to mention Or was it a safe house along a precursor to
Around that time, with the new year’s Charleston, Omar fled. several major rivers — across the state’s vast
arrival, the Charleston Courier published Given the risks, most people who attempt- Pee Dee region. Or he slipped up the coast, Please see OMAR, Page S6
The Post and Courier Sunday, May 29, 2022: S5

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S6: Sunday, May 29, 2022
‘I AM OMAR’ The Post and Courier: S7

OMAR, from S4 Video

the Underground Railroad? Quakers lived
and worked in the area. And when Omar “I am Omar. I love to read the book, the Great Quran.” For a video about Omar’s
wrote about this moment later, he didn’t de- words and the places he lived,
scribe himself alone, the way he did when he go to postandcourier.com.
escaped Johnson. Instead, he referred to “us.”
Whatever the building was he entered,
someone kept an eye on it. And a young per- More online
son riding horseback spotted Omar. Men gather inside „ Who was Johnson? Mystery remains
More men came. They had “a pack of the home of about the “evil” man who enslaved
dogs.” the imam of the Omar ibn Said.
Omar’s flight for freedom ended. The slave Mausolee Seydou „ Historian thought he found Omar’s
patrol walked him for 12 miles to Fayetteville. Nourou Tall to home village. The truth isn’t so clear.
“They put me in a big house,” Omar wrote. chant verses from
“I couldn’t get out. So I stayed in the big the Quran before
house, called ‘jail’ in the language of Chris- Friday prayer
tians, for 16 days and one night.” service, in Dakar, and prayers for his refuge at Milton.
What happened in that jail would launch Senegal. In this world, Omar prayed alone.
the myth-making of Omar’s life. If any other Muslims worshipped among
the enslaved people on the plantations, nei-
ther Omar nor the White people around him
mentioned them.
PART 2 He had no imam to offer guidance. The
NORTH CAROLINA echoes of Muslim calls to prayer were re-
placed with hymns and church bells. And
No more hiding instead of people chanting the Quran, James

I n the Deep South, captured runaways got

thrown into the local jail, then waited for
their enslavers to arrive and dole out what-
Imam Omar ben
Sayed Gadio holds
Owen or his wife and daughter read Omar
the Bible every day.
As Omar learned to speak broken English,
ever punishment they chose. a painting of the Owens’ family stories describe children
It might take time for Johnson to come. his father, Omar slipping onto his knee, eager for tales about
But there was no more hiding. ben Sayed, at his Africa and wisdoms about life.
News of runaways and captures seeped into home in Gabeba, The children grew up watching him wrap
every pocket of the White man’s world. It Senegal. Omar is a his head each morning. He would attach one
filled newspapers. Broadsheets hung at ports. familiar name end of cloth to a tree or post, then wrap the
Steamboat captains brought news up and throughout Futa other end around his head and turn until his
down the waterways. Toro, including El head was covered.
And Fayetteville was a major stop on the Hadj Omar Tall, a He wasn’t just Moro.
Cape Fear River, busy with commerce and revered Muslim He became Uncle Moro.
travel. leader. And Uncle Moro lived in his own little pri-
There, in the Cumberland County jail, vate cabin near the big house, not the slave
Omar waited. cabins — an in-between world.
He sat in a cell, its floor blanketed in soot Later, people would describe Omar as ev-
and slivers of charcoal from a fire. Grasping erything from a butler to an overseer. One
a chunk, he plied the prayers woven into his Owen family descendant said he served as
memory. Across the cell walls, Omar wrote majordomo, or head of a household staff. An-
them, wrapping himself in pleas for Allah’s other wrote that “he was waited on by a little
protection. colored boy and his food carried to him from
Or so the story went. Nobody there could the Owen kitchen.”
read Arabic. Omar clearly recognized his unique lot.
Omar was more educated than most “I continue in the hands of Jim Owen who
Whites around him. Although they used a does not beat me, nor calls me bad names,
narrative of the uncivilized African to justify nor subjects me to hunger, nakedness, or
slavery, barely a third of Whites in North hard work.”
Carolina were literate at the time.
As White writers later told the story,
Omar’s exotic script captured the town’s at- The hidden plea
tention. Up and down the river, people heard Five years after Omar arrived at Milton, a
about this Black man at the jail who could group of prominent White men who foresaw
write a litany of foreign symbols, explicable slavery’s eventual end formed the American
to no one. Colonization Society.
But attention also meant word traveling to Early members ranged from abolitionists
Charleston. For 16 days, Omar agonized. who outright opposed slavery to enslavers
Then the jail door opened. fearful of the growing numbers of free Black
He wrote, “I saw several men who were all people. Supporters included slave-owning
Christians.” presidents Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe
and James Madison.
Despite different motives, they saw a com-
Becoming Moro mon solution: relocate emancipated and
Johnson wasn’t among the crowd standing freeborn Black residents to a new colony in
there. But the local sheriff was, and he had Africa.
mentioned this intriguing runaway to his Its circuit of prominent adherents would
new son-in-law, one of the area’s wealthiest alter Omar’s life.
men. Evangelical Christians in the group, includ-
James Owen was a 27-year-old state legisla- ing the Owens, saw a potential side benefit to
tor and planter, the elder brother of a future the relocation idea: Black Christian converts
governor. The siblings had inherited substan- could help spread the gospel to Africa’s un-
tial property, in land and people, when their saved pagans and “Mohammedans.”
father died a few years earlier. The Owens looked at Uncle Moro. They
They now lived on plantations — Milton could start at home.
and Owen Hill — that straddled the Cape James Owen had become a leader at Fay-
Fear River about 30 miles south in rural etteville’s First Presbyterian Church. Clergy
Bladen County. from around the country came to visit. And
To the White world, they were places of an- evangelize.
tebellum glory. In 1819, with pressure mounting to convert,
Owen Hill sat on a bluff overlooking the Omar sat down to write a letter.
river. The men’s father, Thomas Owen, had In Arabic, he addressed it to James’ brother,
cultivated an orchard along an avenue of then-state Sen. John Owen, and his church
magnolias that led to the plantation house. community in Raleigh. Men there were
Visitors described pear, plum and peach trees forming a new chapter of the Colonization
blooming in fragrant clouds. The breeze Society.
from the river carried the sweet scents to the A guide Perhaps Omar hoped that John would send
home’s wide veranda. walks through the letter through the Society’s channels to
Out in the plantation’s fields, however, en- a preserved slave get it translated. Maybe someone would be
slaved people toiled in obscurity. The Owens house on Goree sympathetic to his plea.
were among the county’s largest slaveholders. Island, off the When he began to write, Omar quoted pas-
In 1810, James Owen alone reported owning coast of Senegal. sages of Muslim texts. Then he drew a large
43 people. It is dedicated Sufi talisman, a geometrical shape with six
After retrieving Omar from the sheriff, to the Atlantic interlocking arabesques on each side.
Owen took him home to Milton. slave trade. The In the middle of the design, he wrote “Jim
It’s unclear exactly when the man from island operated Owen,” the name of his enslaver.
Charleston showed up. But a man did come. as one of the He also wrote another name that has con-
When Omar heard the news, he begged: “No, largest trade founded translators. Setting people’s names
no, no, no, no, no, no.” centers along in the center of this type of talisman can aim
The man who stood before them wasn’t the coast of West to bring them together. Or pull them apart.
Johnson. His name was Mitchell. Africa. Omar continued on then, quoting more
And Mitchell claimed he had bought Omar PHOTOGRAPHS BY GAVIN MCINTYRE/STAFF Muslim passages onto the second page. Half-
for cheap from his prior owner after Omar way down, he drew a small pentacle, a five-
fled. An Owen descendant later recalled that point star, used in Sufism to seek protection,
the man produced a bill of sale, then played said Gueye, the Arabic teacher.
like he didn’t want to sell Omar, who was in Then, he wrote his plea: “I wish to be seen
clear distress. Fama Diagne in our land called Africa, in a place on the
Apparently, so was James Owen. He saw (center) places river …”
value in the strange literacy and regal bearing rice on a plate And then the word Kaba or Kabya.
of this man they dubbed Moro. while preparing Or, maybe, Coppe.
He offered to trade two white carriage a family meal It was a bold move. If the Owens learned
horses. with her mother that he had asked to leave them, he could lose
Mitchell agreed. Then, as he prepared to and sister, both what privileges he enjoyed. Or worse.
leave, he feigned uncertainty. A sum of cash named Fama, He then quoted Surah Al-Mulk, a chapter
would cement his decision. Ibrahima in their home in in the Quran that describes God’s sovereign-
James considered it extortion. But he threw Diallo (from Saint-Louis, Sen- ty over creation. Omar ended the page with
$1,000 into the deal, according to one of his left), Mousse egal. its phrase: “Speak secretly or openly; God
descendants. The sum normally bought a Dia, Mamadou knows what is in your hearts.”
young, healthy male. Sow, Mousse
To Omar’s relief, Mitchell left. Ba and Oumar
Ba sit around Breaking the code
Ousmane Sow as Nobody around Omar could read his letter.
Becoming Uncle Moro he fans charcoal But they wanted to.
As his life settled into a new rhythm, Omar underneath a Upon receiving it, John Owen promptly
clung to his Muslim faith. pot of mint tea. gave it to John Louis Taylor, a friend from
Praying five times a day and strictly observ- They will serve Fayetteville and chief justice of the state Su-
ing Ramadan gave structure and holiness to it to the imam preme Court.
his life. He preserved a modest Muslim ap- and his guests Taylor, who was active in the Colonization
pearance, covering his head and body. And after the Friday Society, in turn forwarded it to a far more in-
he wrote prayers in Arabic, then tacked them prayer service fluential member: Francis Scott Key, lawyer
to trees on the plantations, a common prac- in Orefonde, and poet who had written the words of “The
tice back home. Senegal. Star-Spangled Banner.”
Nobody around could read them. Whites
figured he had written thanks to the Owens Please see OMAR, Page S8
S8: Sunday, May 29, 2022
‘I AM OMAR’ The Post and Courier

“I was afraid to stay with such a wicked little man

who committed a lot of sins. So, I escaped.”

OMAR, from S7

Taylor explained his purpose, using a new

take on Moro’s name, “The man, whose ad-
opted name is Moreau, is believed to have
been powerfully connected in his own coun-
try, and to have received a very uncommon
education.”
Moreau, he added, didn’t want to go back to
Africa. He so appreciated his enslavers’ great
“unbounded confidence and indulgence”
that he couldn’t leave them. Despite the plea
Omar tucked in the letter, Taylor declared:
“He is unwilling to return to his native coun-
try.”
If they could read the man’s script, they
would know more.
“Many persons were desirous of procuring
a translation of the inclosed (sic) letter, which
I hope to obtain by your assistance.”
Taylor also asked for another favor.
They needed to get an Arabic Bible for
Moreau. With it, they could prove to him the
Christian Scriptures’ clear “authenticity and
divine origin.”
Yes, books were expensive. Finding this one
could be difficult. But if Moreau could read
the Bible for himself, he’d have no excuse for
clinging to his Muslim faith.

Allah in the Bible

One day, a leather-bound Bible arrived at
the plantation. It was 11 inches tall, “the size
of the old timey Bible which used to be on
every family’s center table,” an Owen descen-
dant recalled.
Omar held the heavy book, which topped
400 pages.
When he opened its cover, he set eyes upon
the first Arabic words, besides his own, that
he had seen in 13 years.
In the beginning God created the heaven and
the earth ... GAVIN MCINTYRE/STAFF
It wasn’t the Quran. But the essence of After writing his autobiography in 1831, Omar ibn Said moved with James Owen and his family to Wilmington, N.C., in 1835. Owen was
worshipping an omnipotent God felt famil- attempting to expand the railroad in North Carolina, and Omar entertained their guests as his mythology grew.
iar, the message not unlike the opening of
Islam’s holy book. Was it comforting to read
the Psalms, the Lord’s Prayer, the stories of fiery hell for those who tried to usurp Allah’s
Abraham and Moses and Noah and Jesus, all command over all things. The argument
prophets who appear in the Quran? sounded a lot like what Walker had written a
Joining the Christian church would give year earlier in his “Appeal” — that Christian
Omar a spiritual home — a place to pray and slave “owners” were acting as if they were
sing and study with other people again. lords of men.
It also would please the Owens. Unlike Walker, Omar didn’t specifically
Omar made a soft leather bag for the Bible mention enslavers or insurrection.
and hung it on a chair when he wasn’t read- But he would be clear about one thing:
ing it. He was not Uncle Moro.
Later that year, a few weeks before Christ- Or Prince Moro.
mas in 1820, he traveled upriver into town Or Moreau.
with the Owens to attend the worship service “I am Omar,” he wrote.
at First Presbyterian Church. He stood be- And he loved to read the “Great Quran.”
fore the congregation — Black people in the Yet Omar added that he had tried to open
balcony, White people in the sanctuary pews his heart to the Bible “because the law was to
— as the minister baptized him. Moses given, but grace and truth were with
The church’s membership rolls officially Jesus Christ,” Gueye translated.
recorded him, under People of Colour, as Omar praised Muhammad but also said the
“Moroe-Property of Geo. Owen.” Lord’s Prayer.
Though deemed property, he “never con- Then, he added the basic personal details
sidered himself a negro and never mingled that give us what little we know about him in
with the negro slaves on the two plantations, his own words. After filling 15 pages, Omar
nor would he sit with the slaves in the church concluded with praise.
balcony,” an Owen descendant later wrote. GAVIN MCINTYRE/STAFF “I stayed in the hands of Jim Owen who
He had his own chair, which he placed in the After his 1820 baptism, Omar ibn Said was listed on First Presbyterian Church’s mem- did not beat me, insult me, deprive me of
aisle. bership rolls under People of Colour as “Moroe-Property of Geo. Owen.” The story of food or clothing, or force me to do hard
Omar became a fixture at the church. And Omar’s conversion garnered attention from around the country as clergymen saw in labor. I can’t do heavy labor. I’m a sick little
a symbol of successful evangelism. him a chance to evangelize in Africa. man. Over the past 20 years, I have never
The following year, the Colonization Society had a problem with Jim Owen.”
secured a patch of land in Africa — the seed
of what would become Liberia. Soon, the first
free Blacks from America landed there. ‘The leaning tree’
Omar knew of a fellow enslaved Muslim
who performed a similar tightwire act.
Becoming ‘Prince Moro’ Lamine Kebe had been a Quranic teacher in
Five years after Omar’s baptism, in the modern-day Guinea when he was kidnapped
summer of 1825, a Philadelphia-based pub- while buying paper for his school.
lication called the Christian Advocate pub- Now, he was feigning conversion to Chris-
lished an article written by an anonymous tianity and cooperating with the Coloniza-
Fayetteville doctor. tion Society so they would transport him to
It was titled “Prince Moro.” Liberia. A few years after Omar wrote his au-
The editors promised “a faithful statement tobiography, someone sent it to Kebe in New
of facts” that would “give pleasure to our York. The man was about to board a ship.
Christian readers.” What if Kebe had taken the text to Africa,
Those readers learned about an enslaved to anywhere even close to Futa Toro?
man who’d escaped from a South Carolina Instead, he gave it to Theodore Dwight, a
rice planter, been captured and then thrown White abolitionist and scholar with an inter-
into jail. There, he displayed writing in a est in West Africa and Islam. Dwight didn’t,
“masterly hand.” or couldn’t, get it translated until 17 years
“It would seem that he was a prince in his after Omar wrote it.
own country, which must have been far in A White New Yorker finally wrote a ru-
the interior of Africa — perhaps Timbuctoo dimentary translation. Even then, Dwight
or its neighbourhood.” didn’t publish it until the year after Omar’s
Never mind that Timbuktu, a city in death.
present-day Mali, is about 700 miles away Mbaye Lo, a Duke University professor
from Futa Toro. GAVIN MCINTYRE/STAFF with roots in Senegal, studies Islam in Africa
The same lore of royalty grew within the Imam Bobby Abdul Hameed Thomas leads the Friday prayer service outside the Masjid and is co-authoring a book about Omar’s
Owen family. When they offered Omar “the Omar Ibn Sayyid, a mosque named for Omar, in Fayetteville, N.C. writings. Given the Owens’ connections, he
privilege of choosing a wife from among feels certain they saw the translation while
the house slaves,” he declined, a descendant Omar was alive.
wrote. “A Fulah Prince could not condescend Copies appeared across the South, includ- to return to Africa, had been translated yet. But the family was busy.
to marry less than royalty.” ing in Charleston and Wilmington, N.C. But in the 12 years since, Omar had stuck to In the mid-1830s, James Owen sold Mil-
Perhaps what Omar really said, or thought, Gov. Owen sent one to North Carolina quoting religious verses. ton and moved his family downriver to the
was that he could only marry a Muslim lawmakers. He warned of insurrections and Now 61 years old, he looked at the tablet of bustling port city of Wilmington. Fireplaces,
woman, and there were none around him. urged crackdowns. Fears raged. quarto paper, its cream-colored pages blank, chandeliers and gifts from around the world
Although he often penned short prayers for Not a year later, shortly after Owen left and faced expectations to write about his life. adorned the rooms of their new three-story
his mother, Omar never wrote about a wife office, Nat Turner led a rebellion 165 miles Given the broader tensions over slavery, he house on leafy Front Street.
or children back home. away in Virginia. Enslaved people killed at could not let the Owens get any whiff that he The family often entertained there, with
He also never wrote that he was royalty. least 55, almost all of them White. might be open to even the faintest seditious Omar as a centerpiece.
But that didn’t matter to the White world Arguments between slave owners and abo- thought. One guest, a prominent doctor and planter,
crafting its own identity for Omar. litionists intensified. Rumors of planned re- He must appear as they wanted. described Omar as “a fine looking man, cop-
To them he was now Prince Moro, faithful volts spread. Amid the increasingly divided Grateful servant. per colored, though an African” in a black
Christian. politics, Colonization Society members Trusted worker. coat that reached below his knees. When
struggled to find traction for their idea of Faithful Christian. summoned, Omar announced he would read
relocating free Blacks to Liberia. Yet he began writing what Sylviane Diouf, the 23rd Psalm.
Tale of resistance But they did have a new marketing plan. a prominent historian of enslaved Muslims, The visitor also asked him to write the
In 1831, the Owens gave Omar a blank tab- Members began gathering stories from would later call “a document of resistance.” verse in Arabic, which he did.
let of paper. They had new ideas for him. enslaved people. They wanted to demon- Touching a dip pen into iron gall ink, Omar Their family’s new minister, the Rev. Mat-
John Owen had become governor of North strate that at least some weren’t savages, that filled the first page by quoting the familiar thew Grier, also recalled seeing Omar recite
Carolina at a time when fears of slave insur- “there is something exceptional about this lines of Surah Al-Mulk. the 23rd Psalm and how he would never for-
rections flared across the South. person that makes him worth saving,” said In the name of God, the merciful, the com- get “the earnestness and fervor which shone
A Black man named David Walker, who Hussein Rashid, a lecturer in religion at Co- passionate. May God bless our Lord Muham- in the old man’s countenance as he read the
hailed from the state, had written a scathing lumbia University who studies Muslims in mad: going down into the dark valley.”
essay urging enslaved people to revolt. He ap- America. Blessed be He in whose hand is the mulk “Me no fear, master’s with me there,” he
pealed to Christians in particular, insisting The Owens handed Omar the tablet of (sovereignty) and who has power over all recalled Omar saying.
“that God Almighty is the sole proprietor or paper. things.
master of the WHOLE human family.” It’s unclear if his 1819 letter, with the plea Omar included the surah’s promise of a Please see OMAR, Page S9
The Post and Courier
‘I AM OMAR’ Sunday, May 29, 2022: S9

“I stayed in the hands of Jim Owen who did not beat me, insult me,
deprive me of food or clothing, or force me to do hard labor. I cannot do heavy labor. I’m a sick little man.”

STATE ARCHIVES OF NORTH CAROLINA/PROVIDED

John Owen, brother of James Owen,
became governor of North Carolina.

OMAR, from S8

The Owens’ church, First Presbyterian,

listed family members who joined after their
move, including “Morrow, the servant to
James Owen, an Indian Prince.”
Meanwhile, Gov. Owen continued his
political rise. He had just declined an offer
to run as the Whig party’s vice presidential
candidate when he died of a liver disease.
By then, Omar was 71.
One of the Owens’ daughters wrote to her
little sister at boarding school: “As Uncle
Moro says, it is not the leaning tree which
always falls first.”

Twilight of life
Even as Omar aged into his late 80s, he
continued his veiled resistance. In 1857, he
penned his last known writing.
James Owen gave it to a minister’s daugh-
ter in Virginia. A note in English attached
to it says that Uncle Moreau, “a devoted
Christian,” had written the Lord’s Prayer in
Arabic.
That isn’t what Omar wrote.
In fact, he wrote Surah An-Nasr, the last
chapter revealed before the prophet Muham-
mad died. It translates to “The Victory” and
speaks of a great triumph for Islam.
When God’s help and victory come, and you
see people embrace God’s faith in multitudes,
give glory to your Lord and seek His pardon.
He is ever disposed to mercy.
He signed it, “My name is Omar.”
But Omar also read his Bible often. Over DEROSSET PAPERS, THE SOUTHERN HISTORICAL COLLECTION/UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL
the years, he fashioned six cloth covers for it, The words “Uncle Moro” were written on a photograph of Omar ibn Said.
wrapping each new one around the old fab-
ric, worn from use.
Ayla Amon, who is writing a book translat- tion. But we don’t have to rely on the words
ing all of Omar’s writings, also noticed that of other people to explore his true identity.
at both the beginning and end of the Bible, Omar left us his own clues.
he wrote: “There is no God but Allah, and
Muhammad is his messenger.”
The Whites around him continued to iden- PART 3
tify him how they chose. SENEGAL
The 1860 census recorded Omar as a
91-year-old “African Prince called ‘Mon- The authentic story
roe.’” Not long after, the Civil War exploded An ocean away from the Carolinas, Africa
when a 10-inch mortar round blasted across is reclaiming its own story in the gleaming
Charleston Harbor. halls of a new $30 million museum in Sen-
In declining health, and war upon him, egal’s capital city.
James Owen moved back inland to Owen The Museum of Black Civilizations opened
Hill. He brought Omar with him, two old in downtown Dakar in late 2018 after a long
men in the twilight of life. and fitful effort begun by the country’s first
Omar died there in summer 1863, less than president after French colonization ended.
a year before the war’s end would have freed He wanted the continent to reclaim its nar-
him. He was 93 years old. rative.
Owen buried him in the family graveyard, Spanning 150,000 square feet and four sto-
then died himself two years later. ries, it is among the largest museums of its
Seasons passed. Years passed. The war kind in Africa.
ended. Reconstruction ended. The plantation But even the concept of a museum is a
house burned down one Sunday morning in Western one, museum Director Hamady
1876. Bocoum explains. In the past, Europeans
Today, almost 160 years after Omar’s told the African story in their museums as
death, nothing at Owen Hill speaks to his one of ethnography, the study of other cul-
legacy, or anyone else’s. No marker points to tures.
the spot. “Africans weren’t interested,” Bocoum says.
At the end of a rural side street lined with GAVIN MCINTYRE/STAFF Mamarame Seck, the linguistics professor
houses and mobile homes, in a field of thorny Sunrise slowly turns the brick wall surrounding the Owen family graveyard golden guiding our journey to find Omar in Sene-
vines and trash, only a brick wall remains. It among overgrown trees. Omar was buried somewhere in the vicinity after he died in gal, knows Bocoum well. He works at nearby
rises about 3 feet from the ground and forms 1863. Although legend says Omar had a tombstone, no marker remains today. IFAN Cheikh Anta Diop University and is
a rectangle roughly 10 feet by 12 feet. curator of a museum exhibit that explores
Inside, a spindly tree grows through the Abrahamic faiths in African societies. He
heart of patriarch Thomas Owen’s grave. An brought Islam to here. At the time, Parramore was the premier re- translates for the two Post and Courier
empty Smucker’s jelly jar lies in repose. His Beyah, an accountant, moved to Fay- searcher of Omar in North Carolina. Yet, in journalists, given Bocoum speaks French, as
wife and three young grandchildren are bur- etteville and joined the mosque named the 1980s, when he co-authored a state his- do most people in Dakar.
ied here with them, their tombstones some- for Omar. He felt an instant connection to tory textbook, he wrote for school children “We want to show Africa as we under-
where in the jumble of broken parts. the man and led an effort to place a state to read: “Apparently, Omar was sold into stand it,” Bocoum says. “There has been
Nothing marks where Omar is buried, historical marker for him — but not one slavery by his own people as punishment for a consistent need to tell the African story
though a gravestone once did. Legends that claimed Omar was Christian, as some a crime he had committed.” from the African view.”
blame vandals and thieves. wanted. Parramore amplified the idea, but he didn’t The vast majority of Africa’s cultural
A few years ago, a handful of men from a Through his work, he met another man invent it. heritage is held in museums outside of the
Fayetteville mosque named for Omar came with a keen interest in Omar: Thomas Parra- The notion had emerged in 1856 with the continent. One museum in Paris alone has
here on a journey to honor him. They, too, more, a prominent North Carolina historian. Rev. John Leighton Wilson, a South Carolina 70,000 objects from Africa. Now, this mu-
had become fascinated by the man. They, too, Parramore had devoted immense effort native and missionary in Africa. In a book seum has space to reclaim many of them.
stood in the brambles, shocked at the neglect. to learning about Omar and clarifying the about his travels, he wrote that the Fulani But it’s not just about regaining artifacts.
The Quran had taught them what to do, as myriad rumors that framed him, namely the people had not participated in the slave trade Descendants of enslaved people in Amer-
it taught Omar. They prayed. title of African prince. except a few times to rid themselves of crimi- ica, confronting racism and other scars of
In the name of God, the infinitely compas- He was a White man working in the nals. slavery, have long sought to find their lost
sionate and merciful. mid-1970s. The first African American “There is another still living in Wilming- ancestors and cultural origins on the con-
Praise be to God, Lord of all the worlds. student had just graduated from Meredith ton, North Carolina, by the name of Moro, tinent.
It dawned on the imam, Adam Beyah, as College, where he worked. U.S. Sen. Jesse now eighty-five years of age,” he wrote. But here in Africa, the aftermath feels
they spoke those words. This surely was the Helms had been elected after mocking civil “He has had the opportunity to return to different. Children learn songs that talk
first time that a Muslim prayer had seeped rights protestors and admonishing “negro his country, but has always been averse to of slavery and its horrors, but not of what
through the air and settled on the earth of hoodlums.” returning. He was expelled from his own happened to people after their capture. The
this place since Omar last prayed here. In this milieu, Parramore considered country for crime, but found the Saviour mass vanishing of 12 million loved ones left
Omar’s reluctance to divulge personal sto- here, and loves the country where he has a huge void, after which lives of those who
ries, combined with his supposed aversion to found so inestimable a treasure.” remained continued on.
Omar as criminal returning to Africa, as evidence: Wilson gave no reason why he connected a “The diaspora did a lot to understand
Like many Black Muslims in America, Omar was hiding something. long-enslaved man in North Carolina with Africa,” Bocoum says. “But Africa did not
Beyah came to his faith through the Nation Parramore wrote that Omar “occasionally someone in Africa booted for committing a do enough to understand the diaspora. We
of Islam. He converted as a young man in exhibited what some may have perceived as a crime. want to fill that gap.”
1972, back when he knew a lot more about strong sense of guilt, suggesting that he may, As with so many things written about
civil rights than the enslaved Africans who indeed, have committed such a wrong.” Omar, it’s hard to separate truth from fic- Please see OMAR, Page S10
S10: Sunday, May 29, 2022
‘I AM OMAR’ The Post and Courier

“Before I came to the land of Christians, my religion was that

of Muhammad, the envoy of Allah, peace and salvation be upon him.”

GAVIN MCINTYRE/STAFF
Abou Diallo takes a break from chanting and writing verses from the Quran on a wooden tablet to laugh with other students in his Quranic school in the small village of Dimat Walo
in Senegal. Omar ibn Said likely memorized the Quran using the same method.

OMAR, from S9

We explain that we also want to fill the

gap. That is why we have come — to bring
the writings of one man from that diaspora
home.
But first we must find that home.

The ‘wrong’ places

The two-lane road to Futa Toro slices
through the hot Sahel, a buffer between the
Sahara Desert to the north and the savannah
below. Except for dottings of scrappy shrubs
and trees, little interrupts the vast terrain of
apricot-colored sand.
As we drive inland, modern buildings with
WiFi give way to simple structures built of
clay. Fertile land here used to feed its people,
but today the desert encroaches. Many of the
gaunt cows and goats that roam won’t sur-
vive to the rainy season, still a few months
away.
Before we left Charleston, Duke University
professor Mbaye Lo, who has family ties
here, offered some advice.
“We say in Wolof that ‘change is groomed
in wrong places,’ ” he emailed. “I think you
may benefit more from visiting those ‘wrong’
places.”
Indeed, it’s hard to know where to begin.
Given Omar wrote that he was born in Futa
Toro, we cruise toward it. In the front seat, as
Gueye reads Omar’s autobiography, he no-
tices something.
Gueye teaches Arabic at a prestigious
Islamic institute in Dakar but hails from
Futa. And he thinks Omar wrote that a
large army captured him and took him to GAVIN MCINTYRE/STAFF
a specific place. And that place name looks Vendors selling fish, vegetables and grains line the walkway of a market in the Senegalese port city of Saint-Louis. Omar likely was put
very similar to the one Omar wrote in his aboard a slave ship off the city’s coast before it left for Charleston.
1819 letter, where he pleaded to return to
Africa.
Urgency propels us into Futa. adds. “When you hear ‘between the two riv- ‘A true Muslim’ ation,” Beyah said.
Because what if we can find that place? ers,’ that is coming from Podor heading to Our quest doesn’t seek only to find Omar’s Sy emphasizes the same principles.
Omar’s writing isn’t clear. The name looks Salde.” home. We’re also searching for his essence, Before we arrived, he was reading a
like Kaba, or Kabya, maybe. But we don’t see In other words, the Isle of Morfil. It is that part of him and his faith and loved ones Quranic verse in which the prophet Mu-
any obvious matches on maps, ancient or a 100-mile-long tongue of land within that he wasn’t free to reveal. hammad praises Mary and Jesus. There is
modern. Futa framed by the Senegal and Doué Which brings us to Dimat Walo, home of unity among Abrahamic faiths. Jesus, a great
We turn to Omar’s clues. rivers. Imam Amadou Baîdy Sy, one of the area’s prophet in Islam, would have been familiar
He wrote, “My birthplace is Futa Toro, We thank him, then head to a village most learned men. to Omar when he arrived in Charleston.
between the two rivers.” But Futa hugs the where a roadside vendor sells colorful plas- Outside several simple clay structures, a Sy holds up his Quran.
Senegal River for 250 miles. From it sprouts tic brooms alongside Coca-Cola and Fanta. dozen boys sit on a mat covering a patch of “We are all one community.”
myriad branches and tributaries. Then to a larger town where the Muslims in sand. As Omar did, they write Quranic pas- That’s when we ask him to look at Omar’s
Omar also set his capture in 1807. That our group pray at a pastel-painted mosque. sages on wood tablets and chant the words to letter where he pleaded, “I wish to be seen in
is the year Futa’s revolutionary leader was Then to a small city where an imam greets us memorize them. The gentle sound mingles our land called Africa … fî makân al bahri
murdered, his close supporters killed or cap- in a house with French TV blaring. with the bleating of goats and crowing of yusummâ Coppe.”
tured, not far from the river. Everywhere we stop, people point us to roosters. A woman hangs laundry from a
Gueye calls his grandfather, who lives near other places whose name just might be the pink bucket onto a long line near Sy’s home.
the area. Does the place name Omar wrote word Omar wrote. Inside, he sits in the wooden chair beside Close encounter
look anything like a village there, specifically When we reach a small rice-growing village his black-and-gold Quran. Heading onto the Isle of Morfil, the air
one between two rivers? on the Isle of Morfil, a very old man shakes Sy and two other men pore over Omar’s cools and dust hangs thick in the air. The
He suggests one such place. The next his head. letter and autobiography. They agree he was drive feels like vaulting through dense fog
morning, we head there. “The place between two rivers cannot be very educated. But did he convert to Chris- into some secret, ancient place.
Two centuries after the Islamic revolution this area,” he says. tianity? Donkeys pull wooden carts across the
swept through Futa, it remains steeped in It is around Halwar, near Coppe — on an- The men confer, then announce their find- island, about 7 miles wide here. The paved
Quranic teaching. Along our travels, five other end of the island. ings. road was built just in the past year. Women,
times a day, speakers mounted atop mosques Over the past two days alone, we have driv- “He is a true Muslim,” Sy says. “We don’t who carry goods in baskets atop their heads,
of all sizes launch the song of the muezzin. en almost 300 miles across paved roads and have a doubt.” still grind millet by hand.
These men intone the distinctive call to dirt paths in search of Omar. Our clothes are Across an ocean, across cultures, leaders at We cross the Doué and head toward the
prayer, which guides the rhythms of every- grimy, our rented Toyota Fortuner smoth- the Fayetteville mosque saw the same thing Senegal River, the country’s northern border.
day life. ered in dust. The idea of driving across the when we visited. A sign ahead reads: Coppe Mangay.
When we reach the tiny village off a dirt island in search of a remote village feels “This brother is still a Muslim,” Adam When we park, the only cars around, much
road, the imam greets us warmly and invites daunting. Beyah, now the imam emeritus, told us. of the village sits waiting beneath a roof of
us to join him on colorful mats spread over From the front seat, Gueye bursts into He saw a devoted man trying to survive woven branches attached to a structure. An
the sand. He cautions the name Omar ibn laughter. enslaved in a Christian world. Just look how elder named Samba Doucourel Ba settles in-
Said is very common. In fact, it was his own “Omar is making me crazy,” he says. often Omar wrote Surah Al-Mulk after his to the center where Seck and Gueye join him.
father’s name. Our driver agrees. “But also, it’s thrilling. conversion.
“And here is not between two rivers,” he Like a movie that never ends!” “He’s inviting them to look at Allah’s cre- Please see OMAR, Page S11
The Post and Courier
‘I AM OMAR’ Sunday, May 29, 2022: S11

“I was 37 years old when I left my country.

So I (have) lived in the land of Christians for 24 years.”

GAVIN MCINTYRE/STAFF GAVIN MCINTYRE/STAFF

Mauritania is visible from the window of an abandoned building in Podor across the Mohammed Seydi Ba has been chronicling the history of Futa Toro for decades from his
Senegal River. When Omar ibn Said was alive, Moors from Mauritania crossed the river home in Dimat Diery.
to raid villages along the banks and capture people.

GAVIN MCINTYRE/STAFF
Shrouded in dust, the Isle of Morfil was a more fertile landscape hundreds of years ago before the dry weather turned the land into a desert.

OMAR, from S10

Traveling in Futa Toro Fuutankoobe, who were taken away.”
After prayer, and after lunch, the village’s
“Salaam alaikum,” Seck begins, or, “Peace Two Post and Courier journalists traveled from Saint-Louis, the port city Omar likely leader and a dozen other men stroll with
be upon you.” was taken from, and around Futa Toro, the region of his home. They stopped at many us to the Senegal River, not 100 feet away.
A chorus returns, “Alaikum salaam.” villages and cities searching for clues to his life and times. Omar’s pastor in Wilmington, who wrote
He explains our quest and pulls out one of one of the more accurate accounts of his life,
Omar’s photographs. Ba takes it and leans noted that Uncle Moreau was born “upon the
over onto his side to study the image for sev- MAURITANIA banks of the Senegal River.”
eral long seconds. Something in his counte- At the water’s edge, several men build a
nance resembles Omar. Podor Guia Coppe fishing boat, and their hammering bounces
Soon, copies of all three surviving pictures Dimat Walo Halwar over the water. Behind a veil of dust, Mauri-
Sen e gal River
of Omar weave through the gathering of peo- Guédé Ndioum tania sits on the other side.
ple: Old men in caps and long robes called Barobe Gababé Coppe used to be a trading post. For 400
boubous. Young men in jeans and shorts. years, as other villages succumbed to raids
Women in colorful headwraps and flowing Saint-Louis Orefonde and war and time, this one never moved. An-
dresses. Are these descendants of Omar’s Thilogne cient maps, which spell it Kope, attest to that
family and friends? Atlantic endurance.
Gueye hands Omar’s 1819 letter to Ba, who It helped that the village sits higher than
begins reading it. When he reaches Omar’s plea Ocean the surrounding areas. The river also flows
to return to a place in Africa, he glances up. wide here, a source of life and transport that
“Kopia?” SENEGAL stretches several hundred feet across, even
He suggests summoning the imam. now in the dry season.
When the man arrives, Seck hands him That proximity also brought risk. The men
Omar’s letter and points to his appeal. describe two types of armies that attacked
“Kaba,” the imam says. Dakar Coppe: Europeans who raided from boats on
He looks at the autobiography and repeats, the river and Moors from Mauritania who
“Kaba.” slipped across it.
Seck asks: Could it read Coppe? 0 50 mi For a moment, we all stand silent at the wa-
The imam stops and peers at him. His ter’s edge. In this ancient village between two
mood turns tense: Why exactly are these SOURCE: ESRI BRANDON LOCKETT/STAFF rivers, Omar feels close. He feels closer than
Americans here? anywhere we have traveled on this quest.
What would it mean if Omar — important “This is it,” Seck says softly. “I feel it.”
enough for two journalists, one Black and structure beside us. as it has for centuries, and no debate over But we cannot know for sure. Omar didn’t
one White, to travel across the ocean — was When he emerges a few minutes later, he Omar will interfere with it. The women and tell us enough, a choice he made to protect
from this village? The weight of so much that says that he trusts Sy’s interpretation. He can children vanish. Some of the men head away; himself and his most personal memories.
Europeans and Americans have taken from see where the word might be Coppe. To him, others remain to pray beneath the thatched Before we leave, one of the men of Coppe asks
Africa hangs in the air like the thick dust it looks more like Kaba, but they don’t know roof. our group if they can keep the packet of Omar’s
around us. of anywhere called Kaba in Futa Toro. Seck translates the buzz around us: “They texts. They want to study it and allow imams
Seck explains that Sy, the imam in Dimat Later, when we show Omar’s writing to consider Omar as someone from the Futa, around the region to discuss his meaning more
Walo, read the word as Coppe and suggested other imams and historians in the region, and they’re praying for him because they deeply among themselves.
we come here for answers. most agree that the word could be read as believe he is one of them. If Omar was one Yes, we tell them. It is theirs, and his, not ours.
The imam respects Sy and wants to talk Coppe, especially how Omar wrote it in his of them, they can’t tell for sure. But it is
to him. From the crowd, someone produces autobiography. But it isn’t clear. possible. They cannot be 100 percent sure Contact Jennifer Hawes at 843-937-5563.
a cellphone, and he disappears inside the The call to prayer beckons in the distance, because there were many Africans, many Follow her on Twitter @jenberryhawes.
S12: Sunday, May 29, 2022
‘I AM OMAR’ The Post and Courier

Enslaved African Muslims often overlooked by history

BY JENNIFER BERRY HAWES
[email protected]

M
any enslaved Africans — about one
in five — arrived at North American
ports as Muslims.
But their story remains little known.
Historian Sylviane Diouf wrote the first edi-
tion of her book “Servants of Allah: African
Muslims Enslaved in the Americas” in 1998.
She revised it 15 years later to reexplore the
question: Why had so little attention been
paid to Muslims brought from Africa and
enslaved here?
“For all their contributions and accom-
plishments, the Muslims have largely been
ignored,” Diouf wrote.
Estimates of their numbers range widely,
from about 10 to 30 percent of enslaved Afri-
cans, or pushing 120,000 people.
That means many African Americans have
Muslim ancestors.
Diouf is a descendant of the 17th-century
founder of the Islamic university of Pir in
Senegal. As she read hundreds of books about
slavery over the years, she noticed a shocking
absence of scholarship about enslaved African
Muslims. Even recently, as academics exam-
ine myriad aspects of slavery in America, little
has appeared about this key group.
“Why did they disappear as Muslims?” Di-
ouf asked.
Notable exceptions include Muslims en-
slaved just south of Charleston on Georgia’s
Sea Islands who retained their faith and are
well-remembered in history.
Bilali Muhammad was enslaved on
Sapelo Island where he worked as a head
driver on a large plantation. He also penned a GAVIN MCINTYRE/STAFF
13-page Arabic text that is the earliest known Ibrahima Diallo runs toward the home of the imam of a mosque in Orefonde, Senegal.
Islamic document written in the United
States.
On the island to his immediate south, his Islam. Early White academics also might have is writing a book about Omar ibn Said’s sur- cies of these first African Muslims.”
friend Salih Bilali was enslaved on St. Simons. focused on enslaved people who adhered to viving texts. Yet when scholars examine religion during
Bilali also became head driver, supervising animist religions because they fit the narra- The thousands of Muslims who followed slavery and Jim Crow, they often focus on
more than 400 people. He, too, retained his tive of the uncivilized African more easily brought traditions still evident today, espe- the Black church, even though few Africans
Muslim faith throughout his life, reading the than Islam, a fellow Abrahamic faith. cially among Gullah communities. Many arrived here as Christians. Most converted
Quran daily and reportedly praising Allah In fact, Islam arrived in North America Gullah words derive from Arabic, and Amon to the faith of their enslavers — by choice,
and Muhammad in his final words. in the 1500s when Spanish and Portuguese sees convincing arguments that the “ring necessity or force.
But these men aren’t the norm in recorded explorers brought enslaved Muslims with shout,” a kind of religious dance, is related to “For generations, the Black Church had
history. them, said Ayla Amon, curatorial assistant the ritual circling of the Kaaba in Mecca. been seen as the historical religious founda-
Perhaps that is because White historians at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of “These are still very much living tradi- tion of African Americans,” Diouf wrote,
didn’t know — or care — much about African American History and Culture. She tions,” Amon said, “so we are seeing the lega- “but Islam complicated the narrative.”

How we did this project

It’s hard to quantify how much time airplane again amid coronavirus fears, this searching for clues about Omar and the who also is writing a book about Omar’s
Post and Courier reporter Jennifer Berry time with people wearing face masks. times in which he lived. They did the same words. With Professor Carl Ernst, he is ex-
Hawes and photographer Gavin McIntyre During their reporting in Senegal, sup- in Senegal’s capital city of Dakar, its port ploring religious and poetic texts that Omar
spent working on this journey to find ported by a generous grant from the Pu- city of Saint-Louis and Podor in Futa Toro. drew from when he wrote.
Omar ibn Said. On March 11, 2020, they had litzer Center, they convened an invaluable For translations of Omar’s writings, they A box of the late North Carolina historian
just gotten off a flight from Charleston to At- crew: linguistics professor Mamarame Seck, relied on Gueye, Ayla Amon, Ala Alryyes, Thomas Parramore’s research was helpful.
lanta, and prepared to board their overnight Arabic teacher and translator Abdoulaye John Hunwick, and imams and historians Two books with important context about
connection to Paris and then Senegal, when Gueye, drivers Youssou Badji and Serigne around Futa. Omar’s life and writings also proved invalu-
then-President Donald Trump announced Ndiaye, and French graduate student Am- The journalists interviewed dozens of ex- able: Alryyes’ book “A Muslim American
a ban on travelers entering the U.S. from andine Situ Bocco. perts in the U.S., Europe and Africa. Slave: The Life of Omar Ibn Said” and Sylvi-
Europe. For two weeks, countless Senegalese Chief among them was Amon, curato- ane Diouf’s “Servants of Allah: African Mus-
A pandemic gripped the world. opened their homes and villages, offering rial assistant at the Smithsonian’s National lims Enslaved in the Americas.”
With chaos erupting, the journalists aban- insight to these strangers who showed up Museum of African American History and Meanwhile, as the journalists traveled
doned the trip. Spoleto Festival USA post- asking about a long-ago man most had Culture. Her forthcoming book will bring around Futa, they left copies of Omar’s writ-
poned its “Omar” opera, which had been never heard of. Omar’s 15 known surviving texts into one ings with people they met. Imams and his-
set to debut in Charleston last summer. The Back home, the journalists spent months place and translate them all into English. torians there now are deciphering his words
newspaper’s project sat on hold. Then, in scouring archives, libraries and museums The journalists also relied on Mbaye Lo, a and meaning. Stay tuned for more on what
February, McIntyre and Hawes boarded an across South Carolina and North Carolina Duke University professor with roots in Futa they discover.

Storytelling: In Depth and In Person

For two weeks, countless Senegalese opened their homes and villages to journalists
Jennifer Berry Hawes and Gavin McIntyre to help them understand who Omar ibn Said really
Top: Photojournalist Gavin McIntyre
was. It was only through going there in person, talking to people and seeing his homeland, that
(fifth from the left) and Special Projects
Reporter Jennifer Berry Hawes (third from they could best capture his story and bring it home to South Carolina. It is part of The Post and
the right) with villagers in Coppe Mangay, Courier’s mission to tell stories that shed light about little-known aspects of our shared history
Senegal. Above, Gavin shows his camera to and create connections — to the past and to each other.
a child in Halwar, Senegal. At right, Jennifer
doing research with Amandine Situ Bocco
in Saint-Louis, Senegal.

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