Black Rebellion: Eyewitness Accounts of Major Slave Revolts

by Sujan Dass, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Joshua Coffin

Who will tell the stories of those who refused to be slaves? The Atlantic slave trade transported millions of humans from the coasts of West Africa into the New World, stripping them of their dignity, freedom, language and culture. The accepted notion is that these Blacks willingly submitted to the chattel slave system, accepting their new lot in life. When one scours the records, a different story emerges. Black Rebellion chronicles the active resistance of Africans in the New World against their oppressors. These firsthand accounts reveal much that has been neglected in the traditional telling of history. Black Rebellion is a collection of historical literature documenting major slave revolts and uprisings throughout the Americas, written primarily by contemporaries and eyewitnesses. It contains accounts of Nat Turner's Revolt, Gabriel Prosser's Rebellion, Denmark Vesey's Conspiracy, the Stono Rebellion, the Haitian Revolution, and the Maroon Wars of Jamaica and Surinam, as well as a timeline of Western slavery and revolt. This collection is further illuminated by an introduction by Dr. Sujan Dass. Other essays address why most slave revolts were betrayed by fellow slaves, the role of music in rebellion, and resistance to slavery among African leaders. Contains the full text of T. W. Higginson s Black Rebellion: Five Slave Revolts (1889), the full text of Joshua Coffin s An Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections (1860), excerpts from Marcus Rainsford s An Historical Account of the Black Empire of Hayti (1805), excerpts from William Wells Brown s The Black Man, His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements (1863), and other works.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 25, 2010

Reviews

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was so illuminating. It paints a much clearer, truer history of the practice of slavery than anything taught in school, and its primary source material from eyewitnesses. It also traces psychological reactions to oppression, and you can read some work by freedom loving, abolitionist whites, who can’t understand the stupidity of slave holding whites at not knowing that the very practice of slavery puts them at risk for murder. No one is free until everyone is. It’s crazy we are still trying to explain this concept to narcissists.

Anyway, there were so many fascinating stories in this full of nuance. On one hand, you see the class differences and loyalty differences between house slaves and field slaves. You learn about how LARGE, FREQUENT, and COORDINATED the revolts could get. And you learn that many were successful, with people establishing communities in swamps, mountains, or with persecuted Native Americans. You learn about the plights of the rising mixed population. You learn that as long as there’s been a slave trade, violent revolts and racial uprisings were consistent. While many felt resigned to or loyal to enslavement in many ways, there were also daily, quiet resistances. This is far from a history of a simply passive group of victims, though their cruelties endured are unquestioned. These are stories of the chickens coming home to roost, tragically, again and again, and it taking the country 400 years to finally learn its lesson.

And even then, the struggle for true freedom and equality continues.

I learn so much about courage and strength when reading about how colonized subjects have resisted. It’s inspiring. There are, like all histories of oppressions, those who collaborate with their own oppressors a lot, as still today (like a black police officer) but the book also provided some thoughtful reflections on trauma responses and how oppression can maim a soul and psyche.

There’s also a timeline of notable revolts in the book that lets you see how common they are.

My favorite stories were the Maroons, who made colonies in swamps of thousands of former slaves. They attacked plantations and freed people. The government was at war with them for years and they couldn’t be defeated.

I also liked the mutiny on a slave ship in which they murdered all the whites and steered the ship right back home. Imagine coming back home after all that! The stories are ones that you wish they made movies about.