Speaker 1: So season one of Unpopular is over. I hope that
Speaker 1: you've listened to the entire season and also have enjoyed
Speaker 1: the entire season. If you haven't, feel free to go
Speaker 1: back and listen to all the episodes and let us
Speaker 1: know what you think about them. But in the meantime,
Speaker 1: before season two launches, we're going to have a few
Speaker 1: conversations with people who I think that you would really
Speaker 1: love to hear from. Today's bonus interview is going to
Speaker 1: be with Dr Rebecca Hall, who has done a lot
Speaker 1: of research on women who led slave revolts. Women often
Speaker 1: get left out of the conversation of slave revolts, and
Speaker 1: I think her research and her work is really awesome
Speaker 1: and really relevant to the topic of resistance and people
Speaker 1: who have been forgotten and the legacies of those people
Speaker 1: and what we can learn from them. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: do things a little bit differently today. I'm going to
Speaker 1: get off my lonely solo soapbox to have a conversation
Speaker 1: with Dr Rebecca Hall, and I hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 1: Here we go. My name is Dr Rebecca Hall. Rebecca's
Speaker 1: r E. B C c A last name, The Hall
Speaker 1: H A L. L Um I'm a a d pH d,
Speaker 1: meaning I have a law degree and a PhD because
Speaker 1: I wanted all the student debt. UM I got my
Speaker 1: j d from Berkeley in practice law for eight years.
Speaker 1: I worked with homeless families and the tenants rights work,
Speaker 1: and then went on to UH go back and get
Speaker 1: my PhD studying history of race and gender. So how
Speaker 1: would you define slave revolt? Yeah, so that's a very
Speaker 1: interesting question to start with. Um I people historians, you know,
Speaker 1: study slave revolt use different definitions depending on sort of
Speaker 1: almost kind of like what work they want the term
Speaker 1: to use the term to do. So, you know, there's
Speaker 1: slave resistance where slaves are fighting back against either you know,
Speaker 1: their specific situation or against slavery generally. For for you know,
Speaker 1: there their historians who believe that slave resistance is not
Speaker 1: a fulber voles unless it's trying to bring down the
Speaker 1: entire institution of slavery. UH. Some people have definitions that
Speaker 1: a slave revolts has to involve, you know, a certain
Speaker 1: number of people, has to have you know, a certain
Speaker 1: type of coverage or documentation in the press at the time.
Speaker 1: UM my definition is a coordinated act of violent resistance
Speaker 1: against UH. Slavery orders or slave specific slaveholders. And the
Speaker 1: reason why I define it like that is because if
Speaker 1: we'll get into women are written out of the history
Speaker 1: of being involved in slave revolts, um and ah, one
Speaker 1: of those things that keeps coming up is that, you know,
Speaker 1: women aren't involved in violent acts of resistance. They're coordinated
Speaker 1: violent acts of resistance. So I use the term uh
Speaker 1: that is specifically that historians specifically used to exclude women
Speaker 1: say that, okay, this, I'm gonna look for this particular
Speaker 1: type of slave resistance and show that women are involved
Speaker 1: in it. So I I'll say that one reason that
Speaker 1: I came to came to your work and it was
Speaker 1: just you know, really interested in this topic that we're
Speaker 1: talking about today, women who lets slav volts, is because
Speaker 1: I was like, for you know, obvious reasons turning to
Speaker 1: slave revolts as things as acts that people use as
Speaker 1: resistance in terms of terms of challenging the status quote
Speaker 1: that was slavery, and a lot of those people had
Speaker 1: you know, very very interesting stories and you know, resisted
Speaker 1: in different ways even within the practice of slave revolts.
Speaker 1: And I realized that because we are the women like
Speaker 1: you know, in cursory searches. Definitely, there are no women
Speaker 1: that really pop up, and when they do pop up,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like, this is the same story that's
Speaker 1: told over and over. What's the deeper what's the deeper
Speaker 1: story here, what are the beginnings of the story? And
Speaker 1: what did they actually do? You know, the story is
Speaker 1: just kind of a surface look at these, you know,
Speaker 1: amazing women who did this, but doesn't really allow a
Speaker 1: person who's just jumping into that search, who's maybe not
Speaker 1: a historian or a researcher, to learn more about them.
Speaker 1: And that was just I knew that that wasn't I
Speaker 1: knew that that was a measured absence. It wasn't just
Speaker 1: because women were silent. And I would love to know
Speaker 1: what got you into researching women who let slabor votes. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: so I've always been interested in the issue of slaver
Speaker 1: resistance with slabor votes, and by always, I mean since
Speaker 1: I was a child. I think that you know, I
Speaker 1: had my parents were were radical activists, and you know,
Speaker 1: any group of people, any but any oppressed group of
Speaker 1: people getting having access to the history of how we
Speaker 1: fought back is crucial because it tends to be silenced
Speaker 1: on purpose. And it's also important for our basic psychological makeup,
Speaker 1: you know, like I think of you know, you know,
Speaker 1: people like you know, Kanye West or whatever said that, well,
Speaker 1: they must have consented to slavery. I mean he didn't
Speaker 1: say it this articulately, but because you know, they didn't
Speaker 1: fight back or um and and you know, and and
Speaker 1: in fact, you know, there were hundreds of slabor volts
Speaker 1: in the United States, um and and it's and the
Speaker 1: history of slave revolt in specific, um like it it
Speaker 1: was actively erased by historians. So I think it's important
Speaker 1: for me to answer your question, to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about what happened with the history of slavery's revolts generally,
Speaker 1: and then talk about how its recovery actually then erased women.
Speaker 1: UM participation in that is okay, if I if I
Speaker 1: go in there, that question okay, Yeah. So so you know,
Speaker 1: the first you know, historians of slavery were people who
Speaker 1: supported slavery and said, you know, slavers didn't resist to slavery.
Speaker 1: And because you know, the institution was benign and necessary
Speaker 1: for black people in order to attain their culture, and
Speaker 1: that's why there's no slavery wolf that happened in the
Speaker 1: United States, you know, and it's hard to it's hard
Speaker 1: to northern ones like Haiti or some of the huge
Speaker 1: ones in South America. And so that these historians were saying, well,
Speaker 1: slavery was harsher there, but here we had it right.
Speaker 1: It was put you know, and um, that was how
Speaker 1: slavery slave resistance um in general, flavora bolt was taught,
Speaker 1: you know, all the way up through the through the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties in this country. And then you started to
Speaker 1: get um, some historians, especially after World War Two, UM,
Speaker 1: with making comparisons and saying, well, there weren't flavorables in
Speaker 1: the United States because like in concentration camps, slavery was
Speaker 1: such a horrible institution where they would say it's such
Speaker 1: a totalizing institution that it was impossible to resist slavery, um,
Speaker 1: just like in concentration camps. But of course that's not
Speaker 1: true for concentration camps either, but that's another episode. UM.
Speaker 1: And then you know, in the sixties and early seventies,
Speaker 1: you start getting ing African Americans, primarily men um involved
Speaker 1: in academia and the rise of black studies. Also in
Speaker 1: the context of sort of you know, in the civil
Speaker 1: rights movement, and and and and these historians start saying,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, they're actually, we're plenty of slavery voters
Speaker 1: looked at all this evidence for them. Um. But at
Speaker 1: the same time they were saying that, you know, this
Speaker 1: speak sort of cultural uh background issue that you know
Speaker 1: still exists to this day is the idea that the
Speaker 1: black families, uh problem with black people and why black
Speaker 1: people don't succeed is because their families dysfunctional, Their men
Speaker 1: are emasculated that women on matriarchs just happened in slavery.
Speaker 1: It will never be um changed until the black family
Speaker 1: gets it's it's act together in its gender cult roles correct, right, um.
Speaker 1: And this is the whole dysfunctional black family each just right.
Speaker 1: And then you have you know, Angela Davis um writing
Speaker 1: an article on black women in the community of slaves
Speaker 1: while she's actually imprisoned, asking scholars, how can you say
Speaker 1: that women had the power and slavery just doesn't make
Speaker 1: any sense? Right? But um so, But in in response
Speaker 1: to this pushback, you know, you have everything from like activists,
Speaker 1: Black activists like Stokely Carmichael saying when being asked, you know,
Speaker 1: what's the position of black women in the liberation struggle,
Speaker 1: and he responds prone, you know, uh to uh black
Speaker 1: male historians writing these books on recovering the history of
Speaker 1: slavorable and repeatedly saying, but women weren't involved in this.
Speaker 1: Women didn't do this because they performed there to interrote correctly, um,
Speaker 1: and men were manly. And so there's this like huge
Speaker 1: pushback happening, right, And so then you know, you can
Speaker 1: get in the seventies and eighties to get a rise
Speaker 1: of feminist historians, you know, women the black and white no, uh,
Speaker 1: And they were saying, okay, all right, So if women
Speaker 1: didn't figure prominently in flavor bolts, they were very figured
Speaker 1: prominently in slav resistance generally. So, but they're asked for
Speaker 1: more individual, less violent, you know, uh, but and also
Speaker 1: possibly more effective. Right, so trying to to to highlight
Speaker 1: resistance on a broad scale, which is always a good thing, right,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, but they never went back and questioned
Speaker 1: the fundamental assumption about women and there and so when
Speaker 1: I got into graduate school and I wanted to uh
Speaker 1: study flavor bolts and slave resistance, and I kept seeing these,
Speaker 1: you know, every book I picked up, like it will
Speaker 1: be like, Okay, it's gonna be you know, in the
Speaker 1: first within the first pretty pages, there's gonna be some
Speaker 1: statement about how women didn't do this, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: I was like, this is this There's something wrong about this.
Speaker 1: So everything I just told you, this is what I
Speaker 1: ended up learning, right um And and I was like,
Speaker 1: I bet that there are women involved, and this is
Speaker 1: what I want to do my dissertation research on. And
Speaker 1: my dissertation advisors like, well, even if that's true, you're
Speaker 1: not going to find the records. That's not can be
Speaker 1: sources and so so what that's what someone needs to
Speaker 1: do is to tell me I can't do something. So
Speaker 1: then I started and I started finding women all over
Speaker 1: the primary sources, and so that became my work. UM
Speaker 1: my dissertation that and my PhD. I have published academic
Speaker 1: articles about it, and I have a forthcoming graphic novel
Speaker 1: about it. UM where that I write and that's being
Speaker 1: illustrated by an artist, is about what I you know
Speaker 1: about the story of how this history was sort of
Speaker 1: varied and why and how to uncover it with a
Speaker 1: process UM so needs to go through to actually uncover
Speaker 1: and sort of recovered these stories to women in the archives,
Speaker 1: you know who fought and died reading flavor volts and
Speaker 1: participating in flavor volts. So who are some of those
Speaker 1: women who fought in flavor volts. So I think it's
Speaker 1: important for me to put a situate myself after historian,
Speaker 1: like we get you have to specialize on a in
Speaker 1: a time period in place and my my my focus
Speaker 1: is British America in the eighth century, right, I mean
Speaker 1: that's how specific you need to focus. Um. There are women,
Speaker 1: um like if you study you know in Latin America
Speaker 1: and uh they're there are women named in and some
Speaker 1: of some of the revolts that happened in Cuba, I'm
Speaker 1: have been names at the top of my head. Um.
Speaker 1: But here in in what became the United States. Um,
Speaker 1: I've done a lot of my reach on two revolts
Speaker 1: in colonial New York. One in seventeen o eight, which
Speaker 1: I am, which I'm the one who uncovered, and then
Speaker 1: at seventeen twelve revolt in seventeen twelve, so the eight revolts. Um,
Speaker 1: there were four slaves executed for killing um, a family
Speaker 1: of slaveholders. Um, and uh they were prevented from killing
Speaker 1: others and the woman the three men involved were hung
Speaker 1: and the woman was burned at the stake. UM. Her
Speaker 1: name was never recorded. He was referred to as the
Speaker 1: Negro Wench or the Negro seen. And I spent a
Speaker 1: year trying to find her name, and it may never
Speaker 1: we never, maybe that we never find it. UM there
Speaker 1: was there was actually a trial, and if there was
Speaker 1: a trial, there was a court record. But I've been
Speaker 1: told UM at several archives throughout New York that that
Speaker 1: that that record, those records were destroyed in a fire.
Speaker 1: There was a bunch of the big fire in New
Speaker 1: York that is throwing a lot of of its historical records.
Speaker 1: I still haven't given up. There's a couple of leads
Speaker 1: I can still check down. But I looked for her
Speaker 1: name here in New York and also UM in England
Speaker 1: because it was the English colony at the time. In
Speaker 1: seventeen flow, there were four women whose names are in
Speaker 1: the court record for that revolt UM Sarah, Abigail, Amba,
Speaker 1: and Lily Um. Two of those women were convicted Uh
Speaker 1: Sarah and ab Gail, and two Lily and Amba were
Speaker 1: were acquitted. UM. The two who were convicted were sent today.
Speaker 1: And one of those women and it's not clear in
Speaker 1: the court records, Uh, which one, whether it was Sarah
Speaker 1: Abigail had her execution stayed because she was pregnant. Um.
Speaker 1: This was done not because out of sort of any
Speaker 1: kindness to the mother. It's because someone owns that baby,
Speaker 1: um and UM. And then there's a lot of correspondence
Speaker 1: between the colonial governor of New York at the time
Speaker 1: and Queen Anne's Privy Council. He's requesting a pardon for
Speaker 1: her um, saying, you know, she's given birth, she's been
Speaker 1: in the jail, you know, her conditions in a wolf
Speaker 1: of state. Um. But he never received his permission for
Speaker 1: the pardon. And it's never mentioned whether it was Sarah
Speaker 1: or Abogail UM. So uh, these are these are the
Speaker 1: kind of mine fields you come across researching slavery in general,
Speaker 1: but particularly when you try to research you know, when
Speaker 1: you're going back thus far, you know, and uh, you
Speaker 1: know this isn't an antebellum period early during the establishment
Speaker 1: of slavery, um and um. There were three other women
Speaker 1: are named who committed suicide before capture. And there's there's
Speaker 1: it's a it's it's an interesting thing, which will we
Speaker 1: talked about more in the graphic novel Um but You.
Speaker 1: But it can be traced by the names of the
Speaker 1: slaves of there were I think twenty one trial together.
Speaker 1: Amba is a is an Acan name, Uhcan speaking language
Speaker 1: from what is now Ghana, and a large percentage of
Speaker 1: the slaves involved for a Coom speaking UM. And there's
Speaker 1: been really sort of a lot of documentation of methods
Speaker 1: and types of resistance of of people in the Akhane diaspora.
Speaker 1: So from that information and could contrast with colonial records,
Speaker 1: I was able to discover like the kind of oaths
Speaker 1: that they took in preparation for UM the revolt UM
Speaker 1: and the also the the incentive to either win the fight,
Speaker 1: die in the fight, or kill yourself commit suicide UM.
Speaker 1: Because not just because you don't want to be captured,
Speaker 1: tortured and killed, there's that, but also because if if
Speaker 1: that happens, if you die in the fight or or
Speaker 1: kill yourself, bookfill capture you, you you join the ancestral
Speaker 1: plane UM and can continue the fight. So those are
Speaker 1: those are some names and UH and I have more
Speaker 1: information about those of people. But again it's it's a
Speaker 1: little tricky because I don't I'm not exactly sure what
Speaker 1: happened to which one of them you know? Um, I'm
Speaker 1: my educated guest. I mean one was definitely executed immediately
Speaker 1: after the revolt and um, because only the queen did
Speaker 1: give issue a pardon and it never came. Um, I'm
Speaker 1: assuming that she was executed. Um. But the Queen Queen
Speaker 1: Anne died um before responding to letters, and there was
Speaker 1: a new king and the governor got reassigned and then
Speaker 1: the record just falls silence. We'll be back with more
Speaker 1: conversation with Dr Rebecca Hall soon, but we're going to
Speaker 1: take a quick break h m hm. And the work
Speaker 1: that you do of re kind of reclaiming the history
Speaker 1: and the memory of people and really uncovering stories that
Speaker 1: haven't you know, seeing seeing much lighter, if any at all, um.
Speaker 1: And also how you talked about you know, this women
Speaker 1: and Slaver's revolts for several reasons have been excluded. There's
Speaker 1: a mentioned in your work of an event called Celia's Conspiracy.
Speaker 1: And one thing that I'm very interested in it is language.
Speaker 1: And you talk about in your article yes yes, and
Speaker 1: you and you talk about how you specifically choose because
Speaker 1: Celia wasn't mentioned, but she was mentioned as being someone
Speaker 1: who was instrumental in the event and labeling it Celia's conspiracy,
Speaker 1: very intentionally to put her name up front at the
Speaker 1: top of that, the naming of it. So what is
Speaker 1: this the significance? Can you can you talk? Can you
Speaker 1: tell me about your feelings about the significance of naming
Speaker 1: and using language when it comes to reclaiming women's stories
Speaker 1: when it came to resistance and slav revolts. So are
Speaker 1: absolutely okay? So, um, you know, we've already talked about
Speaker 1: how women's involvement in revolt and we definitely should talk
Speaker 1: about slaveship revolts too, uh, but that that that women
Speaker 1: were involved in and led flavor volts in that act
Speaker 1: in different ways and reasons why that was raised. One
Speaker 1: of the things gave that if you know, the historian
Speaker 1: goes to the record, assuming that this is not something
Speaker 1: women did, then they're they're never going to name a
Speaker 1: slave revolt after the women involved. So so many slavor
Speaker 1: volts are named after who people at the time decided
Speaker 1: with a leader or who historians subsequently decided was the reader.
Speaker 1: You know, the Denmark Stacy revolt with Nack Turner revolt
Speaker 1: that you know their name after specific men, and in
Speaker 1: this revolt that you're referring to, you know, there's a
Speaker 1: detailed interrogation of one of the enslaved men involved in
Speaker 1: the revolt where he talks about this woman, Celia, and
Speaker 1: how he had inspired this revolt and planned it. But
Speaker 1: they don't ask that. Interrogators at the time don't ask
Speaker 1: any questions. They don't ask any more questions about this
Speaker 1: woman who decided the time, decided, you know, organized it.
Speaker 1: And so that's just the kind of silencing that that happens,
Speaker 1: both at the time because of gender assumptions and also
Speaker 1: by subsequent um silencing by current historians because of their
Speaker 1: gendered assumptions. You mentioned slaveship revolts. Yeah, okay, so now
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna ask what what what was it that
Speaker 1: is you know, still compelling about slaveship revolts. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, this is really, um, this is I
Speaker 1: think it very important issue in the history or historiography
Speaker 1: of slavery in general, slave resistance and specific For a
Speaker 1: long time, historians thought that revolts on slaveships we're very rare.
Speaker 1: Um mainly because um, it was basically suicidal. You know,
Speaker 1: if you're in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. And
Speaker 1: you know, you don't come from a culture that's technology
Speaker 1: that knows how to operate shifts or whatever. Your your
Speaker 1: best case scenario is, you know, you're going to die
Speaker 1: and take the white people who are slaving you with you. Um.
Speaker 1: So people thought, yeah, it's just it didn't happen very often.
Speaker 1: But then with the rise of sort of digital capacity
Speaker 1: and digital humanities, historians all over the world who are
Speaker 1: studying the Atlantic slave trey. You know, we're talking about
Speaker 1: hundreds and thousands of slaveships. We're pulling their information into
Speaker 1: a centralized data base. And in the nineties, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it was set up so that you could actually query
Speaker 1: the database. And what they found out was that one
Speaker 1: there was a slave the revolt on one in ten voyages,
Speaker 1: which was really shocking. And I'm not an economic historian,
Speaker 1: but it had a really big impact on, for example,
Speaker 1: costs associated with the trade. There's analysis that show that
Speaker 1: it prevented others from being traded, made the cost you know, um,
Speaker 1: because of the costs and the issues involved. UM. But
Speaker 1: I have done a lot of reading about issues of
Speaker 1: prevention about slaveship revolts. But um, the other. But then
Speaker 1: on these quantitative historians, you know, when they looked at
Speaker 1: the data and they wanted to say, okay, why would
Speaker 1: there be a revolt on one ship and not another,
Speaker 1: Like what's the you know, big difference between the two
Speaker 1: ships types of ships that you know what the liners
Speaker 1: of revolt and the number one this difference was that
Speaker 1: on the ships where there were more revolts, there were
Speaker 1: more women. And the historians, seeing that, you know, specifically said,
Speaker 1: but you know, women weren't involved in this type of organized, violent,
Speaker 1: active resistance, so this must be like a statistical fluke um.
Speaker 1: But when when I you know, was England going through
Speaker 1: hundreds and hundreds of slaveship captain flogs and tip sergeant
Speaker 1: flogs that you know describe and and insurance supports that
Speaker 1: documents this, it becomes a very clear like in England
Speaker 1: that the practice was that women were once the ship
Speaker 1: had left the African coast. Uh while on the coast
Speaker 1: everybody was changed below deck because there was a fear
Speaker 1: of what they called cut offs where people from the
Speaker 1: Africa who would come and attack the ship and free
Speaker 1: them invite people on it. Once the ship was in
Speaker 1: the Atlantic and away from the possibility and cut of
Speaker 1: cut off. Um. Women were kept on deck and unchanged
Speaker 1: um and for some pretty you know, nefarious reasons, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, in terms of crew having access to women, um,
Speaker 1: et cetera. But also because there was a thought that
Speaker 1: you know, these women aren't really the danger. But that's
Speaker 1: also where the weapons were kept. And so you can
Speaker 1: see and you know, Captain's supports repeatedly things like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know anything from uh we had was a third revolt,
Speaker 1: you know, and uh, but we keep checking the men's
Speaker 1: change and we don't understand, um, how these people you
Speaker 1: know are being killed or you know, the women, or
Speaker 1: they'll actually mentioned the women, like the men got hold
Speaker 1: of the weapons and or free men below, or or
Speaker 1: women were the ones who did the entire revolt um.
Speaker 1: And this is I think this is a really important
Speaker 1: story about place, super bolts and resistance and that you
Speaker 1: know that has just been erased it both in the
Speaker 1: ways again, the way people documented things at the time
Speaker 1: and the way historians later looked at the records. There's
Speaker 1: this amazing book written by a settle Off s Real
Speaker 1: He's a Patian historian, called Silencing the Past Um. And
Speaker 1: he he looks at this sort of back and forth
Speaker 1: process of how records are, how what what's documented impacts
Speaker 1: how we understand you know, it's easy to say, oh,
Speaker 1: histories written by the victors, but that's a generalized statement
Speaker 1: that doesn't tell us very much. You know, we have
Speaker 1: to understand the ways in which people written out if
Speaker 1: we're going to recover them. He gives an example what
Speaker 1: I thought was really useful of of, you know, silencing
Speaker 1: that happens in the in the actual chronicling of an event.
Speaker 1: Now that you see somebody's chronicling events, that they're getting
Speaker 1: everything down, you know. And his example is like, okay,
Speaker 1: a baseball game. You go to a baseball game. I
Speaker 1: don't go to a baseball game my finding deadly boy.
Speaker 1: But anyway, you go to a baseball game and you've
Speaker 1: got the the sportscaster, person who's announcing, like the person
Speaker 1: who that's bad and the second run and whatever whatever
Speaker 1: they do, you know, but they're not talking about how
Speaker 1: many hot dogs were sold in the stands, right because
Speaker 1: it's irrelevant. It's irrelevant. And so similarly, you know, if
Speaker 1: you can't see that women are capable of violent acts,
Speaker 1: he said, oversist, you're not recording them, you know, and
Speaker 1: and you know and and you know the assumptions that
Speaker 1: are made. I mean a lot of these a lot
Speaker 1: of the cultures from which people were treated had quite
Speaker 1: developed female marshy traditions, you know, So the idea that
Speaker 1: suddenly women who come from cultures where they insact, you know, fight,
Speaker 1: they are soldiers or um or readily defendat their villages
Speaker 1: or whatever, you know, are suddenly like stereo types of
Speaker 1: European women who you know wouldn't do that. Again, those
Speaker 1: are stereotypes. So there's a lot sort of a lot
Speaker 1: of pieces at work, um, a lot of moving parts.
Speaker 1: Let's take a short break and we'll be back with
Speaker 1: Dr Rebecca Hall afterwards. M h m hm. It's already
Speaker 1: a lot of people who are there's historical revisionism or
Speaker 1: you know, negating things that happened in the past. Like
Speaker 1: it's already hard for a lot of Americans to come
Speaker 1: to terms with the fact that slavery had been and
Speaker 1: it has consequences. And just you pointing out, well, even
Speaker 1: within the history that's written and that's told in you know,
Speaker 1: you know, people calling slaves, wage laborers or whatever it
Speaker 1: was they called in that day that US textbook that's
Speaker 1: already white people are learning today. And the fact that
Speaker 1: you're saying that you know things. Even the history that
Speaker 1: is written is also very there's a lot of nuance
Speaker 1: to it where it's like there are a lot of
Speaker 1: things that were left out. So it just seems like
Speaker 1: getting people to go even beyond you know, the negating
Speaker 1: that they're doing of history that actually happened, to understand
Speaker 1: that history happened. But there's also even what's written, you know,
Speaker 1: may seem solid and may seem like it's written so
Speaker 1: that's what happened. Like No, there's even a layer beyond
Speaker 1: that that we have to discover who people are like
Speaker 1: you are uncovering these types of things. It just makes me.
Speaker 1: I try not to be too cynical or too you know,
Speaker 1: pessimistic about it, but when I when I see that
Speaker 1: people are you know, denying things like the Holocaust that
Speaker 1: have histories that are you you really can't deny, but
Speaker 1: are being Denny right, um, And it makes me feel
Speaker 1: a little bit you know, discourage sometimes, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's really good to know, you know that I can
Speaker 1: you know, speak to people like you who are constantly
Speaker 1: uncovering things that makes me feel a lot better. So
Speaker 1: that's that's just my own person my own personal you
Speaker 1: know feelings. Um uh, and just kind of fear, you know,
Speaker 1: of like how we look back at history and how
Speaker 1: we continue to learn about history and realize what we
Speaker 1: that we were wrong and that we can change and
Speaker 1: that things change. Um, that's that's that's my personal feelings. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I get it. And when I present this work, I've
Speaker 1: been doing a lot of presenting of the work outside
Speaker 1: of sort of academic becoming since getting involved in the
Speaker 1: Pross graphic novel of writing process. And I see how strong,
Speaker 1: what a strong emotional impact it has on people, on
Speaker 1: African Americans in particular pal empower and they find this
Speaker 1: work and it reminds me, you know, yeah, it's not
Speaker 1: just me. It's not just some weird thing I'm interested in.
Speaker 1: This is something really important, you know. And and I
Speaker 1: have you know, also taught high school. Um and the
Speaker 1: way the way slavery and the slave trade is taught
Speaker 1: is itself a crime, you know, it's just horrific. Um.
Speaker 1: So I've seen I've seen um, you know where people
Speaker 1: you know, usually I would go to an event and
Speaker 1: be like Okay, can someone raise your hand if you
Speaker 1: you know, you know of what slave revolts, and you know,
Speaker 1: a couple of hands will go up, you know, like, uh,
Speaker 1: maybe Nat Turner, you know. Uh, it's people, don't they
Speaker 1: just you know, history is a dangerous thing and um,
Speaker 1: and it's it's not taught. I mean, and so you know,
Speaker 1: I'm hoping you have to be able to intervene in that,
Speaker 1: you know, by using the scraps of novel format and
Speaker 1: being able to you know, get this book, um, you
Speaker 1: know because it stott picked up by a major publisher,
Speaker 1: by slim an introducer. Um. But you know, being able
Speaker 1: to get this something that can be assigned you know
Speaker 1: in colleges and high schools as well. Um. And you know,
Speaker 1: if I don't know if you've followed the blow back
Speaker 1: that's happened since the The New York Times fifteen nineteen stories,
Speaker 1: but I mean, like, yeah, it's incredible. You know, it's
Speaker 1: just the people just they don't want to I mean,
Speaker 1: they know, whether they're centers, they don't want to hear it.
Speaker 1: They you know. So uh, speaking of speaking of the
Speaker 1: sixteen nineteen projects, I will like to know how your experience,
Speaker 1: you know, you're you're immersed in these stories of flavorable
Speaker 1: and resistance and black resistance and history. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, you know, we're constantly creating stories of black
Speaker 1: resistance and revolt. And how how is it for you
Speaker 1: to do that research? Is there anything that comes up
Speaker 1: and in and you when you're doing that research and
Speaker 1: also interacting with the world and in a in a
Speaker 1: United States that's constantly embroiled in you know, race issues
Speaker 1: and resistance and dissent. Um. Can make sure I'm understanding
Speaker 1: your question. Um, it's like, what is it like to
Speaker 1: be as a historian research and what I research in
Speaker 1: the context of a of a country in denial? Exactly? Yes, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean I think that this is this is a
Speaker 1: this is the fight. This is this is the fight. Um,
Speaker 1: this country is ill. It is and you know it
Speaker 1: is bordering on terminally ill. And you know it's sickness
Speaker 1: of racism and you know, I mean racial capitalism. And
Speaker 1: we can't go into a bunch of stuff. But there's
Speaker 1: never been um, any kind of truth the reconciliation process
Speaker 1: in this country. Um, no, no, you know there's been
Speaker 1: no and and and and we people after the country
Speaker 1: be able to come to terms with our history, um
Speaker 1: or or we're not going to make it, you know. UM.
Speaker 1: And the idea that you know, slavery you know, is
Speaker 1: the irrelevant historically or happened so long ago. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, my paternal grandparents were born slaves. Uh and
Speaker 1: I'm fifty six. Um, that's very unusual, but that it
Speaker 1: was physically possible. My dad was like in this mid
Speaker 1: sixties when I was born, and he was born in
Speaker 1: the youngest child, and my grandmother was born in eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty one and my grandfather was born in eighteen six. Um.
Speaker 1: The fact that it's even physically possible for it to
Speaker 1: be two generations removed. Show if this happened just a
Speaker 1: second ago, you know in our country. UM. Indeed, at
Speaker 1: a minimum a truth and reconciliation process in order to
Speaker 1: sort of move forward to heal. I mean, if we
Speaker 1: don't understand these formative parts of of of who we are,
Speaker 1: you know, American slavery and it's after sex, Native American genocide,
Speaker 1: these kinds of things, then we don't understand what's going
Speaker 1: on around us and don't know how to address it. Yes,
Speaker 1: so it is the work very true. Is there anything
Speaker 1: else you would like to add about slave revolts, are
Speaker 1: resistance or anything else that came up that you will
Speaker 1: be interested in talking about. I can't think of anything
Speaker 1: else the top of my head. UM, definitely, UM. I
Speaker 1: tried to update my website, so I definite would like
Speaker 1: to refer people to my website that has information on
Speaker 1: the ongoing progress of the graphic novel as well as UH.
Speaker 1: That's a link to um scholarly articles published on the topic. UM.
Speaker 1: Then that is red Hall PhD dot org and UH,
Speaker 1: and you can also follow me on Twitter at Weight Revolt.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the interview. We'll be back with
Speaker 1: another conversation very soon, so stay tuned for that. If
Speaker 1: you want to give us a show and let us
Speaker 1: know what you thought about today's interview, you can do
Speaker 1: that by email at Unpopular at I heart media dot com,
Speaker 1: or you can hit us up on social media. We're
Speaker 1: on Twitter at underscore Unpopular Show, We're on Instagram at
Speaker 1: Unpopular Show, and we're on Facebook at this is Unpopular.
Speaker 1: So let us know what you think and we'll be
Speaker 1: back soon. Hi.