A closeup of a stone carving of a group of people with their arms around each other. Text in white. A closeup of a stone carving of a group of people with their arms around each other. Text in white. A closeup of a stone carving of a group of people with their arms around each other. Text in white.

Size: 6 x 9
Pages: 216
Illustrations: 12 b&w halftones

U.S. History
 African American Studies
 paperback
 ebook
 hardcover
 Forthcoming
 Books
 Historic Preservation

Remembering Rebellion

A Public History of Slave Revolts Across America

Evan Faulkenbury

Paperback
978-1-64336-705-7
Published: Nov 19 2026

$29.99

Hardcover
978-1-64336-535-0
 Published: Nov 19 2026

$114.99

Spiral Bound

 Published:

Ebook
978-1-64336-706-4
 Published: Nov 19 2026

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OA Ebook
978-1-64336-706-4
 Published: Nov 19 2026

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The inclusion of this book in the Open Carolina collection is made possible by the generous funding of

Why remembering American slave revolts is contested and necessary history

If American slavery remains a difficult topic to discuss with public audiences, the history of violent slave revolts is even more fraught. Enslaved people resisted constantly, sometimes escalating into open rebellion. Enslavers worked to keep stories of insurrection quiet, and those silences have shaped how slave revolts have been remembered, or forgotten, ever since.

In Remembering Rebellion, Evan Faulkenbury explores why interpreting the sites of slave revolts remains a highly contentious practice. Traveling from New England to the Deep South, he examines how museums and historic sites present the stories of uprisings ranging from the Stono Rebellion to John Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry.

Focusing on the work of public historians who engage visitors and shape these narratives, Faulkenbury shows how place-based storytelling and emotional sensory experiences can make enslaved resistance understandable to contemporary audiences. In this timely book, he argues that these rebellions were acts of freedom seeking and self-determination that deserve recognition in the larger story of our nation's founding struggles.



Evan Faulkenbury is University Historian at the University of South Carolina. He is author of Poll Power: The Voter Education Project and the Movement for the Ballot in the American South and co-editor of Teaching Public History.

"A compelling argument about the hard, everyday work public historians do to preserve the legacy of enslaved resistance."—Jeff Strickland, Montclair State University, author of All for Liberty: The Charleston Workhouse Slave Rebellion of 1849

"Across seven elegantly crafted chapters, Evan Faulkenbury maps the troubled terrain of the historical memory of slave revolts. This work illuminates the difficulty of confronting America's history of revolutionary violence and suppression of Black activism, both in past decades and today. An excellent and important study."—Douglas R. Egerton, Le Moyne College, author of A Man on Fire: the World of Thomas Whentworth Higginson

"Evan Faulkenbury's Remembering Rebellion expertly chronicles how a range of public historians—from tour guides to artists to incarcerated men—remember American slave revolts today."—Ethan J. Kytle, California State University, Fresno, co-author of Denmark Vesey's Garden: Slavery and Memory in the Cradle of the Confederacy