This quote became one of my favorites when I first read David Copperfield by Charles Dickens at the age of 14. Almost 20 years later, I’m realizing that I’ve not only loved this quote, but I’ve also lived by it. If a task can be done now, I will do my utmost to complete it now. If work requires an extra hour, I’ll just do it, even if it’s out of hours. In all things work and productivity, this has been my mantra- any spare or extra time quickly gets filled by things I believe I could use the time to achieve. And yet, the work never feels done. And if it is done, it rarely gives me satisfaction at task completion, because I can see anywhere from 2 to 20 ways I could have done it better.

The goal posts initially are labeled as done. But as soon as I think I’ve scored, the goal posts shift to include all I could improve, or to include three more things I could potentially do to “properly” be done.

In a hilariously delayed bout of self-awareness, I’ve learned this is perfectionism, and now I’m committed to laying it down.

Perfectionism Imperfectly Defined

In the space of one week, a new friend and an over-a-decade-long friend both casually referred to me as a perfectionist. They said it in a way that made it clear they assumed I already knew it about myself. Even as I hashed out my recent realization with my sister she said with a playful side-eye and a stifled laugh, “oh, you didn’t know that? I don’t know how you don’t know that about yourself…” Apparently, it’s been crystal clear to everyone but me.

My response to allegations of perfectionism has always been, “Me? I don’t really relate to that term at all… I’m just conscientious.” Now, “conscientious” is a word teachers have used to describe me as early as 12 years-old. I even received a gag gift as a teen, a door hanger that read, “I know I’m efficient, tell me I’m beautiful.” I could unpack worlds of meaning in that gift, but for now, I’m simply highlighting that my work ethic has been an affirmed central part of my personality for a long time.

And, to me, this isn’t perfectionism. To me, perfectionists are “type a,” anal, uptight people who surveil everyone and everything anyone does, mostly themselves, to create something impossibly perfect. Perfectionists are “clean freaks” who live in pristine houses, have a system for every task, and like minimalist living because they love “clean lines.” More than this, to me, perfectionists are… well, perfect.

Contrastingly, my work is never pristine orwithout errors. My home can be tidy and look as chaotic as a move-in day. I don’t love clean lines or minimalism; I like vintage clothes and antique finds that others might find gaudy or impossible to get clean. And no matter how conscientious I am, I could never be a perfectionist, because I never ever ACTUALLY achieve perfection.

Correctly Naming Perfectionism

Yes, I hear it. I finally hear the irony in this definition. In my opinion, I can’t be a perfectionist because no matter how hard I try, I never achieve it, while others seem to.

That’s the lived definition of perfectionism

1. That there is a standard that my efforts can never meet.

2. That other people are achieving that standard I can’t seem to meet.

This hasn’t felt like perfectionism to me, just a fact I’ve never questioned.

Until now.

I’m sharing this lesson because I believe countless people struggle with this and don’t even realize it because it’s so thoroughly integrated into your sense of self that you can’t see the forest for the trees. But our blindness to its presence in our hearts and minds is robbing us of the joy that it is to be a person who is allowed to grow and change. It deprives us of the love offered by God and by others, because we’re too focused on whether we are worthy of it.

For people of faith, perfectionism distorts sanctification, turning it into the process by which we finally become worthy of God’s love and Jesus’ sacrifice. Which, in case you haven’t guessed, is not the true definition of sanctification, or what this Christian life is about at all. That belief robs us of the joy of our salvation, leaving us to a version of the abundant life that looks closer to the crushing plight of Sisyphus.

It is the thief of joy.

Living Free

So, as Mr. Micawber said of procrastination and time, let me say of perfectionism and joy:

Perfectionism is the thief of joy, collar him!

Undoing a lifetime of living this way is going to take time, but the only way to get free is by getting free! So, for me, that looks like allowing myself to try new things and ways of doing things, allowing myself to start before I’m “really good” at things, and beginning to speak up in arenas where I usually stay silent, hoping to perfect my opinion and knowledge to have the perfect answer. This looks like saying, “I don’t know” more often, and allowing myself and others to simply be, without consistently evaluating my never-ending “progress.” It looks like living life to the full, rather than hemming it in to the things I feel I’m “good enough” to have or do.

I hope you choose to live free of the voice that tells you you’re not doing it right or that you’re not enough.

This is a very new lesson that I’m bringing into 33, and I want to close by encouraging you to think about how this might show up for you. You, too, may be defining perfectionism in a way that obfuscates how it shows up in you. A good question to ask yourself is: Do I allow myself to get wind from my wins? Or do I simply move on to the next thing I need to achieve, filled with the same fear and anxiety over my capabilities?

If you’re further along in this journey, or starting out like me, I’d love to hear what collaring perfectionism has looked like for you, so please share in the comments!

Procrastination is the thief of joy; life will be sweeter when you begin to collar him.

I started carrying around a mini-notebook in my handbag. It’s a light lavender purple and was a gift from a friend on my last birthday. When I first got it, I had no idea what I’d use it for. Initially, I plopped it into my handbag, thinking I’d use it to jot down ideas for writing projects as they hit me in my day-to-day, but I carried it for a year, and it never happened. This year, it found its purpose.

Finding Joy in Paradise Lost

I think we’re way too passive about joy and enjoyment. Perhaps I should speak for myself, but I think this really is so for many of us. It seems we believe moments of joy and pleasure are simply facets of life that come and go, ebb and flow, and are simply seasonal. But I have learned that joy and enjoyment are experiences we have to actively choose and train ourselves to even notice. Now, this isn’t an endorsement of hedonism- the unrelenting and unconstrained pursuit of pleasure- it's a call to live intentionally in a broken world and to respond to how our brains are wired.

We were made for joy everlasting, created to dwell in Eden, walking with God as stewards of an abundant earth. But we don’t. We live in a world of brokenness, sin, and pain, in a paradise lost where all of these things enter our lives without our choice. People hurt and disappoint us, we hurt and disappoint ourselves, and we’re plugged into the global hurts and disappointments happening to people across the world. As I shared in my last post, out of nowhere, chronic illness entered my life and changed everything from my ability to maintain the workload I always had, to my day to day comfortability in my own body. I didn’t do anything to make that happen; I didn’t seek it out; it simply happened. And that is how pain is: unexpected, uncontrollable, and unpredictable. Indeed, these are the unique features of suffering that render many faithless, as its randomness does not align with the ordered justice our hearts long for. Pain is indeed a fact of life on this side of eternity, and it seems that we believe joy and enjoyment are too.

In the most basic sense, they are. The beauty of a sunset can meet you at any moment, as can the kindness of a stranger. We don’t earn the beauty of life that is around us, nor the happenstance (or blessings) of meeting a new person who might become a best friend, or the love of our life. Those are indeed beautiful infusions of joy and enjoyment into our lives. But these moments do not sustain our joy on their own; they require our decision to opt in, to choose to observe or invite them into our lives.

Most often, we slip into a monotonous cycle of work, responsibilities, meeting needs, and caretaking, with moments of enjoyment being reduced to mere rest, like scrolling on our phones or mindlessly watching a TV show. Then our brains are wired to scan to ensure safety, leading us to notice the hard things much more easily than we can detect the good. Part of our fallen condition is this faulty hardwiring adapted to survive the wilderness of life on this side of eternity. So, as life gets more complicated, enjoyment gives way to surviving. We settle for numbing ourselves such that the pains of life, or its monotony, aren’t felt quite so palpably. But this is not joy.

Opt-in to Joy

The solution is to accept that opportunities for joy and enjoyment don’t simply seek us out as we’re living our lives- even all that does happen serendipitously: joy comes from our choosing it, from noticing the good that is indeed sewn into the fabric of the world. We have to carve out space for joy! For me, that has looked like making time to read fiction, an act that isn’t “useful,” but simply brings me pleasure; choosing to put down my to-do list when opportunities for quality time with friends presents itself, choosing to live less urgently, and making literal space in my week for moments of enjoyment over productivity. Opt-ing into joy means cultivating it in your life, not with a “treat yourself” approach to life, but one that puts in the work to sow habits that bloom into experiences of joy and enjoyment. It’s not about overspending, consumerism, or indulgence; it’s about saying yes to connection, community, and the parts of life that feel inconvenient when your focus is productivity and usefulness.

Building new neuropathways

To retrain my brain to notice the serendipitous joy all around us, I have started using the notebook I told you about. I simply carry it around, with a pen, so that when unexpected moments of joy occur, whether through the kind words of a friend or a beautiful sight on a walk, or a stunning Broadway show- I can write it down. I write so that I remember what happened, but then I reflect on how it felt. Only for one page of a tiny Moleskine. It takes roughly 1-2 minutes each time; sometimes it takes less than a minute, but the act of noticing and holding on to what you’re noticing can help you attune to all that is good, true, and lovely!

Opting in to joy really is beginning to reshape my life and my mind, and I truly believe it can help reshape yours, too.

Ryan Coogler, Brianna Bryson / Fortune Magazine Staff / Getty Images, accessed via: Fortune Media

So, I’m sharing it with you all here for you to read and consider. I loved writing this, and I hope you enjoy it and are challenged by it.

‘Anti-Christian Propaganda’? An Alternative Review of ‘Sinners’

This spring, Ryan Coogler’s SINNERS set a fire in the world of cinema, igniting social discourse around Black film, vampire lore, and American history. Unsurprisingly, the provocatively named movie quickly became a source of Christian cultural conversation, and notably managed to elicit the label of “anti-Christian propaganda” by rapper Lecrae and countless others who disliked the way the movie portrayed our faith. In an interview with TMZ, Lecrae argued that SINNERS is a “beautiful piece of work” with masterful visuals and storytelling, but he felt it portrayed Christianity as “oppressive and irrelevant.” He went on to lament the entanglement of Christianity and colonization in modern secular thought, arguing that its use as a tool of oppression “does not discount its relevance, its power, its potency.” He then reminded listeners that Christianity did not originate in Europe, but rather reached Africa first, a fact that remains relatively unknown. It has been two months, and the fire of this conversation has died down a little, yet, as a Christian, lover of art, and a historian, offering an alternative way of thinking about SINNERS, and art more generally, feels necessary and (hopefully) useful.

While Lecrae highlights the potency and power of Christianity and its Eastern origins, there are two main flaws in his argument. First, his response does not speak directly to the tangled history of Christianity and colonialism; it speaks past it. Despite the origins of Christianity, it remains that countless Western empires used it as a tool of oppression across the globe, and in particular used Scripture to endorse chattel slavery as biblical and a positive good. Secondly, to conclude that SINNERS is “anti-Christian propaganda” is a reaction symptomatic of the lost art of storytelling and story exploring in broader Christian culture. In a moment when surveys report the supposed decline of Christianity in America, it is easier to lament any narrative that alludes to some of the harsh realities of American and Christian history, seeing it as an attack on the faith. But reading stories well requires us to engage from a place of confidence, with curiosity rather than judgment.

To examine the presentation of Christianity in SINNERS in good faith is to engage the history of Christianity in America and the broader Western world. In the film, Coogler pulls on the connecting thread between African American and Irish experiences of Christianity. It is a climactic and haunting moment between the musician and pastor’s son, Sammy, and the leading vampire, Remmick, wherein the latter joins Sammy in his recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. Instead of cowering under the words of Scripture, the vampire informs Sammy that colonizers used Christianity to subjugate and brutalize his ancestors, just as enslavers had done to Sammy and his. Not only are the words familiar to him, but they appear to be powerless to defeat him. Two symbols coincide: the proverbial devil himself, uttering Scripture as he did to Jesus in the wilderness, and, the white vampire who means to feed on Sammy, evokes the slaveholders and slaveholding system that fed on the bodies of Sammy’s near family ancestors while co-opting Scripture to encourage their submission.

This moment elicits a sense of utter helplessness for Sammy and for any viewer who understands that what was said is historically accurate. Indeed, English colonizers used Protestantism as a tool to oppress Irish Catholics as early as the 16th century, causing religious violence that has marked each subsequent century. Similarly, European settlers crafted theologies of “Manifest Destiny” to permit the colonization and extermination of Native Americans, and pro-slavery theology to sanctify chattel slavery and white superiority as God’s created order. In both cases, Christianity did not merely coexist alongside colonialization and enslavement in the Americas; colonizers and enslavers actively weaponized the faith against those they desired to subjugate. Thus, the moment between Sammy and Remmick points to centuries of misuse of Scripture that led to the inconceivable harm of millions.

Engaging the faith of the enslaved is the only way to respond directly to the conundrum SINNERS presents. Rather than circumvent or defend the Christianity that endorsed slavery, we can find the potency and power of Christ in those who critiqued and challenged injustice and the misuse of God’s Word in American history. In both trade with and enslavement of Africans, Europeans used Christianity as a bargaining chip and tool of subjugation, yet, countless enslaved people chose Christianity for themselves before slavery’s end. This is evident in the mass conversions of the First and Second Great Awakenings in the 18th and 19th centuries, which birthed traditional evangelicals who “sought to include every person in conversion, regardless of gender, race, and status” without challenging the institution of slavery. Despite this, enslaved converts to Christianity saw the incongruity of slavery with the faith, seeking freedom for themselves and adopting abolitionist positions, a trend that can be seen in conversion narratives of formerly enslaved people.

Richard Allen, the founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, wrote that his conversion led him to be more industrious in his enslavement until he could purchase his freedom, which appears, at face value, to affirm Christianity as an oppressive tool. Yet, later in his narrative, in an address “To the People of Color,” Allen expresses empathy with the still enslaved, stating that when enslaved he was “as desirous of freedom as any of you, yet the bands of bondage were so strong that no way appeared for my release,” which reveals that his continued conscientious labors did not come from an endorsement of slavery, but from lacking a means of escape. After obtaining his freedom, Allen condemned the institution of slavery on religious grounds for the rest of his life. In the early 1780s Allen and other free Blacks attended St. George’s Church in Philadelphia, a white Methodist church, until they refused to accept second-class membership. First, St. George’s clergy forced Black congregants to receive communion after all white congregants, a practice Allen and his counterparts deemed deeply contradictory to the Gospel of Christ. Then, the clergy created segregated seating, forcing Black congregants to move to the back of the church, mostly to standing positions. This led to a Black congregational “sit-in” led by Allen and Absalom Jones, where they refused to voluntarily move from their chosen seats in the sanctuary, leading to their forcible removal by white clergy who would not allow them to kneel in place for prayer. In their rebellion, Allen states, “the Lord was with us,” allowing them to raise funds to found the A.M.E Church where Black Philadelphians could worship freely. Allen denounced slavery and white supremacy in word and deed. In a section entitled “An Address to Those Who Keep Slaves and Approve Its Practice,” Allen compared America to Egypt, encouraging white Christians to “consider how hateful slavery is, in the sight of that God who hath destroyed kings and princes, for their oppression of the poor slaves.”

Similarly, Christians who engaged in the Black Jeremiad tradition not only rejected pro-slavery theology, but they also prophesied God’s coming judgment against American slavery. For example, Black abolitionist writer David Walker wrote in his famous 1829 pamphlet “An Appeal, in Four Articles,” that “the God of the Etheopeans, has been pleased to hear our moans in consequence of oppression; and the day of our redemption from abject wretchedness draweth near…” He denounced the “inhumane institution of slavery,” and declared that God, “being a just and holy Being,” would “one day appear fully in behalf of the oppressed, and arrest the progress of the avaricious oppressors.” Walker prophesied that “the destruction of the oppressors” God may not achieve by the hands of the enslaved, “yet the Lord our God will bring other destructions upon them…” Other Black Christian abolitionists continued these prophetic warnings throughout the antebellum era, and the enslaved themselves told of their sustained prayers for a Moses figure- often seen as Lincoln in the Civil War years- to lead them out of their captivity. These deep convictions and prophetic voices among literate and illiterate Black people of the antebellum era demonstrate the undeniable potency of God’s power to reach and empower the enslaved and abolitionists.

Further, confronting the legacy of slavery and Christianity requires us to denounce the legitimacy of slaveholding Christianity. Formerly enslaved man and abolitionist Frederick Douglass exemplified this in his speech responding to those who accused him of apostasy. He stated: ““What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the slaveholding religion of this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, it is of necessity to be the enemy of the other.” I encourage us to follow Douglass’s lead. Rather than attempting to sanctify and sanitize the history of slaveholding and Christianity, to champion the Gospel, we must learn from those whose faith, actions, and speech align with God’s Word, and reject any changed version of the Gospel. While these truths do not undo the weaponization of Christianity by unjust systems, they allow us to tell a more whole and beautiful story in which God is bigger than His creation; His power and might are not tied to the faithfulness of the powerful.

Engaging Story Well

SINNERS is not, by any stretch, a Christian story, but I do want to leave us with an alternative way of engaging this story, as an invitation into how we can learn, and be challenged by, secular art in all forms. My approach to art— whether film, literature, music, or other forms —is best summed up by literary professor and writer Karen Swallow Prior. In the opening pages of On Reading Well, Prior reflects on the way “reading widely, voraciously, and indiscriminately” allowed her to learn spiritual, emotional, and intellectual lessons that she “would never have encountered within the realm of her lived experience.” The result: learning “how to be the person God created me to be.” This, surprisingly, remains true, even in my viewing of this contemporary vampire horror movie. Here are a few reflections SINNERS led me to:

1. Blackness is often portrayed as incongruous with Christianity, becoming an obstacle to many.

The character Sammy, a gifted musician, is presented with a false binary by his preacher father: give up playing music and be saved, or keep playing the Blues and be damned forever. This plot line reflects historical truth, as many Christian communities have deemed Blues music as demonic throughout time. But it also reflects a common experience among Black Christians who have felt implicitly, or been told explicitly, that their faith requires a shedding of most Black identity markers. Rather than an invitation to the reformation of cultural practices (Sammy’s father could have questioned the environment Sammy played in, rather than his gifting and passion), many are faced with the same false binary today. Sammy’s conundrum reminds me of Jemar Tisby’s extensive speaking and writing on the direct correlation between his activism to remedy racial injustice, a central reality in the Black experience, and being maligned in the circles in which he used to be welcome. It reminded me of my journey from discomfort to comfort in the body and cultural heritage ordained for me, and to seeing and celebrating the beauty in different cultures and communities.

2. God was gracious anyway.

The film makes it clear that Sammy, presented with this binary, chose the Blues. He chose to defy his father by playing at the juke joint and indulging in all it had to offer, ultimately embroiling himself in the waking nightmare of vampire attacks. While Sammy’s choice led to these harrowing consequences, his life is, unexpectedly, spared. He is the only survivor, left to stumble back to his father’s church, where he is presented with the same choice again. The survival of Sammy pointed me to the truth that the consequences of our choices are often still covered by God’s grace, and our deserving lies far outside the scope of God’s actions.

3. Sometimes deliverance is simply the rising of a new day.

Sammy’s survival did not come from a death blow he dealt, but rather from the rising of the sun. Indeed, the sun, the morning, the next day came for Sammy, just as it seemed Remmick would win. Just as it seemed Sammy’s prayer was useless and God was silent. This led me to reflect on the way we often seek a dramatic intervention of the power of God, to supernaturally defeat evil. But often, deliverance looks like the dawning of a new day, with new mercy. In my battles walking with God through chronic illness, the rising sun of deliverance has looked like strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow; the answering of some prayers amidst the waiting for others; God’s giving me eyes to see more joy than I could before. On a larger scale, the coming of the dawn in the perfect moment for Sammy reminded me that God’s will, goodness, and grace stand above and beyond our understanding of Him, and even our submission to Him, because He’s just that good.

Our responses to art are often unique to our circumstances, positionality in the world, and our systems of belief– meaning, we will all interpret a loaded piece like SINNERS differently, no matter Ryan Coogler’s intentions. This is part of the beauty of storytelling: that while there is the writer’s intended meaning, engaged audiences can draw out even more. However, when we engage storytelling from a perspective of the fragility of Christianity in the modern world, we risk perceiving most expressions of the human experience and history as dangerous, rather than something to interrogate and thoughtfully engage. Instead, I invite us to engage storytelling from the solid ground of God’s final victory. Then, and only then, will we be free to engage stories well and adequately respond to the tangled history of race, Christianity, and colonization.

©2026 Abena Ansah-Wright. Originally published in Common Good magazine.

If you are not already subscribed to Common Good Magazine, you should definitely consider doing so! Their issues include topics such as this, as well as theology, economics, vocation, arts and culture. Subscribe here.

Growing up, my mum always made birthdays extra special. She filled each celebration with love in the form of friends coming over to watch films on our bedsheet-over-the-window makeshift cinema screen, chocolate rice crispy cupcakes (because I have an egg allergy), and a few gifts that always left me feeling cherished. But, more than all the love, as I grew in my faith, my birthday always felt like my own personal New Year’s celebration. I would reflect with gratitude upon all God had done in the previous year, the deliverances, the gifts, and the minor joys of life, tallying up with ease to bring me into unmitigated thanksgiving and joy. I loathed the term “birthday blues,” completely unable to fathom how anyone could feel anything besides contentment, at the very least, about their birthday.

Then, unexpectedly, everything changed.

The Turn

Two days before my 30th birthday, I left the hospital after an intense three-night hospital stay, during which I was diagnosed with a fairly uncommon autoimmune disease. After ignoring symptoms for 6-weeks, doctors told me it was a miracle that I was alive. They had never seen lab results like mine, where the person was anything other than incapacitated, unable to believe that I had been at work the previous day. During my treatment, one thing became abundantly clear: I was meeting a new version of my body. One that demanded my care and attention, and one I needed to learn how to steward. One I needed to learn how to love.

Or perhaps I was simply meeting my body for the first time. That same one who had tried to talk to me for years. The one I’d tried to silence by starving it of any attention other than to chastise it. The one that saved me from myself by setting off alarm systems to get me to safety.

I’m still cleaning the lenses of hindsight to see it that way, though I know it’s true.

Then, two days later, I had to abandon my birthday celebrations to return to the hospital after labs revealed a problem. My doctor’s concerned voicemail led to a dramatic medical marathon, running from facility to facility for medication, CT scans, ultrasounds, and MRIs.

A new kind of fear seeped into my life that week. Not a fear that falls from a grey cloud outside of yourself, but one that pours out of you like sweat. A fear from within yourself. A fear of within yourself.

The truth is, this story isn’t one about how my 30th birthday was ruined, and now I’m worried that birthdays will no longer contain the joy they used to. It is a story about unexpected turning points. It’s a story about how the very meaning of being alive changed for me, and how life began to make new demands of my faith and emotional landscape. And I tell it because I think birthday blues are common, even for those who haven’t had major health or life crises. I believe it is common in your thirties onward because it feels like all the major milestones of adulthood have passed (or, disappointingly, have not), and life doesn’t feel quite so linear. The feeling of inevitable forward movement gives way to the unpredictable twists and turns of life that feel more like going backwards than the switchbacks they actually are. Then we take all of that complexity and flatten it into turning our birthday into the day and season to audit our lives. We replace celebration with the looming dread of a performance review that puts a magnifying glass on all that didn’t go to plan. Slowly but surely, birthdays became a time of evaluation more than celebration- and I believe that is an error.

Birthday’s Are About Celebration

I’m finding that the most effective remedy for me is in the liberation of choice. I choose not to allow my birthday to be a time for evaluation, but simply a time to celebrate what is.

It may seem paradoxical, but awakening to the simple gift of continuation has helped me make this choice. I’m learning to see my birthday as the simple gift of another day, another mercy, another chance to keep building the life I want and the life to which I feel called. Intentionally inhaling these simple truths soothes both the fear of unknown future troubles and helps heal the bruises of past disappointments and pains. Remembering that I have been gifted with the continuation of my life frees me up to put down the evaluation form and celebrate. No one is looking over my shoulder, measuring my progress, or checking that I’m moving fast enough. God isn’t looking at me, shaking his head in disappointment that I haven’t accomplished more, wondering how He’s going to make something out of my “nothing.” A birthday doesn’t have to be the end of the game; no one is saying “the scores are in,” and trying to determine if you won or lost (what, I don’t know).

So, whenever your birthday rolls around and your brain starts to seek out affirmation that you’re not behind, remember:

Your birthday is the gift of another day.

Another breath.

Another chance to become.

So now, three years later, on this my 33rd birthday, birthday blues have given way to a quiet gratitude. Indeed, I am still standing in the ruins of the life I anticipated, but I’m also still here to build a fuller, freer, and more honest life than that one. And, it’s a mercy that I get to.

For the rest of the month, I’ll be sharing three other lessons I’m bringing with me into 33, not for my own self-indulgence, but because I believe they can be an encouragement to you, too.

Only days after our visit, I watched footage on social media of the exhibit being dismantled.

Workers remove signs from the President's House exhibit on Independence Mall. Accessed via: Emma Lee/WHYY

Then, on February 19th 2026, the exhibit panels were restored, as a result of the city’s fierce resistance to attempts by the Federal government to erase history. While the case is still being litigated in court and we don’t yet know the outcome, this incident epitomises the continued battle over Black history in the public square and the story arc of American history.

National Park Service Workers restore the exhibit at the President’s House set at Independence Mall. Accessed via: Emma Lee/WHYY

For the 100th anniversary, ASALAH invited us to “explore the impact and meaning of Black history and life commemorations in transforming the status of Black peoples in the modern world,” and I hope that this month I have demonstrated how Black history has done exactly that in different eras and through different mediums. But as we come to the end of Black History Month, I want to wrap up with a simple reminder for this moment: Black History cannot be erased, and Black History is still being made. This might feel contradictory in light of the story I just shared, but I assure you, it isn’t.

Black History Cannot Be Erased

The story of Independence Mall is one of many. In the past year, over 400 Black books have been banned, efforts have been made to redefine inclusion as exclusion, history books are rewriting the history of enslavement, and any mechanisms to right systemic wrongs are being actively dismantled. Indeed, rampant efforts are being made to erase Black History and Black presence in industries across the nation. And frankly, it is scary and deeply disheartening.

But it will fail.

I will fail because these attempts have always failed.

They have always failed because Black Americans, and their allies, have never given their stories over to the hands of the State or anyone else. In the immediate aftermath of the American Civil War, after the passing of the 13th Amendment, Black people across the nation marched in parades celebrating freedom and declaring the victory they had won. And over time, whether through the work of Carter G. Woodson, or the nameless Civil Rights activists of the 1950s and 60s, or the countless firsts, our forefathers and mothers have shown us how to preserve, protect, and build communities of belonging even in the most dire circumstances. The state has never been, and will never be, the keeper of Black stories; Black people and all those who care to tell the truth will be. In that sense, Black lives and history have always stood as a testimony of truth-telling in the face of lies and deception. And we will continue to tell the truth.

Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) members, from the Civil Rights era, practised the skills they needed to sustain the resistance, showing us that resistance is not simply reactivity, but is coordinated action. Accessed via: Eve Arnold.

So as we rightly fight for our stories to be amplified- including with legal action where necessary- we must remember the grassroots origins of Black History in America, and use it as a blueprint to ensure that Black stories are continuously told. We will continue to tell them.

And allow me to encourage you. We, here in the 21st century, have more tools on our side than any generation before. First, we are no longer dependent on school curricula alone for our understanding of history- the internet has led to the digitisation of innumerable sources documenting Black history. Second, social media has created a network and a platform for Black stories to be shared in real time. Third, Black history and other marginalised narratives are benefiting from the Striesand Effect- the more books are banned, the more people are adding them to their reading lists, even if only to find out why!

A collation of some of the over 400 banned Black books. Accessed via: PEN

Black History cannot be erased.

Of course, this is not to diminish the importance of legal and infrastructural acknowledgement, protection, preservation, and celebration of Black people's contributions to this nation. Those are of paramount importance. It is only to say that the importance of this work remains, no matter the destructive whims of macro systems, and the possibilities of making Black history known remain as long as we are willing to share it.

Black history, as it always has been, is in the hands of the people.

May we steward it well.

Black History Is Still Being Made

Black history is still being made. Not just because there is greater justice, equity, and inclusion to be achieved in this nation, but because Black people continue to excel and create regardless of the circumstances. We are still here. Our stories, no matter how big or small, are part of Black history. But even further, if you haven’t noticed, Black history is resistance. At its core, Black history is a tradition of resistance, and the resistance is far from over.

As part of a Black History Month series at my church, I had the pleasure of interviewing members of the congregation who have done much to advance justice and build Black community in this region of Pennsylvania. During the interviews with two older men who pioneered in the 1970s and 1980s, they both offered the same encouragement:

Keep going. Don’t give up. Keep building community. Keep going.

And that is the challenge I receive and offer you.

Keep going.

In this social and political moment, when our gains feel fragile and the time seems scary, may we not look around to see who else will step up and do something. May we not look back in a way that leaves us as inheritors of the blueprint, not only as grateful inheritors of the benefits. May we learn from those who have come before, seeing Black history as a pattern and a blueprint for our resistance. May we build collaborative communities of protection and uplift, so that the winds of white supremacy, though they rage, will never topple us.

A Benediction

I will close with a Black History Month benediction:

We stand on the soil of our heritage,
tilled by generations, now bearing fruit we stretch to reach.

May we not stand only with hands lifted to receive our inheritance,
but bend them again toward the earth.

Those who tilled before us watched vines burn more often than they grew.
Still, we sow.

We hope to see the vines climb high,
and we sow in gratitude and hope,

knowing that enduring growth is not dependent on our sight.

But first, let me explain what the discipline of history is, as that underpins my reasoning.

What is History?

As a historian, I find that people either love or hate history. Every time I introduce myself and tell people what I do, I get one of two reactions:

1. “Oh wow, I’ve never met anyone who actually does that… I hated history in school. So boring!” Then they tend to tell me their memories of a mean or boring teacher who simply made them learn facts and dates.

Or,

2. “Oh wow, I LOVE history! I’m a bit of a history buff myself.” Then, these folks happily rattle off facts and figures, and (if I’m lucky) test my knowledge of facts and figures (the “if I’m lucky” was definitely sarcasm).

These reactions are funny mirror images of one another, as they’re both quite wrong about what history is. History is not about facts and dates you can rattle off at a trivia night. History is the examination of the past like it is an intricate machine that explains itself when you dismantle and look at it closely. We identify and examine interdependencies, continuity and change, asking questions that ultimately try to help us understand what was important and why. Another way to understand the discipline of history is to think of it as we do literature, only our books, poems, and plays are primary sources, and the past. But we similarly piece together the story of the past, analyze the meaning of that story, considering the way things unfolded, and the actors who pushed along the plot. And though we all read for different reasons, writers of both nonfiction and fiction alike are fundamentally examining people. I can speak for myself at least: I enjoy history as an opportunity to understand human behaviors in different circumstances, witnessing the willful dynamism of the human spirit.

Understanding the discipline of history is important for you, dear reader, because that knowledge opens the door to a much richer experience of the subject than mere fact-finding missions in dense, boring, non-fiction books. Instead, you can consider yourself an excavator of the past, someone learning old stories, meeting people with stories to tell and parts to play in larger stories. And you see this in historians ourselves (if you have the pleasure of knowing one). You can see it in the curiosity of one who just found a primary source, telling of an unexpected person doing an unexpected thing in an unexpected context, bringing a plot twist into the story they thought they knew. Or a the joy of finding a pattern among your primary sources that reveals something more significant than you initially expected. Our job is to make a two-dimensional story three-dimensional by finding intricacies and nuances that others have missed or overlooked. This is a central reason the pathways forged by W.E.B DuBois, Carter G. Woodson, and countless others in the field of history are so important. Black history fundamentally changes the broader narrative of American history, forcing it to be a fuller and truer version of the nation’s story.

Even so, no matter how much I love history, writing history, and reading historical nonfiction, I am aware of the limitations of our field. And I am aware that nonfiction is not for everyone.

But history is for everyone! And Black history must be accessible to everyone. So, if you don’t enjoy nonfiction, I would like to permit you to learn more by reading Black historical fiction instead.

Why Black Historical Fiction is Important

As we discussed last week, the heartbeat of Black history is storytelling. The very existence of the field is a result of generations of African descended people in America choosing to continuously tell their stories despite the silencing efforts of white supremacy. In doing so, they simultaneously created and preserved cultures, whilst also preserving otherwise untold histories. And despite the incredible work done by historians, we are not always able to repair the damage done to Black histories by “the violence of the archive.” Coined by French philosopher Jacques Derrida, historian Marissa J. Fuentes uses this term in her iconic work Disposessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive (2016) and defines it as the way that white supremacy constrained the lives of enslaved people at the time continues to constrain the stories that can be told about them today, by shaping what enters the archive. She viscerally describes the act of conducting historical research on enslaved women as “dwelling on the fragmentary, disfigured bodies of enslaved women,” as rendered by the archive in which they only appear as fragments in other people’s stories.

But history is an empirical subject, dependent upon archival sources, which can (and somewhat has) limited what we can do to fully excavate the history of Black life in America and the diaspora. For example, while we have tens, if not hundreds, of diaries kept by white, wealthy women in the 17th through 18th centuries, we have very few by wealthy Black women, and almost none from enslaved women. We are trapped looking at Black people from an outsider’s vantage point, making the interiority of Black lives somewhat inaccessible. Some historians have attempted this through what we call “speculative histories,” where authors like Sadiyah Hartmaan fill in the gaps using cultural knowledge. In truth, few historians are willing to accept this approach as disciplinary orthodoxy.

Yet the stories are there. Deep in the family lore that grandparents share with their descendants while sitting on porches, the stories shared over family reunions about a great uncle and a side of the family that you don’t know directly, but you know where they are and what they do. I even find it in the protection I’ve received as an outsider arriving without parents to teach me how to navigate white supremacy. There is a cultural knowing that comes from these embedded and embodied histories, carried in the hearts and souls of Black folks.

It is often from here that writers of Black historical fiction write. Dealing in fiction frees authors from the constraints we historians face, allowing them to write from a place of knowing that does not have to be reflected entirely in the archive. This is not to suggest that authors of historical fiction are free to lie to you, but rather that they can take steps of authorial faith to explore the interiority of people rendered silent in the archive, based on broader source bases than the archive offers. Still, good historical fiction is situated in archival research, allowing authors to more accurately construct the historical setting. Simultaneously, they are free to animate the fragmented stories of enslaved people with emotion, feeling, and meaning that go beyond the conclusions historians may know, but are rarely allowed to assert.

Black historical fiction is important because it testifies to the full-personhood of historically marginalised people. The genre amplifies the lives and circumstances that are often pushed aside or seen two-dimensionally. I believe it does what many nonfiction books struggle to: brings us closer to those who can often feel so removed. To read about the experience of enslavement through historical fiction removes the distance and space nonfiction can dwell in, and immerses you in the past, inviting you to see yourself in the characters, and them in you.

I could go on, but I will keep it simple this week. Let me close by sharing my 5 of my favourite Black American historical fiction books and why you should read them.

5 Black Historical Fiction Books I Love

James by Percival Everett

James is possibly my favourite historical fiction book EVER. It is a reimagining of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the enslaved man “Jim.” In it we follow the journey of Jim as he navigates the perils of being a fugitive slave with a white boy in tow, all while exploring his heart and mind. This is a fantastic book to learn about the experiences and world of enslaved people. It shows us the complexity of decision-making and the heart of James, reminding us of the humanity of the enslaved. If you read it, you will learn all about the fugitive slave law, the fragility and dangers of Black mobility in the antebellum south, Black networks of communication and community, and Black family life.

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

The Nickel Boys by Coleson Whitehead is not an easy read but it is a necessary one. Based on real-life abuses at the Dozier School for Boys in Florida (a reformatory), The Nickel Boys follows the wrongful capture of the straight-laced college-bound Black teen, Elwood Curtis, sentenced to time at the reform school. Trigger-warnings are required for this one as it truly is a harrowing exploration of the vulnerabilities of Black boys in the Jim Crow South, and the invisible hand of white supremacy and how it derails lives, even of children. Set in the 1960s, it reveals the status quo of injustice that the Civil Rights Movement sought to illuminate and eradicate.

Kindred by Octavia Butler

Kindred by Octavia Butler is a MUST READ book for those seeking to understand the slave system of the antebellum era, despite being a blend of historical fiction and science fiction. The protagonist Dana lives in 1970s California with her white husband Kevin, yet keeps getting pulled back in time to the plantation her ancestors lived on in the antebellum South. Any more details spoils the narrative so I won’t say more. But I will tell you this is a fantastic exploration of the decision-making of enslaved people, the vulnerabilities faced by women on plantations, and will challenge you to think about the enslaved as people facing challenges we could not begin to evaluate in our modern mindsets.

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Homegoing is a generational historical saga that traces the divergent lineages of sisters Effia and Esi, born in 18th century Ghana, separated by the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Traversing 300 years of history, Homegoing is a necessary elucidation of the interpersonal and generational impact of colonialism, American slavery, and segregation. I am currently reading this with my book club, and I can say that it is a hard read, but it does the necessary work of illuminating the complex interconnections between the African diaspora and Africans, as well as showing the havoc wreaked by white supremacy upon generations, families, and nations.

Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honoree F. Jeffers

Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois is a stunning poetic multi-generational saga that follows Ailey Pearl Garfield as she navigates Black womanhood in America. As Garfield explores her mixed ancestry, we move back and forth through time, meeting her ancestors and their experiences. This book is huge and not for the faint of heart- truthfully, I have not finished it yet- but it is already a book I love. If you read it, expect to learn about the changing meanings of race, colorism, misogynoir, and the interconnected impacts of slavery and the displacement of Native Americans in America.

Just Read

The TLDR here is simply this: just read. Black American history, and Black histories across the diaspora are incredibly important, and we should learn and engage with them through multiple media. Every discipline and form has its limitations, so reading through a kaleidoscope of forms gives us a fuller picture of the Black past.

Tell me, what are your favorite Black historical fiction books?

For this, the 100th anniversary of Black History Month, ASALAH has commissioned us to reflect on the ways Black history has “transformed the status of Black people” in America and across the diaspora. And while it may follow that we consider everything from 1926 onwards, the brief biography of Carter G. Woodson illuminates an often overlooked, yet crucial, reality: Black people, including those enslaved, were the keepers of Black history, and their diligent preservation of Black stories is the reason Black history is even possible.

Born in 1875, Carter G. Woodson was part of freedom’s first generation: the first generation of Black Americans born during or after the American Civil War. These children entered an iteration of America in which the 13th Amendment protected their freedom (or, at least, was supposed to), unlike the free Blacks of the antebellum era, who bore a precarious freedom under constant threat of the Fugitive Slave Laws. And although Woodson grew up in the violence of Jim Crow, the stories of his elders, compounded with those experiences, became a central influence in his passions and career. From his parents to the coal miners he worked alongside in his teen years, Woodson’s dreams of studying, teaching, and sharing Black history were shaped by the stories told by the formerly enslaved. Both his parents and the miners shared their memories of enslavement, stories of survival, and love with him.

Woodson’s experience points us to the truth that the original keepers of Black history were Black people themselves, remembering the stories of themselves and their kin, passing through oral tradition long before institutions were willing to house them. This act of family history may appear, on the surface, to be minor storytelling, but it is this act of preservation that has enabled the field to exist today, and it has indeed transformed the status of Black Americans over time.

There are countless ways we could examine the transformative preservation of Black history before the work of Woodson and ASALH, but for this essay, I will focus on two:

1. Slave Narratives: Black Histories as Catalysts for Freedom

2. The Black Press: Documenting Reality

Slave Narratives: Black Histories as Catalysts for Freedom

Before the Civil War, enslavers worked thoroughly to silence the voices of the enslaved by barring them from literacy using legislation. While this was indeed an effort to dehumanize and degrade Black American people, it was also an attempt to limit their ability to disseminate the truth of the brutality of slavey and their experiences. This becomes clear in the antebellum era during a major uptick in the publishing and dissemination of slave narratives, autobiographies written by formerly enslaved people who had self-liberated via the Underground Railroad or other means of escape.

Slave narratives can, and should, be examined as early forms of published Black histories. Between 1760 and 1860, roughly seventy autobiographies penned by formerly enslaved men and women were published. These were firsthand recollections of experiences of enslavement and escape published by abolitionist presses as a crucial tool of the abolitionist movement. Abolitionist organizations, Black and white, from the 18th through 19th centuries, all decried the institution of slavery while removed from the violence of the plantation South. Their outcry collided with Southerners’ claims of paternalism, painting enslavers as benevolent caretakers of their enslaved as dependents who required white stewardship and tutelage. Left to these voices, the issue of slavery rested merely in the realm of moral and economic ideologies and the self-interested opinion of enslavers. Free Black communities in Philadelphia and New York, and their white allies, sheltered runaways and served as station masters along the Underground Railroad, but many themselves had not encountered the brutality of enslavement that existed just across state borders in Maryland and Virginia, let alone the deep South.

Cover of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself, Accessed via: Marcus Books

The testimonies of formerly enslaved people who had successfully run North added theneeded dimension of the voices of those who had experienced it firsthand, grounding abolitionism in the very real and present horrors of the institution of slavery. Harriet Jacobs testified to the sexual vulnerability of Black women and girls at the hands of their enslavers, but also the love shared between she and her grandmother; Frederick Douglass highlighted the brutality of whippings and other abuses commited by enslavers, while also highlighting the undeterred persistence of enslaved mothers to reunite with the children enslavers stole away; Solomon Northrup, a free Black man from the North, captured by slave catchers, illuminated that the constant danger even free Blacks lived in thanks to the far-reaching hands of the Fugitive Slave Law. These and tens of others served as “windows into the nature of slavery itself,” pushing it into the public eye of the North, refusing to allow anyone to feign ignorance of the horrors of slavery.

Henry Bibb’s 1849 Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave, Written by Himself. Accessed via: NCpedia

Therefore, these narratives became central to the abolitionist movement, as evidence of their claims. Although they were written for a mostly white audience, we must examine what they were: Black testimony. Historian David Blight argues that formerly enslaved people wrote “their personal stories first because they were under such pressure to demonstrate their own humanity in a sea of racial prejudice,” and to “prove that they could be reliable truth-tellers of their own experience…to declare their own literary, psychological, and spiritual independence.” I believe that Blight conflates the effect of the slave narratives upon white Americans with the motivations of the enslaved who penned these narratives. At best, arguing that the enslaved wrote to demonstrate their humanity is simply a white-centered way to interpret these sources. At worst, it suggests that the enslaved somewhat took on the claims of their inferiority made by white supremacy. To argue that they wrote to “prove” their humanity or abilities is to understand the effect and motivations as one in the same.

The formerly enslaved wrote for freedom. They wrote because, as those who had reached freedom, they desired to join the cause they hoped would free their loved ones and kin. They wrote to testify against it and to speak up in a world determined to silence them. This is not to say they did not write with white audiences in mind, but rather to say their motivations were not proofs of themselves, but to provide unignorable evidence for the immorality of slavery. In his first autobiography, Frederick Douglass wrote:

So profoundly ignorant of the nature of slavery are many persons, that they are stubbornly incredulous whenever they read or listen to any recital of the cruelties which are daily inflicted on its victims. They do not deny that the slaves are held as property, but that terrible fact seems to convey to their minds no idea of injustice, exposure to outrage, or savage barbarity.

It seems more accurate to argue from this that Douglass, in particular, wrote to place the inhumanity of white enslavers and white Northern bystanders under intense scrutiny. More than answering questions of his own humanity, Douglass repeatedly shifts the lens to the violence of white supremacy, forcing the reader to question their passivity. Indeed, this is a literary device employed by many slave narratives, designed to needle the readers’ conscience, but understanding them this way centers Black humanity and reads them as Black testimonies, rather than as efforts to prove themselves to white audiences.

While abolitionism did not directly affect the downfall of the institution of slavery, its efforts, especially including slave narratives, brought America’s accepted sin into question. Slave narratives dismantled the hold on the narrative by challenging the pro-slavery propaganda peddled by the South.

FUGITIVE SLAVE. /n19th century typefounder’s cut used in advertisements for fugitive slaves, Accessed via: Alamy

But these narratives have also served as foundational texts in the construction of Black history. White historians like Ulrich B. Phillips and authors like Margaret Mitchell (Gone With the Wind) sought to use their whiteness and writing to rewrite the history of slavery, casting the antebellum South as an idyllic landscape of racial order and happily subservient enslaved people. But the slave narratives stood as testimonies that could not be written over. These authors have stood, through their narratives, across time, as witnesses to the truth of American Slavery and the vivacity of Black people and culture. And, in the era of further erasure attempts, their writings continue to ensure the story can never truly be rewritten.

The Black Press

We must take a moment to highlight the Black Press. As a historian of Black American history, the Black Press has been central to my own research, and the preservation of stories that white newspapers and history books still attempt to whitewash or ignore. Even worse, newspapers functioned as active tools of white supremacy, printing pieces that denigrated and dehumanized Black people, consistently casting aspersions regarding the morality and capabilities of the whole race. If we only had these newspapers, much of Black life, culture, intellectual history, and discourse would be completely invisible in the historical record.

The Black press began with the Freedom’s Journal, the first Black newspaper in America. The Journal was a four-column weekly newspaper that first launched in March 1827 in New York City. Tired of the racist commentaries shared in mainstream media, Samuel E. Cornish (a free Black man from Delaware) and John B. Russwurm (Jamaican-born, Canadian-educated, free Black man) launched Freedom’s Journal as a counter and a place for all things current events in the African American community. Established in the same year as slavery’s end in New York, the journal had practical goals, including improving conditions for the newly freedpeople of the North, which, at the time, included over 300,000 people. Further, the journal also discussed abolitionist hot topics like colonization (the proposal that emancipated enslaved people should be ‘returned’ to Africa), political rights, condemned racial violence, and reported on international news stories.

Front Page of Freedom’s Journal. Accessed via: Past Is Present

In their first issue, Russwurm and Cornish, the first editors, declared:

We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us.

This quote defines the core project of the Black Press from then til present day, serving as a crucial site of argumentation against white supremacy and providing a space where Black people could read and contribute an independent voice on Black American life. Black newspapers throughout the 19th and 20th centuries exposed the consistent and persistent injustices plaguing Black communities across the nation, reporting on lynchings when white newspapers would not, reporting on civil rights activism and communal efforts for social uplift. But even more, the Black Press gives us insight into the vibrant Black communities that existed, especially in the free North throughout the antebellum era, as they also reported on local events. They printed lists of births, deaths, weddings, and other moments of note in the Black community. Black newspapers illuminated the three-dimensional lives of the community, not only their pursuits of justice.

Portrait of Ida B. Wells in 1893 by Sallie E. Garrity. Image courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

In the late 19th century, journalists like Ida B. Wells insisted that the Black press must report on the lynchings taking places across the South in the wake of Reconstruction. In her 1892 pamphlet, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases, Wells declared:

The press contains unreliable and doctored reports of lynchings, and one of the most necessary things for the race to do is to get these facts before the public. The people must know before they can act and there is no educator to compare with the press… The Afro-American papers are the only ones which will print the truth, and they lack means to employ agents and detectives to get at the facts. The race must rally a mighty host to the support of their journals, and thus enable them to do much in the way of investigation.

Indeed, the Black press held the burden of responsibility to preserve the truth of Black life in post-Civil War America. As Wells implied, the distortions began at the scene of the lynchings, where police departments actively refused to construct thorough investigations, even allying with the perpetrators in the act in some cases, or simply offering them protection in others. Bishop Henry McNeal Turner of the A.M.E Church mocked the phrase many white newspapers employed, “at the hands of persons unknown,” saying:

Strange… that the men who constituted these [mobs] can never be identidyied by… governors or the law officers, but the newspapers know all about them – can advance what they are going to do, how and when it was done, how the rope broke, how many balls entered the Negros body, how loud he prayed, how piteously he begged, what he said, how long he was left hanging, how many composed the mob, the numbers that were masked, whether they were prominent citizens or not, how the fire was built… how the Negro was tied, how he was thrown into the fire – the whole transaction; but still the fiendish work was done by a set of “un known men.”

This intentional obfuscation was a major tool of white supremacy that worked to ensure the violence and terror inflicted on Black Americans could be a part of white Southern culture without ever becoming part of the official record. Thus, the Black Press carried the heavy weight of truth-keeping and telling, and the Black communities in which they were located carried the weight of providing financial support, so that their publishing could be sustained. Historian Eurie Duhn argues that this “dialogic” relationship between Black newspapers and their readers, where the newspapers influenced their readers, who in turn influenced the press, was a “central trait of African American periodicals of the Jim Crow era.”

Preserving these stories was far from easy. In 1889, Wells, living in Memphis, Tennessee, lost her teaching job after reporting on the poor conditions of Memphis public schools. Things got worse after she fixed her focus on the lynching of her friend Thomas Moss, alongside his fellow grocery store owners Calvin McDowell and Henry Steward. The men were lynched by a white mob enraged by the success of their store, which threatened the economic monopoly the white grocer had on the area. After Wells conducted a thorough investigation in Free Speech, a white mob attacked the offices of the newspaper and burned it to the ground. This forced Wells out of Memphis to Chicago, Illinois, but did not stop her determination to continue her anti-lynching campaign.

Through the persistence of the Black Press from 1827 to the present day, we have robust documentation, eye-witness reports of Black history. It is undeniable that these newspapers affected change and transformed the status of Black Americans- they testified to, and served as a site of Black community, and ensured that the realities of white supremacist violence could never be denied. These periodicals have shaped Black history, granting historians access to the experiences, opinions, and ideological waves within the Black community that would otherwise be lost to time.

Black Storytelling, Black History

Exploring how Black Americans have preserved history across time reminds me of an accusation I received during my first year of grad school about my first-year project. I had written an examination of Union-occupied Nashville that highlighted the violence faced by “contraband,” runaway slaves, who sought refuge and freedom behind Union lines. I argued that the enslaved forced the hand of the Union to house them, and that enslaved women faced particular vulnerabilities as they were not perceived as “useful” by Union officials. After handing in my first draft, I met with the faculty member running the first-year seminar for the first round of feedback, and she said, “There’s nothing here, this is not real history, it’s just storytelling.”

I was shattered. I had relished the honor of bringing the experiences of the enslaved during the Civil War to the foreground, when so few historians had discussed them, especially Black women. I had been so excited, and her reduction of my work from “real history” to “storytelling” left me confused and feeling far from capable. I went to my advisor, a Black professor who had been in the field for over 40 years, and shared what the other professor had said. I will never forget the response I got: “Don’t be surprised if you hear that for the rest of your career. Welcome to being Black, AND doing Black history in the academy! I have letters from editors saying the same thing, and memories of peers saying it, too. It’s their bias, you’re going to have to learn how to deal with it.”

Honestly, I don’t think I ever did.

But I bring this up to say, the academic dismissal of much of Black history as “storytelling” turns the very heart of Black history into a pejorative. At its heart, the art of Black history is testifying to what has long been denied. To present readers and the nation with the full picture of Black American life, so that we can conduct a robust analysis. But, even then, the nature of Black history – its being preserved by oral tradition and fewer written sources – leads us to different questions, methodologies, and analytical frameworks, causing an interdisciplinary approach that many pure historians disapprove of.

We see this interdisciplinary approach as early as the work of W.E.B DuBois. The first Black American to graduate with a PhD from Harvard, in history, DuBois lamented the limitations of history’s methodologies and began to employ those used by sociologists, too. He believed, and proved, that the two disciplines together allowed for a more thorough investigation of Black life and culture to be done through rigorous research. DuBois’ approach has blossomed into Black Studies and African American Studies departments across the nation, which typically house historians, sociologists, literature professors, and more. In these interdisciplinary departments, it is accepted that Black history is, in part, storytelling, and that it requires a multitude of methods to examine it fully.

As we engage Black history, this month and always, may we remember its original keepers, the enslaved. And may we remember the power of Black storytelling.

Sources

Blight, David. “The Slave Narratives: A Genre and a Source.” History Now, Issue 2 (Winter, 2004). Accessed via: Gilder Lehrman.

Cone, James. The Cross and the Lynching Tree. New York: Orbis Press. 2011.

“Editors- Samuel E. Cornish and John B. Russwum.” in PBS, Newspapers: Freedom’s Journal. Accessed via: PBS

Dahn, Eurie. Jim Crow Networks: African American Periodical Cultures. Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2021.

Norwood, Arlisha. “Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931.” In National Women’s History Museum. Accessed via: Women’s History

Wells, Ida B. Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. New York: New York Age Print. 1892. Accessed via: The Project Gutenberg

In this social and political moment, some are questioning the value of this long-standing heritage month, and countless others are afraid that this year may be our last one based on the rollbacks and EOs we have seen in the past year. I believe both of these perspectives require a deeper understanding of the history of Black History Month, its founders, its origins, and the way it became a nationally celebrated heritage month. So before we dive into commemorations, we must start there. Considering the history of Black History Month may feel meta, but it is a worthy starting point for our learning and celebrations because, as you will see, Black History Month itself is a site of remembrance.

Buckle in and feel free to listen to this essay, as it’s going to be a long synoptic dive in 5 parts:

1. History of the Founder: Carter G. Woodson

2. The Origins of the Study of Black History

3. The Origins of Black History Month

4. Black History Month Becomes Official

5. Black History Month Now

Let’s dive in.

Meet the Founder: Carter G. Woodson

Before forging pathways for Black history, Carter Goodwin Woodson forged his own from a patchy education in his youth to completion of his doctorate at Harvard. Born in December 1875 in rural Virginia to formerly enslaved parents, Woodson’s access to education was limited. In his youth, the public schools had five-month terms, but as he worked alongside his parents on the farm, he only attended school on the days his parents did not need his help (typically during periods of rain or snow). Nonetheless, Woodson took his education seriously, quickly out-pacing his classmates. Woodson set his sights on college, but did not start high school until the age of 20, as he worked in coal mines alongside his father.

In his youth, Woodson’s father instilled him with dignity and self-respect, uninhibited by his own illiteracy, and asserted equality with whites as an indisputable truth. Woodson’s time in the mines further refined these principles and priorities, cultivating a dedication to the learning of the working class. Surrounded by miners who were hard-working and longed to learn to read and write, Woodson developed a deep respect for his co-workers, young and old, and worked hard teach them how to read and write. In particular, Woodson recorded the influence of a Black Civil War veteran he encountered who strove to learn to read, collecting books and subscribing to many newspapers long before he could. Simultaneously, Woodson encountered a white miner who claimed to be a devout Christian while also bragging about participating in the lynching of four Black men. Woodson likened this stance to the pro-slavery religious white people of the antebellum era, and felt a deep disdain for such “unchristian” principles held by most white people at the time. Hatred for this hypocrisy marked Woodson’s career, serving as the foundation for his staunch critique of Black churches that were willing to partner with segregationist institutions, like the YMCA, that he became known for decades later.

Carter G. Woodson, Founder of ASALH and Black History Month, accessed via: Black Past

Carter G. Woodson, accessed via: BlackPast

Although Woodson began high school late, he obtained his diploma within one year, moving away to attend Berea College in Kentucky and Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. For unknown reasons, Woodson interrupted his studies to return to West Virginia for work as a high school teacher, while simultaneously serving as a Sunday school teacher and president of the board of deacons at Winona’s First Baptist Church. By 1900, Woodson became principal of Douglass High School, and by 1903, he completed his degree at Berea. After graduating, he went on to travel to the Philippines as an education superintendent for the U.S government, eager to learn more about how education methods could be improved for Black people. After returning from extensive travels through Asia and Europe, Woodson enrolled in a master’s program in European History at the University of Chicago. In 1912, he became the second Black American to obtain a PhD (in History) from Harvard University, following in the path of W.E.B DuBois. His long and illustrious career culminated in becoming Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Howard University.

Exploring his other major achievements leads us to the origins of Black History as a field of study and Black History Month, so let’s dive into that.

The Origins of the Study of Black History

After graduating, Woodson became increasingly determined to create spaces for Black scholars and Black history. In 1915, Woodson, familiar with Chicago after attending the University of Chicago, returned to the city for the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of state-sponsored emancipation. The streets bustled with over 10,000 Black people who had come to remember their long journey to freedom and celebrate the progress made since slavery’s end. Part of the celebrations included Woodson’s very own Black history exhibit, which was met with vast interest. The celebrations lasted three weeks, bringing more and more curious patrons to his exhibit, further inspiring Woodson to determine more ways Black life and history could be celebrated and studied.

Racial barriers that shaped Woodson’s experiences of academia also influenced Woodson’s determination to create space for Black history. Despite paying dues for the American Historical Association, the organisation barred Woodson and his colleagues from attending the annual conference. He also lamented that historians had little interest in Black history, arguing that Black achievements and contributions were “overlooked, ignored, and even suppressed by the writers of history textbooks and the teachers who use them.” Woodson understood that he and his Black colleagues needed their own institutions to study and preserve Black history, and Chicago’s emancipation anniversary celebrations simply confirmed the broader appeal and interest.

ASALH logo. ASALH is a vibrant affiliate organization for scholars of many disciplines who focus on Black American History, but also those who study the African diaspora more broadly. Accessed vial: ASALH

Thus, in fall 1915, Woodson and several others formed the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, which we now know as the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH). The founders stated its mission was the scientific study of the “neglected aspects of Negro life and history.” Shortly after its inception, the organization created the Journal of Negro History, which persists to this day as the Journal of African American History. In an article entitled “Negro Life and History in Our Schools,” published in the journal in 1919, Woodson enunciated the problem with the field of history and its consideration of Black people thus far:

The Negro… has unfortunately been for some time a negligible factor in the thought of most historians, except to be mentioned only to be condemned. So far as the history of the Negro is concerned, moreover, the field has been for some time left largely to those sympathetically inclined and lacking scientific training. Not only have historians of our day failed to write books on the Negro,but this history has not been generally dignified with certain brief sketches as constitute the articles appearing in the historical magazines.

Indeed, prominent historians of the time promulgated Lost Cause ideology and romanticized versions of slavery that asserted it as a benign institution beneficial for Black people and freedom as detrimental for them and dangerous for the white population. Examinations of Reconstruction (the post-emancipation era in the South til 1877) concluded it a failure, as a result of Black inferiority, despite the gains made by formerly enslaved people and free Black communities across the South, in both politics and education. These studies ignored the state’s willful expansion of imprisonable crimes and countless other systems put in place to limit the upward mobility of Black people, and obfuscated the crippling terror of racial violence. Woodson and his colleagues pushed back on these narratives through the journal, publishing thoroughly researched pieces on everything from Black life across different American regions, Latin America, and the Caribbean (illuminating its diasporic considerations from its inception), to Black religion and politics.

The Origins of Black History Month

It was out of ASNLH and the journal that Black History Month was born. Woodson’s commitment to the study of Black history combined with a determination for it to be showcased for public engagement. He encouraged Black fraternities and other Black civic organizations to highlight the research of their members, promoting Black excellence and knowledge of Black achievements. The first iteration of Black history celebrations came from Omega Psi Phi, a Black fraternity of which Woodson was a member, which launched “Negro History and Literature Week” in 1924. Eventually, the fraternity renamed the celebrations “Negro Achievement Week.” Though the celebrations were far-reaching, Woodson desired a greater community impact and decided that ASNLH should pioneer the program. To Woodson, these celebrations were an opportunity to “go back to that beautiful history” and to allow it “to inspire us to greater achievements.” And so, “Negro History Week” began in February 1926.

People today often ask: “Why February? Why not the month of June, when we already celebrate Juneteenth, and why the shortest month of the year?!” But Woodson chose February strategically, as Black communities already held meaningful commemorations during that month. First, February is the chosen birth month of Frederick Douglass (14th), the former slave and abolitionist activist, and Abraham Lincoln (12th), whom many (at the time) deemed “The Great Emancipator.” These birthdays had become sites of commemoration for Black communities across the nation, and so these longstanding traditions also informed Woodson’s choice. From Lincoln’s assassination onwards, Black communities held celebrations in honor of the President slain for his antislavery efforts. Similarly, Frederick Douglass’ birthday had become a fixture in the Black calendar since the mid 1890s. Thus, Woodson built “Negro History Week” around the longstanding traditions celebrating figures central to the Black past and future. Woodson chose his timing strategically, using “Negro History Week” to nudge celebrants away from their celebrations of “great men,” to focus on broader achievements of the Black community as a whole. In fact, Woodson disliked the commemorations of both Lincoln and Douglass because he believed most people did not know enough about either of them to celebrate them. At the time, in the hopes of making it accessible and accepted, he argued that the week was an opportunity to extend their study of Black history, rather than a burden to create new traditions.

The Negro History Bulletin, Vol IV (October 1940- June 1941), accessed via: McBlain Books

As we know, Woodson far underestimated the traditions that would come out of “Negro History Week.” The late 1920s, fueled by the burgeoning “New Negro” (a generation of Black Americans defined by racial pride, consciousness, and hope), saw the explosion of the heritage week across the nation. Schools asked for teaching materials, and public exhibits emerged. ASNLH struggled to keep up with the demand, shocking Woodson and the founders, and necessitating the opening of ASNLH chapters across the country. Even progressive white people expressed interest and began joining celebrations. As the heritage month grew in popularity, Woodson worried about the “intellectual charlatans” who took advantage of public interest by misrepresenting their credentials and speaking to students who had more knowledge than them. But the organization had created something far beyond their control, and could only continue to share materials, while it became more commercialized and (in Woodson’s opinion) trivialized. Its sustained popularity birthed the idea of an annual theme, and in 1937, via the “Negro History Bulletin,” Woodson began popularizing the theme nationwide, distributing the bulletin through burgeoning Black history clubs.

Black History Month Becomes Official

Throughout the mid-20th century, “Negro History Week” continued to grow. Woodson assumed that the celebrations would eventually fade, but, instead, their inception inspired countless people across the nation to expand the study of Black history in schools and in the public square. As early as the 1940s, many communities across the country began to shift towards month-long celebrations of Black history. By the 1960s, spurred by the Civil Rights Movement and the beginnings of African American History and Studies as a formalized field of study at Universities, month-long celebrations became the norm. It was also around this time that the name changed from “Negro History Month” to “Black History Month,” reflecting the preferred language of younger generations and their interest in taking up the mantle for the celebration and preservation of Black History. Eventually, the founding association affirmed the language shift and the month-long celebrations by institutionalizing these changes.

Black History Month has been acknowledged by sitting Presidents since the 1970s, no matter their party. Sixty years into private celebrations of Black History Month, the US government formally recognized National Black History Month in 1976 by passing Public Law 94-479, which encouraged “our Nation’s public schools, institutions and knowledge of the many contributions of Black Americans to our country and the world.” Much like many historical laws regarding Black Americans, this congressional law affirmed and supported a national expansion that had been underway for decades. Nonetheless, this was a crucial step by Congress to protect the practice and celebration of Black History Month in the public square nationwide. The state did not create the holiday, but it did give legal underpinnings that would require legislative change to undo, a truth that should be a balm to those worried about any potential attempts to dismantle it.

Public Law 99-44- February 11, 1986, 99th Congress, accessed via: Govinfo

Black History Month Now

100 years after its founding, in our contemporary moment, many have issues with Black History Month in its current form. First, people lament the relegation of Black History to one month per year, preferring that teachers and curricula integrate Black history into broader American History. Indeed, Black History Month has suffered the detrimental consequences of institutionalization. Many see the month as a reason to confine Black history coverage of any kind to that month only, rather than seeing it as an opportunity to emphasize and remember the specific achievements and contributions of Black Americans. Indeed, as a historian who specializes in Black History within American History, I am consistently astounded by the lack of integration that persists even within academic circles, let alone in the public. “Black History is American History” is a cry of many who long for the integration of the two, not just for the sake of inclusion, but for the purposes of telling the whole truth of the American past. Indeed, Black history is indivisible from American history, from the horrors to the heroes; two are one. However, despite my own hopes for a thoroughly integrated version of the American story, I still believe in the essentiality of Black History Month. To me, as it was to Woodson and the other founders, Black History Month offers us an opportunity to celebrate those who are still not seen as founders, inventors, creators. Integrative history allows for Black America’s threads in the broader tapestry to be seen, as well as the atrocities perpetrated to be unignorable. But Black History Month presents a sacred opportunity to honor and remember those who were not honored in their time.

Second, the institutionalization of Black history by the Federal government has created some amnesia around its origins. There is a common misconception that the state chose the month and dictated its parameters; few people know that Black History Month is the outgrowth of grassroots Black scholarly labor, activism, and creativity. This is why I am starting this month’s “commemorations” by commemorating its history. Black History Month becomes more precious when we understand its origins, the countless people who have fought for Black stories to be told, and the feat that it is to be so far-reaching that the Federal government had to recognize it.

Black History Month is a Site of Remembrance

Learning the rich history of Black History Month has transformed my understanding of this month, from merely an opportunity, a vehicle by which we can learn more, into a deep appreciation of it as a site of remembrance. Indeed, learning Black History is important, but learning is only the beginning. When we learn, we can remember. And the act of remembrance changes us. Remembrance of not only the fight to create Black History and its commemorations, but also the curiosity, self-affirmation, and determination illuminated by its instant popularity, allows us to situate ourselves in those same convictions. To remember is not to simply recall, but instead to glean the truths from history and make them the very foundation upon which we stand. And we stand on the shoulders of giants.

Talk to Me

After that whirlwind introduction, I hope you, too, can see Black History Month as a site of remembrance and celebration. I would love to know: what did you know about the origins of Black History Month? And, what do you believe is the significance of Black History Month today? Let me know your thoughts by commenting below.

Come back next week, when we’ll be going back into the 19th century to learn how practicing Black History changed the future of the enslaved.

References

Dagbovie, Pero Gaglo. “Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950).” Black Past. January 18, 2007. Accessed via: Black Past

Morris, Burnis E. “Carter G. Woodson: The Early Years, 1875-1903.” Accessed via: ASALH.

Carter G. Woodson. Accessed via: NAACP

Woodson, C. G. “Negro Life and History in Our Schools.” The Journal of Negro History 4, no. 3 (1919): 273–80. Accessed via: JSTOR.

I wanted to offer y’all a glimpse into the thoughts behind of my latest post. A peek into the metaphorical wardrobe as a sort through my thoughts like clothes, figuring out what fits the day, the moment, and the season. Something more vulnerable and honest about the journey to the words I shared with the public last week. By doing this, I hope to open up an opportunity for conversation with you all, and if you enjoy these insights, I may keep them coming, just for you!

Minor Housekeeping

Before I get started, you can interact with my posts either by responding to this email or, if you download the Substack app, you can comment on these posts, and we can even have a private community chat! There, we can discuss things as a group, rather than only responding to me, and I can point you to articles by other people that are doing incredible work. Please do let me know if you end up downloading the app, and I will begin a group for us to keep the conversation going!

Read more

Perhaps this moment revealed the Janus face of the nation, the unholy congruity of incongruous things. Perhaps it was the timely elucidation of divergent characters we can choose to embody: sacrifice for the collective good, or excuse harm for self-preservation.

However you slice it, what a cosmically meaningful collision.*

There are few moments where the strictures of time can so artfully paint such moral conundrums so clearly. To me, it felt like an existential test, or a fable through which your whole worldview is challenged. To me, it felt almost Biblical.

It reminded me of the Israelites at the end of Joshua’s life and leadership, once again presented with a choice: continue to serve God (who had been faithful and good), or the gods of the Amorites (who felt proximate and seemingly powerful). Joshua said:

... choose you this day whom you will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell…
(Joshua 24:15).

January 20th 2025, posed that very question. Put another way: “Who will you be? Whose power will you submit to?” And a year on, as the nation descends into increased state violence, the normalization of hatred of enemies, made worse by encouraged scorn for the most vulnerable, we must ask: “Who have you been this past year? And whose power have you submitted to?”

For Christians living in our respective Babylons,** these questions are both individual and corporate: Who have we been as the Body of Christ, both locally and nationally?

I am blessed that locally I can rejoice for the appendage of the Body of Christ that He has placed me in. We have rejoiced together and lamented. Leadership has encouraged us to remain in Christ with our hearts and minds stayed on Him as He leads us in the right response to the cultural moment we are in. I have seen the needy provided for and the vulnerable protected. I have seen leadership encourage congregants to find their position and play it well, and instruct us to love, even when it is hard. Here, loving our enemies is not an option but a mandate. Consistently, we are reminded and challenged to be Jesus’ disciples at all times and in all ways.

Now, I begin here to highlight a truth that often gets drowned out by the loudest in our ranks: countless churches are continuing to do the faithful work of Christ, equipping the saints to faithfully engage this climate. I do not, and cannot, believe mine is exceptional. I pray for these congregations often. However, it is also true that when I think of the loudest “Christian” voices right now, and how they have stewarded the masses, my heart is filled with despair.

Let’s turn to history to name this despair and to answer the questions.

First Lesson from A Letter: Who Will We Be?

In January and April 1963, Birmingham, AL, an eccumenical and interfaith group of white ministers and rabbis came together to denounce the presence of Martin Luther King and the marches and sit-ins planned by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, as “untimely and unwise.” While accusing MLK of being an “outside agitator” and deeming the nonviolent activists as breeding anarchy and violence, they commended “the community as a whole… and law enforcement officials in particular, on the calm manner in which these demonstrations have been handled,” and for “preventing violence.” We stand over 60 years later with almost canonized images of police dogs ravaging protesters, police clubs breaking bones of men, women, and children, and fire hoses tearing clothes and skin. Violences that are rendered invisible and irrelevant by the clergy who lived among the violence and its fallout.

Police dogs set upon a man during an anti-segregation demonstration in Birmingham, Alabama, 1963. Accessed via, Reuther Library.

These statements are the oft-forgotten cause of Martin Luther King’s most famous piece of writing: A Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Penned after his arrest by Birmingham police following a peaceful protest in the summer of 1963, King found himself imprisoned with time, energy, and cause to respond to the accusations of his brothers in the faith. The sections of MLK’s letter that outline the many errors of his accusers, particularly the failures of the Church, serve as prophetic warnings to us about the importance of deciding who we will be in the face of injustice. It serves, too, as a salve for the disappointed. He wrote:

I have been so greatly disappointed with the white church and its leadership. Of course, there are notable exceptions… But despite these notable exceptions, I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church. I do not say that as one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the church, I say it as a minister of the gospel who lives the church, who has been nurtured in its bosom, who has been sustained by its Spiritual blessings, and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall lengthen.

King goes on to express his expectation to have the support of the white church in the fight to end segregation, only to find many

outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows.

An unlikely salve, but knowing that the Church has been here before freed me from the straitjacket of fear that tells me the church is somehow falling apart in a new way, rather than the reality that we are seeing the unhealed boils of injustice (as King terms it) exposed again. I could unpack this despair more, but I think many of us are familiar with it. Countless have left their churches and lost relationships; others have lamented seeing those they call brother and sister abandon the central tenets of the faith; many have walked away from God altogether, struggling to disentangle Him from the web of deceit and earthly power that many have spun around Him. We have watched the Bride of Christ willingly tear her gown for a lesser groom. We must, as King did, lament that disappointment thoroughly and constantly.

But I want to focus on the prophetic warning that rings through time from King’s pen to this moment, as it helps us answer the question “who will we be?” Heed the warning: in this iteration of Babylon, we must take care not to be “more cautious than courageous,” and not to “remain silent,” allowing the security of our sanctuaries, our perceived set-apartness, to anesthetize us from following the commands of Jesus in, and for, the broken world around us. Much like in the Civil Rights era, many leaders mistake compliance with the status quo and preservation of false peace as the way forward. This is a deeply consequential mistake, illuminating allyship to the world over Christ.

We must be wise to know when action is required of us, and when false peace is masquerading as the real thing.

We must not comply with evil regimes that subvert the commands of God.

We must not caution ourselves out of doing good.

We must not caution ourselves out of being courageous.

We must not caution ourselves out of obedience to Christ, trusting more in the powers of this world than in the One, True God.

Similarly, we must not remain silent. Proverbs 31:8-9 commands us to “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.” Silence is not an option for the people of God, nor is speaking up an added extra. Nor is it something the needy must earn from us. Indeed, in our self-righteousness, many of us demand blamelessness from the people Jesus calls us to protect. Perhaps this is why Paul reminds us frequently to remember who we were, to remember our sin and confess often, so that when we behold our neighbor, we have the humility to see our own neediness in theirs.

A protester is detained by Federal agents near the scene where Renee Good was fatally shot by an ICE officer last week, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026, in Minneapolis.(AP Photo/Adam Gray), accessed via, KRCTV.

Second Lesson From a Letter: Who Have We Been This Year?

As I think on these questions retrospectively, “Who have we been this past year?” MLK’s evaluation of the church in 1963 sings in uncanny harmony with my answer. He wrote:

So here we are moving toward the exit of the twentieth century with a religious community largely adjusted to the status quo, standing as a taillight behind other community agencies rather than a headlight leading people to higher levels of justice.
I have wept over the laxity of the church. But my tears have been tears of love.

Through a thorough critique of Christian activism in the 2020 era, the Church, by and large, has relegated “social justice” to the secular world, rendering it a four-letter word to those who want to be seen as “serious” and sound Christians. Thus, where MLK saw a Church “largely adjusted” to the status quo, I see one that is not only adjusted to the cruelties of the day but defending and sanctifying it.

Where he saw the Church as a taillight behind others in the pursuit of justice, I see the Church acting as the brake lights, actively holding back justice.

Where he saw the Church as lax, I see the Church losing her sight, being led about by those she has put her trust in, to do what she would never do with clear sight.

This is not to say our moment is worse than that of the horrors of Jim Crow or slavery, but rather to say that sin unrepentant begets sin, growing in us like a cancer. At best, it simply stays within us, rearing its ugly head here and there. But at worst, it overtakes us and embeds itself in our very nature. This is why compliance and compromise is dangerous. It will define the character of the Church.

I fear that the last year has altered much of what it means to be a Christian in America. The powers that be have sought to rewrite the Gospel of Jesus and tell us who He wants us to be. They present themselves as apocryphal texts that offer a greater revelation, permitting us to abandon the teachings of Jesus. They twist scripture as the devil did when He tempted Jesus in the desert, but I fear that where Jesus beheld fasted-clarity of the truth, we are over-stuffed and too glutted for earthly power to discern the truth as He did.

A Time to Choose

Perhaps MLK was more gracious than I. In fact, I’m certain that this is true. Nonetheless, I do not write this with pride in my chest; I know that I am not free from these same trappings, and I am part of this same Body. But I do write with tears of love for my brothers and sisters, sighing out a prayer as I lament who we have been, and pray for who we will be in this cultural moment. I pray that soon and very soon, we will fall on our knees and ask forgiveness for bartering away our inheritance, and for a deeper knowledge of His love and His will. I pray that we will remove our blessing from the status quo and actively challenge it.

Mugshot of Martin Luther King Jr following his 1963 arrest in Birmingham, accessed via: WikiCommons.

May we remember who Christ called us to be. And may we have the courage to be that.

Let me close with my version of Dr. King’s closing words in his letter:

If I have said anything in here that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable evaluation, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my permitting anything that allows us to settle for anything less than being the true Bride of Christ, I beg God to forgive me.

*By “cosmically,” I mean the collision of two wildly different worlds and worldviews, the collision of the Spirit of sacrifice with the carnal flesh that devours. To me, it is a picture of the wheat and the chaff, or of the defeated powers and principalities raging on like they could still win.

** By “Babylon” I am drawing from Dr. Preston Sprinkle’s terminology that encourages us to understand ourselves, the Church, as “exiles in Babylon,” rather than the often pushed “Christian nation” narrative. While many find this daunting or perceive it as a failure of the Church, I believe it is a more freeing status that allows us to divorce worldly power; see the functions of the nation more clearly; understand our faith more accurately as a global, multiracial, and multicultural one; and faithfully rely on the power of God and God alone.

References:

Martin Luther King Jr., A Letter from a Birmingham Jail

Alabama Clergymen’s Letter to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr

Preston Sprinkle, Exiles: The Church in the Shadow of Empire

It is here that Advent met me. And it is here that I am meeting it.

From this place, it is unsurprising that the first word and theme of Advent- hope - would be the one that is bringing me pause. Understanding hope when you actually need it is a radically different pursuit than when all is well, or things are looking up. As Tim Mackie of the BibleProject explained in their Advent podcast (exploring biblical definitions of hope,) hope is not optimism.

“You can have a hope built up because you look at a set of circumstances and you’re like ‘yeah, I think we’re trending in the right direction, and it’s the one that I like, so I’m hoping for that outcome!’”

That is optimism.

Contrastingly, Biblical hope

“is something the Biblical authors want us to sustain regardless of the circumstances. Or actually, in the face of Goliath standing in front of you.”

Biblical hope is something that lives in the darkness. That beholds the broken, the disappointment, the reasons to be afraid, the reasons to give up, and can somehow glimpse something beyond this moment. And I’m learning that the ability to see beyond is gifted, given, imparted, not mustered up from within oneself. Hope is our vision of God. However clouded by our circumstances, hope is believing that He is still there beyond them. Hope says the truth is still the truth even when it doesn’t feel true in the moment. Or, we whisper it.

Quiet Hope is Still Hope

The problem is, we want our hope to be loud. Often, we only detect hope in our hearts when it feels bold and defiant. When it feels like the roar of a lion tearing out of our lungs. We note hope within ourselves when it stands up tall, confronting the threat of darkness like a protective older sibling defying a schoolyard bully on our behalf. We want it to be audacious.

But in reality, hope often feels a lot flimsier than that. It is softer, a dare to whisper what is true in the face of what is real. It is a quiet thought on a sleepless night that says “morning will come,” because we know that is all morning knows to do. In reality, in the dark, hope rests in our breath. In the inhalation and exhalation that carry us to the next moment. Hope is in our rising anyway, in our whispered “yes” to the life we’ve been given. Hope is timid when we’re in the thick of pain, trial, or storms.

I want you to know that that is hope.

That hope counts, too.

Quiet hope is still defiant.

Your quiet hope is enough.

Your whispered hope is enough.

A Benediction

Advent is the sweetest gift and remedy for this.

The word “Advent” is derived from the Latin “Adventus,” which translates to arrival, entrance, or coming. This definition has stopped me in my tracks this year, painting a picture in my heart of a cosmic door swinging wide in the starlit sky, as the God of the Universe steps through and walks among us. Just as He once did in the Garden. What an entrance, a commotion, a break in time and space when absolutely everything changed. I also see an image of a simple crack, a fissure, a hairline fracture in concrete that seems small and inconsequential. But, in reality, the integrity of all that seems firm is shattered, and life begins to breathe through the cracks. Both images, together, illuminate the scope of how we experience and hold the arrival of Christ. Sometimes we see clearly the way everything has changed because He came, but just as often, we only catch sight of the flourishing that squeezes through the cracks of His coming.

Image by American Jael, accessed via: Unsplash

And that’s why Advent is a gift to a heart that wants to press on to the next, racking up goals and new habits that will fix everything. It is an opportunity to hold both wonder and awe, while breathing into hope for all that is not so, at the same time.

On wonder and awe, Advent invites us to slow down enough to notice, to notice the seismic change that Jesus’ entering in 2000 years ago brought to the world. In the prophetic poem of Isaiah 61, we see the promise of who Jesus would be and all He would do:

1 The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,

because the Lord has anointed me

to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim freedom for the captives

and release from darkness for the prisoners,

2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor

and the day of vengeance of our God,

to comfort all who mourn,

3 and provide for those who grieve in Zion—

to bestow on them a crown of beauty

instead of ashes,

the oil of joy

instead of mourning,

and a garment of praise

instead of a spirit of despair.

And in the life of Jesus, we see He did exactly that. In our own salvation stories, we see He did exactly what He said He would do.

On hope for all that is not so, this prophetic poem includes and is dependent on an acknowledgement of the dark. Jesus beholds the prisoner, the mourner, the despairing, the poor, seeing them/us in the fullness of all that sin and death have robbed of us. Jesus sees the brokenness of the world. Advent creates space for us to acknowledge the unfinished nature of our restoration, our need for Jesus’ Second and final Coming. It allows us to be honest about all that is not what we hoped. To lament the brokenness within and around us. To grieve the gap between the Kingdom and the present. Advent invites us to wait while reminding us that He has come before, giving us a knowing assurance even in the lingering dark.

So, this Advent, I would like to invite you to meet God’s presence with your presence. Resist the rush. Reject the hustle to 2026. Instead: Notice. Make space for wonder. Make space for grief. Make space for hope to breathe into your heart. Ask the meaning of all that has become commonplace. Behold the thrill of hope. Behold the light that breaks into the dark. The dark has not, cannot, and will not, overcome it.

I invite you to go joyspotting: pray for eyes that can see the good, the true, and the beautiful, in the cracks in the concrete and splayed across the sky. Pray that this Advent is one in which Jesus’ presence is familiar to you in the dark. Slow down and lean in, let the season be the blessing it is supposed to be to your weary soul.

The Sons of Africa: Members

Established in the late 1700s, the Sons of Africa was a London-based abolitionist organization comprised of formerly enslaved men and descendants of enslaved people. The group is considered to be Britain’s first Black political organization, and played a crucial role in the abolitionist movement that often gets overlooked. The members of The Sons of Africa were freed enslaved men who had once toiled in America and the Caribbean, but also on British soil. Each had secured their freedom, which they used to become educated and aid in the ending of slavery.

Portrait of Olaudah Equiano, accessed via: Black History Month

Twelve men made up the organization: Olaudah Equiano, Ottobah Cugano, Boughwa Gegansmel, Jasper Goree, Cojoh Ammere, George Robert Mandeville, Thomas Oxford,

George Wallace, William Stevens, Joseph Almze, James Bailey, and John Christopher.

Col. Richard Cosway; Maria Louisa Catherine Cecilia Cosway (née Hadfield); probably Ottobah Cugoano, by Richard Cosway. Accessed via: National Portrait Gallery

etching, 1784laborative Abolitionist Efforts

Abolitionism is best understood as an ensemble movement, dependent on the interconnected efforts of a myriad of actors. British abolition was marked by the enslaved themselves, the Sons of Africa, but also the efforts of Quakers, other religious groups, parliamentarians, philanthropists, and scholars like Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson- the founders of The Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, a white abolitionist organization. Together with the Sons of Africa, over decades, these marginal groups gained traction and made abolition a central conversation in British social and political discourse at the end of the 18th century. The Sons of Africa contributed significantly to this movement by lobbying Parliament and the Crown, making speeches in the public square, and rallying support from British aristocrats and ordinary people. Their words, in writing and speech, reached the nation, presenting Britain with living proof of Black humanity and capacity, directly contradicting pro-slavery ideologies of Black inferiority and suitability for enslavement.

The autobiographies of Equiano and Cugano became bestsellers, stoking the interest of the public in the hidden horrors of Caribbean and American slavery. By foregrounding their experiences of vicious brutality at the hands of enslavers, highlighting the violence of overseers and the family destruction central to slavery, their narratives pushed forward British abolitionism, which originally focused on ending the slave trade, by forcing them to also prioritize the emancipation of the enslaved. This is a seismic contribution that their first-hand narratives made to the movement, humanizing the enslaved who toiled in fields an ocean away, forcing the nation to behold the human cost of slavery. Further, they added the (sadly) necessary first-hand experience to authenticate the moral authority of abolitionism, forming a powerful voice that could not be long ignored.

Not only did The Sons of Africa shape the British abolitionist movement, but they also influenced public opinion and the push for antislavery legislation, namely in the Zong Massacre case and the passing of the 1788 Slave Act.

The Sons of Africa, the Zong Massacre, and the 1788 Slave Act

The horrors of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the experiences of Africans forced aboard ships transporting them through the Middle Passage into the “New World” served as the centerpiece of abolitionist denunciation of slavery. The imagery of slave ships we know today is a result of abolitionist efforts to depict the horrors of the trade, printing diagrams on pamphlets to distribute across the nation. Ottobah Cugano’s narrative of his enslavement, entitled Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species (1787), recalls that the experience aboard a slave ship was too traumatic to describe. In his narrative, Equiano describes slave ships as a “scene of horror almost inconceivable,” and memories of “a multitude of black people of every description chained together,” the captives packed in quarters “so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself.” Their narratives worked in conjunction with the “Description of a Slave Ship” diagram commissioned by Thomas Clarkson, which he intended to evoke an “instantaneous impression of horror upon all who saw it,” inspiring them to join the abolitionist cause.

Print of “Description of a Slave Ship, originally printed as posters and pamphlets in 1778. Accessed via: Understanding Slavery

However, the horrors of the trade were brought into British consciousness in 1783, five years before the widespread distribution of Clarkson’s image, through the harrowing case of the Zong Massacre. In 1781, a Liverpool-registered slave ship named the Zong set sail with 442 enslaved people aboard; twice the human cargo the ship was designed to carry without innumerable deaths. However, three months into the voyage, as a result of crew errors in navigation and a rampant outbreak of disease among the captives, the crew ascertained that they would quickly run out of freshwater and supplies. In a ruthless effort to preserve their profits, the crew cast 133 of the most unwell enslaved people overboard over the course of three days. This “clinical massacre of innocents” proved to be worse still, a feat of callous incompetence, when the ship arrived in Jamaica with 420 gallons of freshwater to spare.

The incident became widely known two years later when one of the Zong owners attempted to file an insurance claim against the “loss” of cargo, demanding repayment of thirty pounds for each enslaved person he had elected to murder. Equiano and the Sons of Africa were some of the first to notice the claim reported anonymously in newspapers in London. The case landed in court as the insurance company refused to pay, and to the legal system, this was simply an insurance dispute. However, the Sons of Africa actively worked to keep the story in the public eye, reframing it in its true light: a demonstration of the inhumane treatment of the enslaved aboard slave ships, and a harrowing depiction of the truth of human property. Their efforts shaped the beginnings of formal abolitionism in the UK, but ultimately, the court ruled that the insurance company was liable for damages because it deemed enslaved property the same as any other property.

Joseph Mallord William Turner, Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On). Accessed via: Smart History

In 1788, abolitionist William Dolben sought to stem the tides of the Transatlantic Slave Trade by proposing a law that limited the number of enslaved people legally allowed to be transported aboard a slave ship. Likely inspired by the horrors of the Zong Massacre, Dolben argued for the law to limit the number of enslaved people allowed aboard a ship bound for the New World. The law stated that a ship had to:

to have on board, at any one time, or to convey, carry, bring, or transport slaves from the coast of Africa, to any parts beyond sea, in any such ship or vessel, in any greater number than in the proportion of five such slaves for every three tons of the burthen of such ship or vessel, so far as the said ship or vessel shall not exceed two hundred and one tons; and moreover, of one such slave for every additional ton of such ship or vessel, over and above the said burthen of two hundred and one tons, or male slaves who shall exceed four feet four inches in height, in any greater number than in the proportion of one such male slave to every one ton of the burthen of such ship or vessel, so far as the said ship or vessel shall not exceed two hundred and one tons, and (moreover) of three such male slaves (who shall exceed the said height of four feet four inches) for every additional five tons of such ship or vessel, over and above the said burthen of two hundred and one tons . . . and if any such master, or other person taking or having the charge or command of any such ship or vessel, shall act contrary hereto, such master, or other person as aforesaid, shall forfeit and pay the sum of thirty pounds of lawful money of Great Britain, for each and every such slave exceeding in number the proportions herein-before limited . . .

II. Provided always, That if there shall be, in any such ship or vessel, any more than two fifth parts of the slaves who shall be children, and who shall not exceed four feet four inches in height, then every five such children (over and above the aforesaid proportion of two fifths) shall be deemed and taken to be equal to four of the said slaves within the true intent and meaning of this act. . . .

In short, Dolben, hoping to limit the horrors of the Middle Passage, sought to limit the number of enslaved adults aboard a ship. He also outlined that no more than ⅖ of a ship’s cargo should be children. The Sons of Africa lobbied parliament and offered their support to Dolben in the hopes that it would transform the Transatlantic Slave Trade and make it less profitable. The law was passed, but slavers simply pivoted their trade to include more children who met the height restrictions, dragging an increased number of African children into the trade away from families. It also sparked discourse on the benefits of slave breeding over and above buying them, making this legislation a key catalyst for the increased sale of children and girls after 1788.

The Long Fight

The British abolitionist movement faced a long fight, in which the establishment and commercial law continued to win, until they successfully lobbied Parliament to pass the abolition of the trade in 1807 and the ending of slavery in the British Caribbean in the 1830s. The loss of the Zong case and the inadvertently dire consequences of the 1788 slave act evidence the commitment to the trade and institution of slavery held by those in power in the late 18th century. Nonetheless, throughout the years, the Sons of Africa and countless forgotten Black abolitionists fought to bring an end to the enslavement of their kin across the New World.

However, Equiano is far from anomalous in the British abolitionist movement, but, rather, is only exceptional in the fact that we acknowledge and remember him. Allow me to introduce you to a few Black voices that fueled the abolitionist movement in Britain.

The Convoluted Case of Mary and John Hylas- Hylas v. Newton

Oftentimes, abolitionism is understood simply as a systematized movement, often obfuscating the attacks against the institution levelled by enslaved people themselves through revolt or petitioning for freedom. Contrastingly, I argue that what organized abolitionism had in rhetoric served as a mere reflection of philosophies first enlivened by enslaved people themselves through their direct resistance to the institution of slavery, no matter the level of their success.

Countless enslaved people in Britain dared to defy their status as property, staking their claim to freedom by running away.

One such case is that of Mary Hylas, an enslaved woman married to a free Black man, John Hylas. Mary Hylas was born in Barbados in the early 18th century on the Newton plantation on the coast of the island, and John Hylas was an enslaved manservant to her mistress’s sister. By 1754, both were forced to accompany their mistresses on an extended trip to England as their enslaved property. Mary and John married four years later, and John claimed his freedom after the death of his mistress in 1763, choosing to continue living as a free man in London. Contrastingly, his wife, Mary, was forced to leave her husband behind and return to the Newton plantation in Barbados. John Hylas filed to sue the Newtons for taking his wife away without his consent and sought monetary damages. The case went to trial in 1768. Unexpectedly, Hylas won, and the Judge demanded that the Netwons pay damages, return Mary to her husband, or receive further penalties. Mary Hylas had no entitlement to freedom according to British law, but she won her freedom based on the court’s concession that her husband’s rights held legal sway over those of her owner. John Hylas won this case, but curiously, Mary never returned to England and continued to live in Barbados as an enslaved woman on the Newton plantation. This case demonstrates the failing omnipotence of white slaveowners in 18th-century England in the face of British law, but simultaneously reveals the power enslavers derived from distance. It also illuminated the limitations of loopholes available for enslaved people, especially women, for accessing freedom. The lack of legislation surrounding slavery on British soil yielded an uneven and unpredictable hand of the law, allowing it to work to the benefit of the enslaved (Mary was technically free) on occasion but to their detriment on others (Mary was in Barbados, where slavery was untouchable), even in the same court case.

Simultaneously, because Mary’s voice is nowhere to be seen in the historical record, it is hard to ascertain her desires. While we can assume her desire for freedom, we do not know her relationship to John Hylas and whether his legal authority to claim her offered her a pathway to freedom that was safe or of interest to her. Notably, British law recognized her consent neither as a married woman nor as an enslaved woman. Historian Katherine Paugh highlights this, illuminating the legally complex status of women like Mary Hylas, enslaved women, in the 18th century. She uses this case to critique the limited scope of British abolitionist reformers, arguing that this case demonstrates their continued commitment to the subjugation of women through marital law, going as far as using it as their core argument against Mary Hylas’s enslaved status. Unlike the American institution of slavery, which had ruled out the compatibility of slave status and legal marriage by this time, Britain had not, leaving a complex legal knot about the relationship between the two.

Nonetheless, Hylas v. Newton provided precedent in the British legal system that Judges sought to suppress in other legal cases, including the landmark court case Somerset v. Stewart.

Thomas Lewis: Lewis v. Staypleton

Another (supposedly) enslaved man, Thomas Lewis, benefitted from yet another loophole. In 1770, retired captain Robert Staypleton claimed ownership over a Black man named Thomas Lewis and arranged for his abduction for sale to slavers headed for Jamaica. They almost to abduct Lewis, who screamed loud enough to draw enough attention that the servants of wealthy onlookers, but the henchmen claimed to have a magistrate’s warrant for his arrest, leading the servants to retreat for fear of their own arrest. They bound and gagged Lewis and loaded him onto a boat, sailing him down the Thames to a larger ship Jamaica bound. Lewis’ salvation came as a result of his screams, which were overheard by Mrs. Banks, the wealthy mother of famous botanist Joseph Banks, who immediately contacted Granville Sharp for his assistance in the matter. Sharp dove into the case headfirst, demanding an injunction for Lewis’s return, even though the ship had already departed. Thankfully, bad weather had delayed the voyage and forced the ship to temporarily dock in Kent, allowing Lewis to be rescued. A court case ensued wherein Sharp sought to prosecute Staypleton for assault of Lewis, which the defense argued was the former’s right as Lewis was his property. Because of his reticence to make a definitive claim about the legality of slavery (which he frequently avoided), the presiding Judge Mansfield directed the jury to deliberate over whether Lewis was indeed enslaved, not whether slavery was permissible or what a slave owner had rights to do to his enslaved property. In an unexpectedly fortuitous twist of fate, Lewis won his freedom on this technicality as Staypleton could not produce proof of purchase.

As with Hylas, Lewis’s voice is silenced by the racial subjugation of the time, repeated in the violence of the archive, so we do not know anything of his experiences throughout this trial and what he thought of the outcome. But we do know that he dared to challenge the status quo and hope for more than British law allowed in the legally ambiguous status of enslavement.

James Somerset: Somerset v. Stewart

James Sommerset, of the Somerset v. Stewart trial of 1772, served as a key actor in British abolitionism, so let us consider the case from his perspective. Somerset, a Black man enslaved in British Virginia, was torn from kin and family by his enslaver, Mr. Charles Stewart, in 1769. Somerset endured enslavement in England until 1771, when he fled his master and refused to continue work as Stewart’s enslaved property. Although Somerset’s thoughts and feelings are unknown, we do know that in London, he would have encountered lots of free Black people working in the bustling city, and it is likely that seeing these possibilities made him question why his lot differed so much. He would have also seen the free Black presence in London as a perfectly busy setting into which he could anonymously slip and build a free life. Sadly, Somerset did not get very far. After only a few months of self-made freedom, slave catchers viciously rooted him out, captured, chained, and imprisoned him on board a ship on the Thames, and threatened him with deportation to Jamaica for his crime of self-stealing. Somerset found aid through his religious family, godparents, and abolitionists who secured a writ of habeas corpus on his behalf, meaning he would have his day in court.

“The Slave Trade” by John Raphael Smith (1791). Credit: Yale Center for British Art, accessed via: Lincolns Inn

Somerset and his allies secured support from legal scholar, abolitionist, and philanthropist Granville Sharp, who had long-awaited an opportunity to support another court case in the name of abolition. Sharp eagerly took the case and enlisted three other anti-slavery barristers to partner with him on the case. Both men saw Somerset’s case as an opportunity to mount a challenge against the existence of slavery in Britain. Nonetheless, the odds were not in their favor. In the eyes of Judge Mansfield, the injured party was Somerset’s enslaver, Stewart, agreeing with the former’s affidavit that claimed Somerset had “departed and absented himself” from service, depriving Stewart of his property. In court, the defense attempted to sidestep the question of slavery’s morality and argued that for the court to deny Stewart’s property rights (simply because he had travelled to Britain on business) would be damaging to British commerce, suggesting that it would lead to the abolition of slavery and losses of multiple hundreds of thousands of pounds. While this seems a relatively weak argument to us in the 21st century, this was the centerpiece of the British pro-slavery argument in the 18th century, as commerce in the British West Indies was the backbone of the British economy. Additionally, this was the only basis of appeal in a nation where slavery had no explicit legal terms.

In defense of Somerset, Sharp and the prosecution centered their arguments on much of Sharp’s longstanding research into the legal history of slavery in Britain. They argued the proposition that “no man in this day, is or can be a slave in England,” a longstanding legal opinion that they believed required “the introduction of some species of property unknown to our constitution.” They highlighted that slavery only existed in colonial law; meanwhile, Britain had never legally sanctioned slavery, and thus the protections offered by British law applied to everyone, evidenced by Judge Mansfield’s willingness to grant Somerset a writ of habeas corpus.

As one of the chief architects of British commercial law, Judge Mansfield had dreaded and dodged ruling against the legality of slavery for decades, and he employed many tactics to avoid reaching a verdict in this trial, too. He attempted to persuade Stewart to drop the case and simply free Somerset, or to negotiate and settle out of court. He repeated this request more than three times, and even petitioned one of Somerset’s abolitionist supporters, Elizabeth Cade, to purchase him from Stewart and free him herself, which she refused to do. Mansfield also repeatedly adjourned the case and delayed proceedings, forcing the trial to move at a stuttering pace between December 1771 and June 1772. This tactic ultimately worked against him, allowing Sharp and his team to shore up their argumentation and for journalists to stoke public interest in the case. What Mansfield hoped would be another suppressed runaway slave case transformed into a landmark case that shook the nation even before his verdict, pushing discussion of freedom, slavery, and property into national discourse.

Over a month of deliberation, Lord Mansfield weighed the costs and consequences of ruling for or against Somerset. In June 1762, the judge entered an overflowing courtroom filled with journalists, abolitionists, those with vested interests in Caribbean commerce, and curious onlookers, to deliver his verdict. He argued that Stewart’s kidnap of Somerset was so “high an act of dominion,” that it could only be seen as permissible if it was a right “recognized by the law of the country where it is used,” judging that slavery required “positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasion, and time from whence it was created, is erased from memory.” He went on to argue that slavery was “so odious, that nothing could be suffered to support it, but positive law.” Therefore, according to Lord Mansfield, whatever the consequences, he must rule that “the black man must be discharged.” Somerset was free, and finally, Britain had a court ruling that had not rendered Black freedom a loophole and individual success, but instead definitively declared slavery’s end on British soil.

The court did not allow Somerset to speak in his own defense, seemingly rendering him a passive recipient of justice and freedom. However, this is untrue. Somerset’s success in this case depended upon his sustained determination to reach freedom and his ferocity of will. Though the record is silent on it, no doubt Somerset lived in danger for the long duration of the trial, with threats of violence and kidnapping marking his life. Yet, he persisted, fueling Granville Sharp and his team’s dogged pursuit of the end of slavery on British soil. This case, in particular, demonstrates the centrality of enslaved people to abolitionism, despite their invisibility in the record.

Black celebrations began immediately after Lord Mansfield uttered his verdict. Newspaper sources describe that Black onlookers in the courtroom rose and:

“bowed with profound respect to the Judges, and shaking each other by the hand, congratulated themselves upon their recovery of the rights of human nature, and their happy lot that permitted them to breathe the free air of England. – No sign upon earth could be more pleasingly affecting to the feeling mind, than the joy which shone at that instant in these poor men’s sable countenances.”

Slavery’s End?

The ending of slavery on British soil served as only one battle in the war to end Britain’s continued commitment to slavery. Slavery still existed in the British Caribbean, and Britain remained a frontrunner in the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Black abolitionists continued to ally with white abolitionists to eventually deal a death blow in these remaining battles. Come back soon for an exploration of some of those Black activists.

Thank you for tracking with the Black British History Month series this month, and for generously supporting my work. I have really enjoyed sharing all that I am learning with all of you, and I hope you’re enjoying it, too.

Those of you who know me, or have engaged with me online know that one of my particular interests is the intersection between history and faith. Particularly as a Black Christian woman, now living in the US, I am deeply troubled by the weaponization of history against minorities. I am equally troubled by efforts to rewrite history and Christianity, to exclude our experiences and contributions.

I believe that knowing is of deep importance to our faith and witness. Knowing Scripture and Truth, but also knowing the realities of the broken world we traverse until God’s Kingdom comes. As such, I would like to offer an exclusive live mini-lecture and discussion over Zoom, for us to learn about the intersection of Christianity and the Transatlantic Slave Trade- examining how the Church supported it, opposed it, and examining the repentance narrative seen in the life of hymn writer John Newton.

Read more

Proof of Racialization

Historian Olivette Otele argues that the 17th century can be characterized by changes in how Europeans perceived Africans, and this is evident in Britain. Upon establishing the British slave trade, Blackness quickly became associated fully with Africanness and subsequently enslavement. We see this most clearly in Elizabethan English plays, like Othello, where Blackness is depicted as evil, foolish, hypersexual, and untrustworthy. Otele highlights that “Black heroic characters in England were flawed,” with Othello imagined as a man riddled by jealousy to the point of murderous rage, character traits intended to point to his Blackness and Muslim religious identity. Similarly, Shakespeare’s racialized construction of Othello suggests a deep attachment to duty and service, highlighting Black usefulness. It also implies that, despite incorporation into European ways and culture, Othello remained too African to be European. Contrastingly, Spanish stage depictions of Blackness centered more on stupidity and enslavement. In both constructions, though, analysis of plays and popular culture of 17th-century Europe confirms the proliferation of negative stereotypes regarding Black people.

This is an important cultural backdrop that helps us understand the world of ideas that British people encountered and entertained, as well as the world Africans stepped into upon their arrival in Britain. These views fueled the Transatlantic Slave Trade, serving as justification of for the brutality and violence wrought on Black bodies, as well as their sale.

Britain and the Triangular Trade

Beginning in 1562, Britain fought to establish slave trading ports and castles across the coasts of West Africa, attempting to break the monopoly on the trade by the Portuguese. Despite initial challenges, Britain succeeded in joining the Transatlantic Slave Trade, quickly taking root as one of the most dominant nations in the trade. Over the course of two and a half centuries, Britain transported over 3.5 million Africans across the Atlantic, a route known as the “Middle Passage.” Slavers and sailors engaged in brutal acts of violence, from sexually assaulting Black women onboard and in the castles before departure, brutally whipping and branding men, women, and children, and keeping the hundreds of enslaved people chained together in dungeon cellars built for tens of people. Off the coast of Sierra Leone on an island called Bunce Island, the remains of a British slave castle are still visible. On that island, English traders bartered with local elites and other European traders for the sale of human flesh. The remains today include the area of auction and sale, as well as quarters assigned for the assault of enslaved women. This illuminates that the horrors of enslavement took place even before enslaved Africans reached the Caribbean, Americas, or Britain.

Illustration of the routes taken by merchants in the “triangular trade,” accessed via: Britannica.

For two centuries, enslaved people in the Caribbean cultivated sugarcane, from planting to harvesting to processing, on plantations throughout the Caribbean islands. As slavers and merchants took the cultivated sugar and sold it back in the British metropole, they realized fortunes could be made and pushed for the acceleration of the slave trade (hence the term “triangular trade”). Here economic driving forces sped down the already worn path of racialization, by which Europeans argued that Africans were suited both to the heat and humidity of the Caribbean, and to the hard labor required for sugar cultivation. By the end of the 17th century, the Black population in the Caribbean rose dramatically from 20% in the 1650s, to 80% by the early 18th century.

“Planting the Sugarcane,” by William Clarke, 1823, depicts slavery in Barbados, accessed via: Encyclopedia Virginia.

Enslaved people who survived the horrors of slave castles on the African coasts and the brutality of the Middle Passage had been initiated into a new world of normalized extreme racial violence. Historians estimate that the journey through the Middle Passage claimed anywhere between 12% and 25% of enslaved Africans. Upon their arrival to the Caribbean islands, slave traders prepared their human cargo for sale by washing and oiling them to make them appear healthy to local buyers. In these sales, families were separated and English buyers sought to strip enslaved people of their individuality and culture by replacing their native dress with coarse, shapeless clothes and renaming them monosyllabic English names. By the mid-18th century, the Transatlantic Slave Trade guaranteed a steady supply of enslaved people into the Caribbean because the harsh labor and treatment of the enslaved led to a high death rate. Not only were enslaved people beaten and tortured by overseers, but the labor itself also endangered them due to fire and boiling water required to process sugarcane into sugar.

Although this is not an account of enslaved people brought to live and work in the UK, it is still central to Black British history. The booming trade of enslaved people, sugar, rice, cotton, indigo and more, by English traders became the backbone of the British economy and fueled the Industrial Revolution. Cotton from North American colonies was taken back to England and used in the booming factories of the late 18th century. Slave ports in Liverpool, Glasgow, and Bristol bolstered the economy, reflected in the magnificent Georgian buildings that still stand today. Not only did the traders gain wealth from their engagement in the slave trade, the nation became wealthy, too. By 1740 Liverpool was the biggest port of the slave trade in Britain, receiving slave ships arriving from Africa and hosting auctions of enslaved people for traders going to the Caribbean and North America. Africans enslaved in the Caribbean and North America were indeed separated from Britain by an ocean; thus, the products and the money existed in the foreground of British luxuriance, at a stark remove from the bloodied hands that made them. Public historian David Olusoga argues that the closer we look at the wealth of the British crown and aristocracy, the more these borders and separations break down. Though we may prefer to whitewash the landscape of Georgian, Regency, and Victorian Britain, visiting beautiful mansions and castles, and reveling in the delight of romantic period pieces, the reality is, enslaved “people, money, and ideas surged across the ocean,” making this shiny veneer possible.

Statue of former Prime Minister William Gladstone, inheritor of the wealth of his slave owning father, John Gladstone, accessed via, Victorian Web.

Slavery on British Soil

Let us tackle the myth head-on now: Slavery did, indeed, exist on British soil for over two and a half centuries. The stories of enslaved people in Britain have been easily painted over precisely because British law did not define the terms and conditions of enslavement. This lack of legislation makes it difficult even to establish how many enslaved people there were in Britain at any one time, as they do not appear as such on historical censuses, like they do in the colonial records. Particularly in the 17th and 18th centuries, the size of the Black British population is understood via estimates made in newspapers and court cases at the time. For example, in 1764, a London magazine suggested that the city alone had 20,000 Black residents, but did not connote their status as slave or free. During the Sommerset Trial in 1772, lawyers believed there were 15,000 in the city of London. By 1789, other records indicate the presence of 40,000 Black people across Britain. Although African and African descended people lived on British soil in the 17th and 18th centuries, it is evident that they made up a small portion of the population, just as we do now. White supremacists of the era sought Black expulsion from Britain, campaigning against the growing Black presence by claiming them to be a threat against the contamination of English blood, but failed to drum up enough alarm because the Black population was so small. Nonetheless, the Black presence in Britain was a palpable reminder of the brutalities British slavers were committing an ocean away.

Another reason the Black population of Britain in the Georgian era is difficult to ascertain is that such small numbers left legislators with no impulse to instigate segregation. This means that it is difficult to find any “Black communities” which we see emerge in the free states of America after the American Revolution, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the boroughs of New York. Instead, Black people were scattered everywhere across London and other cities across the nation, rather than in any one community. Nonetheless, David Olusoga argues that both free and enslaved Black people were “numerous enough to have been a feature of city life, but still unusual enough to have remained an exotic novelty worthy of mention in the accounts of travellers and the reports of journalists.”

Africans arrived in Britain in numerous ways. Most arrived via the Transatlantic Slave Trade, when British slave ships docked in Liverpool, Bristol, and Glasgow to sell enslaved people on to slavers headed for the Caribbean and North America. Some merchants and British elite families would purchase enslaved people for retention in the UK to work as domestic servants, on the docks, or on other merchant and slave ships. Others arrived from the West Indies, brought by slave traders who claimed a few enslaved people for themselves and brought them back to work. Britain’s lack of definition surrounding the terms of enslavement made for the flexibility of the status that is unique to slavery on British soil. As David Olusoga highlights, many enslaved people who arrived in the UK “discovered that the borders between slavery and service were not nearly as well delineated in Britain as they were in the binary, slave societies of the West Indies and North America.” One benefit of this is that some were able to renegotiate their position, occupying a semi-manumitted state.

Perhaps the most famous instance of this was the life of world-renowned as the first “Black Dandy,” Julius Soubise. In 1764, British Royal Navy Captain Stair Douglass purchased Soubise as a 10-year-old from a Jamaican plantation, and gave him as a gift to Catherine Hyde Douglass, the Duchess of Queensberry in England. This purchase removed from the hard labor of Jamaican plantations, the “young Othello” was stripped of his name, christened Julius Soubise, and entered a different form of enslavement known as “pet people,” or “darling blacks,” or “privilege persons.” This version of enslavement functioned all over Europe, where European aristocracy held enslaved people as semi-manumitted persons, using them not for labor, but as status symbols who expressed their wealth.

In Soubise’s case, this manifested in being groomed by Douglass into a member of the aristocracy, training him in fencing and horse-riding, leading to his eventual mastery of both crafts and employment as an instructor. In addition to these aristocratic adornments, the duchess dressed Soubise in the latest fashions and fineries, for which he became famous. He became known to be seen “clad in a powdered wig, white silk breeches, very tight coat and vest, with an enormous white neck cloth, white silk stockings and diamond buckled red heeled shoes.” Soubise served as a companion and confidant to the duchess and elite men, as did countless others enslaved in this station. This dandification of Soubise may appear to be luxury at first glance, but for him and others like him, it further entrenched them in the objectification of enslavement. While under the patronage of Douglass, English society turned a blind eye to Soubise’s rumored womanizing and excessive drinking, celebrating his dress and skill.

However, Soubise gradually became increasingly independent, taking advantage of the liminal space he occupied as an enslaved man in Britain. He earned his own income as a horse-riding instructor, moved into an apartment for parties and female company, and continued to wear lavish clothing. Soon, white society saw his behaviour as decadence, demonstrative of a Black man untamed, too free, and, therefore, dangerous. He quickly became “known as one of the most conspicuous fops in town.” Historian Monica Miller argues that Soubise’s “crime of fashion” was simple: he “transformed white excess into black luxuriance,” undermining the rigid racial hierarchy of 18th-century England. Public disdain escalated, and Soubise was expelled to Calcutta, India, to reform his ways. Soubise’s rise and demise demonstrate the limitations of this flexible status of enslavement in Britain, which evidences the rigidity of British notions of the status Black people were supposed to occupy. By this time, the notion of the inherent inferiority of Blackness and Africanness was in place and shaped the lives of the many Black residents of Britain.

Black Brits of the 18th century, both enslaved and free, worked in a variety of service roles. Many worked as servants in the houses of the wealthy, or as liveried coachmen, pageboys, all roles which would have made them highly visible in British society, though they are often off to the side in the art of the time. Black men also found work as bandsmen in the army, or as sailors (both free and enslaved) on merchant ships and slave ships. Countless men worked as bargemen on banks, and men and women served at bars and taverns. Of course, as many occupied the working class, many ended up beggars on the streets, struggling to get by, leading some Black women into the thriving sex trade. Newspapers of London celebrated one Black woman known as Black Harriott, a courtesan who they believed had “attained a degree of politeness, scarce to be paralleled in an African female,” a racialized praise that illuminates not only Harriott’s life circumstances but also the British gaze upon their Black countrymen and women. Olusoga highlights theatre and music as arenas in which Black people found work, drawing crowds based on novelty to British audiences.

Further evidence of the presence of enslaved people in Britain throughout the 17th and 18th centuries is the presence of advertisements for the sale of enslaved people or rewards for the return of enslaved people who had run away. These newspapers reveal that sales of enslaved people could take place in the public square, but also at public houses. Additionally, through these sources we can see white art dealers advertising both artwork and enslaved people for sale, an unusual profile for a slave trader to the 21st-century mind.

A 1768 Runaway Slave Newspaper Advertisement, accessed via: Runaway Slaves in Britain

Historians have found hundreds of advertisements for the sale of enslaved people who would otherwise go to the West Indies in 18th century newspapers and periodicals. This is particularly interesting fiven the lack of law supporting and regulating the institution of slavery, and illuminates the reality that slavery was deeply embedded into custom, society, and culture, such that enslavers used these advertisements.

Ultimately, some Black people were able to integrate into white Britain through intermarriage and finding work and freedom, but countless others remained enslaved until their deaths. While enslavement in Britain presents as a deliverance from the brutalities of the West Indies and America, we must not assume it to be a benign institution. British enslavement featured violence, subjugation, and denial of rights. As David Olusoga notes, “unfreedom and slavery of black human beings was a feature of British life between the 1650s and the end of the 18th century,” long years that firmed up deeper ideas of race and Black inferiority.

The Origin of the Myth and the Truth

Unlike most myths, the myth that slavery did not exist on British soil can be traced directly to its origin. When King Fedeinand and Queen Isabella sent enslaved people to England with their daughter, Catherine of Aragon, the English did not recognize the status of “slave.” This issue had arisen before during the reign of Henry VII, who manumitted an enslaved African named Peo Alvarex, who arrived in England via Portugal. In 1569, 7 years into England’s trading in human flesh, the issue of slavery came up again in court, where a lawyer argued that “England has too pure air for slaves to breathe in.” In 1577, prominent clergyman, William Harrison reinforced and popularized this belief in his book Description of England, where he stated:

“As for slaves and bondmen, we have none; nay such is the privilege of our country by the especial graces of God and the bounty of our princes, that if any come hither from other realms, as soon as they set foot on land, they become as free in condition as their masters, whereby all note of servile bondage is utterly removed from them.”

Historian Miranda Kaufmann argues that, though hyperbolic and flattering, Harrison’s theory had a “ring of truth.” This is because, indeed, many African enslaved people managed to secure freedom in England, but more importantly, England did not have legislation surrounding slavery. Unlike France and Portugal, which had “Black Codes” governing the possibilities of what life could look like for the enslaved on their soil and colonies, Britain had no such laws (on British soil). In 16th-century England, slavery was neither legal nor illegal; it was a legally invisible status. However, the absence of law did not mean that Africans did not occupy slave status and suffer such treatment across time. In practice, slavery very much existed on British soil. Kaufmann evidences that Africans were continuously referred to as “slaves” in the historical record, were bought and sold by English people, subjected to brutal whippings and other physical punishments, and were not paid for their labor. Each of these is a hallmark of racial slavery across Europe and the New World in the 16th through 19th centuries.

Additionally, there is the misunderstood story of Queen Elizabeth I’s supposed “expulsion” of Africans from Britain in 1596, which has led many to believe, teach, and share that Black people did not reside there afterwards. The truth of this historical moment is that Queen Elizabeth’s Privy Council “issued a limited license” to Captain Caspar Van Senden, a merchant, to only permit him to “transport individuals out of England with their masters’ consent.” In reality, Senden did not secure the consent of any English enslavers, demonstrating their commitment to retaining enslaved labor on English soil.

This lack of legislation and misrepresentations of historical events are the root causes of the persistent myth that slavery never existed on British soil. But in reality, this points to the invisibility of Black experiences on English soil and the way in which memory (how we discuss and memorialize our nation’s stories) functioned in the 16th century. The original historical narrative entirely obfuscates Black presence and life in England. Harrison’s mythological depiction of England’s air as so thoroughly infused with freedom that slavery could not exist, combined with the lack of legislation, and the myth of “African expulsion,” has come to define the common understanding of Britain’s relationship with slavery on its soil even til today.

The Early Manifestations of Slavery on British Soil

What is true is the varied experiences of Black people in Tudor England and earlier. As we have learned so far, connections and migration existed between Africa and Britain before the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Ira Berlin, a historian of American slavery, argued that race is not only a social construct, but also a historical one. Race as a historical construct means that “blackness” and “whiteness” held different meanings in different moments in time. This is especially clear in Medieval Britain, where Africa connoted wealth and prosperity, and Africans could be servants and workers in the Royal Court (John Blanke), merchant sailors, army men, or enslaved. Although there is evidence of racialization happening as early as the 13th century, historian Marianne Kaufmann highlights that, before the Transatlantic Slave Trade, skillset, religion, and status often defined the experiences of Africans in Britain more than racial categories. Nonetheless, parish records, correspondence, and legal records demonstrate that by the 16th century, people of African descent populated London and seaports in the south of England in small clusters. The majority of these Black Tudors lived and worked as domestic servants, but there is a lack of clarity surrounding their status as free or enslaved people.

Portrait of a Moor by Jan Mostaert, early 16th century, accessed via: The Guardian

Not only was race a flexible category in mid-16th-century England, “slave” was too. One clear example of this early flexibility can be seen in the arrival of five West African enslaved men in 1555, on the ship of English trader John Lok. In a travel account of Lok’s voyage, it is reported that the merchants returned to England with ivory, pepper, gold, and “certaine blacke slaves.” Although they were “slaves,” in England, they functioned as “intermediaries and translators for future expeditions,” which the English hoped to become more lucrative. The English learned this use of Africans as intermediaries from the Portuguese, who dominated trade with African royalty and were 70 years deep into the slave trade before England had even begun. Brought from the coasts of Ghana, we know little about the men. Richard Hakluyt described them as “tall and strong men” who “wel agree with our meates and drinks,” but with whom “the colde and moyste aire doth somewhat offend them.” Unexpectedly (to our 21st-century understandings), the English returned the five men to their homes in Ghana after only a few months of service in London. The traders reported that upon the men’s return, their families and kin wept for joy, a reaction that is imaginable in the context of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, which had trained Africans to expect never to see loved ones again.

While this tells of early flexibility of enslavement in Britain, historian David Olusoga argues that it set the stage for English traders to establish a slave trading stronghold in competition with the Portuguese. As such, this flexibility gave way to a racialized rigidity, 7 years later, with the first voyage of a slave ship led by Captain John Hawkins.

Come back on Wednesday for part 2, where we will examine Britain’s deep commitment to the Transatlantic Slave Trade in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Black Tudors and the Early Modern Mind

Beyond the European imagination, Africans found their way to English and Scottish lands, becoming more visible in the Early Modern era of Tudor England. Because Portugal and Spain instigated and dominated connections with Africa, and the early Slave Trade, historical records suggest that many of the Africans who arrived in Tudor England came via Europe. In particular, those in servitude during the reign of King Henry VIII likely came as part of the court of Catherine of Aragon. Throughout the Tudor era, Africans could arrive in England as anything from ambassadors of African nations to enslaved people, demonstrating that the rigid association between African ethnicity and slavery had not quite taken root.

This is particularly clear in the story of Tudor Trumpeter John Blanke (or Jean Blanc). Blanke served in the courts of Henry VIII from roughly 1507 to 1512, and he is known as a man of African descent, likely from North or West Africa. Though his origins are relatively unknown, his race is known because of visual records from the time. The Westminster Tournament Roll, a 60-foot-long document that depicts an extravagant jousting tournament held by Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon in celebration of the birth of their son. A two-day event marked by music, pageantry, and jousting in which the King himself took part, the roll depicts John Blanke, the first named African in Britain’s record. Blanke is featured twice as a heralding trumpeter, alongside white trumpeters. This is definitive evidence of a skilled Black man not simply living in England, but also embedded in the King’s Royal Court, a reality unimagined by most who have learned about the Tudors.

John Blanke as featured on the Westminster Tournament Roll, accessed via the National Archives.

Not only is there a visual record of John Blanke, but we are also able to know more about his life thanks to the preservation of written correspondence between him and the King. In a bundle of letters now held at the National Archives in London, there is an undated petition to the King, written by John Blanke, requesting an increase in pay from 8 pence per day to 16 pence. While for many it may be striking that Blanke was paid at all, I am particularly astounded by his request to be paid the same as his colleagues, including back pay for the months he’d served so far. From this request, we can see that not only was Blanke being paid less, possibly on account of his race, but we can also see his boldness that demanded equal treatment. Though the record is isolated to Blanke’s experience, this suggests some of the racial dynamics at play in Tudor England.

Blanke made the argument that this pay raise could be accomplished by promoting him into the role of another trumpeter who had recently died, and historians believe that his confidence came from a positive relationship between him and the King. This certainly seems to be the case as King Henry approved his request. John Blanke lived as a skilled worker in the courts of the King, seemingly married to an Englishwoman, and was able to negotiate his salary. Each of these defies the presumption of enslaved status being the only status available for Africans in Tudor England.

John Blanke’s petition to Henry VII, accessed via the National Archives.

Historian Miranda Kaufmann explores the history of Black Tudors in her seminal work Black Tudors: The Untold Story, which I will be giving away to one lucky reader at the end of the month!

Black Victorians

Because I intend to cover the Transatlantic Slave Trade in the next post, let’s skip ahead to the Victorian Era.

Britain abolished slavery in 1833, and the Victorian British narrative transformed abolitionism from a fringe activist concern in the UK into part of British identity and moral character. This led to many Brits taking part in abolitionist efforts across the world. Indeed, the Crown deployed British ships named “The West Africa Squadron” to the coasts of West Africa to intercept slave ships and liberate enslaved people. While they only succeeded in intercepting 6% of slave ships, 150,000 men, women, and children were liberated between 1808 and 1860. These seamen transported many of these liberated peoples to Sierra Leone, where some settled in Freetown, while others were recaptured for enslavement or forced into the army. To this day, those descended from those who settled in Freetown celebrate the “re-captives” who were rescued from a lifetime of enslavement, describing them as “the lucky ones.” However, these valiant efforts over time merged seamlessly with British colonization efforts on the continent.

Meanwhile, African and Caribbean descended people, both former slave and free, continued life as part of British society. While Black communities were not widespread across the nation, Black communities were small and concentrated in locations of available labor, particularly near the docks of Liverpool and Cardiff, or in the hubbub of metropolitan London. Many African elites took advantage of connections with the UK and arrived for schooling or to work as traders between Britain and their home nation. Formerly enslaved people from America and the Caribbean also sought settlement in Britain, hoping to benefit from the freedom on offer. As a result, Black Brits of the Victorian era spanned all classes, from domestic workers (who made up the largest group) to those who worked as part of the Royal Navy or as merchants. Despite varied class positions, racism marked work and life in Victorian Britain. Many white families who used Black people as domestic laborers saw fit to treat them as “slave servants,” subjecting Black men, women, and children to violence and maltreatment. In the Royal Navy, Black men reported unequal treatment and a stagnation that prevented them from rising through the ranks.

One exceptional story is that of Sara Forbes Boneta. During negotiations between Dahomey and British traders, the Dahomey, reluctant to end the slave trade, offered a young girl as a “gift” to Queen Victoria. Despite the mission of the West Africa Squadron to end enslavement, Captain Forbes takes the “captive girl” and other gifts back to England, renaming her Sara Forbes Boneta. The young girl was aged 6 upon her arrival in 1850. Queen Victoria recorded in her diary that Boneta knew English (which demonstrates the “creolization” that took place in coastal port cities). It is likely that she learned from exposure to British merchants and had been raised with this fate in the mind of the Dahomey Royal Court. Queen Victoria described her as intelligent and smartly dressed, but remarked upon her “woolly head and big earrings,” giving her “the negro type,” hidden initially by her bonnet. She became the ward of Queen Victoria, making her a woman of great privilege. Simultaneously, Sara was forced to live with the reality of being used as an experiment to prove that British paternalism could civilize Africans.

Portrait of Sara Forbes Boneta, accessed via Post News Group.

Unlike John Blanke three hundred years prior, intermarrying with the English aristocracy or any other white English person was unthinkable, and so she was married to trader James Davies from Freetown, Sierra Leone. In fact, Davies was the child of enslaved people freed by the West African Squadron. In this picture, and others, we can see the fusion of African and British identity in Sara, revealing that the “becoming something new” goes way back in time. While Boneta is exceptional in her unique experience as a Black ward of the Queen, much of her complex identity formation can be imagined as a common experience among the many Black Victorians living in Britain.

The late 19th century brought the Scramble for Africa, which transformed the relationship between Africa, the Caribbean, and Britain. In fact, because this served as the turning point that has defined the subsequent presence of Black people in the UK, that will have its own post, too!

World War I

Let’s close out with World War I. By 1914, the outbreak of the war, Britain had the largest colonial empire in the world, with colonies on every continent. If that scope does not capture the expansiveness of the British Empire for you, know that more than ¼ of the world’s population was under British colonial rule at some point in history. This is an important backdrop that we must acknowledge before we discuss World War I, as it is essential to the name itself. Growing up, I always wondered why the wars were called “World Wars” when they were mostly fought in Europe, between Europeans, with American input. The history is demonstrated in the name: Britain had colonized much of the world and therefore, the First and Second World Wars embroiled the Empire, too, including Black military service.

Portrait of Alhaji Grunshi, accessed via The Bay Museum.

In fact, public historian David Olusoga argues that “the First World War began in Africa.” In the then-named “Togoland,” Black soldier, Alhajii Grunshi of the British West African Frontier Force, fired the first shots of the British in the war. This extraordinary and untold moment perfectly demonstrates the shift in the relationship between Black people in the UK and across the Empire, and Britain. Over the course of the war, the Crown enlisted one million Africans to work as carriers for the army, roughly 100,000 of whom were killed in battle (some estimate that figure as an underestimation of 50%). Those who served in the military came from all over the continent: many from Sudan, Rhodesia, Ethiopia, and Nyasaland formed regiments under the King’s African Rifles; Ghana enlisted thousands of men into the Gold Coast Regiment, fighting in East Africa; the West African Frontier Force comprised of Nigerian soldiers. Olusoga argues that at the beginning of the war, and upon encountering one another from differing British colonies, African soldiers had hope in their unity and that their service would demonstrate Black valiance and capability. Most importantly, though, Africans and Caribbeans at this moment believed colonialism to be what the British said it was: an extension of British citizenship, and so, many sought to demonstrate loyalty to “their nation” and “their Crown.” However, racism marked the experiences of these soldiers who faced lesser rations, insufficient and lower-quality clothing, and supplies. By the end of the war, those who survived returned to their nations filled with discontent and disillusionment.

West Indian regiments had similar experiences. At the outbreak of war, many were eager to take part, and men from the Bahamas, Grenada, British Honduras (now Belize), British Guiana (now Guyana), the Leeward Islands, St. Vincent, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, and Jamaica all sought to serve as soldiers, auxiliaries of the British Army. In towns across Jamaica, impassioned people held rallies in support of the war, and newspapers debated the threat of German invasion, fueling a “pro-imperialist euphoria” among the people. This rampant patriotism came from the high esteem those in the British Caribbean had for the then recently deceased Queen Victoria. They saw the Queen as an emancipator of sorts, as she ascended to the throne shortly after Parliament passed the emancipation acts in 1833. This fostered a sense of goodwill and loyalty that survived and served Britain’s war effort. Unsurprisingly, Britain took advantage of this wave of patriotism, using it as evidence of Jamaica as a “paragon of morality and virtue,” evidence of their successful “civilizing mission,” in great contrast with “German tyranny” and brutality. Eventually, in May 1915, the Colonial Office approved the formation of a West Indian regiment.

Image of the British West Indian Regiment doing much of the grunt work reserved for Black soldiers. They spent time digging trenches, building roads and gun emplacements, acting as stretcher bearers, loading ships and trains, and working in ammunition dumps. Accessed via: Imperial War Museum.

Throughout the war, Caribbean regiments fought in Egypt and the Middle East because the British believed that they would be better equipped to handle the heat than white British soldiers. African, Caribbean, and the million Indian soldiers who fought, too, faced racist mockery and maltreatment at the hands of the British. Many military superiors mocked the idea of Black people’s capability to serve in the army, and one Trinidadian soldier reported that he and his Black comrades were “treated neither as Christians nor as British citizens, but as West Indian ‘N*ggers,’ without anybody to be interested in or look after us.” The army actively withheld promotions from Black soldiers, making every effort to ensure the army reflected the racial hierarchy of the day. The experience of such treatment at the hands of white British superiors brought an end to any belief in a British citizenship or a “free empire” that extended throughout the colonies. Instead, Africans and Caribbeans left the war with anti-colonial sentiments that would mark the 20th century.

Though these are not Black British men and women in the sense of those born and raised on British soil, the British, through its Empire, expanded British soil to these territories abroad. Therefore, these stories and experiences are central to British history and our understanding of how ideas of race and racism functioned in the early 20th century. Further, these are the stories of the ancestors of Black British people, no matter our arrival date.

A New Timeline

Although this is a whirlwind narrative of the history of Africans and Caribbeans in connection with and living in the United Kingdom across time, I hope that it demonstrates the long history that must be studied and celebrated. There is not one Black British story, much like we are not a monolithic people group today. Examining these many moments in time illuminates the number of stories that we still have to explore to get a fuller picture.

—Come back next week, when we will discuss the final (and most pervasive) myth I need to bust: “Slavery didn’t exist on British soil!”

Doing the history of marginalized people requires that we dig a bit deeper. That we piece together scraps of history that are threads of a larger tapestry that we may not see in full and clear view. This, again, is why critical mass cannot be the only way we define Black British history, as we will never fully know the numbers of Black people who lived and built homes in the UK across time. Though records are sparse, we do have evidence of Black people and Africans present in England and Scotland as early as the 3rd century AD! So let’s start there.

FYI: I don’t want this to be a 10-hour read, so this is a whirlwind introduction to Black history in each era. I have also split this into two parts, and part 2 will be posted tomorrow.

Romans in England

Historical records in the North of England show the presence of Africans as part of the Roman rule of Britain as early as the 3rd century AD. The famous Hadrian’s Wall marks the most northern part of the Roman Empire, which stretched all the way to North Africa, and from tomb inscriptions and military records, it is clear that several North Africans came with Rome as part of the army. Likely hailing from Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria, all of which were under Roman rule for 400 years, many of these soldiers would have traveled to the UK with their families in tow, due to both distance and the permanence of the post. Thus, while North African men served as Roman soldiers guarding and protecting English borders, their families settled in nearby towns, raising generations there.

One way this is known is through the military records of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who ruled Britain (and the whole Roman Empire) for 19 years. Known as the Numerus Maurorum Aurelianorum, North African soldiers served in this auxiliary unit of the Roman army, stationed in Britain along Hadrian’s Wall. While North Africans are not phenotypically considered Black, this is evidence of African contact with Britain long before the dawn of the modern world, and even before Britain existed as a geographical concept. Another piece of evidence comes from the inscriptions found on an excavated altar stone, which archeologists have determined was part of the Roman fort Aballava in Cumbria. The inscription includes a dedication to the god Jupiter and records the presence of what the writer called “Aurelian Moors.”

Plaque commemorating the African Regiment stationed at Ford Aballava on Hadrian’s Wall in the 3rd Century, accessed via: Historic England.

As archeology and forensic science have made strides, more and more histories are becoming accessible. The exhumation of over 200 bodies found in York in the mid-20th century served as another key discovery in the history of Roman-era people of African descent in England. Among the skeletons exhumed were several bodies that have been proven to be those of Black Africans. Initially studied by archeologists in the 1980s, who based this assertion on the proportions of the skeletal remains, their conclusions were verified thirty years later by forensic science. This technology also helped identify the “Ivory Bangle Lady,” a third-century African woman who lived in the North of England. Archeologists encountered her remains buried in a stone sarcophagus in 1901, finding that she had been buried with an inscribed bone which reads: “Hail sister, may you live in God.” This suggests the woman was likely a Christian. Other trinkets accompanied her remains, including “blue marbled glass beads, fragments of five bone bracelets, silver and bronze lockets, two yellow glass earrings, two marbled glass beads, a small round glass mirror, and a blue glass perfume bottle.” Each of these items indicates that she was an upper-class woman in Roman England. It was not until 2009 that radio-isotope analysis could be done on the body, and it was confirmed that she was likely of mixed racial ancestry, likely North African.

Images of some of the recovered items in the sarcophagus of “The Ivory Bangle Lady,” accessed via Yorkshire Museum.

There are countless other examples of figures like this, and their stories are significant because British history often frames first contact between Africans and the UK as a result of British efforts to reach Africa, boasting the seafaring prowess of the Tudor Empire. But evidence of North Africans in Roman

ngland completely uproots this narrative, demonstrating the mobility of Africans across the Roman Empire.

Medieval Racialization

Interestingly, there is a palpable historical silence between the Roman era and the 13th century, but, as we have already established, silence simply means stories as yet untold, not strictly absence. This is particularly evident in the discussions of racialization that take place in Britain and across Europe in the 13th century. Discussion of Blackness, or “Africanaity,” and its meaning among Europeans connotes that interactions had continued throughout those long years with a limited historical record. How else would questions about race be so prevalent? What else could be the cause of discussions around interracial marriage in Britain and Germany?

The debate around racialization in the context of the United States typically centers on the Transatlantic Slave Trade, with historians long debating whether the Slave Trade created race or whether race created the slave trade. Yet, European history reveals that this process began over 200 years before the inauguration of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. We can see the beginnings of racialization as early as the 13th century. Africans and Europeans had been in enough contact for racialization to become a subfield of medical study. Physicians expressed a curiosity about Black women’s bodies, desiring to validate the widespread belief that black women produced superior breast milk. The notion derived from Aristotle’s belief in the connections between menstrual blood and heat, and physicians believed that black women’s milk had the most nutrients. In Paris, medical discourse asserted Black women’s hypersexuality as a consequence of the hotter temperatures of their native climates.

Theology played a part in the process of racialization, too. In 1215, English theologian Thomas of Chobham sought to regulate the institution of marriage between a white man and a white woman. It was believed by he, and many other European clergy, that Africans were hypersexual, the relations between white men and black women were ultimately part of the “private sphere” and thus could not be governed, or sanctified by, the institution of marriage. As historian Olivette Otele argues, “these debates were not exempt from shame, confusion, and morbid fascination,” resulting in a “firm set of widely accepted views” that took root in the 13th century. As you may have noticed, much of this racialization is gendered. Theologians and philosophers demonized foreign women, particularly Black women, who worshipped other Gods, as “dangerous to family structures and social order,” particularly because of the responsibility of children and the home women assumed. Notions of race shaped notions of gender before the explosion of modern slavery across the Old and New World.

The idea of Africa burned bright in the medieval European and British imagination. This is evident in medieval English maps and art. In the famous medieval map of the world called the Mappa Mundi, Africa is depicted alongside Europe and Asia, as the three continents of Christendom. More specifically, the map highlights Ethiopia as civilized and majestic, due to its longstanding Christian religious heritage, while the rest of Africa is imagined as a place of mythical beasts and seemingly animal-human and plant-human hybrids. Nonetheless, the map illuminates the interconnectedness of these continents, European awareness of Africa and Asia, and the long history of mobility and migration between continents. In the Early Modern imagination, Africa existed as a site of potential wealth.

Adoration of the Magi, by Albrecht Dürer (Nuremberg 1471 - 1528), accessed via: Uffizi Gallery

Interestingly, the most vivid imaginaries of Africa came in conceptions of the Christian story of Jesus’ birth. Throughout the Middle Ages and Tudor England, an understanding of the three wise men, who visited Jesus in Bethlehem to offer gifts, emerged, making one of them African and eventually sub-Saharan in appearance. Though nameless in the Bible, the Church imbued the three wise men with the geographical history and politics of the day, one that celebrated a three-pronged Christendom, in Asia, Africa, and Europe. As such, many altarpieces from this time depict one of the three Magi as African, both in skintone and features. Historians of the era argue that part of the symbolism of an African Magi is the potential wealth of Africa and its ability to enrich Christendom. This vision of Africa as a place of riches went on to fuel England and Europe’s dogged pursuit of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and colonization of Africa.

Come back tomorrow for part 2 where we will explore Black Tudors through to World War One!

Although I subsequently deleted this comment to maintain the respectful tone of my social media platform (internet rudeness is exhausting), I almost didn’t, because this person articulated the first and most pervasive myth I want to tackle in this series. As you can see, above, I have highlighted the definitive assertions in the comment, which are all, in reality, assumptions. Educators refer to a comment like this as something a student might say that “reveals the scaffolding” of a their thinking; the underpinnings that shape, or prevent the intake of, all the information we may try to teach them. So, let’s take a look at these assumptions.

“There is no such thing as Black history in Britain”

This one is a definitive statement of fact, with the added authority of “saying this as a black man.” One of the challenges for people encountering history as a subject is the problem of one’s own subjectivity. History is storytelling, using qualitative data rather than quantitative data. So, many feel that if what they learn conflicts with their own experience, perspective, or worldview, it must be wrong. But that is not how history works. Black people in Britain and elsewhere in Europe is a historical reality, no matter how I, or any other person, identify with, or feel about it. Because history is not based on anecdote. While my (and your) story matters, historical understandings are crafted through so much more than that. Indeed, a historian may pursue a research topic based on a hunch, but as my graduate advisor told me, you have to follow the evidence. So, to make a definitive statement, then try to evidence or authenticate its validity using your subjective identity, just doesn’t cut it for making claims about history and people groups. I can’t write about Black women and make a definitive claim, based on my experience, about the universal realities of Black womanhood in the 21st century. Rather, we can use our own vantage point to ask questions about broader historical realities.

“Black British history” makes two simple claims:

1. Black people live in the UK. Many have been born and raised there for several generations, many for a few. Therefore, we can ask historical questions about their lives and experiences.

2. “Black British” is a term that points to nationality for some, culture and heritage for others, but honors the presence of the Black diaspora in the UK. Black people are embedded in broader British culture, but have a distinctive experience as a result of differing origins, cultures, and white supremacy. Therefore, there is something to study.

Ironically, though the commenter denies Black British history and culture as an identity, he does use “we” to refer to himself and me, and (presumably) other Black people living in Britain. He doesn’t know my heritage, whether we’re from the same place or not, but he assumes based on the fact that “we” immigrated to the same place, that we are a “we.” This on its own proves the point: even if you do not identify as British (which you don’t have to), the immigrant experience in the same nation has created a cohesive group enough to make us refer to ourselves as “we.” That, alone, is worth studying, even if you’re not quite settled on the term “Black British.”

Indeed, similar to the evolution of terminology in the US for self-identification, there is great debate about what we should call ourselves. Historian Hakim Adi argues for referring to it as the history of “African and Caribbean People in Britain” (the title of his new book) because he believes the term “Black” erases the multiplicity of ethnicities and heritages of the people who live in the UK now and throughout history. Contrastingly, the founder of Black History Month in the UK, Linda Bellos, a biracial woman with a Nigerian father, saw Black History Month as a moment to celebrate the contributions of Africans, Caribbeans, and Indians, taking a pan-racial and Commonwealth (former colonies) countries approach to the identity. Historian Olivette Otele uses the term “African Europeans” in her incredible work tracing the long presence of the diaspora across the whole continent, including British, arguing that the term “African Europeans” functions better than European Africans because historically, “most of them are defined by other groups or define themselves firstly through their connection with the African continent.” Public historian David Olusoga argues for a global conception of “Black British history,” not because of migration and communities in Britain, but because “black British history is as global as the empire.” Indeed, terminology is not the issue, as it is always in flux. The problem is the denial of the relevance of Black stories and their significance in the broader narrative of British history.

Sadly, the meaning of the presence of Black people in the UK across time has been defined by white supremacy. Who we are, and how we get to identify, is often in the eye of the beholder. In fact, this comment spurred a conversation between my sisters and me about whether we identify as British or African and Caribbean. Even among the three of us, we have differing levels of identification with the term “Black British.” My oldest sister and I have both immigrated to the United States, and both agree that our experiences as cultural outsiders in America solidified our self-perception as Black British women. Meanwhile, my sister, who still lives in the UK, doesn’t feel as strongly about identifying this way, feeling stronger ties to our Ghanaian and Trinidadian heritage. But she noted: “The reality is, we’re not allowed to identify as British. It doesn’t matter that we were born here, we’ll always be asked where we’re ‘really’ from!” On that, we all agree. Accepting Black British as an identity feels impossible when everyone around you says, “Well, you’re not really British, are you!”

Nonetheless, immigration creates fusions of old and new, of heritage and nationality, birthing something new. Each child of immigrants feels this if they visit their parents’ homeland, and even psychology teaches the “ambiguous loss” immigrants themselves go through- a loss of cultural fluency, remaining attached to a version of home that is no longer present. Residence shapes and reshapes our identities. We meld unique blends of cultures and ideas, creating a new thing. This new “thing” is often pushed away by white supremacy, which prefers to leave us as placeless people whose stories aren’t significant outside of individual experience. But rendering us nameless concedes our nonexistence. Whatever we choose to name ourselves, our histories remain.

We’re Just Voluntary Immigrants

This assertion is an interesting one that many might miss the implications of, but this is a common assumption: the Black diaspora is only defined by slavery. This is a slavery-centric understanding of the Black diaspora, and while I have been a historian of slavery in America for the last decade, I have many colleagues who study Black mobility outside of the institution of slavery. Indeed, for those in Europe and America, after the inauguration of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, slavery defined the lives of even free Black people across the world. But Black history is diverse because experiences are diverse, even today.

Additionally, “voluntary immigrants” is a bit of a misnomer in the context of vast colonization. Most immigrants from African nations are such as a result of the economic, political, and social instability that colonization and neo-colonialism caused. While some people are naturally adventurous and choose to emigrate, most choose to for the sake of opportunities that otherwise would evade them. Indeed, this is “voluntary,” but it cannot be understood outside of the forces of larger systems and histories that shape the pathways of people throughout time and today.

As the director of the Institute of Race Relations said in 2008 at an event in celebration of the institute’s 50th anniversary: “We are here, because you were there.”

“Sure, there were a few but they were temporary workers who returned to Africa.”

My next post will dive more deeply into debunking this myth, but I still want to highlight the assumptions embedded in the statement. Beginning with the assertion that “there were a few,” Black people in Britain across history, the assumption is that there has never been enough to matter; that their presence is exceptional and therefore has no impact on Britain’s broader history. Historian Olivette Otele argues the complex consequences of the narrative of “exceptionalism,” highlighting that while it allows us to explore what mainstream historical narratives leave out, it can also misshape our understandings of Black history across the world. She argues that the knowledge of select Black figures across time has been severed from the broader history of “a fight against exploitation,” which has been erased, resulting in the belief of “only a few.” The presence of ANY Black people in Britain at any time is evidence of larger stories of trade, cultural exchange, movement, and interconnections between places and people we imagine as geographically and culturally disparate. If Henry VIII had a Black trumpeter in his royal court (he did), that tells us not about an exception to be ignored, but opens up questions on a systemic and micro level.

Additionally, the notion of “few” suggests that history only matters if it happened to a significant enough number of people. Who gets to decide that number? And how do we trust numbers when people’s presence his been erased from the record, or they were unable to, or prevented from, recording their own stories? Even today, Black Brits represent less than 4% of Britain’s population, a hyper-minority. Does that render the experiences of around 2.3 million people meaningless? Does that suggest that their presence is without consequence or impact on the British economy and society? If nothing else, the current uptick in anti-Black and anti-Asian sentiment in the UK suggests that our presence is felt (and scapegoated). It is important to understand that if critical mass is what we’re looking for in the historical accounts of Black people’s presence in the UK, we will continually wrestle with the question of whether Black history is a thing. We will facilitate our erasure, by believing ourselves insignificant enough to ignore.

Lastly, and colloquially, “temporary workers” is crazy. If by “temporary workers” we mean enslaved people who were often kicked out of the country after being freed, then let’s say that. If we mean that some people move to the UK, live and work, and return to their home country, then let’s say that. In either case, these are still histories waiting to be told, and their presence shaped British history and tells us a lot about Britain. In reality, the 3.7% Black population is evidence that people came to the UK and stayed.

Ignorance is Not Bliss

The fact that we have to begin with a defense of “Black British history” as a category of study is evidence of the success of the narratives written by white supremacy. As Otele highlights, the subjugation of African and African descended peoples has not only been physical, but rather, it has been “accompanied by not only a rewriting of the oppressor’s history but also by a shaping of the story of the oppressed.” Cedric Robinson evidences this using the extensive records from British and European travellers to West Africa in the 15th and 16th centuries, in which they describe the advanced social, cultural, and agricultural systems among the different communities, yet by the 18th century, this evidence had been sidelined for a more convenient ideology of “unsophisticated” Africans. These attitudes prevailed through the 20th century, evidenced by British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper declaring in 1965 that: “Perhaps in the future there will be some African history to teach. But at present there is none: there is only the history of Europeans in Africa.” As an undergraduate studying history, our core courses required that we read Roper.

We cannot deny that what we know, and do not know, what we believe, and cannot fathom, is shaped by these long-standing myths of white supremacy. Our ignorance of Black history in Britain is by design. It is not incidental or a result of how individual immigrants feel about their heritage. To ignore that would be an exercise in continued erasure.

So let’s get into the fuller story of British history, the one in which Black, or African and Caribbean, voices and stories can be heard.

Come back on Wednesday to bust the next myth: “Black people have not been in the UK for very long!”