Quamina
*Quamina's birth is celebrated on this date in 1778. He was a Black Guyanese slave and abolitionist.
Quamina Gladstone (surnamed after his master) was a carpenter who lived and worked on the "Success" plantation in Demerara. Quamina was African-born from the Akan ethnic group in modern-day Ghana. He and his mother were sold into slavery when he was a child.
Sir John Gladstone, who had never set foot on his plantation, had acquired half share in the plantation in 1812 through mortgage default; he acquired the remaining half four years later. Quamina attended the Bethel Chapel of the London Missionary Society on the Le Resouvenir plantation. When he was young, he had been a houseboy and had to "fetch" girls to entertain the estate's managers. Under Reverend John Wray, he learned to read and write. Wray noticed constructive changes after Quamina became Christian, baptized in December 1808.
When Wray was sent to nearby Berbice in 1816, his replacement, John Smith, became widely respected by slaves and free Blacks throughout the colony. Quamina had many wives, but he cohabited for twenty years with a free woman named Peggy. As was familiar with other slaves, he had been harshly treated and was frequently forced to work, thus missing religious services. In 1822, when Peggy was seriously ill, he was forced to work all day, every day, and returned home to find her dead.
He and his son were involved in the Demerara Rebellion of 1823, one of the most significant slave revolts in the British colonies. Quamina was implicated in the revolt by the colonial authorities and killed by British soldiers on September 16, 1823. Quamina is considered a national hero in Guyana. In 1985, the post-independence Guyana renamed Murray Street in Georgetown – named for former Demerara Lieutenant Governor John Murray (1813–1824), who oversaw the colony during the rebellion – Quamina Street in his honor and a monument to him at the junction of Quamina and Carmichael Streets. He is depicted in a mural in the dome at the headquarters of the Guyana Bank for Trade and Industry (GBTI) building on Water Street, Georgetown.
