1,849 freed men: “Organizing the Community,” Black Founders: The Free Black Community in the Early Republic, librarycompany.org/blackfounders/section6.htm.
turned the first shovel: “Life, Experience, and Gospel Labours.”
African Methodist Episcopal Church: “Our History,” African Methodist Episcopal Church, www.ame-church.com/our-church/our-history.
1789–1794: Sally Hemings
“careful Negro woman”: Thomas Jefferson to Francis Eppes, August 30, 1785, quoted in Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2008), 191.
“Mr. Jefferson’s concubine”: Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1997), 246.
1794–1799: The Fugitive Slave Act
“And be it further enacted”: Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, www.ushistory.org/presidentshouse/history/slaveact1793.php.
Ona Judge: See Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge (New York: 37 Ink, 2018).
Black people in Haiti: For a more detailed discussion of tactical violence and Black abolitionism, see Kellie Carter Jackson, Force and Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019).
In Pointe Coupée, Louisiana: Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, “The 1795 Slave Conspiracy in Pointe Coupée: Impact of the French Revolution,” in Proceedings of the Meeting of the French Colonial Historical Society 15 (1992): 130–41.
1799–1804: Higher Education
Francisco de Miranda: John S. Ezell, ed., The New Democracy in America: Travels of Francisco de Miranda in the United States, 1783–84, Judson P. Wood, trans. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963), 70–71.
Moreau de Saint-Méry: Kenneth Roberts and Anna M. Roberts, trans. and ed., Moreau de St. Méry’s American Journey [1793–1798] (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1947), 103–09.
Isaac Weld: Isaac Weld, Jr., Travels Through the States of North America, and the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, during the Years, 1795, 1796, and 1797 (London: John Stockdale, 1807), I: 259–60.
“wasted & destroyed”: Craig Steven Wilder, “ ‘Sons from the Southward & Some from the West Indies’: Slavery and the Academy in Revolutionary America,” in Leslie M. Harris, James T. Campbell, and Alfred L. Brophy, eds., Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2019); John H. Livingston, “To the Honourable, the Legislative Council and General Assembly of the State of New Jersey,” Box 1, Folder 12, MC 089, Elizabeth R. Boyd Historical Collection, Special Collections and University Archives, Alexander Library, Rutgers University.
close their schools or relocate: Craig Steven Wilder, “ ‘Sons from the Southward.’ ”
tripled the number: Ibid.
Transylvania College: Donald G. Tewksbury, The Founding of American Colleges and Universities before the Civil War with Particular Reference to the Religious Influences Bearing upon the College Movement (New York: Teachers College, 1932), 32–35.
church with national reach: Craig Steven Wilder, “War and Priests: Catholic Colleges and Slavery in the Age of Revolution,” in Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development, eds. Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 227–42.
Father Patrick Smyth: Patrick Smyth, The Present State of the Catholic Missions Conducted by the Ex-Jesuits in North America (Dublin: P. Byrne, 1788), esp. 17–19; American Catholic Historical Researches (July 1905), 193–206; Jennifer Oast, Institutional Slavery: Slaveholding Churches, Schools, Colleges, and Businesses in Virginia, 1680–1860 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), introduction.
“keeping harems of Negro women”: J. P. Brissot de Warville, New Travels in the United States of America, 1788 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), 346.
1809–1814: The Louisiana Rebellion
Charles Deslondes: Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America’s Largest Slave Revolt (New York: HarperCollins, 2018).
“At present I am”: Governor William C. C. Claiborne to James Madison, New Orleans, July 12, 1804, in Elizabeth Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution, 1935), 4:663.
They wielded clubs: Leon A. Waters, “Jan 8, 1811: Louisiana’s Heroic Slave Revolt,” Zinn Education Project, n.d., www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/louisianas-slave-revolt/.
“They were brung here”: Rasmussen, American Uprising, 148.
“Had not the most prompt”: Ibid., 148–49.
1814–1819: Queer Sexuality
“African homosexuality”: Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe, eds., Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), xv.
“the range of emotional”: Daina Ramey Berry and Leslie M. Harris, eds., Sexuality and Slavery: Reclaiming Intimate Histories in the Americas (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2018), 1.
“evade capture and to subvert”: Ibid.
“transcend their laboring”: Sharon Block, Colonial Complexions: Race and Bodies in Eighteenth-Century America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), 123.
“One of the unfortunate things”: Jessica Marie Johnson, interview by author, February 21, 2019.
“I have been in the practice”: Jonathan Ned Katz, Love Stories: Sex between Men before Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013).
1819–1824: Denmark Vesey
Rapper Kanye West: Harmeet Kaur, “Kanye West Just Said 400 Years of Slavery Was a Choice,” CNN, May 4, 2018, www.cnn.com/2018/05/01/entertainment/kanye-west-slavery-choice-trnd/index.html.