Why remembering American slave revolts remains 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.
