Amos: The Prophet of Justice — The Story Few Know!

Know the styles of clothes that English women wore with the big round behind that was an attempt to emulate this African butt that is a thing of beauty and while Sarah was carried around displayed and treated like some kind of freak others were trying to copy that look for the last couple of years the BBL trend has reigned supreme women are paying thousands of dollars to get BBLs to look like the Kardashians Cardi B and Nicki Minaj but in 1810 a young woman had a completely natural curvaceous body she had excess fat tissue around her buttocks and hips which made her look unusually large Sarah Bartman was an African lady who was captured and caged she was treated like a circus animal and abused in freak shows on the stage she was forced to wear outfits that kept her almost naked people paid two shillings just to see her but those who paid a few extra more got the chance to touch the woman’s black skin known as Hottentot Venus Sarah was a subject to public scrutiny she was trafficked and exploited for the sexual entertainment of rich women and men because of how obsessed people were with her her torment didn’t end even after her death this is her story.

Their apartment origins in the 18th century slavery in the new world and Europe was a firmly established political social and economically lucrative institution it provided access to cheap labor that led to mass production Sarah Sati Bartman was born in 1789 near the Gamtoos River in the Eastern Cape which is now part of South Africa she was a member of the Gonaqua group of the Khoikhoi people a group that was known for herding cattle Sarah grew up on a farm when slavery was at its peak her family likely worked as servants her mother passed away when she was just two years old and her father who worked as a cattle driver died when she became a teenager Sarah later married a Khoikhoi man who played the drums the couple had a child together but the child passed away shortly after birth because colonial influence was expanding the Khoikhoi eventually clashed with the Dutch slowly but surely the people of the Gonaqua group became a part of the massive labor system when Sarah was just 16 years old her partner was killed by Dutch colonists this is when her life completely changed her captors sold her into slavery to a man named Pieter Willem Cezar he brought her to Cape Town where she worked as a servant for his brother it was during this period that she was called Saitjee which is a Dutch diminutive for Sarah little did she know that she would catch the eyes of everyone who passed her this brings us to another part of today’s video and that’s the fascination with Sarah’s body Sarah had a unique figure it was probably caused by a condition known as steatopygia it was a genetic trait she had a substantial amount of extra tissue on the thighs and buttocks making her bum and hips appear voluptuous and visually appealing steatopygia is a rare condition but common for women of the Khoi tribes in Africa among the Khoisan the condition starts when the baby is born it then fully develops by the time of the first pregnancy this type of body however doesn’t qualify for obesity it is just a pronounced development of the thighs and buttocks and in other words she was a healthy young woman so she didn’t think much about it but as she started spending more time with the Dutch she realized that her body was in fact associated with her hypersexualization and fetishization of curvy black women people started pointing at her and talking about her and rumors quickly spread some days

Cezar would take her with him and show her at the city’s hospital he used her physique to earn some quick cash and it worked every day more and more people would come to see the famous black girl I want to point out that at the time it was highly desirable and fashionable for women to have big bums women would wear layers of clothing that would emphasize a tiny waist and a big backside Sarah was basically the epitome of beauty so lots of women envied her or were mortified by her because she had such a natural body shape her popularity grew gradually which brings us to another part of today’s video and that is Sarah’s contract in October 1810 Sarah signed a contract with an English ship doctor named William Dunlop he was a friend of Cezar all she had to do was travel with the doctor to England and Ireland to work as a household servant and be displayed for entertainment she was supposed to get a share of the money from these exhibitions and return to South Africa after five years well this so-called contract had a lot of loopholes first Sarah couldn’t read or write she came from a cultural tradition that didn’t keep such records so she had no idea what she was getting herself into secondly the family that brought her was low on money so there is a high chance that they wanted to use Sarah to make more money shortly after she signed the contract Sarah hopped on a boat to London and never saw her home again the doctor printed out countless pamphlets and started advertising his latest addition to the freak show anyone willing to see this extraordinary woman would have to pay two shillings or more and come to Piccadilly it was one of the most popular destinations for tourists and residents alike these shows were designed to exploit people with abnormalities or disabilities like humans with extra limbs or Siamese twins giants dwarves and people with too much hair were popular attractions some would even tattoo their face to look like freaks on purpose or add prostheses to look deformed but Sarah was real she was exotic she was beautiful she was forced to wear a tight costume which practically showcased every feature of her body men drooled at the sight of her women watched in pure shock they’ve never seen anything like her her big bum black skin and large thighs made

Sarah the object of fascination the colonial Europeans believed they were racially superior so a body like hers would defy their ideals visions and perceptions of beauty this is why Sarah became an oddity for display she was placed in a cage that was about a meter and a half high while Sarah was working with Dunlop and Hendrick Cezar the movement against slavery in Britain was gaining momentum this drew a lot of attention to how Sarah was being treated Dunlop and Hendrick Cezar were taken to court but they didn’t face any real punishment that’s because during the trial they showed the judge the contract that Sarah allegedly signed at the bottom of the contract there was a statement that said that she wasn’t being mistreated this gave them power over Sarah still her contract was changed and she became entitled to warmer clothing better living conditions and a larger share of the profits this brings us to another part of today’s video and that is Sarah’s later life in September 1814 after spending four years in London Sarah was taken to France here she was enslaved when she arrived Hendrick Cezar sold her to a man named Réaux Réaux operated menageries which were a popular form of entertainment in the 1800s they were a sort of cross between a zoo and a traveling fair Réaux believed Sarah would be a great object for display see what I mean by object that’s right they didn’t even see her as a person he paraded her across

Paris and made a ton of money from the public’s curiosity even locked her in a cage next to a young rhinoceros hired a trainer who would give her commands like they did with circus animals he would tell her when to sit stand and dance they wanted Sarah to act like the animals to make sure she stayed popular Sarah often had to wear nothing more than a simple tan loincloth it would only cover her private parts which were deemed culturally sacred she was nicknamed Hottentot Venus the people viewed Sarah’s black body as something that could be exploited violated and subjugated to inhumane conditions according to experts from the University of South Africa during this period there is a world order that determines who fits where and the colonial world is divided in two those who are at the top and those at the bottom in Sarah Bartman’s case her dark skin was not the only thing that labeled her as inferior the colonizers also used the shape of her physical physique to portray her as a lesser being first she was treated as an object for examination she was made fun of and violated all the paintings and pamphlets they used to make her popular distorted Sarah’s story and her features so secondly she was forced to work as a prostitute Sarah became immensely popular in a short period of time eventually she caught the attention of Georges Cuvier a zoologist and naturalist he was the leader of elite French science he was called the founding father of paleontology basically a rich man with a huge network Cuvier asked Réaux if he could take Sarah and study her body he thought she would make a fine specimen Réaux immediately agreed and from

March 1815 the woman was studied by French physiologists zoologists and anatomists her body became the subject of scientific racism Cuvier and his colleagues were curious about whether Sarah had an elongated labia that earlier naturalists like François Le Vaillant claimed to have seen in Khoisan women at the Cape in March 1815 she was examined at the Jardin du Roi she was the subject of many different scientific paintings now there are two versions of this story the naturalists Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and Frédéric Cuvier said she willingly took her clothes off to be painted in the nude but the other version says that is completely not true according to Sarah’s cultural norms of modesty it is important for a woman to wear a small apron-like garment that would cover her genitals some reports indicate that Sarah adamantly refused to remove it even when attending scientists offered her money so she was probably undressed by force Cuvier concluded that Sarah was a link between people and animals this idea was used to promote the false belief that Africans had unusually strong sexual desires and were deemed a lesser race records show that many rich people paid to have Sarah at their parties and private gatherings that’s because in Paris they didn’t have to worry about slavery charges so by the time she arrived in Paris her life was miserable she was treated like an animal at one point she wore a collar around her neck so at the end of her life she had no money this was likely because of the economic downturn in France after Napoleon was defeated so not everyone could afford to pay to see her to compensate for the losses some speculate that Sarah was forced to work as a prostitute but these are just speculations because there are some reports that she was seen at a brothel in Cours-la-Reine.

What happened after Sarah died Sarah Bartman passed away in 1815 at the age of 26 there’s not enough evidence about the cause of death some suggest she died of pneumonia syphilis or smallpox but what we do know is that even after she died Cuvier took her body from the local police and dissected it during the 18th and 19th centuries the study of anatomy had a bad reputation rich scientists would often hire someone to steal bodies from graves to get enough cadavers for research that’s because during that period knowledge about the human body in Europe was mostly based on manuscripts from medieval Italy and classical Greece these manuscripts covered information about the dissection of animals or condemned criminals but as science grew it was obvious that experts needed more reliable evidence by the 18th century charitable hospitals were set up to care for the poor these hospitals were often run by anatomy schools where people trained to do surgery and dissect human bodies Cuvier was a respected scientist who used his influence and network to gain access to Sarah’s body he created a plaster cast preserved her brain and private parts in jars and displayed them at the Museum of Man she was kept on public display until 1974 the poor woman didn’t even get a proper burial Cuvier wrote in his monograph that his subject was a smart woman with an impressive memory especially for faces other than

her native tongue she spoke a bit of French and English and was fluent in Dutch he said that her arms were slender and her back was graceful she had pretty feet and charming hands she also knew how to play the jew’s harp and dance but he still interpreted her remains based on his theories on racial evolution he noted that she had ape-like traits he wrote that her small ears were quite like the ears of an orangutan when she was alive he wrote that her had the speed of a monkey Cuvier was part of a movement of scientists who worked to create a hierarchy of races and place white men at the top in 1978 Diana Ferrus a poet from South Africa and a woman of Khoisan descent wrote a poem called I’ve Come to Take You Home I’ve come to take you home home remember the veld the lush green grass beneath the big oak trees the air is cool there and the sun does not burn in the 1980s the story of Sarah Bartman gained global attention the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould wrote about her in his book The Mismeasure of Man he used his work to criticize racial science after the African National Congress ANC won the South African elections President Nelson Mandela personally asked the French government to return Sarah Bartman’s remains for proper burial this task took eight years and the French needed to create a bill that would prevent other nations from making similar claims on treasures held by France then on March 6 2002 Sarah Bartman was finally returned to South Africa and laid to rest on August 9 2002 which is celebrated as

Women’s Day in South Africa Sarah was buried at Hankey in the Eastern Cape Province Sarah Bartman wasn’t the only Khoikhoi who was taken from her homeland but her story is the only one that left a mark on history it highlights social and political tension Dr Yvette Abrahams a professor at the University of the Western Cape pointed out that we don’t have academic studies that see Sarah Bartman as anything other than a symbol this is why she has been remembered throughout the years Bartman is a symbol of African discrimination she is one of the many Khoikhoi who suffered in the western world yes girls much younger than Sarah shared a similar fate historian Neil Parsons wrote about two Khoikhoi children aged 13 and 6 who were taken from South Africa and put on display at a fair in Elberfeld Prussia in 1845 another traveling show called Boss Gibbons had two Khoikhoi men women and a baby their captors toured Britain Ireland and France from 1846 to 1855 Sarah’s story became so popular because she was the subject of extensive exploitation and examination but also because she ended up in the hands of famous scientists and naturalists she was forced to spend most of her time in luxury houses and private parties but no matter where she went she was mistreated even after death she was brought to the West because of her big bum and thighs the white people were so impressed with her figure that they wanted to study her reproductive organs after all parts of her body were exhibited at the Musée de l’Homme for 150 years but after all that time she was finally able to find peace compared to other stories of slavery and sexual exploitation that of Sarah Bartman stands out the most the time she spent in

London and Paris was so shocking and distressing that it is even hard to imagine what the woman went through Sarah was the Khoisan from South Africa she was put on freak shows because of her extremely large buttocks this also made her the focus of scientists and naturalists in the area people wanted to study her they wanted to touch her she lived in a period where black people rarely got a chance to live a normal life during her very short life she toured countries she was the subject of many caricatures pamphlets and other forms of advertisement she attracted so much attention that a famous anatomist took her body after her death it was their studies and inhumane treatment that showcased the true horror of Sarah’s life her dead body was dissected and studied extensively her remains were painted by artists and she was placed in a museum in France do have in mind however that most of Sarah’s story was written by her captors so we don’t know the full extent of their brutality we don’t know much about her early life the good thing is that her remains were finally returned home and she got the burial she always deserved what do you think about Sarah’s story is there something that you would like to add leave your thoughts in the comments and don’t forget to like and subscribe to join the movement we aren’t just telling stories we’re changing lives and waking the culture up the video on the screen shares some more hidden black history that they will never teach you in school click on it now to watch we’ll see you over there.