Time To Unite The Clan.

What about the half that never been told. As we approach May 30, Biafra Heroes day, do our brothers and sisters in Jamaica know that we two are One. Time to unite the Clan.

Igbo people in Jamaica were shipped by Europeans onto the island between the 17th and 18th as forced labour on plantations. Igbo people constituted a large portion of the African population in slave-importing Jamaica. Some slave censuses detailed the large amount of Igbo slaves on various plantations throughout the island on different dates throughout the 18th century.Their presence was a large part in forming Jamaican culture as their cultural influence remains in language, dance, music, folklore, cuisine, religion and mannerisms. Many words in Jamaican Patois have been traced to the Igbo language. In Jamaica the Igbo were referred to as either Eboe, or Ibo.

Originating primarily from what was known as the Bight of Biafra on the West African coast, Igbo people were taken in relatively high numbers to Jamaica as slaves. The primary ports from which the majority of these enslaved people were taken from were Bonny and Calabar, two port towns that are now in south eastern Nigeria.These ports were dominated by slave ships arriving from Bristol and Liverpool who delivered these slaves to British colonies including Jamaica. The bulk of Igbo slaves arrived relatively late after 1750. The 18th century in the Atlantic slave trade saw the amount of enslaved Africans of Igbo descent rise by a large amount, the heaviest forced migrations were centred between 1790 and 1807.Jamaica, after Virginia, was the second most common disembarkation point for slave ships arriving from the Bight of Biafra. Igbo slaves formed the majority of the people on the bight and became common among the slave population of Jamaica.

Igbo people were spread on plantations all around Jamaica, with a higher concentration on the island's western side, specifically the areas around Montego Bay and Savanna-la-Mar.[6] Consequently the amount of Igbo influence was concentrated in the parishes to the west of the island. The region also witnessed a number of revolts that were attributed to people of Igbo origin. Slave owner Matthew Lewis spent time in Jamaica between 1815 and 1817 and studied the way his slaves organised themselves by ethnicity and he noted, for example, that at one time when he 'went down to the negro-houses to hear the whole body of Eboes lodge a complaint against one of the book-keepers'.Olaudah Equiano, a prominent member of the movement of the abolition for the slave trade, was an African born Igbo ex-slave that on his life's journey in the Americas as a slave and free man, documented in his 1789 journal, was hired by a Dr. Charles Irving and recruited slaves for his 1776 Mosquito Shore scheme in Jamaica for which Equiano hired Igbo slaves which he called "My own countrymen". Equiano was especially useful to Irving for his knowledge of the Igbo language, using Equiano as a tool to maintain social order amongst his Igbo slaves in Jamaica.

Most of the time Igbo slaves resorted to resistance rather than revolt and had maintained "unwritten rules of the plantation" of which plantation owners were forced to abide by.[9] Igbo culture influenced Jamaican spirituality with the introduction of Obeah folk magic; accounts of 'Eboe' slaves being 'obeahed' by each other have been documented by plantation owners. Other Igbo cultural influences are the Jonkonnu festivals and in Igbo words in Jamaican patois. In Maroon music were songs derived from specific African ethnic groups, among these were songs called 'Ibo' which had a distinct style.

Igbo slaves were considered suicidal. Suicide was resorted to by Igbo slaves not only for rebellion, but in the belief that after their death they will return to their homeland. In a publication of a 1791 issue of Massachusetts Magazine, an anti-slavery poem was published called Monimba which depicted a fictional pregnant Igbo slave that committed suicide on a slave ship destined for Jamaica. The poem is an example of the stereotype of Igbo slaves in the Americas.[12][13] Igbo slaves were also distinguished physically by a prevalence of 'yellowish' skin tones prompting the colloquialisms 'red eboe' used to describe people with light skin