POISON! An Africana Legal Studies Investigation into Enslaved Africans and Their Deadly Roots

This article is a murder investigation. And a strange one, as the victims might be the suspects, and the suspects might be the victims. Or, even stranger, who we are calling the victims might be the enforcers of an entirely different justice system we did not initially see. This is a cold case: we are investigating African people enslaved in the Province of Maryland during the eighteenth century. It is really a collection of cases—all cases of poisoning. These enslaved Africans were poisoning their enslavers. The incidents are described in legal records and newspapers. But what do these poisonings really mean? It is our job in this moment to take a closer look. According to the colonial legal system, the subjects of our investigation, the African poisoners, were criminals. But that legal characterization of the poisoners is not the only characterization. We are tasked with reexamining these cases, this time with some key methodological insights in our investigative toolbox, insights from disciplinary Africana Studies. In one paradigm, we could think of the poisoners as murderers. And we could argue that they were using self-defense. Or, in another paradigm, we could conclude that, by poisoning, these Africans were addressing wrongdoing according to their own indigenous governance systems. By applying Africana Legal Theory, this investigation demonstrates the shift in orientation that reveals those African governance systems at work. In centering the perspectives of the Africans who used their deadly roots to poison the enslavers, our characterization of the “murderers” necessarily changes. They are criminals in one system and agents of justice in another.