The Response to the Capitol Riot Is Whitewashing the History of Black Insurrection
A turn toward nationalism following the MAGA storm on D.C. erases the Black radical tradition of rebellion—and endangers its future.
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In 1811, between 200 and 500 enslaved Black people armed themselves in a revolt that began on a sugar plantation a few miles outside of New Orleans. Charles Deslondes, a slave driver of Haitian descent, marshaled an insurrection against the slaver Manuel Andry, turning the tools of the plantation—the ax, the sugarcane knife—against his master. “An attempt was made to assassinate me by the stroke of an axe, and my poor son has been ferociously murdered,” Andry wrote of the attack in a letter to William C.C. Claiborne, then governor of Louisiana.