Abstract
Excerpted From: Angi Porter, Poison! An Africana Legal Studies Investigation into Enslaved Africans and Their Deadly Roots, 43 Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality 1 (Winter, 2025) (429 Footnotes) (Full Document)
Auntie Sue had seven masters she outlived all 'cept the last she served them mint julep with sugar and ground up glass - Listervelt Middleton, Southern Winds African Breezes
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.
Our investigation will be informed by the knowledge of indigenous African governance, what Africana Legal Theory calls "Protocol"--specifically, the Protocol of Akan speakers of West Africa. We will be tracking this Protocol to eighteenth century Maryland. By tracing the steps of Akan Protocol along this one passageway, we may begin to contemplate the larger implications of Protocol's continuity in the Western Hemisphere.
I. Investigative Tool-Kit: Definitions and Grounding Principles
As Africana Legal Studies investigators, we are guided by the theoretical underpinnings of disciplinary Africana Studies and the work of African-Centered thinkers. Disciplinary Africana Studies, and Africana Legal Studies by extension, is not simply about the subject matter Africana--"Africa and Africans wherever and whenever you find it/them." It is about the methodology used to approach that subject matter.
Africana Legal Studies takes particular interest in the idea of Governance, defined by Greg Carr as the "sets of common rules and/or understandings [that] Africans create to internally regulate their lives ...." The European world--that is, the West--has its own Governance and uses its own systems and principles to create, implement, and sustain that Governance. We call that Law. Law arises out of the Western experience and tradition. It is inappropriate to assume that all peoples of the world have always subscribed to this European version of Governance or the underlying concepts and assumptions that inform it. Accordingly, it is inappropriate to use the same language created from European Governance to describe, say, African Governance. For more detail on this problem, which I call the "QLO" (Qualified Law Orientation), extensive discussion is found in my article, Africana Legal Studies: A New Theoretical Approach to Law & Protocol.
Thus, a primary methodological task of Africana Legal Studies is distinguishing African Governance from European Governance by using distinct language and avoiding use of Legal terms of art to describe African Governance. "Law" and ""Legal" are thus capitalized to emphasize that these are references to European Governance. The word "Protocol" is used as a placeholder to signal the ""epistemic rupture," a primary step needed to respect African Governance on its own terms--terms that should, ultimately, as a result of a necessarily collective effort, be described using African languages. ""Protocol" serves as an open challenge to the presumed ubiquity of Law and, more significantly, a gateway toward indigenous African thought on Governance, and it will therefore be used throughout this investigation.
Overall, our approach attempts to move from an orientation that centers Law to an orientation that centers Protocol. Let's begin.
II. Crime Scene: Africans Were Poisoning Their Enslavers
In the 1700s, the African world--continental and diasporic--was experiencing one of the most intense periods of the Maafa, the "disaster" or "the great suffering of our people at the hands of Europeans." One roaring furnace in the boiling-house of the Maafa was the Province of Maryland, a primary center of enslavement which, along with Virginia, held over half of the enslaved African population in the United States in bondage at one point.
The occupants of this place--Europeans with the nerve to claim the land already inhabited by Indigenous peoples, many of them Algonquin speakers, like the Piscataway, Sekohese, Nanticoke, and Accomack peoples so devoted to atrocity that, in 1790, four out of every ten white families in Maryland were enslaving Africans.
However, African people, enslaved and "free," on the coasts of the African continent, aboard ships on the high seas, and on land across the Western Hemisphere, were refusing to be terrorized, tortured, or imprisoned. They were, instead, escaping.
They were plotting revolts. They were sabotaging equipment and destroying property. They were fighting overseers and other Whites. They were taking their own lives and the lives of loved ones as a way to break free from the nightmare they found themselves in.
They were attacking and killing their enslavers. And they were doing all of this constantly.
Oh--and they were poisoning.
Including in Maryland.
In 1737, Negro Preston attempted to poison Ezekiel Gillis and his wife in Anne Arundel County, Maryland.
On March 20, 1738, "a certain Negro Pompey and Negro Indey[,] two slaves belonging to the hon[ora]ble George Plater[,] Esqr," conspired to poison "the Overseer[,] Clerk[,] and Gardiner of the said Mr[.] Plater."
In May 1738, in Prince Georges County, "a certain Negro named Bess the Slave of a Certain John Beale ... feloniously attempt[ed] to murder with poyson [sic] the af[orementione]d John Beale her Master ...."'
In June 1755, convictions were entered for "Negro[] Anthony and Negro Jenny for Consulting, Conspiring & advising to Poison their late Master Jeremiah Chase ...."
Also in June 1755, "Negro Jack ... attempt[ed] to Poison his Master Francis Clements."
Later that year, in St. Mary's County, "Negro Harry the Slave of Philip Key the younger & Negro Cork, the Slave of Philip Key Esqr [were sentenced to death] for feloniously consulting, advising, conspiring and Attempting to Poison a Certain John Key, and also at Prince Georges County ... Negro Thomas the Slave of John Prather [was sentenced to death] for Feloniously consulting, advising, and conspiring & Attempting to Poison a Certain Richard Duckett ...."
Yet another 1755 poisoning is recorded, wherein "another Negro wench was likewise found Guilty for intending to poison her Master, which fell in the Way of two Negro Children, who [consumed] it, and both died."
In 1757, in Anne Arundel County, "Negro ... [F]ida ... attempt[ed] to poison" her enslaver, Ephraim Gover.
In May 1760, Bett Pone of Talbot County, Maryland, attempted to poison her overseer. This record provides some additional detail: "Negro woman named Bett Pone ... of her malice, propense, and forethought voluntarily and feloniously did consult[,] advise[,] conspire[,] and attempt with poison and poisonous, venomous, and virulent powder mixtures and other poisonous, venomous, and virulent ingredients and matter put and mixt in and with certain food and victuals to wit cream, milk, small homminy, boild bacon, and boild salades." Bett Pone "attempted to kill, murder, and poison" a "planter" (enslaver) named David Robinson. Robinson was Bett Pone's overseer. Robinson "became sick and lanquished [sic]." Interestingly, during the previous month another enslaved African named Buckinfield, also of Talbot County, attempted to poison this same David Robinson.
In 1761, enslaved Africans Samuel, Abigail, and Rachel of Calvert County attempted to poison a Mrs. Smith. They were executed, though one of the women's executions was postponed due to her pregnancy. This delay was likely motivated by greed rather than humanitarianism.
In 1764, "Negroes from Calvert County ... Toe, Sambo, and Betty ... attempt[ed] to poison Mr. [William Hamilton] Smith and his Wife." Mr. Smith ultimately died after months of sickness.
In 1766, Negro David from Talbot County attempted to poison his enslaver, Samuel Mulliken. During his trial, an enslaved African woman testified about "his preparing a Dose Composed of Ground puppies and other ingredients which he supposed poisonous with intent to give it to his Master." "Ground puppies" is a reference to dried salamanders. The skin of salamanders, by the way, is poisonous.
In 1769, enslaved African Pompey of Charles County ("owned" by an enslaver named Benjamin Davis) attempted to poison Leonard Burch.
In 1797, decedent Robert Dunn's will stated that an enslaved African woman would be emancipated once all of his family members died; that enslaved African woman poisoned and killed Dunn's three children.
These are the poisoning cases from the eighteenth century--the cases that we know about. Even more arise later during the nineteenth century, beyond the scope of our investigation.
[. . .]
Based on the foregoing, the investigator has reasonable cause to believe that the African poisoners in eighteenth century Maryland--and elsewhere--were carrying out the Protocol of their homelands. This investigation was one piece in the larger collective work of African-centered thinkers. Here, we tracked one example of Protocol--that of Akan speakers--to one place in the Western Hemisphere--colonial Maryland. But the lessons from this investigation are grand.
The Protocol orientation shift obliterates the notion of Black criminality, as it reveals the subjective nature of the term "criminal" and the fragility of the idea of "crime." The Protocol orientation reveals the hidden hand driving these notions: Western-centered thought. The myth that Black criminality will always necessarily rely on Law, a self-serving system of Governance that has defined what is "criminal." What is criminal is not the same as what is wrong; and what is wrong depends on a people's worldsense, their orientation in the universe.
Through the orientation shift facilitated by this investigation, we have seen that one Governance system's criminals are another Governance system's champions. A fearful objection might worry that such an orientation shift might be used to justify violence today. Such fear should be met with deep contemplation and exploration of the concept of violence in general and on the specific violence at issue. The thoughts around violence and "crimes" by African actors ought to be investigated and interrogated. Is there precedent violence that should be made visible? Is there a conflict between Law and Protocol at play? The answers will not always be yes, but the questions should be asked.
Relatedly, we are at the scene of a bigger "crime"--wrongdoing at a grander scale--that we must investigate: the "crime" of miscasting our ancestors, mischaracterizing their actions, and burying alive their experiences of governing themselves according to their own Ways of Knowing. We seek to bring justice to them. And not through co-optation or integration into a singular narrative. Such a strategy would be led by the "delusion of inclusion," because in such a project, the Western center is always maintained. Other perspectives are only nominally referenced, while the narrator ultimately genuflects before the original, Western-centered conclusions.
There is no one narrative. The notion that there can or should be one--and that that one would be adequate, meaningful, or useful--is a fantasy. We do not need fantasy. We need power. And power flows from truth, our truth, in the presence of several truths. We need not only a wealth of information, but a wealth of perspective on that information--the proverbial "arc shot." Only with a "plurality of centres" do we have the full arc of perspectives, giving us the power and the freedom to make meaningful choices about the facts and the consequences. Legal thinkers, of all people, cannot deny this idea: the entire trial process is built around it.
African thinkers must build. We must be bold in our work, undeterred by the prospect of mistake, and unrelenting in the face of hostility. We must define our world, not as adrift hallucinators, but as anchored visionaries animated by the undying African spirit. In this grounded fashion, we may successfully restore an African center to serve as the basis for innovation, imagination, and future investigation. Fortunately, we have the brilliance and resilience of our ancestors to draw from. Their voices enable us to "break the chain" and make our plan for today based on our stories, our traditions, our lessons learned, our Protocol.
Assistant Professor of Law, American University Washington College of Law.
