Ode to Elisabeth Samson | Ode to Elisabeth Samson

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Dear Elisabeth,

With this letter I pay tribute to you. Not to praise you as a heroine, but to get to know you as the woman you were: intelligent, ambitious and determined.

You, Elisabeth Samson, seventh child of your mother Nanoe - a woman who had once been enslaved but was freed by her also ransomed children - were born a free black woman in Paramaribo in 1715. As a young girl, you learned to read, write and calculate, skills that would prove indispensable to your later career as a businesswoman. Through shrewd investments in plantations and real estate, you acquired considerable wealth, an extraordinary achievement for a woman of African descent in a colonial Suriname where racial hierarchies ruled society. Yet as a free woman, you managed to claim your own place and build a position few thought possible.

Today you are remembered as a “rich, free, black woman,” characteristics that make your story exceptional and prove relevant to history. But you were not the only one who broke through the constraints of the colonial system. There were other black women who, like you, gained their freedom: some were ransomed and started their own businesses, others fought for their freedom and fled into the jungle. These stories are often seen as isolated exceptions, but together they form a broader picture of black women's experiences during slavery. It is my hope, then, that your story, Elisabeth, will be seen not only as an isolated miracle, but as a testimony to the resilience of black women under the patriarchal and racist colonial regime.

In my time, you are criticized for your role as a slaveholder, as a black woman who conformed to colonial structures and exploited black people for economic gain, something that benefited the white elite. But I understand how difficult it must have been to pursue your ambitions within the rules of a society that offered little room for black women. Yet you chose to resist these rules by fighting for the right to marry a white man. Why was this so important to you? Was it a matter of love, of principled equality, or a strategic choice to gain access to the highest strata of society? In a sense, you were explicitly fighting for the rights of the “free” black woman. Yet you did not campaign for enslaved women, with whom your own mother once shared the same fate.

Many people of my time see slavery simply as a fact of the time - “that was normal then” - a view that suppresses any criticism of the system and trivializes the suffering of the oppressed. How did you yourself experience your role within this system? After all, you could not hide behind the prevailing belief that black people had less feeling or intelligence; you knew your own emotions, your own desires. Did you ever doubt your position as a slaveholder? How did you deal with this, and how did you justify it to yourself?

I am writing to you because I believe that every story counts - not just that of heroes and heroines. We remember the names of so many slave traders and oppressors, why do we measure women, especially black women, by a different standard?

Your life, like that of many others, gives us a more complete picture of history. You show that women's resilience is not always in heroic deeds, but sometimes in surviving and growing in a harsh unfair world.

Warmest regards, Martje Onikoyi