were experiencing the lashing wrath of their enslavers. White vengeance in the South and white apathy in the White House were rendering Black southerners unhoused and hungry, even though through their stolen labor, as Childress put it, they had earned nearly “all this property” in the region. African Americans literally helped build “the South.” But every day they encountered members of the slaveholding apparatus, from the wealthy plantocracy to poorer whites, who all made clear they would do everything they could to keep Black people as close to bondage as possible. Childress
