Much of the following information is from an essay by Dr. Ronald L.F Davis and Dr. Dawn Dennis. Some parts have be edited for clarity.

“Prince Abdul Rahman Ibrahim was born into a royal family of the Fula nation in Timbo Futa Jallon, Guinea, West Africa in 1762.

He was the “second or third of 33 sons” of the Fula King of Futa Jallon, at the time a created self-serving Muslim influenced political state entwined in Christian European “slave” trading demands in West Africa.

In 1788, Prince Abdul Rahman Ibrahim led a troop of 2,000 warriors against a group of non-Muslim Africans who were disrupting his father’s successful slave trade with Europeans on the coast of West Africa. Ironically, Prince Ibrahim’s war with these non-Muslim, opponents to slavery resulted in his own capture and transport down the Gambia River to the coast, where he was sold to British slavers for two flasks of power, a few trade muskets, eight hands of tobacco and two bottles of rum.

Prince Ibrahim was transported nearly 3,000 miles to the Caribbean Island of Dominica. After a brief period of being seasoned in the islands, he was taken by ship some 1,600 miles to the large slave market town of Spanish New Orleans. From New Orleans, Prince Ibrahim was pulled upriver on a barge, along with other African captives to Natchez. There, the owner of Greenwood Plantation, a 26-year-old Thomas Foster purchased Ibrahim and Samba, a fellow (Fula man) captured with him back in Africa, from a New Orleans slave trader for around $950 in 1794.”

While enslaved on the Greenwood Plantation in what became known as “Foster Fields” he married an enslaved woman owned by Foster named Isabella, a Christian. To this union, were born nine enslaved children.

The cause of Prince Ibrahim was taken up by Andrew Marschalk, the first printer in Mississippi. “Marschalk drafted a letter that eventually reached the government of Morocco. When Morocco expressed interest in his freedom, intervention by top U.S. officials and colonization societies in the north finally persuaded Foster to sell (Ibrahim) to Marschalk.” On “Feb. 22, 1828, Foster delivered up Ibrahim for the sum of $200 with the condition that his esteemed slave be sent immediately back to Africa. (Feb. 22, 2012, is the 184th freedom anniversary).

On April 8, 1828, Ibrahim and Isabella boarded a steamboat at the Natchez Landing and traveled up the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers to Cincinnati, Ohio where they stepped onto free-soil in the U.S., after 40 years of enslavement.

For the next year, Ibrahim was feted and celebrated in northern cities from Cincinnati to Boston in a campaign to raise funds to buy his children’s freedom ranging in age from 7 to 27. Often dressed as a Moorish prince (Traditional royal Fula clothing), he spoke at many northern colonization and abolition societies and thrilled audiences by his remarkable story. They continued their journey to Washington, D.C., where they met with Secretary of State Henry Clay and President John Quincy Adams at the White House.

Having raised only about half the money needed to buy his children, Ibrahim, aged 67, and his beloved wife, Isabella, set sail for Liberia, West Africa, along with some 150 other black immigrants colonizers. Soon after reaching Liberia, and before he could contact his family in Guinea, Ibrahim contacted a serious illness and died.

Today, Ibrahim’s son, Simon, who was sent to Liberia with his family, has descendants who are living in Liberia. Some of them came to the United States in exile from Liberia’s civil war, unaware of the story of their famous ancestor. One of them, Artemus Gaye, discovered Ibrahim’s story while searching for the parents and grandparents of his earliest known ancestors who came to Liberia from America.”

I am the coordinator of Friends of the Forks of the Road Society Inc. and member of the board of directors of the Ibrahim/Isabella Freedom Foundation. I commissioned a well known artist from New Orleans, Charles “Chuck” Siler, to draw a new image of Prince Ibrahim in the princely image of his African nation’s traditional dress.

Mr. Siler used facial likeness from pictures of Ibrahim’s Liberia born great-grandsons, Bubba and Artemus Gaye, now living in the Chicago area, to arrive at a family likeness of the aged prince.

A black and white image of Ibrahim now in the small frame exhibit at the Natchez Visitor Reception Center is the image that’s has historically existed in America.

A color drawing is on display for the month of February. It is of a first African-Ancestor of African Americans in the Americas resurrection project of Ser Seshsh Ab Heter-CM Boxley.

Others will be forthcoming. The African presence in Mississippi-Central Louisiana, especially Natchez must become more visible as is that of the first European families!

Were enslaved Africans brought here in captivity not family of today’s African Americans?

Ser Seshsh Ab Heter-CM Boxley is the coordinator of Friends of the Forks of the Road Society, Inc.