To Be Visible without Being Seen in the Age of Nat Turner: A Documentary Archaeology of Free Black Responses to Dissonance in the City of Alexandria, Virginia, 1829–1833

• Garrett R. Fesler ^[1]
  1. [1] Alexandria Archaeology
• Localización: Historical Archaeology, ISSN 0440-9213, Vol. 58, Nº. 2, 2024, págs. 255-281
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • For two days in August 1831, an enslaved preacher named Nathaniel Turner and a core group of followers rampaged across rural Southampton County, Virginia, killing some 55 white people. One month later, 46 free Black residents of Alexandria, Virginia, published a petition in the local newspaper, asserting their loyalty to the town. What compelled these 46 men to do this? I explore the connections among the petitioners as well as 238 other free Blacks in Alexandria in 1831, focusing on the concepts of social dissonance and stability. I propose that free Black Alexandrians mitigated the discord in their lives by forming neighborhoods, buying property, putting down roots, and establishing a favorable reputation within the white community. I conduct a documentary archaeology of primary sources to investigate the ways that free Blacks tempered the daily onslaught of racist disruption in their lives, particularly for the period ca. 1829–1833.