The Fight For Freedom: Fort Wayne in 1771
By Key Kessens
FWIS Contributing Writer
Closer to Home
Slavery ended around 155 years ago, but it’s closer to home than we think because our ancestors were enslaved in 1771 in Fort Wayne, Indiana. This was 23 years before the city was officially founded, so in honor of Black History Month, let’s explore the story of our roots. It’s going to be a long journey because unfortunately, it’s a dark history to uncover because a fight for freedom took place at the cost of African Americans' sense of self as a whole.
There’s a rainbow with gold at the end of the storm though because we have the opportunity to rebuild our races’ self-esteem once we learn about the impact of our past. According to the Fort Wayne News Sentinel, slavery was first documented here in 1771 because a Frenchman named Antoine Lasselle settled in Fort Wayne with numerous kidnapped Africans. Even though slavery seems so far in the past, the psychological impact on our self-esteem can be seen 254 years later through generational trauma. We must look into our history to learn how to rebuild our races’ worth.
Back in 1771
First, let’s take it back to 1771. The psychological torture began when French and British settlers kidnapped Africans to force them into this country. Imagine being ripped away from your home land and forced into a foreign country under physically tortuous conditions. That is a real life nightmare. The Fort Wayne News Sentinel acknowledges that military files, government records, and other letters or diaries from settlers documented the journey with slavery in Fort Wayne. It’s time to uncover our roots.
Former kings, queens, and tribal leaders were considered property to the white supremacists that forced the Africans to Fort Wayne in a claustrophobic space. The ships were so crowded that the captured Africans could only lie on their backs or sit in tiny spaces. Sadly, it’s not a surprise that many people passed on the ships before reaching Fort Wayne (Fort Wayne News Sentinel). The fact that some of our seized ancestors had royal blood serves as a paradox to the treatment they received.
The psychological torture of slavery worsened on the ships because the enslaved Africans were forced to make heart wrenching decisions. Some mothers had to make the dreadful choice to throw their young babies overboard so they could avoid growing up in slavery. What would you choose for your baby - a life of pain and torture or a life in Heaven? I certainly don’t know which one I would have chosen. Some Africans even committed suicide on the ships so they didn’t have to endure the torment ahead of them. Even before the harsh physical labor and abuse, our self-esteem was damaged by impossible choices that would force anyone into a mental battle with themselves. More sorrows awaited our ancestors in the city.
Life in Fort Wayne
So far, Africans were stripped from their homes into crowded ships where they had to decide to make it to an unknown land or end their lives (and their children’s lives) to escape from enslavement. Then, once our ancestors made it to Fort Wayne, they built a city from the ground up for twenty three years with no credit. If you didn’t know, our city is named after General Anthony Wayne. He led us into victory during the Battle of Fallen Timbers on August 20, 1794. What is mostly unknown to the public is the same forts that rewarded our city its name were built by the enslaved Africans.
As stated before, documents indicate that the first black population in Fort Wayne were slaves, laborers, and soldiers, which highlights how our ancestors were treated as less than the humans they were. A post on the History Center’s Facebook page suggests that the French and British settlers forced the seized Africans to build the city and took recognition during the battle. Once again, the self-esteem of our race was stepped on by forced labor, abuse afterwards, and no recognition for practically creating an entire city.
The psychological torture worsened because families were torn apart when a “master” would sell a family to different “masters”. Other family members would attempt to run away from enslavement because of the prison-like treatment. Even some Native Americans would treat the captured Africans similarly by raiding the French and British settlements to steal them as their own prisoners. On the bright side, some Native and African Americans would get married. They started families of their own, which is why both descendants are common in people nowadays.
There are many other ways that slavery became relevant in Fort Wayne because it served as a booming business back in the day. “Masters” were allowed to trade and sell slaves whenever and wherever they pleased. Despite the fact that slaves were held in this city, Indiana itself was not considered a slave state. Therefore, Southern slaves sought out Fort Wayne as a city of refuge.
The kidnapped Africans in Fort Wayne were either born free or paid for their freedom with money. Being kidnapped from Africa and having to pay for freedom is an anomaly to how extreme the mental impact of slavery was on our ancestor’s self-concept. Seized Africans would have believed that their identity revolved around the putrid treatment and they were worth no more than the items the settlers would have bought to put into their homes. That means with no sense of self, our self-esteem ceased to exist.
The Absent Self-Esteem
The slavery system corrupted the Africans sense of self by forcing them to become slaves, tearing families apart, performing abuse, and allowing the “masters” to reap the benefits of the physical labor the seized Africans did. But what is our self-concept and self-esteem? In my Intro to Interpersonal Communication course at Ivy Tech, I was introduced to these notions. The self-concept is defined as the beliefs that you agree with about yourself. For example, if I believe that I am an outgoing person, that’s a trait relating to my self-concept. Whereas, the self-esteem is the value you place on your self-concept. Building on the previous example, since I’m an outgoing person, I may believe myself to be valuable because I can make friends easily and am not afraid to speak up for myself. Basically, your self-esteem is how you internally define your self-worth as a human being.
Now imagine being treated not as a person, but as an object or a thing. It’s no secret that the black people endured every type of abuse back then. Such as women being sexually assaulted by their “masters.” Even to the extent that black women would have babies by them. Some of the “masters” wives would feel so enraged, that the mothers would be abused by the spouses or permanently separated from their babies (National Humanities Center). The psychological pain of this situation is indescribable because it’s all based on hatred for an entire race, aka ethnocentrism (the belief that one race/ethnicity is superior to another one). This supremacy belief enslaved and tortured African Americans.
Again, sadly there’s no surprise that many kidnapped Africans developed mental illnesses as a result of enslavement. The same common mental illnesses now were likely developed more during slavery but not taken seriously since the captured Africans were not considered as humans. These psychological problems include PTSD, depression, anxiety, borderline personality disorder, and bipolar disorder. The main feelings behind these mental illnesses would consist of terror, loneliness, betrayal, shame, isolation, and resentment. If those are the feelings that our ancestors constantly experienced, there’s no doubt that their self-esteem was based on the belief that they were unworthy.
Ethnocentrism poisoned the self-concept of black people. The slavery system was used to change the identity of Africans into believing they were not humans. Our ancestors’ self-esteem revolved around feeling inadequate in a foreign land because they were forced to endure abuse. Thankfully, slavery was abolished in 1865 by the 13th amendment in the Constitution. But, that didn’t fully free black people from racism. African Americans minds were still in enslavement because there were still challenges afterwards that were passed down through generational trauma.
Beat Down After Slavery
The odds were clearly stacked against our ancestors from the beginning. The absent self-esteem from prisoner treatment for years combined with the poor conditions after slavery became a roadblock to how the freed black people integrated into society. Since about 1865, African Americans were marginalized economically, psychologically, and socially. The struggle reinforced unworthiness.
Most African American communities didn’t have access to basic needs, such as food, shelter, and income. Cognitive struggles, like poor memory, were present because of a lack of adequate education across our race. Relationship issues arose because of a lack of trust, which would increase the likelihood that the black population lived in isolation, felt shame, and were stigmatized because of enduring public humiliation as a race. Also, mental illness definitions were founded in white supremacy back in the day because some practitioners would label abolitionists or Civil Rights activists as schizophrenic for desiring equality among races. This only added onto the draining of our races’ self-esteem.
The unsatisfactory development of a healthy sense of self established fallacies in our mindsets. Frequent ones consist of perfection & helplessness which can generate a predisposed perspective of self destruction. For instance, hookup culture most likely resulted from slavery to fill the void of having no self-esteem. To embrace a sense of masculinity under harsh economic circumstances, men slept with multiple women. A hatred towards women could be another consequence of slavery as a way to blame women for the barriers that enslavement placed on men being able to achieve the idea of a nuclear family. These are unhealthy approaches to reclaim a sense of self, but our ancestors weren’t presented with many options.
African Americans may still be enslaved mentally because their parents/guardians exhibited symptoms like paranoia, low self-esteem, and emotional unavailability. Children learned to mirror their loved ones' behavior because that’s all either party knew. Since our ancestors for generations were only familiar with hatred, struggle, and pain, the poor self-esteem was passed down through generational trauma.
Generational Trauma & Slavery
What exactly is generational trauma? Well, it’s a relatively new field of study in psychology because it was coined by the Canadian psychiatrist Vivian M. Rakoff in 1966. She observed Holocaust survivors and how their descendents reacted. Rakoff deemed that trauma becomes generational when it’s passed on psychologically, culturally, socially, and neurobiologically. For example, children may learn to mirror the psychological distress that their parents display. In other words, trauma is passed down generations from expressing symptoms of mental illness or emotional suffering.
Slavery has the same categories of impact that most generational trauma does. Including historical trauma, enslavement, and violent political regimes, which would be white supremacy in this case. All of these factors increase the vulnerability that psychological stress will be passed down since the slavery system made blacks endure every type of trauma and abuse. The sexual assault, individual crimes (like lynching), and other hate crimes are only three examples of the torture our ancestors endured for hundreds of years, but they highlight how slavery poorly impacted our self-esteem. If all you know yourself and others like you to be is worthless, what else can you give to your descendants?
I know the contents of this article have been dark and depressing. As a race, we have been survivors of the worst type of hatred - systematic racism. The purpose of unravelling parts of our ancestors’ story is to give insight to our roots. Now that we know what and where we came from, we can focus our attention on future directions. It’s our turn to do our part because there is still hope in reclaiming our self-concept back from ethnocentrism. We can free our minds from enslavement because of the blueprint our ancestors provided.
Rebuild your Self-Esteem
254 years ago, our ancestors (some being royalty) were kidnapped & forced into enslavement in this city. The journey of slavery in Fort Wayne makes our former descendants’ past more closer to home. In 1834, the US abolished slavery, but African Americans were still not free. After enslavement, black communities were still treated as objects and experienced impossible circumstances. We were stripped of a sense of self, basic necessities, education, and other resources for years. The discrimination our race faced increased the likelihood of generational trauma being passed on to us.
During the 1940s and on, the Civil Rights Movement began as a fight for freedom. We earned our citizenship and right to vote among plenty of other things. Prominent black figures paved the way for us to receive a chance at equality of opportunity. Their resilience and hope towards equality has given us a blessing in disguise. Now, in 2025, we can choose to relearn our past. We can reclaim our self-concept and rebuild our self-esteem because we are human beings just like everyone else.
Take me for example - I’ve had the opportunity to go to college as a first generation grad and write about the first black female psychologist. I am choosing to pass on the wisdom I’ve learned about the self-concept so we can rebuild it. That’s the least I can do to help our community better understand our history and how we can change our self-esteem as a race in the future.
Start to define your self-concept by making a list of values, traits, roles, likes, and other things you identify with. Mine would look something like the fruit of the Spirit, forgiving, optimistic, a student, psychology, etc. This exercise will not encompass your entire self-concept, but the purpose is to become familiar with yours. Now think or write about how you feel about those qualities. The more positive you feel about those characteristics, the higher your self-esteem is. Repeat this exercise until you have a clear idea of how you measure your value. Remember that you are a worthy human being regardless of your history.
If you have poor self-esteem, there are ways to improve it. Practicing reappraisal is a hard, but effective way to go about it. Reappraisal is reflecting on how you interpret emotionally charged situations to take control of your emotions. For instance, imagine that your significant other has been toxic lately by trying to bring down your self-esteem. A common response would be to try to belittle their character because you take their attacks personally, or you can choose to de-escalate the situation until y’all are ready to have a healthy conversation about what’s going on internally with both people. Of course, that’s easier said than done, but with enough practice healthy coping mechanisms can become second nature.
This is only the beginning of learning to reclaim your self-concept, so stay tuned for more information on how to rebuild your sense of self. As a psychology major, I will do my best to provide y’all with applications of what I’ve learned so far. For now, recognize that your self-esteem is the biggest influence on how you perceive yourself and the world. It’s only fair that you know the basics of how your self-esteem is developed, so you can start to become more aware of how it impacts you. You are a valuable human being no matter what & we can make it out of the shackles ethnocentrism has tried to bind us in. Your ancestors’ story is part of your story because it’s our roots. With the right knowledge, you can create your own path.
