The Division of History
Two hundred years ago, a freed Charleston slave named Denmark Vesey attempted to lead a rebellion. To many Black people, he is a hero, but his name is still anathema to many whites.
Several years ago, I spoke at an event at the Unitarian Church in Charleston. When a member of the audience asked for my opinion of Denmark Vesey, I replied, “The same thing that most of you think of George Washington. He fought for the freedom of my ancestors.”
As you look at our publication, I’d ask you to pay particular attention to our homepage. Each story has a label. This week, as our storytelling gets rolling, one of those labels says “Hope,” another “Humor” and still another “Family.”
To me, those labels are much more than “stickers” that identify what each story is about. To me, they represent qualities that define the American South as a region.
The predominantly white audience gasped at this response, but when I would make this statement at other events — before Black audiences — they would cheer.
Three decades ago, a Black Charleston city councilman named Robert Ford called for a statue of Denmark Vesey to be placed in front of the Gilliard Auditorium. Local Blacks expressed approval, while a white conservative columnist named Tom Hamrick opined that Vesey was “a would-be killer who wanted to turn Charleston into a blood inferno. No one could have been less popular among white Charlestonians than Vesey, not even Adolf Hitler.” While the statue was not placed at that location, a portrait by a Black artist named Dorothy Wright would hang at the auditorium, in the face of overwhelmingly negative white reaction including the painting being briefly stolen from the auditorium before its return.
What accounts for this diversity of views over an individual who was executed 200 years ago, and still causes controversy today? The answer reveals much about the racial divide in America, which persists to this day. In 1822, a former Charleston slave named Denmark Vesey planned a slave revolt that was put down before it happened, and in July and August of that year, a city-appointed court convicted and executed him and 35 other potential rebels.
The trial transcripts, which are still available in print and online, tell the essentials of the story. A Charlestonian named Captain Joseph Vesey purchased Denmark in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, in 1781. They both came to Charleston, and a short time later, Captain Vesey allowed Denmark to earn a living along with his assigned chores. Denmark used this income to purchase a lottery ticket in 1800. He won and used the proceeds to buy his freedom. He would use his ability to read to organize a slave rebellion by using biblical passages to encourage his followers. Their plan was to steal guns from the city armory to fight off slaveholders, then they would free the Blacks of Charleston and set sail for Haiti, where they would be free. An informant then revealed these plans, which led to the incarceration and execution of Vesey and his followers.
What accounts for this diversity of views over an individual who was executed 200 years ago and still causes controversy today? The answer reveals much about the racial divide in America, which persists to this day.
White Charlestonians immediately passed laws banning Black gatherings without the presence of whites, and the Hampstead African Church, where Vesey was a lay leader, was ordered demolished. A fort designed to prevent future slave rebellions was built on Marion Square; it would later evolve into The Citadel Military College of South Carolina. The site where Vesey was buried after his hanging was never publicly identified to prevent Blacks from making a shrine of this location — and inspiring more such slave rebellions.
White Charlestonians would rarely speak of Denmark Vesey at all over the next 150 years, as his story was a grim rebuke to their cherished narrative of benevolent slaveholders. But Blacks would speak of him privately as a hallowed agent of their liberation. Lee Bennet Jr., the historian of Mother Emanuel AME Church, has said that he remembers elders speaking of Vesey in whispers in his youth. The Works Progress Administration’s Slave Narrative Project of the 1930s includes several recollections of the Vesey Rebellion by older African Americans, and Black demonstrators in Charleston during the Civil Rights movement occasionally chanted, “Remember Denmark Vesey.”
The statue honoring Vesey was finally erected in Charleston’s Hampton Park in 2014 and was vandalized seven years later. The culprits were never identified, but the statue was repaired in time for the Bicentennial commemoration of the attempted Vesey Rebellion.
White Charlestonians, along with other Southerners, were traditionally taught the “Lost Cause” version of their history in the South Carolina history books. The now notorious “History of South Carolina” by Mary Simms Oliphant read in a manner akin to the novel “Gone with the Wind” — filled with happy, well-fed slaves and brave Confederates who fought for “States’ Rights.” The attempted Vesey Rebellion, when mentioned at all, was portrayed as an aberration by a violent fanatic. That story was too disruptive to the accepted narrative, which brought comfort to the descendants of those who gave their lives to the cause of the Confederacy.
Blacks responded in a far different manner. The histories of Black South Carolinians were not seriously compiled until Black history was popularized among the literate by the likes of Negro History Week founder Carter G. Woodson in the 1920s. Because the state’s segregated educational system for Blacks was deliberately designed to maintain a permanent class of cheap labor, the few Blacks who knew anything about Vesey in succeeding generations learned of his story through word of mouth from a handful of remaining elders. Black South Carolinians often grew up with the false belief that there was nothing more to their history than the drudgery of slavery, and thus felt a deep psychological craving for heroes who proved that there were those who fought against and resisted the status quo. When The Charleston Chronicle, the local Black newspaper, published a series on Vesey in 1972, it caused a sensation and led to a revival of interest in Vesey.
As a child, I was very well read and devoured the Black history articles by Lerone Bennett in Ebony Magazine in the 1970s. While my father had read Carter Woodson’s book “Story of the Negro” in his college days, and my mother told me what she knew and remembered about Black history, few of the other adults around me were casual readers. I was not aware of Vesey or his story until my own college years, in spite of my growing up not 10 miles away from where his actions occurred. Then and now, there was resistance to Black history being taught in the public schools. I have taught and written about history for nearly 30 years, and it has been my experience that Black youth are often horrified to learn that American heroes such as George Washington, Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson were slaveowners. Thus, they are often gratified to learn that people such as Denmark Vesey were willing to fight on behalf of their ancestors in the same manner that Washington and Henry were willing to fight for the ancestors of white Americans.
The adage “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” may apply to this case, but white South Carolinians may want to consider the following scenario: Had they grown up not being taught nothing about their history but the Dark Ages of the Medieval Era and suddenly discovered that there were brilliant men and women who were willing to fight to free them from that drudgery, then they might have some understanding as to why so many of their Black neighbors feel the need to celebrate someone such as Denmark Vesey.
Damon L. Fordham is an adjunct professor of history at The Citadel and the author of four books on South Carolina’s Black history, including the recent volume “The 1895 Segregation Fight in South Carolina” from The History Press.
Professor Fordham does us a real service in making the point that one man’s rebellion is another man’s liberation.