Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America

by Michael Harriot

Perhaps Denmark Vesey’s story best illustrates the role of the Black church in resistance and education. Enslaved before the Revolution, Vesey was literate in three languages before winning $1,500 in the Charleston lottery in 1799 at the age of thirty-two. He paid $600 for his freedom, opened a carpentry business, married an enslaved woman, and attended Second Presbyterian Church before leaving to help start Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. When authorities briefly closed the church’s doors in 1818 for meeting after sunset, it was the second-largest AME congregation in the country, with 1,848 members.23 The church was shut down once again in 1821 when the Charleston City Council learned that the church was becoming a “school for slaves.”24 Vesey began preaching that enslaved Africans were the current-day manifestation of the Children of Israel who were enslaved in Egypt.