Palmer Colin a - Slave Resistance

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9/30/10 4:olin A. .Palmer - Slave Resistance - Reviews in American History 26:2

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Colin A. .Palmer - Slave Resistance

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Slave Resistance

Colin A. Palmer [1]

Gary Collison.Shadrach Minkins: From Fugitive Slave to Citizen.

Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1997. 294 pp. Index. $27.9

Peter B. Hinks. To Awaken My Afflicted Brethren: David Walker an

the Problem of Antebellum Slave Resistance. University Park: The

Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997. xvii + 301 pp. Bibliography and ind

$45.00 (cloth); $17.95 (paper).

When Gunnar Myrdal publishedAn American Dilemma in 1944, he observed

hat "The Negro's entire life and, consequently, also his opinions on the Negro

problem are, in the main, to be considered as secondary reactions to more

primary pressures from the side of the dominant white majority." Disagreeing

with this assessment of the behavior of black Americans, Ralph Ellison, the

writer, enquired: "But can a people (its faith in an idealized American Creed

notwithstanding) live and develop for over three hundred years simply by

reacting?" 1 Ellison was certainly aware of the rich tradition of resistance by

African Americans to slavery and other forms of societal mistreatment. But he

also knew that their entire lives were never spent on the barricades reacting to

white oppression; blacks responded to their own pulls, created their own spac

and realized themselves in their own fashion.
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Contemporary scholars have sought to depict blacks as playing active roles in t

construction of their lives and have embraced resistance as an ubiquitous them

n the African-American past. Responding to some earlier characterizations of

blacks as being docile under slavery, recent scholars have focused on the ways

which the enslaved challenged the institution that held them in thrall. While

many have emphasized revolts, conspiracies, and flight, others have seen the

remarkable cultural production of the slaves as constituting a form of resistanc

Similarly, much of the new scholarship on blacks since emancipation has

examined their struggles against segregation and racial discrimination, and for

civil rights.

Although resistance as a methodological construct represents a healthy

corrective to earlier interpretations, it has been used so mechanically and

applied to so many aspects of black life that it has lost much of its interpretive

[End Page 371] power. The remarkable tradition of resistance in black

American history is becoming increasingly trivialized in the hands of some

scholars. Every act by a black person, in some accounts, has been dictated by t

behavior of whites and the need to contest their intrusive power, precisely theflawed methodology that Ellison questioned half a century ago. As currently

employed, the resistance paradigm has such interpretive elasticity that by

seeming to explain everything, it explains nothing at all or interferes with our

understanding of black life in all of its complexities.

A maturing historiography of black America must also eschew hagiography if

only because it diminishes the humanity of the people being studied and makecaricatures of their struggles, vulnerabilities, successes, and failures. In

frequently making resistance the sole interpretive paradigm--even in situation

where such a construct is questionable--we fail to capture the variegated natur

of black life and deny to our subjects the very autonomy that many struggled to


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achieve. The resistance paradigm, obviously, has much to recommend it and

should not be abandoned. But it requires a serious and creative reexamination

and a more limited and nuanced application to the complex history of the

peoples of African descent.

The two books that are being reviewed here represent important discussions o

he responses of blacks to the institution of slavery. Gary Collison's book is an

absorbing account of one man's escape from slavery in Virginia, his precarious

freedom in Boston, his recapture by slave catchers and his extraordinary rescu

and flight to Montreal. This is historical detective work at its best, gripping and

dramatic. This masterly study by an English professor pieces together the

splinters of Shadrach Minkins' life, crafting an intensely human portrait of oneman's efforts to claim his freedom and himself. This powerful story needs no

embroidery; it is a signifier of an entire people's travail in this nation, their

challenges to end an oppressive social system, and their uncertain place in the

and of their birth.

Shadrach Minkins was born a slave in Norfolk, Virginia, probably in 1814 or

1822. As a slave in an urban environment, Minkins may have had an easier lifen contrast to his peers who labored on plantations. In common with other

urban slaves, he was hired out and eventually sold twice in 1849. Like thousan

of other enslaved persons before him, Minkins escaped from bondage in 1850

and headed for Boston. He found a temporary sanctuary among Boston's free

black population of some 2,500 and accepted a job as a waiter. Minkins' uneas

freedom was short-lived as he was recaptured by agents of his master.

Fortunately for him, black Bostonians successfully executed a courageous rescu

scheme. Recognizing that his freedom would never be secure in Boston or

anywhere in the United States for that matter, Minkins fled to Montreal and a

ife away from slavery. Canada was no racial [End Page 372] paradise to be

sure, but Minkins and the other escapees who lived there had achieved a


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measure of victory over slavery.

Collison's compelling narrative situates Minkins' odyssey within the context of

he abolitionist movement and the larger political currents in the nation.

Dispassionate in tone, the book provides a credible picture of the texture of life

for blacks in Norfolk, Boston, and Montreal. The result is a major contribution

o the history of black resistance, unembroidered and free of romantic

condescension.

While Collison's account enriches our understanding of one man's poignant

struggles to claim himself, Peter Hinks examines the life and times of David

Walker, an early black nationalist, intellectual, and advocate of violent resistan

o slavery. Born free in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1785, Walker lived in

Charleston and Boston before his death in 1830. Hinks presents the most

complete picture to date of Walker's career, often combining the little known

aspects of his life with hefty doses of speculation. The author places Walker in

he expanding worlds of free blacks, elucidating their attempts to create their

own institutions and their assaults on slavery. His is a very sympathetic accoun

of Walker's life, often breathless and even romantic in its discussion of blackresistance to slavery during the first decades of the nineteenth century.

Hinks establishes the social and political context within which the enslaved

aunched their challenges and began the process of defining themselves. His

primary focus, however, is on David Walker's "Appeal to the Citizens of the

World," a pamphlet that he published in 1829. Hinks dissects this extraordina

document, providing a sensitive discussion of its call to slaves to resist theiroppression, its appeal for black unity, and its espousal of black autonomy. The

book provides a rich analysis of the ways in which southern authorities sought

prevent the circulation of the incendiary pamphlet.

Hinks, unlike some other scholars, does not view the Appeal as essentially a


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black nationalist document. He notes that "Walker was filled with a radical

egalitarian evangelicalism that postulated a universal equality and

connectedness among all humans and races through God" (p. 250). These

principles, to be sure, are not necessarily contradictory to the diverse

expressions of black nationalist ideologies. The broad outlines of the story thatHinks tells are well-known, but he weaves unfamiliar details into a narrative

hat, for the most part, deepens our understanding of forms of black resistance

n the early nineteenth century.

Taken together, these two works constitute sophisticated analyses of black

resistance to slavery. Collison focuses on one individual's travails and Hinks us

he impassioned writings of one man as a window through which to [End Pag373] examine the challenges to slavery. Still, the study of black resistance to

slavery in the United States remains in its conceptual infancy. Scholars of the

African-American experience can learn much from the nuanced ways in which

historians of the St. Domingue revolution and the Demerara slave revolt of 18

address the struggles of slaves for liberation. 2 These, as well as other studies

draw upon the cultural backgrounds of the enslaved peoples to show that the

nature and style of resistance, like other forms of human behavior, must posse

cultural legitimacy and need not take violent forms. Monica Schuler has, for

example, suggested that many African peoples saw their enslavement as a

misfortune and the result of sorcery. Consequently, according to Schuler, "if

slaves defined slaveowners as sorcerers, there surely could be no acceptance of

bondage." 3 Such sorcery, however, could only be contested by the application

a stronger form of sorcery and not by a resort to violence. Insights like theseremain to be tested cross-culturally. At the very least, however, contemporary

historians should be sensitive to the variegated nature of the challenges to

constituted authority and systems of domination that blacks employed in the

diaspora. Resistance frequently took violent forms, but this was not a universa
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READABILITY An Arc90 Laboratory Experiment

feature, as Schuler suggests. Viewing the texture of slave resistance through a

modern Western optic may obscure more than it reveals about the struggles of

peoples who responded to other cultural pulls.

Colin A. Palmer[2], Department of History, Graduate School of the City

University of New York, is the author ofPassageways: An Interpretive Histor

of Black America (1998).

Notes

1. The two quotations may be found in Ralph Ellison, "An American Dilemma:

Review" inShadow and Act(1964), 315.

2. See, for example, Carolyn Fick, The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue

evolution from Below (1990); Emilia Viotti da Costa, Crowns of Glory, Tears

of Blood: The Demerara Slave Rebellion of 1823 (1994).

3. Monica Schuler, "Afro-American Slave Culture" inHistorical Reflexiones, ed

Michael Craton (1979), 13134.

References

1. ^Colin A. Palmer (muse.jhu.edu)

2. ^Colin A. Palmer (muse.jhu.edu)

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