By Mikael Owunna. Stills from Love Drought Video and Donovan Nelson Igbo Landing Image via Valentine Museum of Art

[image description: Beyoncé in the music video for “Love Drought” marching into the water followed by a procession of black women]
Beyoncé’s LEMONADE is filled with incredible artistry and stunning imagery. For me, one of the most striking images on the visual album occurs in the video for “Love Drought”. Much has been said about how LEMONADE draws influence from Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust, but less has been said about how the story of
Igbo Landing is central to Daughters of the Dust or about how the story of Igbo Landing – an act of mass resistance against slavery – also shows up in a very pronounced manner in the “Love Drought” video.

[Donovan Nelson’s depiction of Igbo Landing in charcoal. It shows the Igbo slaves marching into a body of water with the water already up to their necks and their eyes closed. Image via Valentine Museum of Art]
For those who don’t know, Igbo Landing (or Ebos Landing) is the location of a mass suicide of Igbo slaves that occurred in 1803 on St. Simons Island, Georgia. A group of Igbo slaves revolted, took control of their slave ship, grounded it on an island, and rather than submit to slavery, marched into the water while singing in Igbo, drowning themselves. They unanimously chose death over slavery, and their act of mass resistance against the horrors of slavery became alegend,particularly among the Gullah people living near the site of Igbo Landing.
Not only is the story of Igbo Landing one of the key themes of Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust, which influenced LEMONADE, but its imagery also appears to be central to the “Love Drought” video. In the video, Beyoncé marches into the water followed by a group of black women all in white but with black fabric in the shape of a cross on the front of their bodies. They march deeper and deeper into the water before pausing and raising their hands toward the sunset.

[Beyoncé marching into the water followed by other black women]
This scene – and the video as a whole – occurs in a marshy landscape matching African-American folklore descriptions of the location of Igbo Landing. This is combined with imagery of Beyoncé physically bound in ropes and resisting their pull, which directly evokes slavery, resistance, and the events at Igbo Landing.

[Beyoncé on a beach leaning backward, resisting the pull of a taught rope]
The action of raising their hands towards the sunset symbolizes how the act of mass resistance at Igbo Landing has been mythologized in many African-American communities as either “water walking” or “flying.” In one version of the myth, the Igbo slaves walked into the water and then flew back to Africa, saving themselves. In other versions, they transformed into birds and Here is how Wallace Quarterman, an African-American man born in 1844, reold the legend when he was
interviewed by members of the Federal Writers Project in 1930” Ain’t you heard about them? Well, at that time Mr. Blue he was the overseer and … Mr. Blue he go down one morning with a long whip for to whip them good…. Anyway, he whipped them good and they got together and stuck that hoe in the field and then … rose up in the sky and turned themselves into buzzards and flew right back to Africa…. Everybody knows about them. (http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/ebos-landing)

[Image description: Beyoncé and several black women partially submerged in water by a beach and raising their arms toward the setting sun]
Seeing Beyoncé and a group of black women marching into the water and raising their hands collectively toward the sunset reminded me specifically of this last interpretation of the story of Igbo Landing where the slaves flew to their freedom.

There are lots of potential interpretations for this video and the visual album as a whole but the core imagery of the “Love Drought” video – marshy landscape matching folklore descriptions of the location of “Igbo Landing,” images of Beyoncé bound in ropes and resisting their pull, a collective march into the water and holding their hands out toward the sky as if they were about to fly away together-basically screamed out to me as the story of Igbo Landing as I watched the video. It’s such a powerful act of mass resistance against slavery and as an Igbo person living today in America, it was moving to see imagery which reminded me strongly of it in LEMONADE as well.