Author: Kellie Carter Jackson
Title: Force and Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence
Narrator: Machelle Williams
Publication Info: Tantor Media, Inc , 2021.
Summary/Review:
Kellie Carter Jackson is one of my favorite historians/public intellectuals who is a co-host of the podcast “This Day in Political Esoteric History” with Jody Avirgan and Nicole Hemmer. In this work she traces the use of force by Black activists against white supremacy in the United States. Nonviolent protest and violent action are often seen in a binary, but Jackson lays out the use of force as a continuum.
As the abolitionist movement emerged in the 1820s & 1830s, white leaders like William Lloyd Garrison were often pacifists. There was good reasons to adopt a pacifist approach as the slaveholder elite had the power and weaponry to suppress uprisings, carry out collective punishments, and use Black violence as a means to further justify slavery. But the idea that “moral suasion” would change the minds of white supremacists was also unrealistic, and it was patronizing to tell enslaved Black people to quietly endure the violence of enslavement. It was also contradictory for white Americans to celebrate the founding generation who gained liberation from Britain through violence to deny that as a means for Black people to gain their liberation.
Jackson lays out the many different ways Black people used force against slavery in the decades leading up to abolition. In everyday resistance by enslaved people there were work stoppages, destruction of tools, and other acts of sabotage. Uprisings of enslaved peoples such as those Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vessey, and Nat Turner struck fear into the hearts of the white enslavers. Reminders of the successful Haitian Revolution were also used to make white supremacists paranoid.
In the north, force was used to protect Black communities from white violence. This became particularly important after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 allowed bounty hunters to snatch people who escaped from slavery (and some freeborn people) off the streets. Vigilance committees were formed to protect potential targets and to free anyone captured by bounty hunters.
The chapter on the raid of Harper’s Ferry, a violent uprising lead by the white abolitionist John Brown, focuses on the incident from the Black perspective. Brown drew influence for the use of force from Black leaders going back as far as David Walker, and Harriet Tubman participated in recruiting (although she missed the raid itself). Other Black leaders like Frederick Douglass were skeptical of Brown’s plan and were not interested in participating. Brown’s failure to gain the trust of enslaved people on nearby plantations contributed to the ultimate failure of raid to initiate a widespread revolt.
Jackson’s book is fascinating look at a part of Black history that has not so much been overlooked, but worse, discredited in comparison to mistaken understanding of Martin Luther King, Jr and the use of nonviolence in the Civil Rights Movement of the 20th century.
Recommended books:
Rating: ****
Panorama of the Mountains 