Bermuda

Mfairlady Bermuda

"Mfairlady Bermuda" by Mary Fairchild/Mfairlady is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Bermuda is an island, and a British territory in the Western North Atlantic Ocean and it is self governing. A majority of the population in Bermuda has African ancestors and a large portion of the people are immigrants from the West Indies. Bermuda was settled officially after English travelers shipwrecked there due to a hurricane in 1609. 

Bermuda is the birthplace of Mary Prince. 

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Bermuda.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 31 Mar. 2025, https://www.britannica.com/place/Bermuda/History. Accessed 9 May 2025.

Parent Map

Writers and the Voices of the Oppressed - Map, LB

Coordinates

Latitude: 32.307800000000
Longitude: -64.750500000000

Timeline of Events Associated with Bermuda

Date Event Manage
1831 to 1833

Mary Prince, England’s First Black Woman Autobiographer

Mary Prince plaque

By Megalit - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=93587181 (There are no existing images of her). 

In The History of Mary Prince, she talks about what it was actually like to be an enslaved woman in the British Caribbean, moving from place to place, working constantly, being beaten, and never having any control over her own life. One of the most powerful parts is when she describes working in the salt ponds, standing in saltwater for hours until it cracked her skin. She vividly describes her experience being enslaved, showing us what it felt like. She gave this testimony to Parliament, which means she wanted her story to lead to real change. The fact that she wrote it herself (with the help of a transcriber) means she was taking back control over how her life was represented, something enslaved people were rarely allowed to do.

Greenblatt, Stephen. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Period. 11th ed., vol. D, W.W. Norton & Company, 2024.