African Insights – February 2004 (Black History Month) 

The King and the Son of a Slave: King Leopold and William Sheppard

Africa, the continent was shaped into countries and nations, area as we know them today by a bunch of Politicians in Berlin who gathered together in 1884 to divide the riches of Africa amongst the European nations such as France, England, Germany, Portugal, Spain and of course the compassionate King Leopold of Belgium who had been presenting himself as this caring, benevolent, philanthropic king who only wanted to help Africa and establish a nation that would preserve the rights and lives of Africans, school them, train them and make them civilized according the Western Standards, and no one saw him as the scheming, ruthless dictator who only wanted to establish a private colony that he could exploit for his own personal benefit in order to make him wealthy and to own the largest piece of real estate in Africa.

In the history of Africa, there are various characters that have caused me to perk up and take a second and third look.  Here are two of these characters.  There is Goliath in the form of King Leopold, the Belgian King establishing the State of Free Congo…nothing free about the State of Free Congo except the millions of dollars, pounds, francs that King Leopold and his army of mercenaries plundered from that land for himself.  On the other side you have young David who is an African American missionary, the son of the slave facing one of the mightiest men in the world at that time.

It was in the 1890’s  that the Dunlop company came up with a way to make inflatable tires from rubber and provide a more comfortable ride for those riding bicycles  and of course for the motorcar industry that was just about to come on line.  The Congo contained vast areas filled with wild rubber; it also had a ready labor-force that King Leopold through his “Force Publique” Army enslaved to do his bidding.  Villages, residents were given daily quotas of extracted rubber. If they did not cooperate and fill their quotas, they could lose their families, a hand, ear and life, at the very least their dignity.

The Africans who were unfortunate enough of be subjects of King Leopold paid an enormous price and literally became slaves in their own country. Besides losing possessions, life and limb, most of all they lost the freedom to choose for themselves, thy lost their God given liberty.

The Congo situation sparked many a thing, amongst them the book by Joseph Conrad “Heart of Darkness.”  A book that college professors have used in the classroom in terms of Freudian or Jungian thought, looking at it as a classical myth, as original sin and all kinds of other things when in reality the book shows the heart of darkness within human beings.  Living beings, so-called civilized people capable of genocide and crimes against humanity in Africa.

Europe was unaware of what was really going inside of the “not so free state of Congo.” Since this was the private domain of King Leopold who had promised to establish a state that would benefit the Africans living in that geographical region.  The sad reality however was that the King Leopold and his Mercenary Government and Army ruled with a heavy hand and their only aim was to extract whatever they could from rubber to ivory and everything in-between.

The story of the Congo is one of European Greed bringing about a rule of Terror, Fear and Death. It is also a story of Heroes who refused to be silent or be silenced as to what was taking place in the Congo, who refused to be intimidated by threats, by lawsuit and expulsion from the Congo and plain political spin emanating from Brussels.

One of those heroes was one of the first American Missionaries to go to the area of the Congo.  He belonged to the Southern Presbyterian Church and the most surprising thing was that Reverend William Sheppard was an African American.  His denomination had recently adopted a “back to Africa” policy for former slaves and their descendants and they wanted to send some African Americans to Africa to sort of test the waters.  They did also send a white Missionary who was in Charge of the mission.  Reverend Samuel Lapsley was the son of a former Alabama slave-holder Judge.  The two got along quite well until Reverend Lapsley died of a fever in the Congo while William Sheppard remained in the Congo for 20 years impacting his world in a rather unique manner unlike other missionaries. (Becoming a recognized explorer besides)

This Africa American Missionary who was not considered good enough to head the mission of his denomination, this man who had experienced the rejection of racism firsthand practiced an acceptance of the African that was different from any most any other missionary.  He did not come to change their behavior but he saw himself as influencing the heart of Africa, black or white.  His joy of life bubbled over and affected those with whom he came into contact with and was even declared to be a revered royal ancestor of one tribe the Bakuba whose culture and language he studied and mastered.  (He has also been called “The Black Livingstone” in a book by Pagan Kennedy.)

The tribe that Reverend Sheppard had come to like and respect was a tribe that refused to cooperate with King Leopold’s government.  They refused to collect the rubber, they were fined, taxed, flogged, hands and limbs amputated and Reverend Sheppard could take no more and wrote an article in a newspaper stating the case for the Bakuba tribe and their relationship to the Free State of the Congo and its ruler King Leopold.  King Leopold never did visit his empire in Africa, being satisfied in extracting its wealth without being bothered with visiting the very people he was abusing while getting wealthy.

Reverend Sheppard was confronted with a lawsuit from King Leopold’s government.  A lawsuit which Sheppard won in the court of King Leopold’s government defended by a Belgian lawyer who delighted in confronting the King with the reality of the real “state” of “Free Congo.  The dear Reverend actually won “court costs” in the King’s court. 

The Boston Herald wrote under the headline “First to inform world of Congo abuses,” the article went on to state the following words “ Dr. Sheppard has not only stood before kings, but he has stood against them…This son of a slave…has dared to withstand all the power of King Leopold.”

Amazingly when Reverend Sheppard returned to the United States he did not complain about the white racism that existed in the USA even though he achieved national fame as he toured with Booker T. Washington and spoke about Africa. 

I find it amazing that here was a man who could raise the issues of the abuse of power by a King against Africans and yet in the United States South, one woman would say this of him in 1910 – “He was such a good darky.  When he returned from Africa he remembered his place and always came to the backdoor.” 

Here you have one of the people instrumental in bringing King Leopold to his knees and yet in his own land he is seen as a lesser than…hmmm that is most interesting but so often the truth when a man with the voice of a prophet returns home, he finds rejection. 

You don’t hear much about Reverend Sheppard in the USA, but if you dig into the background of the King Leopold’s Congo, you will come up with his name as one of the change-agents who called King Leopold to account.

If you do a search today under Reverend Sheppard’s name on Google, you come up mostly with book reviews of Pagan Kennedy’s Book “Black Livingstone,” even though Reverend Sheppard wrote a book of his own which I have not found in print, but would love to read.

I have come across a most interesting section about William Sheppard in the book “King Leopold’s Ghost” by Adam Hochschild:  “In 1899 the reluctant Sheppard was ordered by his superiors to travel into the bush, at some risk to himself, to investigate the source of the fighting. There he found bloodstained ground, destroyed villages, and many bodies; the air was thick with the stench of rotting flesh. On the day he reached the marauders' camp, his eye was caught by a large number of objects being smoked. The chief "conducted us to a framework of sticks, under which was burning a slow fire, and there they were, the right hands, I counted them, 81 in all." The chief told Sheppard, "See! Here is our evidence. I always have to cut off the right hands of those we kill in order to show the State how many we have killed." He proudly showed Sheppard some of the bodies the hands had come from. The smoking preserved the hands in the hot, moist climate, for it might be days or weeks before the chief could display them to the proper official and receive credit for his kills.”

The proud King Leopold was building himself castles and greenhouses in Belgium with the profits from the Congo.  He was also building this myth of a caring king for his savage subjects.  The Reverend Sheppard, son of an African American slave, a man from a humble background would be like the David of old to be part in bringing down the giant Goliath of his day, King Leopold, there would be others, but Reverend Sheppard was one of the first voices to be heard around the world about the truth of the “Free State of Congo.” God has always been in the business of confounding the seemingly wise through the seemingly lowly…and William Sheppard, the son of a slave was an instrument used to bring down a King to reality…There is still room in our world for more William Shepard’s in our world.  There is still room for more shepherd boys like David of old to confound the Goliath’s of our world…jon