Wow, that’s awesome holding such a piece of rare history in your hands. I’m not sure how I feel about it though. The slave Bible I researched and read about since your first article made me aware that it was created to serve as a vehicle or repression and control, as you say. But in doing so to an enslaved people, it was not just like a missionaries trying to convert, it was forcing an entrapped people to convert. This forced conversion essentially was no different to the forced conversion of Uyghurs in Western China going on today that the UN has labeled genocide. Those people are entrapped as well and forced to convert and forced to work, no different from the black Americans or Jews working in the concentration camps. The last two people were stripped of the papers and citizenship, so to speak, and the Salve Bible was a genocidal mechanism to strip captured humans from Africa of the cultural identity, religious beliefs, and language, what UN labels as stripping of ethnicity. The slave Bible became a critical part of the forced obedience you describe. The conversion to Christianity was a denial of their collective memory of their original identities being based on. Of course they probably wanted to comply to that conversion as their masters who kept them beaten, entrapped and feed them and housed them were offering education and a way out of the spiritual and mental “darkness” they were kept in. The conditions of their conversion prepared them for that “way out” where they could gain more freedom by willing to self-subjugate under the rules and norms of the slave Bible that created a common language of obedience between master and slave.

It’s great though to see you engaged in history and hearing all the figures who emerged from Fisk’s history. I think I’ve read most their works and never knew of the connection. Thanks again.