Sam D.

Theophilus Story
by Sam. D.

Do you know why he gave you land, Mr. Niger?

Why you, Mr. Niger?

He gave you land, Mr. Niger.

You were an enslaved person,

It wasn’t normal to be given land.

Though I do not know what you did to receive that land,

You, sir, had an impact.

To make Mr. Coe, a white man, recognize you,

Realize that you deserve more.

And even though you were not free, he still gave you land.

That man valued you back then, even when it was abnormal

For a white landowning man to give a gift to a black enslaved person.

At the time, it was unheard of.

You did something that changed that man, Mr. Niger.

He noticed you,

Against everything that seemed typical,

You changed him and everything around you.

You gave you children the gift of freedom

You set your family free

You were the bird that escaped its cage

You were like a gazelle free to roam where you pleased.

These things you did, Mr. Niger, were not normal,

You endured everything wonderful and lousy this country had to offer.

Your grandson became a notable black voting rights activist.

You caused that.

So I sit here today and ask you, sir,

How do you feel?

Are you happy for you and your family?

Are you mad at all of the injustices?

Did you feel free?

Sam's Poet’s Statement

Theophilus Niger, a man lost in history uncovered after hundreds of years. His story was waiting to be shared. Mr. Niger was enslaved but that didn’t stop him from finding ways to resist his bondage. The most clear example of Mr. Niger’s resistance was when he was being given land while he was enslaved. Back in Mr. Niger’s time enslaved people could not legally own anything. That’s why acquiring land from Jedediah Coe was so extraordinary, because an enslaved person would normally never be given land without payment (with currency). Mr. Niger must have done something special for Jedediah, to get this land. Mr. Niger obtained the land, and then later, freedom for his family around 1760, finally becoming a free man for probably the first time in his life. I wanted this poem to talk about him being given land and how Jedediah giving him land was a sign of accepting that Mr. Niger was a person. This acceptance may have been the thing that led him and his family to be emancipated. I also talked about how formerly enslaved people were technically free, but did not have a lot of the same rights as white people. I asked this when I wrote: “Did you feel free?”(Line 30) I was asking Theophilus (in the poem) if he truly believed he was free. There is a difference between a title and the truth.