#negro seamen act

[lboogie1906]

Ambassador Barbara Mae Watson (November 5, 1918 - February 18, 1983) businesswoman, lawyer, government executive, and diplomat, was born in New York City. She was the daughter of James S. Watson, the first Black judge elected in New York State, and his wife, Violet Lopez Watson, one of the founders of the National Council of Negro Women. Barbara M. Watson was the sister of James Lopez Watson and the cousin of General Colin L. Powell.

After graduating from Barnard College, she took a job as an interviewer for the United Seamen’s Service. She founded a modeling agency and charm school, Barbara Watson Models, serving as the agency’s executive director (1946-56).

She served as coordinator of Student Activities at Hampton Institute. Upon graduation from New York Law School, she worked as an attorney with three New York City government agencies; the Board of Statutory Consolidation of the City of New York, the Office of the Corporation Counsel of the City of New York, and as director of the New York City Commission to the UN.

She joined the US Department of State as special assistant to the Deputy Under Secretary of State for Administration. She became Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Security and Consular Affairs and served as Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Security and Consular Affairs (1966-68).

She was the first Black Assistant Secretary of State and the first woman to serve as Assistant Secretary of State.

President Lyndon Johnson nominated her as Assistant Secretary of State for Security and Consular Affairs (1968-74). She took a job with Walter Annenberg’s Triangle Publications as a legal consultant. She lectured at several colleges and universities. President Jimmy Carter appointed her Ambassador to Malaysia (1980-81). #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence #deltasigmatheta

[gravalicious]

Hunt’s arguments are noteworthy in several interrelated respects. First, he equated the Negro Seamen Act to quarantine. Foreign free black sailors (that is, from outside South Carolina) were literally infected. Their ailment was a “moral pestilence.” “In South Carolina,” Hunt reasoned, “we think the presence of a free negro, fresh from the lectures of an Abolition Society equally dangerous” as “the importation of yellow-fever.” Hunt stated emphatically: “Were Great Britain to send her convicts or incurables to our shores, the prohibition of their entry would be no regulation of commerce.” The police power of South Carolina, his argument went (and the Taney court later endorsed in New York v. Miln), was wholly competent to interdict the entry of all dangerous outsiders, whether the danger was biological or moral in nature. Intermittently over the next forty years, commentators on the Negro Seamen Act wrestled with this view of police power and the application of quarantine for the suppression of “moral contagions.”[12] Second, Hunt made no comment regarding the rights of free blacks, whether subjects, citizens, or subsumed under another category. Quarantine measures took no cognizance of nationality, of rights, or of treaties. If a person was sick and contagious he could be prevented from interacting with susceptible populations on shore. The infection determined the application of the law. Thus, the legal status of the sailor was immaterial. Third, Hunt never bothered to consider whether the sailors harbored dangerous and infectious ideas. This tendency—to assume that all free black sailors automatically carried with them a “moral pestilence”—undergirded the entire rationale for race-based “quarantines.” Hunt’s decision to leave the real issue—the writ of habeas corpus—as a postscript afforded Justice Johnson the opportunity to do the same thing. Johnson treated the jurisdictional problem as an afterthought and instead focused his energies on constitutional arguments. In front of hundreds who filled the courtroom to hear his decision, Johnson refuted nearly every one of Hunt’s conclusions. He doubted that the law in question was a police regulation at all, and a quarantine in particular. Quarantine measures are put in place to prevent interaction between the infected and the vulnerable. Yet, the very penalty for entering the state, Johnson explained, “put[s] the firebrand under our own houses.” In other words, Johnson wondered why these sailors would be put in a jail designed for delinquent, domestic slaves if the goal of the law was the isolation of contagion.[13]

Michael A. Schoeppner - Status across Borders: Roger Taney, Black British Subjects, and a Diplomatic Antecedent to the Dred Scott Decision [The Journal of American History, Vol. 100, No. 1 (June 2013), pp. 46-67]

[newhistorybooks]

"Schoeppner's pathbreaking book reconceptualizes the national story of citizenship to include a broader cast of characters and an earlier timeline, demonstrating the significance of the Negro Seamen Acts to American legal history. This elegantly-written work reminds us of the centrality of movement for African Americans as they struggled over the meaning of citizenship rights."

[sonofhistory]

Part I: Thomas Hutchinson Before the Revolution

Despite his lack of training as a lawyer, Thomas Hutchinson had been appointed by Governor Bernard to replace the chief justice who had passed away. In Boston, Massachusetts, few men represented entrenched privilege more than Thomas Hutchinson. The Hutchinsons had been successful businessmen for generations, and Thomas had been brought up to be a member of Boston’s ruling class, although he had problems within the family. His father suffered from nervous disorders that kept him shut up in his house for weeks and from chronic insomnia, and he had lost two favorite sons and a daughter to smallpox and consumption.

By the time Thomas Hutchinson entered Harvard College, two months before his twelfth birthday, his character was already formed. Thomas would remember his Greek lessons with clarity but loved history the best and wept at the account of Charles I’s beheading. At college, Thomas began his business career by trading several hundred pounds of fish his father had given him. By graduation, he had built that capital into nearly five hundred pounds sterling. When he married, at twenty-three, Thomas was six-foot-tall and his seventeen year old bride was the daughter a man who had been the Hutchinsons business partner for four generations. Thomas was normally aloof, but it was a good marriage. He would remark that the intimacy he found with Peggy Hutchinson was proof that he had a soul.

Hutchinson turned naturally to public service and in 1737, at the age of twenty-six was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, ignoring his father, who warned him, “Depend on it, if you serve your country faithfully, you will be reproached and reviled for doing it.” Hutchinson used his mastery of economics to defend Boston’s aristocrats against challenges from a growing party of workers and shop keepers. When Boston went through periods of inflation, Hutchinson antagonized much of the town by advocating hard money politics. The economic contractions that followed turned his name to a curse among the town’s working people. When his house caught fire, crowds gathered, shouting, “Let it burn!”

Hutchinson remained within a close circle of family and prosperous friends. He considered it contemptible to seek a wider popularity and described the multitude as “foreign seamen, servants, Negroes and other persons of mean and vile conditions.” His conservative fiscal policies cost him a seat in the house and the Governor named him to the council. In 1754, Peggy Hutchinson did at the end of her twelfth pregnancy. Hutchinson had always believed that religion was essential to a well-ordered society. He buried his wife and moved with his four children and new daughter.

When Hutchinson returned to public life, he served first as an aide to the royal governor, then as his lieutenant. He fought successfully to preside over the Council. He was also a judge of probate, a justice of common pleases and governor of Castle William. He planned to publish his version of the history of Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Hutchinson’s constant appointment not only bugged John Adams but was disturbing to James Otis. When the Chief Justice died in September, Otis had called on Hutchinson to ask his help in achieving an appointment to the court for his father, speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Hutchinson swore later that he had told Otis candidly that he had considered the appointment but that he wasn’t sure he would accept if offered to him. Otis left convinced Hutchinson said he would turn it down. When Otis became speaker of the house, Hutchinson said it was only because he had done “little low dirty things” that no reputable person would stoop to doing.

Two months passed after James Otis’ appeal to Hutchinson until, mid-november when Governor Bernard told Hutchinson that he wanted him as chief justice. Hutchinson warned him he might be courting trouble by disappearing the Otises, and he added that around town James Otis was threatening violence if his father was not chosen. But Bernard offered Hutchinson the job and added that whatever his answer, he did not intend to appoint Speaker Otis. Hutchinson accepted the position. 

As lieutenant governor, Hutchinson was already the colony’s deputy executive. As president of the Council he was its ranking legislator. Now he would told the highest judicial post. When he heard about the appointment, James Otis was enraged. Thomas Hutchinson soon concluded that whenever Otis was annoyed by anyone, anywhere i the colony, he would take his revenge on Hutchinson. Otis wrote an antagonist antigovernment statement to the Boston Gazette and Hutchinson considered suing for libel. 

In reaction to the Stamp Act, Hutchinson worried that a concerted action by the colonies was likely to bring together every demagogue on the American continent. To stop letters against the Act to be send, Hutchinson, acting a lieutenant governor, shut down the session. Another time, King George III was burned in effigy and Hutchinson sent out Sheriff Greenleaf with order to cut the effigy down. The rioters soon broke open stables and dragged out public officials of loyal to the crown. Hutchinson collared Greenleaf and demanded they force the rioters to disperse. Hutchinson had barely begun to speak to the crowd when a shout went up: ”To your arms, my boys!”. Hutchinson and Greenleaf were soon pelted with stones an forced to retreat. 

When the assault finished, they then hurried to Hutchinson’s house. Hutchinson has counseled London against the Stamp Act, but his attempt the night before to quell the rebellion made it easy to believe he supported the tax. Hutchinson heard fits beating on his door and the voices demanding that he come onto his balcony and swear that he had not endorsed the act. His courage, or pride, prevented the lieutenant governor from bowing to the will of the mob. He braced for the worse and gave no answer. Before any ransacking could begin, a neighbor called from his window that he had seen the family in their carriage, heading for the country house. 

After the family returned from there country house a while later, his friends reassured Hutchinson that he house would not be hurt nor his family. On August 25th 1765, in the early morning, Thomas Hutchinson, by afternoon, was hearing rumors that a mob was being raised again. He even knew it would attack officers from the Custom House and the Admiralty office. Friends said his courage in the rocks and insults won the mob’s respect. However, for some reason, thought filling with anxiety, Hutchinson believed their words. 

At supper that evening, the night was warm and he was dressed informally in a woolen jacket over his waistcoat. Around him at the table was his sister-in-law, Grizell Sanford, who had raised his children since his wife’s death; his eldest sons Thomas Junior and Elisha, graduates of Harvard who were training to become merchant; Sarah, a daughter; Billy, Hutchinsons’s youngest son; and Peggy, her father’s favorite, only eleven years old and already acting as his secretary. 

As the family ate, a friend burst in through the door to warm them that the mob was indeed heading their way. Hutchinson sent the children from the house and bolted the doors and shutters, determined to wait out the assault. But Sarah came running back to say that she would not leave unless he came away with them and her father did not resist before hurrying away to a neibours house. A few minutes after his escaped, the mob descended upon the Hutchinson home in a fervor for hatred and violence. One of the Hutchinson sons was near enough to witness and hear the axes splitting the front door and heard a cry into the night: “Damn him! He is upstairs! We’ll have him!” 

Some men ran at once to the top of the house, while others swarmed into the drawing room and raided the basement for liquor. Merely breaking windows and furniture was not enough for the pulsating crowd. Instead, the men shattered inner does, beat down the walls and crashed the chandeliers. Standing in the upstairs windows, then they split open all the mattresses and covered the lawn in a “summer blizzard” of features. After two hours, they left. 

Word reached the Hutchinsons in their hiding place but the crowd “picked up his scent” and he wound his way through neibouring yards and gardens to a house even farther away. he stayed there unsleeping until four AM; by then, the mansion was splintered to a shell. Near dawn, men were still crouched on the roof prying up the wooding. Every fruit tree had been cut down to a stump. A strongbox had been broken and nine hundred pounds was stolen as well as clothes and books destroyed. 

The next morning, Hutchinson’s fellow justices took their places in court when he arrived. he was wearing what he had fled in. He was pale after a sleepless night and his clothes were “trampled in the streets.” He received pity, even from Josiah Quincy. Quincy described it in his diary, “thus habited, with tears starting from his eyes and a countenance which strongly told the inward anguish of his soul.”Hutchinson rose to speak and rejected any suggestions he was speaking for sympathy. He had come to count because “there wouldn’t of been a quorum without him.” Hutchinson in the words of A.J. Langguth “demonstrated[ed] that the patriotic leaders had no monopoly on eloquence.” But he added “some apology is necessary for my dress,” he said, “indeed, I have no other. Destitute of everything: no other shirt, no other garment but what I have on, and not one in my family in a better situation than myself.” 

He wished to acquit himself, “I am not obliged to give an answer to all the questions that may be put me to me by every lawless person, yet I call on God as my witness–and I would not, for a thousand worlds, call my Maker to witness a falsehood–I say I call my maker to witness that I never, in New England or Old, in Great Britain or America, either directly not indirectly, was aiding, assisting or supporting–in the least promoting or encouraging–what is commonly called the Stamp Act but, on the contrary, did all in my power, and store as much as in me lay, to prevent it. 

“This is not declared through timidity, for I have nothing to fear. They can only take away my life, which is of but little value when deprived of all its comforts, all that was dear to me…” Hutchinson hoped the people would see how easy it was to spread false reports against the innocent. But violence was wrong, even against the guilty. “I hope all will see how easily the people may be deluded, inflamed and carried away with madness against an innocent man.”

“I pray God give us better hearts!”

The governor raised three hundred pounds the bounty for identifying the mob’s leader. Hutchinson was not surprised when the reward went unclaimed and the sheriff arrested nobody. Otis riled the crowds so much they were disappointed that Hutchinson no longer had a house for them to destroy.  Ever since his house was destroyed, Hutchinson thought of spending some time in London and now his friends were assuring him that his life was in danger. Hutchinson rode into Boston, expecting to find such turmoil that he would have to escape immediately to New Hampshire and book the next passage to England. Instead, the town was sullen but peaceful. 

Consulting with the governor, Hutchinson found another way to advance his family’s fortunes. Even if he didn’t go abroad, he would leave the court temporarily and allow his brother to take his place. Suddenly, after this change, Otis wasn't willing to appear in court and Hutchinson fabricated a reason to be out of Boston during this. In accordance to his misfortune, Hutchinson only wishes that the same misery could be visited upon James Otis, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, William Molineux and another fifty patriots he could name. Hutchinson could never appreciate that Americans are not longer children and would not pretend to be. Hutchinson forwarded to London an affidavit from Richard Sylvester that accused Samuel Adams of open calls to rebellion agains the English troops. 

Throughout much of his life, Hutchinson had wanted to be governor. Now, when the job was worse than worthless, his wish was being granted against his will. He had asked to stay on merely as Chief Justice, but London ordered him to assume Bernard’s duties as we'll. Since no announcement has been made about Bernard remaining in England, Hutchinson’s title would be acting governor. The Boston Gazette upped its attack more frequently after this news because public. In Hutchinson’s Council, he refused to authorize used of British troops to put down rebellions or disturbances. 

When the nonimportation agreement ended officially, on New Year's Day, 1770, Thomas Hutchinson and his two sons were eager to begin turning to profit. Hutchinson’s sons rejected the new restrictions, however, saying nothing could go on sale before it took a ship to sail to London and returned. They broke off the locks that the Committee of Inspection had fastened to the doors of their warehouses and moved the tea to a hiding place. Thomas Jr, thirty years old, and Elisha, twenty-five lived with their father. The next morning they send away the wagons that patriots had brought to collect their tea. Leaders including Otis and Molineux gathered outside of his home and from a window Hutchins asked them what the wanted. Molineux said, “it is not you but your sons we desire to see.”

One of the sons came tot and beside his father at the window. Hutchinson invoked the king’s authority and warned the crowd to leave. No one moved. Hutchinson chided Otis for lending himself to an illegal assembly. The acting governor said that he would make out six or seven of the men who had helped tear dow his house four and a half years old. “Gentleman,” Hutchins started, “when I was attacked before, I was a private person. I am now the representation of the greatest monarchy on earth, whose majesty you affront in thus treating my person.”

After the mob left, Hutchinson encountered more resistance. He wanted to use troops to disband Samuel Adams’ irregular assemblies in Faneuil Hall but the Council continued to refuse his request. The next morning, Hutchinson send word over that he would see that his sons turned over their tea, along with any money they had received from that already sold. It was the bitterest moment of Thomas Hutchinson’s political life. Even the destruction of his home, he wrote afterward, had not distressed him as much. 

On Monday morning, March 5th, 1770, Hutchinson laid before the council a letter complaining about the town’s mood towards the British soldiers there to keep order. The Council replied that the people would never be satisfied until the troops were removed. In response to the Boston Massacre, it was Hutchinson who suggested John Adams be the defending lawyer for the British soldiers of whom had fired their weapons on the people and killed five. “The law shall have its course!” Hutchinson cried, “I will live and die by the law!” Hutchinson may have chosen Adams because he had observed him in court and believed he was the best lawyer for so difficult a case. 

In retaliation for Josiah Quincy denouncing Hutchinson’s administration, and, as Chief Justice, Hutchinson denied Josiah the long robes of a barrister; instead, he had to plead his cases in street clothes. By the end of March, Hutchinson sent his resignation to Lord Hillsborough in London. The job of governor, Hutchinson wrote, demanded a man of greater powers that his. He asked only to be allowed to resume the post of chief justice. His letter was late in arriving. In the meantimes Francis Bernard had lobbied to have Hutchinson named as his replacement. When Hutchinson’s resignation reached London, they wrote to assure him that no one had ever given London more satisfaction than he. It Hutchinson accepted the governorship, he would never regret it. Against his instincts, Hutchinson allowed himself to be persuaded. 

[presentwarquotes]

Notifications, Orders, and Instructions: Relating to Prize Subjects during the Present War, 1813

Page 1: Instructions: Article I: That it shall be lawful for the commanders of ships authorized by letters of marque and reprisals for private men of war, to set upon by force of arms, and subdue and take the men of war, ships, and vessels, goods, wares, and merchandises, belonging to the French Republic, or to any persons being subjects of the French Republic, or inhabiting within any of the territories of the French Republic, but so as that no hostility be committed, nor prize attacked, seized, or taken, within the harbors of princes and states in amity with us, or in their rivers or roads within the shot of their cannon, unless by permission of such princes or states, or of their commanders or governors in chief in such places.

Page 55: All our ministers are charged with the execution of the present decree, which shall be inserted in the Bulletin of the laws. (*) SPANISH DECREE. Aranjuen, 19th Feb. 1807. [Spanish corresponding decree, 19th Feb. 1807.] By the greatest outrage against humanity and against policy, Spain was forced by Great Britain to take part in the present war. This power has exercised over the sea, and over the commerce of the world, an exclusive dominion. Her numerous factories, disseminated though all countries, are like sponges, which imbibe the riches of those countries without leaving them more than the appearances of mercantile liberty. From this maritime and commercial despotism England derives immense resources for carrying on a war, whose object is to destroy the commerce which belongs to each state from its industry and situation. Experience has proved that the morality of the British cabinet has no hesitation as to the means, so long as they lead to the accomplishment of its designs; and whilst this power can continue to enjoy the fruits of its immense traffic, humanity will groan under the weight of a desolating war. To put an end to this, and to obtain a solid peace, the Emperor of the French and King of Italy issued a decree on the 21st of November last, in which, adopting the principle of reprisals, the blockade of the British Isles is determined on; and his Ambassador, his Excellency Francis de Bourharnois, Grand Dignitary of the Iron Crown, of the Legion of Honor, etc. etc. having communicated this decree to the King our master; and his Majesty being desirous to cooperate by means sanctioned by the rights of reciprocity, has been pleased to authorize his Most Serene Highness the Prince Generalissimo of the Marine, to issue a circular of the following tenor.

Page 91: Whereas, by an Act of Parliament made in the 47th year of our reign, intituld, “An Act for the abolishing of the Slave Trade,” it is among other things enacted and provided, that all slaves, and all natives of Africa, treated, dealt with, carried, kept, or detained as slaves, which shall be seized or taken as prize of war, shall and may for the purposes only of seizure, prosecution, and condemnation as prize, be considered, treated, taken, and adjudged as slaves and property, in the same manner as negro slaves have been heretofore considered, treated, taken, and adjudged, when seized as prize of war; but the same shall be condemned to our use for the purpose only of divesting and barring all other property, right, title or interest whatever which before existed, or might afterwards be set up or claimed in or to such slaves or natives of Africa; and that the same shall nevertheless in no case be liable to be sold, disposed of, treated, or dealt with a slaves, by or on the part of us, our heirs or successors, or by or on the part of any person or persons claiming by or undue us, our heirs and successors, or under or by force of any such sentence of condemnation: Provide always, that it shall be lawful for us, our heirs and successors, and such officers, civil or military, as shall, by any our general and social order in Council, be from time to time appointed and empowered to receive, protect, and provide for such natives of Africa as shall be so condemned, to enter, enlist, and apprentice, and provide for the same in such manner as therein is mentioned: Provided also, and it is thereby further enacted, that when any slaves or natives of Africa, taken as prize of war by any of our ships of war or privateers duly commission, shall be finally condemned as such to our use as aforesaid, there shall be paid to the captors thereof, by the Treasurer of our Navy, in like manner as the bounty call head money is now paid by virtue of an Act of Parliament made in the 45th year of our reign, intituled, “An Act for the encouragement of seamen and for the better and more effectually manning our navy during the present war,” such bounty as we, our heirs and successors, shall have directed by any order in Council, so as the same shall not exceed the respective sums therein and hereinafter mentioned, for every such slave or native of Africa, that shall be so taken and condemned, and delivered over in good health to the proper officer or officers, civil or military, so to be appointed as aforesaid, to receive, protect, and provide for the same.

[capturedvessel]

Henry K. Brooke, Book of Pirates, 1841

Page 32: Williams, who acted as lieutenant of the vessel, and was distinguished by the ferocity of his nature, had an opportunity of exerting his cruelty, by beating these unhappy sailors, a privilege that he did not fail to exert with a degree of severity that rendered his very name detestable. The ship thus seized, had been called the George Galley, but the pirates gave her the name of the Revenge,and having mounted several guns, they steered towards Spain and Portugal, in expectation of making a capture of wine, of which they were greatly in want. They soon made prize of an English vessel laden with fish, bound from Newfoundland to Cadiz; but having no use for the cargo, they took out the captain and four men who navigated the ship, which they sunk. One of the seamen whom they took out of the captured vessel, was named James Belvin, a man admirably calculated for their purpose, as he was by nature cruel, and by practice hardened in that cruelty. He said to Gow that he was willing to enter into all his schemes, for he had been accustomed to the practice of acts of barbarity. This man was thought a valuable acquisition to the crew, as several of the others appeared to act from motives of fear, rather than of inclination. The next vessel taken by the pirates was a Scotch ship bound to Italy with pickled herrings; but this cargo, like the former, being of no use to them, they sunk the vessel, having first taken out the men, arms, ammunition, and stores.

Page 36: No engagement happened with the French ship, which held on her way, and two days afterwards the pirates took a ship belonging to Bristol, which was laden with salt fish, and bound from Newfoundland to Oporto. Having taken out the provisions, and many of the stores, they compelled two of the crew to sail with them, and then put the French prisoners on board the newly captured vessel which was just on the point of sailing, when they began to reflect in what manner Williams should be disposed of. At length they determined to put him on board the Bristol ship, the commander of which was desired to turn him over to the first English man of war he should meet with, that he might experience the justice due to this crimes; and in the meantime to keep him in the stricter confinement.

Page 131: About the latter end of August, Vane, with his consort Yeats, came off South Carolina, and took a ship belonging to Ipswich, laden with logwood. This was thought convenient enough for their own business, and therefore they ordered their prisoners to work, and threw all the lading overboard; but when they had more than half cleared the ship, the whim changed, and they would not have her: so Coggershall, the captain of the captured vessel, had his ship again, and he was suffered to pursue his voyage home. In this voyage the pirates took several ships and vessels, particularly a sloop from Barbados, a small ship from Antigua, a sloop belonging to Curacoa, and a large brigantine from Guinea, with upwards of ninety negroes aboard. The pirates plundered them all and let them go, putting the negroes out of the brigantine aboard Yeats’ vessel.

Page 209: He then pointed to a vessel of forty guns, and a hundred and fifty men; and though her strength was greatly superior to Roberts, yet he made towards her, taking the master of the captured vessel along with him. Coming alongside of her, Roberts ordered the prisoner to ask, “How Seignior Captain did?” and to invite him on board, as he had a matter of importance to impart to him. He was answered, “That he would wait upon him presently.” Roberts, however, observing more than ordinary bustle on board, at once concluded that they were discovered, and pouring a broadside into her, they immediately boarded, grappled, and took her. She was a very rich prize, laden with sugar, skins, and tobacco, with four thousand moidores of gold, besides other valuable articles.

[1baddmouthcrown]

1728 September the British send more troops to Jamaica and later on in the year also send a new governor, Major General Robort Hunter.

1929 Maroon leader Jeddo leads an attack on the North East town Port Antonio.

1730 Lieutenant Soaper soldiers are ambushed by the windward maroons.

1731 Two British regiments are sent to Hunter.

1732 Hunters three parties capture the stronghold of the Windward Maroon leader Nanny overlooking stony river from a 900ft ridge in the Blue Mountains of the parish of Portland.

1733 Hunter party British seamen are ambushed by the Windward maroons ambushed.

1734 The Windward Maroons parishes of Portland and St. George, and loose the Black Shot forces. Hunter dies and John Ayscough is appointed governor in his place. Nanny Town is recaptured. Captain Shuttlewood’s party defeated, the Maroons attack an estate in Saint George including fort and barracks.

1673 200 slaves revolt in the parish of St. Ann and form the Maroons in the parish of St. George.

1739 Leeward Maroon leader Chief Cudjoe signs treaty with British colonel John Guthrie and Captain Francis Sadler troops sent by the British governor Edward Trelawny suspicious of being tricked send forth kissed Guthrie’s hand and embraced his legs and kissed his feet giving the Maroons 1500 acres in Cockpit Country between Cudjoes town of Trelawny in the mountains of the parish of St. James and Akan Maroon leader Accompong’s town in the hills of the parish of St. Elizabeth, however the town itself not included, Accompong named as Cudjoes successor, return runaway slaves for $2 each.

1690 400 slaves revolt on the Sutton plantation in the parish of Clarendon. 

Milton McFarione according to the oral Cudjoe was the son Naquan the leader of the Sutton plantation.

1740 June 23 July Quao signs treaty with Robert Bennett and Nanny signs treaty giving them 500 acres of land Nanny New Nanny Town (Moore Town) and Quao Crawford Town.

1746 Superintendents are assigned to Crawford Town and Edward Crawford, from who the town gets its name from, is made its leader. 

Lieutenant Ross and militia sent by Governor Charles Knowles to negotiate with Quao.

1751 Thomas Thistlewood Egypt plantation in the parish of Westmoreland meets Captain Cujdoe. "he had on a feather’d hat, Sword at his Side, gun upon his Shoulder...Bare foot and Bare legg’d, somewhat a Majestic look".

1751 - 1758 Saint Domingue Hougan Francois Mackandal.

1753 Phyllis Wheatley born in Africa.

1754 Quao and maroons kill Ned Crawford along with three superintendents.

1756 Accompong Town is granted 1, 000 acres of land by the Jamaican Assembly.

July 30 Thistlewood whips two slaves and “washed and rubbed in salt pickle, lime juice & bird pepper”

August 1 Thistlewood catches runaway slave Hazat “put him in the bilboes both feet; gagged him; rubbed him with molasses & exposed him naked to the flies all day & the mosquitoes all night, without fire”.

1760 May Easter Sunday July Saint Mary, Jamaica Fante chief Tacky Rebellion attack the Frontier and Trinity plantations, raid the English Garrison Fort Haldane in Port Maria gunpowder and firearms and estates Heywood Hall, Esher, Ballards Valley. Obeahman puts portection spell on, Charles Town superintendent Charles Swigle Militia Windward Maroons officers Clash and Sambo from Moore Town, Quaco and Cain from Charles Town and Cudio and Davy from Scotts Hall, the Obeahman is captured and left for to see from their lookout, Scotts Hall Maroon, marksman, Lieutenant Davy. pursues Tacky, shoots him and cuts off his head which is displayed on a pole in Spainish Town.

1761 July 11 Wheatley is sold by local chief to trader and brought on the ship Phillis to Boston, Massachusetts.

1764 Cudjoe passes away, Governor of Jamaica Roger Hope Elletson Superintendent John James Twelawny Town Maroon officer Lewis James.

1767 Wheatley at age of 14 writes her first poem “To the University of Cambridge, in New England”.

1768 Wheatley writes her poem "To the King's Most Excellent Majesty"George III repealing the stamp act.

1770 Wheatley writes her poem, a tribute to George Whitefield entitled.

February 14 Scottish explorer James Bruce of Kinnaird arrives in Gondar received by Emperor Tekle Haymanot II, Ras Michael Sehul.

November 14 Bruce reaches Gish Abay the source of the Lesser Abay.

1772 Wheatley defends the authorship of her poems in court of Boston luminaries.

1773 Superintendent appoints Maroon captains Crankey and Muncko as his officers in the Town of Accompong.

Wheatley travels to London and at the age of just 20 has her book Poems on Subjects Religious and Moral published and emancipated meets Lord Mayor.

Bruce travels to Paris where he presents Book of Enoch to King Louis XV French National Library.

“A Negro hung alive by the ribs to a gallows”; background shows skulls (presumably of beheaded slaves) on posts. This illustration was based on a 1773 eyewitness description. An incision was made in the victim’s ribs and a hook placed in the hole. In this case, the victim stayed alive for 3 days until clubbed to death by the sentry guarding him who he had insulted. This and other engravings are found in the autobiographical narrative of Stedman, a young Dutchman who joined a military force against rebellions of the enslaved in the Dutch colony. The engravings are based on Stedman’s own drawings and were done by professional engravers. For the definitive modern edition of the original 1790 Stedman manuscript, which includes this and other illustrations see Richard and Sally Price, eds. Narrative of a five years expedition against the revolted Negroes of Surinam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988).

“1773 Flagellation of a Female Samboe Slave.”Shows a female hanging from a tree with deep lacerations; in background two white men and two black men, the latter with whips. Stedman witnessed this event in 1774. The female was an eighteen-year old girl who was given 200 lashes for having refused to have intercourse with an overseer. She was “lacerated in such a shocking manner by the whips of two negro-drivers, that she was from her neck to her ancles literally dyed with blood.”

1775 Wheatley sends a copy of her poem “To His Excellency, George Washington” to him.

1776 March Wheatly accepts Washington’s invitation to visit him in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

April Wheatly’s “To His Excellency, George Washington” poem is also published by Thomas Paine in the Pennsylvania Gazette.

A young free black carpenter being beaten on the rack. Stedman witnessed this scene in 1776. The man (on the orders of white authority) had been accused of stealing a sheep and shooting an overseer who discovered the theft. This method of torture was intended to keep the victim alive long enough to endure extreme pain before his eventual death. In this case, the victim’s left hand was cut off before he died as additional punishment for theft and to serve as an example to others. the above scene is described by Stedman on pp. 546-549 of the Price edition.

Shows a woman carrying a weight chained to her ankle; in background, a man tilling ground with a hoe. The woman was judged guilty of not speaking when spoken to by a white person; for this she received 200 lashes and was forced to carry a 100 lb. weight for several months.

1781 Samuel Grant officer of Charles Town and maroon party kill Three Finger Jack.

Saint Domingue (Haiti), “Pearl of the Antilles” according to in 1787, the French imported 20, 000 slaves from Africa into Saint-Domingue while the British imported about 38, 000 slaves to all of their Caribbean colonies.

1789 August 26 National Assembly publish Declaration of the Rights of Man.

1789 Gens de couleurlibres (free man of color), Vincent Ogé and Julien Raimond right to vote men of their class, approach Grandsblancs planters in Paris and attend meetings at, and become leaders of the Society of the Friends of the Blacks anti slavery society founded in the previous year in Paris by Jacques Pierre Brissot. Oge French National Assembly for representation and voting rights. 

1790 October Oge returns to St. Domingue writes a letter argues that the promulgation of the amendment passed on March 8 by the French National Assembly free men of property citizen vote colonial, refused by Colonial governor Count de Blanchelande, Oge meets with Jean-Baptiste Chavannes, American Revolution veteran,

1790 Oge and Chavannes begin insurgence defeating several militia detachments from Le Cap Francais and are forced to flee and take refuge across the border in Santo Domingo.

Bruce publishes Volume 3 of his Travels to discover the source of the Nile.

November 20 Oge and Chavannes are captured in Hispaniola.

1791 February 6 Oge is broken on the wheel and beheaded in the public square in Le Cap.

August to 1804 Saint Domingue Hougan DuttyBoukman and Mambo Cecile Fatiman begin the Vodou ceremony at Bois Caïman of what becomes the Hatian revolution, lead by Jean Francois Papillon, Georges Biassou and Jeannot Bullet.

September The white militias kill 15, 000 blacks.

Revolution 100, 000 people after two months 4, 000 Whites killed inflicting property damage of a cost of 2 million francs 15, 000 Blacks killed.

Papillon and Biassou execute Jeannot.

Jean Jacques Dessalines becomes a lieutenant in Papillon’s army and with Papillon in Santo Domingo joins the Spainish against the French.

1792 Legislative Assembly dispatch 600 French soldiers under governor Léger-Félicité Sonthonax. August 29 Sonthonax and Étienne Polverel free slaves.

1793 France declare war on Britain. Jacobin Toussaint L'Ouverture is made a Knight of the Spanish order of Saint Isabela. January L'Ouverture loses the fortified post La Tannerie to French General Étienne Maynaud de Bizefranc de Lavaux. August 29 L'Ouverture makes his declaration of Camp Turel and French commissioners Sonthonax and Polverel make their proclamation of emancipation. September 20 600 British soldiers from Jamaica land at Jérémie. September 22  Mole St. Nicolas, the main French naval base in Saint Domingue surrender to the Royal Navy. November 26 General Charles Grey aka "No-flint Grey" and Admiral Sir John Jervis set sail from Portsmouth. 

1794 February 4 the National Convention, the first elected Assembly of the First Republic, under Maximilien Robespierre proclaim the abolition of slavery in all French colonies and giving civil and political rights to all Blacks. February Grey and Jervis arrive in the West Indies Martinique, Saint Lucia and Guadalupe. May 6 L'Ouverture ambushes the Spanish after mass at church at San Raphael. May 19 Troops from Greys force under commander John Whyte arrive in Saint Domingue, march to and take Port Au Prince allowing Sonthonax and the French to leave on condition that they do not burn the 45 ships of sugar in the harbour. May L'Ouverture and Sonthonax command in the North whilst André Rigaud commands in the South. L'Ouverture switches his allegiance and now fights on the side of the French, raises the republican flag over the port of Gonaïves, eradicates all Spanish supporters from Cordon de l'Ouest and joins 4, 000 of his troops with those of Lavaux’s, with his brother Paul, nephew Moise, Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Henri Christophe being among his officers. Rigaud takes the town of Léogâne by storm and drives the British back to Port-au-Prince. December 25 Rigaud takes Tiburon in surprise attack. Soldiers of the 104th, 105th, 111th and 112th regiment in Dublin and Cork, Ireland riot.

1795 April 22 The Brigand War, The Battle of Rabot, Soufrier, Saint Lucia.

July Treaty of Baseline. Jean-François and Biassou fight against L'Ouverture. 

The second Maroon war. The Montego Bay magistrate flogging of two Trelawny Maroons over the theft of two pigs, Governor Alexander Lindsay the 6th Earl of Balcarres has Trelawny Maroons imprisoned.

August 65 British killed by the Trelawny Maroons in the first two weeks, with a total of 16 Trelawny Maroons killed.

Walpole with the 13th Light Dragoons joins the British against the Trelawny Maroons.

Governor Walpole scorched earth strategy dry season.

Balcarres imports 100 bloodhounds from Cuba.

Captain James Palmer of Trelawny shots Captain Chambers and cuts off the Accompong head.

In Trelawny Town Militia Colonel William Finch and Colonel Sanford’s two detachments are ambushed and the Colonels themselves killed.

December Walpole negotiates the terms of surrender with Montague James and his junior officer Lieutenant Major John Jarett, Walpole solemnly promises that the Maroons will not be sent off the island, Balcarres deports 600 Maroons to Nova Scotia including, Walpole resigns.

November Francois and Biassou and leave for Spain and Florida. November 16 The Great Push 30, 000 men on 200 ships under General Ralph Abercromby depart. December 9 wrecked by storm.

1796 March 17 Abercromby arrives in Barbados and despatches force under Major General Gordon Forbes to Port-au-Prince, fails to take French held city of Leogane, French Commander Alexandre Peton uses guns of his fort to sink three ships under Admiral Hyde Parker and then turning his guns to the British, Forbes retreats back to Port au Prince. March 20 Commander Jean-Louis Villatte captures and overthrows French General Lavaux as Governor as part of his plan to ally with Rigaud, L'Ouverture’s troops arrive at Cap-Français to freeing Lavaux and drive Villatte out. May Lavaux promotes L'Ouverture to commander of the West province. Sonthonax arrives with the French third commission, promotes Louverture to General and makes arrangements for L’Ouvetures sons Placide and Issac to attend a school for children of colonials in France. highest ranking officer. June 1 198 of 1, 000 from the Sixty-sixth regiment and 515 of 1, 000 men of the Sixth-ninth regiment not infected with yellow fever. September elections for colonial representatives of the French National Assembly, Louveture both Lavaux and Sonthonax also elected. October Lavaux leaves, Sonthonax stays.

1797 L'Ouverture appointed Lieutenant General second only to Lavaux himself.

5, 000 of Greys 7, 000 die from yellow fever and the Royal Navy 11, 000.

The Battle of Rabot, Soufrier, Saint Lucia recruited to 1st West India Regiment Sierra Leone.

1797 February General John Graves Simcoe replaces Forbes with orders to pull back the British to Port au Prince. April 11 British Colonel Thomas Maitland of the Sixty-second Foot regiment lands in Port-au-Prince. L’Ouverture retakes the fortress at Mirebalais. June 7 L'Ouverture attacks Fort Churchill. July Simcoe and Maitland sail to London to advise withdrawal from colony.

1798 March Maitland returns with mandate to withdraw from Port au Prince. French Commissioner, Gabriel Hédouville, arrives. April 30 L’Ouveture signs treaty with General Maitland for amnesty for French counter revolutionaries. May Port au Prince is returned to French rule. May 10 Maitland meets with Louverture to agree armistice. May 18 The British leave Port au Prince. July L’Ouveture and Rigaud meet Hedouville. August 31 Maitland and L'Ouverture lift the British blockade on the condition L’Ouverture agrees not to involve himself in any rebellion in  Jamaica. Commissioner Hédouville tries to interfere with an insurrection started by L'Ouverture’s adopted nephew Hyacinthe Moïse. October Hédouville sails for France. 

1799 June 16-18 War of Knives, Rigaud sends 4, 000 troops to take the bordering towns of Petit-Goâve and Grand-Goâve, Louverture’s officer Laplume. Petion joins Rigaud with a large contingent of veteran troops. Rigaud North Le Cap, Port de Paix and Mole Saint Nicolas and west central Artibonite plain. Christophe and Dessalines troops. August Louverture U.S. President John Adams blockade ports held by Rigaud. L’Ouverture with  45, 000 – 50, 000 troops Rigaud 15, 000. November Christophe’s army Jacmel whilst Dessalines army Petit and Grand Goave. The U.S. Navy frigate USS General Greene, commanded by Captain Christopher Perry provides Toussaint with fire support Louveture lays siege on Jacmel held by Rigauds forces.

[teachanarchy]

Many Americans might not know the more polemical side of race writing in our history. The canon of African-American literature is well established. Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, James Baldwin are familiar figures. Far less so is Samuel Morton (champion of the obsolete theory of polygenesis) or Thomas Dixon (author of novels romanticizing Klan violence). It is tempting to think that the influence of those dusty polemics ebbed as the dust accumulated. But their legacy persists, freshly shaping much of our racial discourse.

On the occasion of Black History Month, I’ve selected the most influential books on race and the black experience published in the United States for each decade of the nation’s existence — a history of race through ideas, arranged chronologically on the shelf. (In many cases, I’ve added a complementary work, noted with an asterisk.) Each of these books was either published first in the United States or widely read by Americans. They inspired — and sometimes ended — the fiercest debates of their times: debates over slavery, segregation, mass incarceration. They offered racist explanations for inequities, and antiracist correctives. Some — the poems of Phillis Wheatley, the memoir of Frederick Douglass — stand literature’s test of time. Others have been roundly debunked by science, by data, by human experience. No list can ever be comprehensive, and “most influential” by no means signifies “best.” But I would argue that together, these works tell the history of anti-black racism in the United States as painfully, as eloquently, as disturbingly as words can. In many ways, they also tell its present.

1771-1780

“Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral,” by Phillis Wheatley (1773)

No book during the Revolutionary era stirred more debates over slavery than this first-ever book by an African-American woman. Assimilationists and abolitionists exhibited Wheatley and her poetry as proof that an “uncultivated barbarian from Africa” could be civilized, that enslaved Africans “may be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train” of European civilization and human freedom. Enslavers disagreed, and lashed out at Wheatley’s “Poems.”

* “An Address to the Inhabitants of British Settlements, on the Slavery of the Negroes in America,” by Benjamin Rush (1773)

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1781-1790

“Notes on the State of Virginia,” by Thomas Jefferson (1785)

The author of American freedom in 1776 wrote of American slavery as a necessary evil in this book, widely regarded as the most important political portrait of the nascent United States. Jefferson indicted the “tyranny” of slavery while also supplying fellow slaveholders with a batch of prejudices to justify slavery’s rapid expansion. Blacks “are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind,” he wrote. And Wheatley is not “a poet.”

* “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano; Or, Gustavus Vassa, the African” (1789)

1791-1800

“Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia Almanac and Ephemers,” by Benjamin Banneker (1792-97)

After helping to survey the District of Columbia, Banneker compiled his first almanac, replacing Wheatley’s “Poems” as abolitionists’ finest showpiece of black capability. He enclosed the almanac in a letter to Jefferson, writing, “I apprehend you will embrace every opportunity, to eradicate that train of absurd and false ideas and opinions.” Jefferson did not jump off the train, but other Americans did while reading this remarkable book.

1801-1810

“An Essay on the Causes of Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species,” by Samuel Stanhope Smith (second edition, 1810)

The Princeton president tried to stop the polygenesis theory that the races are created unequal, stoutly defending biblical monogenesis and the notion that first humans were white. He called for physical assimilation: In a colder climate blackened skins would revert to their original white beauty; “the woolly substance” on black heads would become “fine, straight hair” again. His racist idea of the lighter and straighter the better still demeans after all these years.

1811-1820

“Thoughts on the Colonization of Free Blacks,” by Robert Finley (1816)

Blacks should be freed, trained “for self-government” and returned to Africa, according to the antislavery clergyman and former student of Samuel Stanhope Smith. Finley wrote the manifesto for colonization, a cause supported by several American leaders until Lincoln’s failed schemes doomed the movement during the Civil War.

* “An Appeal From the Judgments of Great Britain Respecting the United States of America,” by Robert Walsh (1819)

1821-1830

“An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World,” by David Walker (1829)

This Boston abolitionist viciously assailed colonization and “Mr. Jefferson’s arguments” in the first book-length attack on the “inhuman system of slavery” by an African-American. Black seamen smuggled the appeal into chained Southern hands; community readers sounded the appeal to violently throw off the violent yoke. Walker’s ultimatum for slaveholders: Give us freedom and rights, or you will “curse the day that you ever were born!”

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1831-1840

“Crania Americana,” by Samuel Morton (1839)

This book revived the theory of polygenesis that dominated intellectual racial discourse until the Civil War. What reviewers hailed as an “immense body of facts” were Morton’s measurements of the “mean internal capacity” of the human skulls in his renowned collection in Philadelphia, from which he concluded that whites had the “highest intellectual endowments.”

* “Review of the Debate in the Virginia Legislature of 1831 and 1832,” by Thomas Roderick Dew (1832), and “Thoughts on African Colonization,” by William Lloyd Garrison (1832)

1841-1850

“The Narrative of the Life,” of Frederick Douglass (1845)

The gripping best seller earned Douglass international prestige and forced readers around the world to come to terms with slavery’s brutality and blacks’ freedom dreams. No other piece of antislavery literature so devastated Morton’s defense of polygenesis, or John C. Calhoun’s recently popularized theory that slavery was a “positive good.”

* “The Narrative of Sojourner Truth” (1850)

1851-1860

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852)

Inflamed by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Stowe offered a fugitive slave story that made millions sympathize with slaves. Her novel — and its dramatic adaptations — turned the “hard and dominant Anglo-Saxon race” toward Christian salvation with a simple lesson: to stop enslaving quintessential Christians in all their “lowly docility of heart.” From accommodating Uncle Toms to superior mulattoes to soulful Africans, the book also popularized any number of lasting racist tropes.

* “On the Origin of Species,” by Charles Darwin (1859)

1861-1870

“The Principles of Biology,” by Herbert Spencer (1864)

In “Principles,” Spencer coined the term “survival of the fittest,” becoming the ultimate amplifier of Social Darwinism in the United States. Americans fell in love with his comprehensive theory of evolution, claiming that Reconstruction policies would allow inferior blacks to evolve (or assimilate) into white civilization or lose the struggle for existence. The net effect of Spencer’s Social Darwinism: the eugenics movement of the early 20th century.

* “Hereditary Genius,” by Sir Francis Galton (1869)

1871-1880

“The Prostrate State: South Carolina Under Negro Government,” by James Pike (1874)

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This prominent New York journalist blanketed the nation with fairy tales of corrupt, incompetent, lazy Black Republican politicians. Reconstruction’s enfranchising policies were a “tragedy,” Pike wrote, nothing but “the slave rioting in the halls of his master.” His “objective” reporting caused many once sympathetic Northerners to demand a national reunion based on white rule.

* “The Descent of Man,” by Charles Darwin (1871)

1881-1890

“Our Brother in Black: His Freedom and His Future,” by Atticus Haygood (1881)

In the 1880s, Southern segregationists marketed their region as the New South, among them this Methodist bishop and Emory College president. In his popular book, Haygood eased consciences that the end of Reconstruction meant the end of black rights. The New South will be as good for black folk as the old, Haygood declared, as new white Southerners would continue to civilize inferior black folk in their nicely segregated free-labor society.

* “The Plantation Negro as a Freeman,” by Philip Alexander Bruce (1889)

1891-1900

“Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro,” by Frederick Hoffman (1896)

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PRIVACY POLICY

Better covered than the Plessy v. Ferguson decision that year, “Race Traits” catapulted this statistician into scientific celebrity. At the time of emancipation, blacks were “healthy in body and cheerful in mind,” Hoffman wrote. Thirty years later, the 1890 census forecasts their “gradual extinction,” due to natural immoralities and a propensity for diseases. He blazed the trail of racist ideas in American criminology when he concluded that higher black arrest rates indicated blacks committed more crimes.

* “Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases,” by Ida B. Wells (1892)

1901-1910

“The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan,” by Thomas Dixon (1905)

Convinced that “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” had misrepresented the South, Dixon emerged as Jim Crow’s novelist laureate. “The Clansman” was the most influential of his works, particularly after it was adapted into a popular play and D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film “The Birth of a Nation.” In Dixon’s telling, the virtuous Ku Klux Klan saved Southern whites from their “awful suffering” during Reconstruction.

* “The Souls of Black Folk,” by W.E.B. Du Bois (1903)

1911-1920

“Tarzan of the Apes,” by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1912)

With his racist colonial plot, Burroughs glued animals, savages and Africa together in the American mind, and redeemed white masculinity after the first black heavyweight champion knocked it out in 1908. Forget boxing and Jack Johnson — white men embraced Tarzan, the inspiration for comic strips, 25 sequels and dozens of motion pictures.

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* “The Passing of the Great Race,” by Madison Grant (1916)

1921-1930

“Nigger Heaven,” by Carl Van Vechten (1926)

Van Vechten was the Harlem Renaissance’s ubiquitous white patron, a man as curiously passionate about showing off black people as zookeepers are about showing off their rare species. Through this best-selling novel, he gave white Americans a racist tour of the safari of Harlem, casting assimilated blacks in the guise of tropical exotic lands being spoiled by white developers.

* “The Weary Blues,” by Langston Hughes (1926)

1931-1940

“Gone with the Wind,” by Margaret Mitchell (1936)

The Pulitzer Prize-winning jewel of the plantation fiction genre, this was Americans’ second all-time favorite book behind the Bible, according to a 2014 Harris Poll. Mitchell portrays white enslavers as noble, slaves as shiftless, docile and loyal. Mitchell did for slavery what Dixon did for Reconstruction and Burroughs for Africa.

* “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” by Zora Neale Hurston (1937) and “Native Son,” by Richard Wright (1940)

1941-1950

“An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy,” by Gunnar Myrdal (1944)

As Americans fought against Nazism overseas, this Swedish economist served up an encyclopedic revelation of racial discrimination in their backyards. If there was a scholarly trigger for the civil rights movement, this was it. Myrdal concluded that “a great majority” of whites would “give the Negro a substantially better deal if they knew the facts.” Segregationists seethed, and racial reformers were galvanized to show the truth of Jim Crow.

* “Race: Science and Politics,” by Ruth Benedict (revised edition, 1943)

1951-1960

“To Kill a Mockingbird,” by Harper Lee (1960)

This instant classic about a white lawyer defending a black man wrongly accused of rape was the “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” of the civil rights movement. “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy,” a neighbor tells the lawyer’s daughter, Scout. She’s talking about their reclusive white neighbor, Boo Radley, but the African-Americans of 1930s Alabama come across as singing spectators, thankful for the moral heroism of Atticus Finch. The white savior remains the most popular racist character in American letters.

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* “Invisible Man,” by Ralph Ellison (1952)

1961-1970

“The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” as told to Alex Haley (1965)

It was the manifesto for the Black Power movement, where young black saviors arose, alienated by white saviors and the slow pace of civil rights change. Malcolm wrote black pride before James Brown sang it. His ideological transformation from assimilationist to anti-white separatist to antiracist inspired millions of all races.

* “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” by Maya Angelou (1969)

1971-1980

“Roots: The Saga of an American Family,” by Alex Haley (1976)

For African-Americans in the radiance of Black Power’s turn to Pan-Africanism, the thrilling and terrifying story of Kunta Kinte and his descendants arrived right on time. The best seller inspired one of the most watched shows in American television history. “Roots” dispatched legions of racist ideas of backward Africa, of civilizing slavery, of the contented slave, of loose enslaved women. The plantation genre of happy mammies and Sambos was gone with the wind.

* “The Declining Significance of Race,” by William Julius Wilson (1978)

1981-1990

“The Color Purple,” by Alice Walker (1982)

Of the black feminist classics of the period, Walker’s garnered the most prestige — a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize — and controversy. Set in 1930s rural Georgia, the story shows a black woman finding happiness beyond abusive black patriarchs, Southern poverty and racist whites. Steven Spielberg’s 1985 blockbuster adaptation cemented its legacy.

* “Beloved,” by Toni Morrison (1987)

1991-2000

“The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life,” by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray (1994)

Herrnstein and Murray offered validation for Americans raging about pathological blacks and crime, welfare and affirmative action. “Inequality of endowments, including intelligence, is a reality,” they wrote, sparking one of the most intense academic wars in history over whether genes or environment had caused the racial “achievement gap” in standardized test scores.

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* “America in Black and White,” by Stephan Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom (1997)

2001-2010

“The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” by Michelle Alexander (2010)

Two years after Obama’s election, Alexander put the entire criminal justice system on trial, exposing racial discrimination from lawmaking to policing to the denial of voting rights to ex-prisoners. This best seller struck the spark that would eventually light the fire of Black Lives Matter.

* “Dreams From My Father,” by Barack Obama (2004 reprint)

[gravalicious]

One of the most extreme cases of this violence came during the race riots of 1919 which exploded in Cardiff and Liverpool. The race riots which took place in Cardiff in 1919 resulted in the murders of at least three men, an Irishman, John Donovan (who was shot), an ‘Arab’ and an ‘unidentified negro’ (who died from ‘wounds, chiefly to the head’) which were part of violence that, as reported by the Western Mail, resulted in 15 people being injured, shots being fired in the streets of Cardiff, as well as the homes of Arab and black seamen being besieged and ransacked by mobs. Similar riots in Nottingham, Liverpool and London marked one of the lowest ebbs in race relations in twentieth-century Britain. During the riots in Liverpool Charles Wootten was murdered. Wootten, a West Indian ship’s fireman, was chased into the Mersey by a Liverpool crowd of over 200 people. The mob stoned him until he sank beneath the waters, and despite police presence on the bank, nobody was arrested for this murder. This was, according to Marika Sherwood’s research, the first recorded lynching in England or Wales.

Caroline Bressey - The Black Presence in England and Wales after the Abolition Act, 1807 - 1930* (2010) [Parliamentary History, 26: 224-237]