Samuel "Daddy Sharpe was born as an enslaved person in Montego Bay, St James. He worked in the fields and later in the plantation house. His superior intellectual and oratorical skills, demonstrated through his organisation and leadership as a deacon in the Baptist Church, enabled him to extensively influence, mobilise and lead a general strike of thousands of slaves across several parishes in western Jamaica that ultimately became known as the Christmas or Emancipation Rebellion.
In December 1831, the planned passive resistance to slavery and the petition for wages on the Kensington Estate, Montego Bay, broke out into a war for freedom.
For his role in organising the strike, Sharpe was tried, found guilty, sentenced to death and hanged on May 23rd, 1832, in Montego Bay.
The Morant Bay rebellion was the largest slavery uprising in the British Caribbean, and its impact was pivotal to the passing of the Emancipation Act in England in 1834 and the total emancipation of slavery across all British colonies in 1838.
Famous Quote
"would rather die upon yonder gallows than live in slavery."
Sam Sharpe was conferred the Order of National Hero in 1982 for his role as a redeemed leader against the institution of slavery and the impact of the rebellion on its abolition.
