Abina and the Important Men: A Graphic History

“I read a court case where a young African woman, Abina Mansah, who didn’t speak English, went before a British judge and complained that she had been enslaved. She said, ‘I could not take care of my body and myself.’ I wanted to know what she meant and what her experiences were. I followed that for many years, trying to understand what was going on. In my classroom, I wanted students to understand how historians struggle to hear the voices of people like her and what tools we can have to do that. It suddenly occurred to me that the way I could do that best was to give students my interpretation of her words in comic form, and then to give students the tools to question or come up with their own interpretations of what it meant. That’s what my comic book is. More than anything, it’s a teaching tool. It’s an attempt to help the students understand why we should listen for these voices and how we can do that.” Read more...

The Best Comics on African History

Trevor Getz, Historian