Today, I encountered the work of Herbert Apthekar. While I did not meet the man himself—he passed away in 2003, long before I was acquainted with his scholarship—I engaged with his seminal text, American Negro Slave Revolts. First published in 1939, this work fundamentally challenged the prevailing narratives held by implicitly biased historians. The dominant understanding of American slavery at the time portrayed the enslaved as largely passive. The few instances of American slave revolts typically discussed in public education—namely, Nat Turner and John Brown—represent a minuscule fraction of the resistance that occurred. While some more progressive textbooks may acknowledge the existence of other uprisings, they are rarely explored in depth.
Neither my undergraduate studies as a world history major nor my nine years teaching in the South Bronx, where I reviewed numerous American history textbooks, exposed me to Apthekar’s work.
The narrative I had absorbed was one that had been carefully constructed: that armed resistance by the enslaved was swiftly suppressed by enslavers or by betrayal within their own ranks.
Furthermore, the role of Black women in resisting bondage was conspicuously absent from this narrative. Aside from a brief mention of Harriet Tubman, the prevailing notion was that Black women endured their suffering with quiet dignity.
This portrayal is, unequivocally, a fabrication.
Apthekar was the first historian to illuminate the discrepancies in our historical record concerning the resistance of the enslaved in the colonies, a revelation that was met with resistance from the academic establishment.
Since the publication of American Negro Slave Revolts, scholarly inquiry into this complex subject has expanded, yet we have only begun to scratch the surface. Apthekar demonstrated the widespread nature of resistance in the colonies. Scholars such as Stephanie M. H. Camp, in Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South, have focused specifically on the contributions of women that Apthekar overlooked.
The rise of Black feminist scholarship has further contextualized the Black woman experience in America. While diverse, certain threads connect Black women to capitalism through the lens of heteropatriarchy, a connection that has long been marginalized in academic discourse. Cheryl Clarke, in her essay “Lesbianism: An Act of Resistance,” makes a compelling argument: “Just as the foundation of Western capitalism depended upon the North Atlantic slave trade, the system of patriarchal domination is buttressed by the subjugation of women through heterosexuality.” Heteropatriarchy operates as a subtext within American culture, asserting that the “natural order” positions Black women beneath all white people and Black men, relegating them to a state of subservience and service to all others.
Every Black woman reading this statement has likely felt the weight of this expectation.
Rape, both physical and psychological, has been a tool of subjugation.
Octavia Butler, in Parable of the Talents, articulates this powerfully: “Rape will happen in any situation a man has absolute control over a woman.” It functions as a tactic of psychological warfare as much as physical dominance. It is used to assert power. It is one of the oldest weapons in human history. American slavery is no exception. And, I would argue, one of the reasons white nationalists resist scholarship on this particular subject is because it reveals a level of depravity that is often projected onto those deemed inferior.
The 250th anniversary of our nation’s independence from oppressive governance provides an opportune moment to examine these insidious threads woven into our national fabric.
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