The question was both fantasy and dogma to a nation simultaneously frightened of Black people but desperately in need of their presence to provide whites with labor, racial status, and a cultural touchstone to mark what was “civilized” and what was “primitive” or “savage.” African Americans never bought into the paradigm, however, and challenged both the “facts” of white supremacy and that they had ever blithely accepted their subjugation. The Stono Rebellion, Gabriel’s uprising, Charles Deslondes’s march to New Orleans, Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, Cincinnati, Christiana, Colfax, Atlanta, and
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