Fugitive Movements: Commemorating the Denmark Vesey Affair and Black Radical Antislavery in the Atlantic World

In 1822, White authorities in Charleston, South Carolina, learned of plans among the city's enslaved and free Black population to lead an armed antislavery rebellion. Among the leaders was a free Black carpenter named Denmark Vesey. After a brief investigation and what some have considered a dubious trial, Vesey and thirty-five others were convicted of attempted insurrection and hanged.

Although the rebellion never came to fruition, it nonetheless fueled Black antislavery movements in the Un...