two enslavers: “Richard Allen: Apostle of Freedom,” Historical Society of Pennsylvania, hsp.org/history-online/exhibits/richard-allen-apostle-of-freedom/allen-enslaved.
didn’t know hard work: “The Life, Experience, and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen…,” Documenting the American South, docsouth.unc.edu/neh/allen/allen.html.
hard just to live: Richard S. Newman, Freedom’s Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers (New York: NYU Press, 2008), 198.
“A nation, without”: Federalist Papers, No. 85, Avalon Project, avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed85.asp.
“do good” to those: Newman, Freedom’s Prophet, 206.
The abuse and affront: “Life, Experience, and Gospel Labours.”
“this mode of alluding to slaves”: Abraham Lincoln’s Cooper Union Address, February 27, 1860, www.nytimes.com/2004/05/02/nyregion/full-text-abraham-lincolns-cooper-union-address.html.
Free African Society (FAS): “The Free African Society,” Historical Society of Pennsylvania, hsp.org/history-online/exhibits/richard-allen-apostle-of-freedom/the-free-african-society; “Free African Society,” Encyclopædia Britannica, www.britannica.com/topic/Free-African-Society.
1,849 freed men: “Organizing the Community,” Black Founders: The Free Black Community in the Early Republic, librarycompany.org/blackfounders/section6.htm.
turned the first shovel: “Life, Experience, and Gospel Labours.”
African Methodist Episcopal Church: “Our History,” African Methodist Episcopal Church, www.ame-church.com/our-church/our-history.
1789–1794: Sally Hemings
“careful Negro woman”: Thomas Jefferson to Francis Eppes, August 30, 1785, quoted in Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2008), 191.
“Mr. Jefferson’s concubine”: Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1997), 246.
1794–1799: The Fugitive Slave Act
“And be it further enacted”: Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, www.ushistory.org/presidentshouse/history/slaveact1793.php.
Ona Judge: See Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge (New York: 37 Ink, 2018).
Black people in Haiti: For a more detailed discussion of tactical violence and Black abolitionism, see Kellie Carter Jackson, Force and Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019).
In Pointe Coupée, Louisiana: Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, “The 1795 Slave Conspiracy in Pointe Coupée: Impact of the French Revolution,” in Proceedings of the Meeting of the French Colonial Historical Society 15 (1992): 130–41.
1799–1804: Higher Education
Francisco de Miranda: John S. Ezell, ed., The New Democracy in America: Travels of Francisco de Miranda in the United States, 1783–84, Judson P. Wood, trans. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963), 70–71.
Moreau de Saint-Méry: Kenneth Roberts and Anna M. Roberts, trans. and ed., Moreau de St. Méry’s American Journey [1793–1798] (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1947), 103–09.
Isaac Weld: Isaac Weld, Jr., Travels Through the States of North America, and the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, during the Years, 1795, 1796, and 1797 (London: John Stockdale, 1807), I: 259–60.
“wasted & destroyed”: Craig Steven Wilder, “ ‘Sons from the Southward & Some from the West Indies’: Slavery and the Academy in Revolutionary America,” in Leslie M. Harris, James T. Campbell, and Alfred L. Brophy, eds., Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2019); John H. Livingston, “To the Honourable, the Legislative Council and General Assembly of the State of New Jersey,” Box 1, Folder 12, MC 089, Elizabeth R. Boyd Historical Collection, Special Collections and University Archives, Alexander Library, Rutgers University.
close their schools or relocate: Craig Steven Wilder, “ ‘Sons from the Southward.’ ”
tripled the number: Ibid.
Transylvania College: Donald G. Tewksbury, The Founding of American Colleges and Universities before the Civil War with Particular Reference to the Religious Influences Bearing upon the College Movement (New York: Teachers College, 1932), 32–35.
church with national reach: Craig Steven Wilder, “War and Priests: Catholic Colleges and Slavery in the Age of Revolution,” in Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development, eds. Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 227–42.
Father Patrick Smyth: Patrick Smyth, The Present State of the Catholic Missions Conducted by the Ex-Jesuits in North America (Dublin: P. Byrne, 1788), esp. 17–19; American Catholic Historical Researches (July 1905), 193–206; Jennifer Oast, Institutional Slavery: Slaveholding Churches, Schools, Colleges, and Businesses in Virginia, 1680–1860 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), introduction.
“keeping harems of Negro women”: J. P. Brissot de Warville, New Travels in the United States of America, 1788 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), 346.
1809–1814: The Louisiana Rebellion
Charles Deslondes: Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America’s Largest Slave Revolt (New York: HarperCollins, 2018).
“At present I am”: Governor William C. C. Claiborne to James Madison, New Orleans, July 12, 1804, in Elizabeth Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution, 1935), 4:663.
They wielded clubs: Leon A. Waters, “Jan 8, 1811: Louisiana’s Heroic Slave Revolt,” Zinn Education Project, n.d., www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/louisianas-slave-revolt/.
“They were brung here”: Rasmussen, American Uprising, 148.
“Had not the most prompt”: Ibid., 148–49.
1814–1819: Queer Sexuality
“African homosexuality”: Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe, eds., Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), xv.
“the range of emotional”: Daina Ramey Berry and Leslie M. Harris, eds., Sexuality and Slavery: Reclaiming Intimate Histories in the Americas (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2018), 1.
“evade capture and to subvert”: Ibid.
“transcend their laboring”: Sharon Block, Colonial Complexions: Race and Bodies in Eighteenth-Century America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), 123.
“One of the unfortunate things”: Jessica Marie Johnson, interview by author, February 21, 2019.
“I have been in the practice”: Jonathan Ned Katz, Love Stories: Sex between Men before Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013).
1819–1824: Denmark Vesey
Rapper Kanye West: Harmeet Kaur, “Kanye West Just Said 400 Years of Slavery Was a Choice,” CNN, May 4, 2018, www.cnn.com/2018/05/01/entertainment/kanye-west-slavery-choice-trnd/index.html.
he rented or owned: David Robertson, Denmark Vesey: The Buried Story of America’s Largest Slave Rebellion and the Man Who Led It (New York: Vintage Books, 1999), 42.
over 77 percent: Ibid., 34.
It seems that: Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, ed. William Harwood Peden (1955; Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).
The Haitian Revolution: Robert Jones, Jr., “The Wretched Refuse of Your Teeming Shore,” Medium, theprophets.medium.com/the-wretched-refuse-of-your-teeming-shore-9a3396556be6.
Smartly, he had faked: Douglas R. Egerton, “Before Charleston’s Church Shooting, a Long History of Church Attack
s,” in Charleston Syllabus: Readings on Race, Racism, and Racial Violence, eds. Chad Louis Williams, Kidada E. Williams, and Keisha N. Blain (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2016), 26.
he joined the new: Robertson, Denmark Vesey, 42.
the Work House: Ibid., 35.
Dylann Storm Roof: Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, “A Most American Terrorist: The Making of Dylann Roof,” GQ, August 21, 2017, www.gq.com/story/dylann-roof-making-of-an-american-terrorist.
recruited as many: Robertson, Denmark Vesey, 4, 42.
What motivated: Ibid., 70–71, 80–81.
All transcripts: Ibid., 17.
threatened with arrest: Ibid., 10.
1824–1829: Freedom’s Journal
“We wish to plead our”: “John Brown Russwurm (Bowdoin Class of 1826),” Africana Studies Resources, library.bowdoin.edu/arch/subject-guides/africana-resources/john-brown-russwurm/index.shtml.
number of Black journalists: Table O, “Employees by Minority Group,” News Leaders Association, www.asne.org/content.asp?contentid=147.
2019 annual survey: “People of Color in TV News,” RTDNA/Hofstra University Newsroom Survey 2019, www.rtdna.org/uploads/images/RTDNA-Hofstra%202019%20TV%20news%20diversity%20among%20non%20Spanish%20language%20stations.png and “2019 Research: Local Newsroom Diversity,” RTDNA, June 13, 2019, www.rtdna.org/article/2019_research_local_newsroom_diversity#TVPOC.
circulation of leading newspapers: Pamela Newkirk, Within the Veil: Black Journalists, White Media (New York: NYU Press, 2000), 65.
Essence: It’s worth noting that Richelieu Dennis, the owner of Essence, was born in Liberia, where Russwurm relocated as a leader of the colonization movement. There he established the Liberia Herald.
Hollywood Diversity Report: Darnell Hunt and Ana-Christina Ramon, Hollywood Diversity Report: A Tale of Two Hollywoods (UCLA College of Social Sciences, 2019), 3, socialsciences.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/UCLA-Hollywood-Diversity-Report-2020-Film-2-6-2020.pdf.
1829–1834: Maria Stewart
prominent speaker and writer: Valerie Cooper, Word, Like Fire: Maria Stewart, the Bible, and the Rights of African Americans (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011), 120. See also James Oliver Horton, Free People of Color: Inside the African American Community (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993).
first woman in the United States: Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (New York: HarperCollins, 1984); Marilyn Richardson, ed., Maria W. Stewart, America’s First Black Political Writer: Essays and Speeches (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987); and Carole B. Conaway and Kristin Waters, Black Women’s Intellectual Traditions: Speaking Their Minds (Burlington: University of Vermont Press, 2007).
“women did not speak”: Giddings, When and Where, 49.
“promiscuous” audience: Richardson, Maria Stewart, xiii.
“Her original synthesis”: Ibid.
several of Stewart’s writings: In addition to these essays, Richardson’s edited collection of Stewart’s political essays and speeches includes Stewart’s later writings, letters, and biographical sketches.
gain economic independence: Stewart asked, “How long shall a set of men flatter us with their smiles, and enrich themselves with our hard earnings, their wives’ fingers sparkling with rings, and they themselves laughing at our folly?” She replied, “Until we begin to promote and patronize each other.” Richardson, Maria Stewart, 38.
“possess the spirit”: Ibid.
called out racial prejudice: Ibid., 48.
“Farewell Address to”: Ibid., 68–69. Richardson has identified the full source of Stewart’s citations as John Adams, Woman: Sketches of the History, Genius, Disposition, Accomplishments, Employments, Customs and Importance of the Fair Sex in All Parts of the World Interspersed with Many Singular and Entertaining Anecdotes by a Friend of the Sex (London, 1790).
“talk, without effort”: Richardson, Maria Stewart, 58.
1839–1844: Racial Passing
George Latimer and his pregnant wife: Asa J. Davis, “The George Latimer Case: A Benchmark in the Struggle for Freedom,” Rutgers, edison.rutgers.edu/latimer/glatcase.htm.
“travelled as a gentleman”: Ibid.
“beaten and whipped”: Ibid.
“We all know”: Nell Irvin Painter, Southern History Across the Color Line (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 15, 18.
federal legislation: Maeve Glass, “Citizens of the State,” University of Chicago Law Review (June 2018): 870.
“No, never”: Davis, “Latimer Case.”
“RANAWAY from the subscriber”: Ibid.
“women—whether slave”: Painter, Southern History, 91.
“Can this flesh”: Davis, “Latimer Case.”
1844–1849: James McCune Smith, m.d.
valedictorian of the medical school: Simon Newman, “180th Anniversary for Former Slave James McCune Smith,” University of Glasgow, April 27, 2017, www.gla.ac.uk/news/archiveofnews/2017/may/headline_523751_en.html.
university scholarships: “Description: James McCune Smith Scholarship,” University of Glasgow Scholarships and Funding, www.gla.ac.uk/scholarships/jamesmccunesmithscholarship/.
formal medical degree: Harriet A. Washington, “The Invisible Man: African Americans in Biomedical Research,” unpublished manuscript, July 2006.
Glasgow Emancipation Society: Bob Davern, “Surgeon and Abolitionist James McCune Smith: An African American Pioneer,” Readex, April 17, 2012, tinyurl.com/y5o65qqc.
profits from enslavement: No more than eighty slaves are thought to have lived in Scotland before it banned chattel enslavement in 1778, and the nation utterly abolished slavery the year after McCune Smith arrived. However, the university, like the nation, profited handsomely from the imperial slave trade. See Annie Brown, “Scotland and Slavery,” Black History Month (August 19, 2015), www.blackhistorymonth.org.uk/article/section/history-of-slavery/scotland-and-slavery; “Slavery, Freedom or Perpetual Servitude? The Joseph Knight Case,” National Records of Scotland, www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/learning/slavery; “Slavery and the Slave Trade,” National Records of Scotland, webarchive.nrscotland.gov.uk/20170203095547/https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/guides/slavery-and-the-slave-trade; Iain Whyte, Scotland and the Abolition of Black Slavery, 1756–1838 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006).
against American enslavement: Davern, “Surgeon and Abolitionist.”
Samuel Cartwright: Samuel Adolphus Cartwright, “Report on the Diseases and Physical Peculiarities of the Negro Race,” New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal 7 (1851): 691–715.
Josiah Nott: J. C. Nott, “The Mulatto a Hybrid—Probable Extermination of the Two Races If the Whites and Blacks Are Allowed to Intermarry,” American Journal of the Medical Sciences 6 (July 1843): 252–56.
“free” and “enslaved”: U.S. State Department, “Compilation of the Enumeration of the Inhabitants and Statistics of the United States, as Obtained at the Department of State, from the Returns of the Sixth Census” (1841).
particularly mental health: Albert Deutsch, “The First U.S. Census of the Insane (1840) and Its Use as Pro Slavery Propaganda,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 15 (1944): 469–82; Louis Dublin, “The Problem of Negro Health as Revealed by Vital Statistics,” Journal of Negro Education 6 (1937): 268–75; and Clayton E. Cramer, Black Demographic Data, 1790–1860: A Sourcebook (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2003).
freedom could prove fatal: Thomas Mays, “Human Slavery as a Prevention of Pulmonary Consumption,” Transactions of the American Climatological Association 20 (1904): 192–97; and Clovis Semmes, Racism, Health, and Post-Industrialism: A Theory of Afri
can-American Health (Greenwood, CT: Praeger, 1996), 49–88.
detailed report: James McCune Smith, M.D., “The Memorial of 1844 to the U.S. Senate” (1844), in Herbert Morais, The History of the Afro-American in Medicine (Cornwells Heights, PA: Publishers Agency, 1976), 212–13.
never formally corrected: Robert W. Wood, Memorial of Edward Jarvis, M.D. (Boston: T. R. Martin & Sons, 1885), 12, 13. See also “Startling Facts from the Census,” The American Journal of Insanity 8 (October 1851): 153–55; ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/ajp.8.2.15.
posthumous acceptance: “New York Academy of Medicine Awards a Posthumous Fellowship to Dr. James McCune Smith 171 Years After It Was Withheld,” New York Academy of Medicine, November 5, 2018, nyam.org/news/article/academy-awards-posthumous-fellowship-dr-james-mccune-smith/.
orphans’ asylum was burned: Jeffrey Kraus, “The Burning of the Colored Orphanage Asylum, NYC,” Antique Photographics, April 24, 2012, antiquephotographics.com/the-colored-orphan-asylum-nyc.
his 1865 death: “Descendants of First Black US Doctor Mark NYC Grave,” African America, September 26, 2010, www.africanamerica.org/topic/descendants-of-1st-black-us-doctor-mark-nyc-grave.
1849–1854: Oregon
“dangerous subjects”: Gregory R. Nokes, “Dangerous Subjects,” Oregon Humanities Magazine, August 9, 2013.
2016 statistics: “Data Profiles,” American Community Survey, 2016, www.census.gov/acs/www/data/data-tables-and-tools/data-profiles/2016/.
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