The Official Royal House of Sori and The Prince Ibrahima and Isabella Freedom Foundation Announces the Commencement of the 2026 Annual Walking in the Footsteps of a Prince Tour
Commemorating the Resilience, Faith, and Legacy of Prince Abdulrahman Ibrahim Ibn Sori
Natchez, Mississippi, April 15, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The Official Royal House of Sori, and The Prince Ibrahima and Isabella Freedom Foundation are proud to announce that the 2026 Annual Walking in the Footsteps of a Prince Tour has officially commenced. A global initiative created in 2022 by Dr. Artemus Gaye and HRH Princess Karen W.S. Brengettsy-Chatman, this solemn and celebratory journey invites participants, historians, educators, and descendants to walk the very ground where one of history’s most extraordinary stories of resilience, faith, and perseverance unfolded.
Walking in the Footsteps of a Prince
ABOUT THE 2026 TOUR The 2026 tour continues the annual journey honoring the enduring legacy of Prince Abdulrahman Ibrahim Ibn Sori of Futa Jallon, a West African prince of the Fulani people — who endured forty years of enslavement in Natchez, Mississippi, before achieving emancipation and journeying with his beloved wife Isabella to Monrovia, Liberia. The tour begins in Guinea’s Fouta Jallon region, where the Prince was captured, then proceeds to Natchez, Mississippi, where he was enslaved for four decades. From there, participants travel to Connecticut, New York, the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, retracing the Prince’s advocacy tour conducted under the sponsorship of Thomas H. Gallaudet, Francis Scott Key, and the American Colonization Society. The journey concludes in Norfolk, Virginia, where Prince Abdulrahman and Isabella boarded the ship Harriet bound for Liberia, and ends with a homecoming celebration in Monrovia, where the Prince and his wife at last found freedom. The tour incorporates historical education, community commemoration, and a call to bear witness to a history too often overlooked. Participants are invited to walk as an act of remembrance, reckoning, and renewal.
THE PRINCE’S STORY Captured in battle around 1788 and sold into slavery, Prince Abdulrahman spent four decades laboring on Thomas Foster’s plantation, known as Foster’s Fields in the Natchez district of Mississippi. Despite the chains of bondage, he never abandoned his identity, his literacy, or his faith. His remarkable story came to light through a chance encounter, sparking a transatlantic campaign for his freedom that reached the highest levels of American government and the court of the Sultan of Morocco. Upon securing emancipation, Prince Abdulrahman and Isabella faced the most urgent and heartbreaking of missions: their nine children and grandchildren remained enslaved at Foster’s Fields. The couple embarked on a tireless national tour from Washington to New England — seeking funds necessary to purchase their family’s freedom. The 2026 tour traces those very steps, honoring the ground he walked and the doors at which he pleaded. CHAMPIONS OF HIS
CAUSE: GALLAUDET & KEY Thomas H. Gallaudet, the celebrated educator and founder of the American School for the Deaf (1817), became one of the Prince’s most ardent advocates. In 1828, Gallaudet authored A Statement with Regard to the Moorish Prince, Abduhl Rahhahman, a pamphlet designed to galvanize public fundraising. He envisioned the Prince as a potential missionary to Africa — a hope famously complicated when the Prince, asked to write the Lord’s Prayer in Arabic, instead inscribed the opening of the Holy Quran. Gallaudet’s legacy lives on through Gallaudet University, established by his son, Edward Miner Gallaudet. Francis Scott Key, a founding member of the American Colonization Society (ACS), employed his considerable legal and political influence to secure the Prince’s freedom through diplomatic channels engaging the Sultan of Morocco and the administration of President John Quincy Adams. Together, through the Connecticut chapter of the ACS, Gallaudet and Key helped raise approximately $3,500 during the 1828–1829 tour, reflecting the broad sympathy Prince Abdulrahman’s story inspired.
THE FINAL VOYAGE In February 1829, Prince Abdulrahman and Isabella boarded the ship Harriet, bound for the shores of Liberia — the land promised by the ACS as a home for freed American Blacks. They arrived in Monrovia with hearts full of hope, though the Prince’s family remained enslaved in Mississippi. Tragically, Prince Abdulrahman died of fever in Monrovia on July 6, 1829, just months after his arrival — his dream of reuniting his family unfulfilled, yet his courage and his story immortalized.
About The Official Royal House of Sori
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