Sam Sharpe

Samuel "Sam" Sharpe was born into slavery in Saint James Parish, Jamaica, around 1801. He took the name of his enslaver and namesake, Samuel Sharpe, a lawyer of Montego Bay, and was held on the Cooper's Hill property on the outskirts of that town. Brought early into domestic service among the so-called "slave elite," he was permitted an education unusual for an enslaved person, learning to read and write — a literacy that would arm his conscience and his cause.

Converted to Christianity, Sharpe became a deacon in the First Baptist Church of Montego Bay, now the Burchell Memorial Baptist Church, and a respected "daddy," or leader, among the native Baptists. From the Scriptures he drew the conviction that no man was made to be the property of another, and he carried that message from estate to estate across western Jamaica, quietly organizing a network of trusted lieutenants.

In December 1831 Sharpe called for a peaceful general strike: the enslaved would refuse to work after the Christmas holidays unless granted wages and their freedom. The withheld labor erupted into the Baptist War, or Christmas Rebellion — the largest slave uprising in the British Caribbean, drawing in as many as sixty thousand people over some ten days. Its suppression was brutal, yet the rebellion hastened Parliament toward the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833.

Tried and condemned, Sharpe walked with dignity to the gallows and was hanged on 23 May 1832, roughly thirty-one years old. He is remembered to have said he would rather die upon the gallows than live in slavery. Proclaimed a National Hero of Jamaica in 1982, the Right Excellent Samuel Sharpe endures as a witness whose faith and courage helped break the chains of a people.