The Black History They Won’t Tell You In School: A Legacy of Armed Resistance
One of my biggest gripes with how Black History is often told is the information people choose to leave out. In fact, I would argue that if the history that is often ignored were actually placed front and center, America would have a different view of Black Americans and how they responded to the troubles they faced.
If one only had access to the history we are told, they would likely come away with the impression that Black people, from slavery until modern times, were helpless victims put upon by white oppressors. They might believe that any resistance against oppression was limited to Nat Turner’s slave rebellion and Harriet Tubman’s courageous endeavor to lead runaway slaves to freedom.
This is so far from the truth that I was infuriated when I finally began learning about the bravery of the many Black Americans who did not cower in the face of oppression but took up arms to fight violently against it. Those in charge of the storytelling leave out the reality that Black Americans often violently resisted oppression, a critical aspect frequently omitted in mainstream historical narratives.
During the month of February, students all across the country learn about historical figures such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others who advocated for peaceful resistance. They discuss how, in the days of chattel slavery, slaves used the Underground Railroad to evade slave catchers and find their way to freedom.
The abolitionists are often a focal point. However, there appears to be a conspicuous hyperfocus on figures like William Lloyd Garrison, who advocated for a pacifist approach to freeing slaves. Frederick Douglass, a former slave who ascribed to Garrison’s way of thinking, is also known for his support of pacificism.
What they don’t tell us is that Douglass later changed his mind on nonviolence shortly after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, which empowered southern slave owners to regain their former slaves who fled to the North. Slave catchers ventured into non-slave states to retake “property” on behalf of slave masters in the South. Indeed, in many cases, they enlisted the aid of the government through U.S. Marshalls to assist in these endeavors.
This development drove Douglass to rethink violence. He eventually came around to the idea that armed resistance and self-defense was essential. Even further, he supported the use of overt political violence and slave insurrections.
Douglass later broke away from the Garrison camp and exhorted fugitives and freedmen to take up arms to defend their freedom. “A good revolver, a steady hand and a determination to shoot down any man attempting to kidnap … Every slave hunter who meets a bloody death in his infernal business is an argument in favor of the manhood of our race,” he famously said.
In his book, “Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms,” author Nicholas Johnson chronicles story after story of the exploits of Black men and women who stood against their oppressors with guns in hand. Our mainstream whitewashed history would have us believe that Blacks simply fled and hid from slave catchers. The truth is that while some avoided their kidnappers, there were plenty who simply shot them.
Take the story of Ned and Lucy Page, which occurred in 1806 near Dayton, Ohio. Ned and his wife were a free couple having been brought from Kentucky under conditions that dissolved claims to them as property. Nevertheless, they found themselves facing down two armed White men in a tavern intent on bringing them back to bondage.
“Ned Page pulled a pistol from his pack, squared up his sights, and threatened to kill rather than be taken. A clutch of friends surrounded him in support. The slave catchers were apprehended and charged with breach of the peace,” Johnson wrote.
There is also the case of a group of runaway slaves named Barnaby Grigby, Mary Elizabeth Grigby, Frank Wanzer, and Emily Foster. They fled their Virginia plantation, stealing their master’s “best horses and carriage” and made the trek North.
Upon reaching the Cheat River Valley in Maryland, they encountered a group of “six white men and a boy,” who believed the group looked suspicious. Johnson quotes the account of William Still, known as the “father of the Underground Railroad,” who documented the group’s story, as well as plenty of others.
Shortly after encountering the group, the fugitives, “verily believing that the time had arrived for the practical use of their pistols and dirks, pulled them out of their concealment—the young women as well as the young men—and declared they would not be taken!”
Still writes that “[o]ne of the white men raised his gun, pointing the muzzle directly towards one of the young women, with the threat that he would ‘shoot.’”
The Black female fugitive was unafraid. “Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!” she yelled at her would-be assailant while holding a double-barreled pistol in one hand and a “long dirk knife” in the other.
By this time, the male leader of the fugitives had “pulled back the hammers” of his “pistols” and was ready to let loose some serious ordnance.
The White group, not wishing to get themselves into a risky confrontation, “sidled over to the other side of the road,” and allowed the fugitives to stroll past.
In another story that took place in 1836 in Swedesboro, New Jersey, a Black family was apprehended by a professional bounty hunter and locked in the basement of a local tavern. Little did the bounty hunter know, he was about to face 40 Black men who were friends and neighbors of the family he kidnapped. To make matters worse, they were armed.
These people, “armed with rifles, muskets, and pistols, riddled the building with bullets and grape shot,” according to Johnson’s retelling. “The tavern owner, now ad hoc warden, got the worst of the deal. His building was ventilated and his return fire hit no one except a white bystander.”
The impact of these instances of armed resistance inspired many Black men and women, both slave and free. It also motivated White and Black abolitionists who were bent on seeing the slaves set free. They also played an essential part in encouraging Black people to fight for their Second Amendment rights after chattel slavery was abolished and southern states passed laws intended to disarm them.
Yet, chances are, this is the first time you have seen stories such as this, if you grew up with the mainstream version of history. I can assure you that these harrowing tales are but a drop in the ocean. There are many such stories told in various places, many of which were documented by Johnson.
Nevertheless, we continue learning the sanitized version of this history that gives the impression that Black folks throughout history were holding hands and singing “Kumbaya” all while hoping that oppression did not catch up with them. In reality, these people stood up to their oppressors and fought hard, even when they did not win. They were not the helpless victims Hollywood and propagandistic historians have portrayed, but stalwart warriors fighting for their liberty.
So, why would modern-day historians choose to focus on Black Americans being oppressed and defeated by White men? Without being able to read minds, it may not be possible to know for sure. But I would submit to you that these omissions were aimed at painting a picture of a meek people who needed rescuing by White saviors.
It is a narrative that plays out even in today’s politics. Talk of self-sufficiency and grit have become largely subservient to those who would rather view us as victims than those who overcame adversity. The history on which we choose to focus only further helps mold that narrative. Perhaps, for Black America, it is time to start telling some different stories.
Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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Those are some good stories that need to be told. No, enslaved people weren't all meek and mild and sitting around singing Negro spirituals waiting for the Great Liberator to come--in fact, one of my own ancestors almost certainly didn't do that since that side of the family were free Blacks from at least the early 1700s on in what is now eastern Tennessee--but the fact remains that the slave population of the South could not have won their freedom on their own at the time, and that it was the rise of industrial capitalism that doomed the slave economy as much as anything else.
None of that diminishes the heroism of the Blacks who often effectively resisted the slave system at all, and there were white antagonists who KNEW that. Another of my ancestors was a Confederate soldier who was at Bentonville, fought Black troops, and concluded that racism was bullshit because they were the best soldiers he ever fought, and he'd been at Shiloh, Chattanooga, and Atlanta.
The fact is it took a civil war to end slavery in the United States, and a LOT of white folks died in horrible fashion to pay the bill for doing that. They don't deserve all the credit, but they deserve to be remembered just as much as the Blacks who freed themselves.
Funny you post this and on a ghost hunting show I am watching what is on. It is about the 1811 slave revolt in LA. People in the area that they talked to about the history discussed how they tried to hide this at the time. Short history some slaves rebelled with one person as the leader and killed their slave owner and took off across the swamp. It ended up a group of 500 slaves who planned on making their own black state. They failed, but shows what you are talking about. Very interesting story from history.