Tag Archives: Slavery

1776: Equally as Precious to a Black Man

Posted on July 4, 2021 by corvusfugit

In 1776, Lemuel Haynes, a veteran of the American Revolution and the first black man in the United States to be ordained as a minister, wrote this response to the Declaration of Independence: Liberty Further Extended: Or Free Thoughts on … Continue reading →

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1939: Revolt

Posted on June 1, 2020 by corvusfugit

Hale Woodruff’s murals commemorating the revolt on the Spanish slave ship Amistad were installed in Talladega College’s Savery Library in 1939, the centennial of the uprising. The first mural depicts the moment when, on or about July 1, 1839, kidnapped … Continue reading →

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1865: An Army of Striking Labor

Posted on April 28, 2019 by corvusfugit

In Black Reconstruction in America (1935), W. E. B. Du Bois argues that a “general strike” by millions of enslaved African-Americans decided the outcome of the civil war. By rebelling against their masters, abandoning southern plantations, contributing their labor to … Continue reading →

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1802: The Mammoth Cheese

Posted on March 9, 2019 by corvusfugit

On the first day of 1802, President Thomas Jefferson received a gift of mythic proportions. Amid great fanfare, a “mammoth” Cheshire cheese was delivered to the President’s House by the itinerant Baptist preacher and political gadfly Elder John Leland (1754-1841). … Continue reading →

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1831: A Loud Noise in the Heavens

Posted on August 19, 2017 by corvusfugit

Nat Turner’s bible (source) And on the 12th of May, 1828, I heard a loud noise in the heavens, and the Spirit instantly appeared to me and said the Serpent was loosened, and Christ had laid down the yoke he … Continue reading →

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1862: That Time Abraham Lincoln Levitated on a Piano

Posted on July 15, 2017 by corvusfugit

Fayette Hall’s  Secret and Political History of the War of the Rebellion (1890) (here) is an interesting example of conspiracy theory from the turn of the century, blaming “Abraham Lincoln’s lust for power, and the people’s greed for gold, or … Continue reading →

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1852: What, to the Slave

Posted on July 4, 2017 by corvusfugit

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, … Continue reading →

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3rd Century AD: A Slave Rebellion on Chios

Posted on June 4, 2017 by corvusfugit

Athenaeus of Naucratis relates the story of a slave revolt in an early 3rd-century Greek work called the Deipnosophistae. It takes place on the Greek island of Chios, close to what is now Turkey. Athenaeus first explains that, unlike other … Continue reading →

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1845: Frederick Douglass Visits Ireland

Posted on May 13, 2017 by corvusfugit

Shortly after the 1845 publication of his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Frederick Douglass left the US for a two-year tour of Ireland and Britain. During his time in Ireland, he befriended and appeared on … Continue reading →

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