31. Becoming “British Freedom”
Many of British Freedom’s black neighbors kept their slave names, even as they made their passage to freedom. However, his choice of a new name was an important declaration: that he was no longer somebody else’s chattel or negotiable property. It mattered to him that the world should know it.
It is unclear when British Freedom had shed his slave name. It might have been aboard one of the many British ships that evacuated thousands of formerly enslaved black loyalists, saving them from the clutches of their masters. It might have occurred in the terrifying months between the end of America’s War of Independence and the final departure of the British. As Patriot slave owners searched for their escaped slaves, many of them changed their names to avoid detection. However and whenever he changed his name, British Freedom went an extra step in picking a new handle. He gave himself an alias that combined taunting the Patriot slave masters seeking to recover their human property, with a patriotic boast in praise of those who had actually granted freedom and liberty to black people like him.
