Fugitive Movements: Commemorating the Denmark Vesey Affair and Black Radical Antislavery in the Atlantic World (The Carolina Lowcountry and the Atlantic World)

In 1822, White authorities in Charleston, South Carolina, learned of plans among the city's enslaved and free Black population to lead an armed antislavery rebellion. Among the leaders was a free Black carpenter named Denmark Vesey. After a brief investigation and what some have considered a dubious trial, Vesey and thirty-five others were convicted of attempted insurrection and hanged. Although the rebellion never came to fruition, it nonetheless fueled Black antislavery movements in the United States and elsewhere. To this day, activists, politicians, writers, and scholars debate the significance of the conspiracy, how to commemorate it, and the integrity of the archival records it left behind. Fugitive Movements memorializes this attempted liberation movement with new interpretations of the event as well as comparisons to other Black resistance throughout the Atlantic World—including Africa, the Caribbean, and the Northern United States. This volume situates Denmark Vesey and antislavery rebellion within the current scholarship on abolition that places Black activists at the center of the story. It shows that Black antislavery rebellion in general, and the 1822 uprising by Black Charlestonians in particular, significantly influenced the history of slavery in the Western Hemisphere. The essays collected in this volume explore not only that history, but also the ongoing struggle over the memory of slavery and resistance in the Atlantic World. Manisha Sinha, James L. and Shirley A. Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut and author of The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolitio n, provides the foreword. The essays in this book commemorate the 1822 Charleston Antislavery Movement and offer a new interpretation of the 1822 events. Taken together, the essays also suggest new ways of understanding how commemorations of Black antislavery rebellion have contributed to Black resistance to racism since emancipation, with an emphasis on Black movements and cultural production during and after enslavement. Three catalytic or motivating factors that motivated Black antislavery resistance and its commemoration emerge: (1) the presence of a "common wind" of information circulating the Atlantic, (2) African and diasporic ideas of freedom independent of Euro-American inspirations, and (3) locally rooted relationships and communities of both free Black and enslaved people. The history of Black antislavery rebellion intertwines circum-Atlantic flow and local production. The broad U.S., Caribbean, and West African geographic scope of the book reflects this reality and resonates with Vesey's own national and international frame of reference. The volume's essays highlight two overarching themes, antislavery resistance and its commemoration. A first set of essays considers the Vesey movement itself, the roots of the movement in the Atlantic world, and the problematic and prejudicial trials. These essays suggest that the Vesey affair had both Caribbean and African contexts. The 1822 events emerge as more than a "slave conspiracy" in Charleston, South Carolina; they were a social movement of both enslaved and free Black people. Movement participants were aware of U.S. and Atlantic-wide currents, and their movement as a whole contributed to the larger struggle. These essays are followed by a second set of essays looks at the longer cultural memory of Black antislavery, demonstrating the continuing resonance of the themes covered in earlier sections and how they continue to shape contemporary understandings not only of our collective past, but also how culture and identity are formed in the present. "All black freedom movements are fugitive. This has been true of slave rebellion, religious revivals, labor strikes, Civil Rights, black power liberation, and #BlackLivesMatter. Black fugitivity, Tina Campt has argued, is a refusal to "stay in one's proper place." Fugitives cross boundaries, unauthorized, and are always running. The fugitive chooses to live for the possibility of an "unbounded" life and refuses to be subject to law that negates or exoticizes black lived experience. Fugitivity therefore is a status precariously placed between possibility and danger: even when they were the omnipresent majority population where chattel slavery was still legal in the early nineteenth century, the enslaved remain unrecognized as people or citizens. Free and enslaved, blackness was (and is) treated as suspect in a white-supremacist society. There is no prospect for belonging as equals. There is no possibility of escape other than temporarily and incompletely. Even when free, fugitivity continues to structure the lives of propertyless black workers, makes them targets for street harassment and carriers of intergenerational traumas.""-- Provided by publisher

In 1822, White authorities in Charleston, South Carolina, learned of plans among the city's enslaved and free Black population to lead an armed antislavery rebellion. Among the leaders was a free Black carpenter named Denmark Vesey. After a brief investigation and what some have considered a dubious trial, Vesey and thirty-five others were convicted of attempted insurrection and hanged.

Although the rebellion never came to fruition, it nonetheless fueled Black antislavery movements in the United States and elsewhere. To this day, activists, politicians, writers, and scholars debate the significance of the conspiracy, how to commemorate it, and the integrity of the archival records it left behind. Fugitive Movements memorializes this attempted liberation movement with new interpretations of the event as well as comparisons to other Black resistance throughout the Atlantic World—including Africa, the Caribbean, and the Northern United States.

This volume situates Denmark Vesey and antislavery rebellion within the current scholarship on abolition that places Black activists at the center of the story. It shows that Black antislavery rebellion in general, and the 1822 uprising by Black Charlestonians in particular, significantly influenced the history of slavery in the Western Hemisphere. The essays collected in this volume explore not only that history, but also the ongoing struggle over the memory of slavery and resistance in the Atlantic World.

Manisha Sinha, James L. and Shirley A. Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut and author of The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition, provides the foreword.

Foreword / Manisha Sinha -- Fugitive Direct Action. Denmark Vesey, South Carolina, and Haiti: Borne, Bound, and Battered by a Common Wind / Bernard E. Powers Jr. ; Denmark Vesey and the 1822 Charleston Antislavery Uprising: New Themes and New Methods / James O'Neil Spady ; Writing Reparative Histories of Connection: The 1831 Tortola Slave Conspiracy in the Atlantic World / Anita Rupprecht and Cathy Bergin ; Black Southwestern Pennsylvanians and the Politics of Free Soil in the Northern Borderlands / Lucien Holness ; Fugitivity and Citizenship in the Southeastern Coastal United States: Representing Black Resistance, 1862-1902 / Wendy Gonaver -- Fugitive Memory. The Silent Jean St. Maló: A Counterhistory of Slavery / William D. Jones ; Slavery, Resistance, and Memory in the Lowcountry: The Commemoration of the Stono Rebellion / Shawn Halifax and Terri L. Snyder ; Arrows of Power: The Builsa Feok Festival of Slave Resistance and Abolition in Ghana / Samuel Ntewusu ; Revisiting Denmark Vesey's Church / Robert L. Paquette ; "To See What He Could Do for His Fellow Creatures": Enslaved Women, Families, and Survivors in North American Slave Conspiracies / Douglas R. Egerton ; Freedom Fighter or Attila the Hun? How Black and White Charlestonians Remembered Denmark Vesey, 1822-2014 / Blain Roberts and Ethan J. Kytle "In 1822, White authorities in Charleston, South Carolina, learned of plans among the city's enslaved population to lead an armed antislavery rebellion. Among the leaders was a free Black carpenter named Denmark Vesey. After a brief investigation and what many considered a dubious trial, Vesey and 35 others were convicted of attempted insurrection and hanged. To this day, activists, politicians, writers, and scholars have questioned and debated the historical significance of the conspiracy, its commemoration, and the integrity of the archival records left behind. James O'Neil Spady has collected essays by 14 outstanding scholars, who reframe the Vesey affair as part of the broader development of Black Radical antislavery movements in the Atlantic World. Essays focus on Vesey and several other rebellion events, including the forcible rescue of African Americans being trafficked within the United States. Manisha Sinha, James L. and Shirley A. Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut and author of The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition, provides the foreword"-- Provided by publisher Examines development of Black Radical antislavery movements in the Atlantic World. Essays focus on Denmark Vesey and several other rebellion events, including the forcible rescue of African Americans being trafficked within the United States.