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Summary Of Abina And The Important Men

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In the graphic history: Abina and the Important Men by Trevor R. Getz and Liz Clarke, it talks about the court case from the 1870s in Cape Coast in the British Gold Coast Colony. We, the readers are presented to the character Abina Mansah, a strong-willed West African Woman who was enslaved by Quamina Eddoo. At the time it was illegal to have slaves and Abina knew she had been illegally sold so she ran away to Cape Coast to complain about being purchased because she heard that there were country people living there. She went to the interpreter for the colonial courts, James Davis; he helped her fight in court for her rightfully owned freedom. It becomes clear through the graphic history which characters are considered to be “important” because …show more content…
James Davis, Quamina Eddoo, William Melton, and James Hutton Brew. They all contributed in developing the storyline. Davis played an essential role when Abina ran away, she went to him and he helped her get back on her feet by giving her a place to live and a job. When Abina’s master, Eddoo, found her she went to Davis and convinced him to help her. At first, he did not want to help because her master, Quamina Eddoo, grew palm oil which made him a very important man and the British don’t like to cause hostility between those who are important because they are the ones who end up paying their salaries, but at the end he finally agreed to help her. William Melton, equivalent to Davis, also played a crucial character because he was a judicial assessor. He was “a minor career official of the British Colonial Office,” as well as the decision maker for whether or not he would rule in favor of the plaintiffs claims. Melton wasn’t like your average judge, he was not trained, yet he was “reasonably fair… as far as cases involving enslavement…” Melton was contradictory when it came to any case that touched the topic of enslavement, only because of the omnipresence of James

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