BONUS: Women in Slave Revolts with Dr. Rebecca Hall

of research on women who led slave revolts. Women often get left out of the conversation of slave revolts, and I think her research and her work is really awesome and really relevant to the topic of resistance and people who have been forgotten and the legacies of those people and what we can learn from them. So we're gonna do things a little bit differently today. I'm going to get off my lonely solo soapbox to have a conversation with Dr Rebecca Hall, and I hope you enjoy it.

Here we go. My name is Dr Rebecca Hall. Rebecca's r E. B C c A last name, The Hall H A L. L Um I'm a a d pH d, meaning I have a law degree and a PhD because I wanted all the student debt. UM I got my j d from Berkeley in practice law for eight years. I worked with homeless families and the tenants rights work, and then went on to UH go back and get my PhD studying history of race and gender. So how would you define slave revolt? Yeah, so that's a very

interesting question to start with. Um I people historians, you know, study slave revolt use different definitions depending on sort of almost kind of like what work they want the term to use the term to do. So, you know, there's slave resistance where slaves are fighting back against either you know, their specific situation or against slavery generally. For for you know, there their historians who believe that slave resistance is not a fulber voles unless it's trying to bring down the

entire institution of slavery. UH. Some people have definitions that a slave revolts has to involve, you know, a certain number of people, has to have you know, a certain type of coverage or documentation in the press at the time. UM my definition is a coordinated act of violent resistance

against UH. Slavery orders or slave specific slaveholders. And the reason why I define it like that is because if we'll get into women are written out of the history of being involved in slave revolts, um and ah, one of those things that keeps coming up is that, you know, women aren't involved in violent acts of resistance. They're coordinated

violent acts of resistance. So I use the term uh that is specifically that historians specifically used to exclude women say that, okay, this, I'm gonna look for this particular type of slave resistance and show that women are involved

in it. So I I'll say that one reason that I came to came to your work and it was just you know, really interested in this topic that we're talking about today, women who lets slav volts, is because I was like, for you know, obvious reasons turning to slave revolts as things as acts that people use as resistance in terms of terms of challenging the status quote that was slavery, and a lot of those people had you know, very very interesting stories and you know, resisted

in different ways even within the practice of slave revolts. And I realized that because we are the women like you know, in cursory searches. Definitely, there are no women that really pop up, and when they do pop up, it's kind of like, this is the same story that's told over and over. What's the deeper what's the deeper story here, what are the beginnings of the story? And

what did they actually do? You know, the story is just kind of a surface look at these, you know, amazing women who did this, but doesn't really allow a person who's just jumping into that search, who's maybe not a historian or a researcher, to learn more about them. And that was just I knew that that wasn't I knew that that was a measured absence. It wasn't just because women were silent. And I would love to know

what got you into researching women who let slabor votes. Okay, yeah, so I've always been interested in the issue of slaver resistance with slabor votes, and by always, I mean since I was a child. I think that you know, I had my parents were were radical activists, and you know, any group of people, any but any oppressed group of people getting having access to the history of how we fought back is crucial because it tends to be silenced

on purpose. And it's also important for our basic psychological makeup, you know, like I think of you know, you know, people like you know, Kanye West or whatever said that, well, they must have consented to slavery. I mean he didn't say it this articulately, but because you know, they didn't fight back or um and and you know, and and in fact, you know, there were hundreds of slabor volts in the United States, um and and it's and the history of slave revolt in specific, um like it it

was actively erased by historians. So I think it's important for me to answer your question, to talk a little bit about what happened with the history of slavery's revolts generally, and then talk about how its recovery actually then erased women. UM participation in that is okay, if I if I go in there, that question okay, Yeah. So so you know, the first you know, historians of slavery were people who supported slavery and said, you know, slavers didn't resist to slavery.

And because you know, the institution was benign and necessary for black people in order to attain their culture, and that's why there's no slavery wolf that happened in the United States, you know, and it's hard to it's hard to northern ones like Haiti or some of the huge ones in South America. And so that these historians were saying, well, slavery was harsher there, but here we had it right.

It was put you know, and um, that was how slavery slave resistance um in general, flavora bolt was taught, you know, all the way up through the through the

nineteen fifties in this country. And then you started to get um, some historians, especially after World War Two, UM, with making comparisons and saying, well, there weren't flavorables in the United States because like in concentration camps, slavery was such a horrible institution where they would say it's such a totalizing institution that it was impossible to resist slavery, um, just like in concentration camps. But of course that's not

true for concentration camps either, but that's another episode. UM. And then you know, in the sixties and early seventies, you start getting ing African Americans, primarily men um involved in academia and the rise of black studies. Also in the context of sort of you know, in the civil rights movement, and and and and these historians start saying, wait a minute, they're actually, we're plenty of slavery voters

looked at all this evidence for them. Um. But at the same time they were saying that, you know, this speak sort of cultural uh background issue that you know still exists to this day is the idea that the black families, uh problem with black people and why black people don't succeed is because their families dysfunctional, Their men are emasculated that women on matriarchs just happened in slavery.

It will never be um changed until the black family gets it's it's act together in its gender cult roles correct, right, um. And this is the whole dysfunctional black family each just right. And then you have you know, Angela Davis um writing an article on black women in the community of slaves while she's actually imprisoned, asking scholars, how can you say that women had the power and slavery just doesn't make

any sense? Right? But um so, But in in response to this pushback, you know, you have everything from like activists, Black activists like Stokely Carmichael saying when being asked, you know, what's the position of black women in the liberation struggle, and he responds prone, you know, uh to uh black male historians writing these books on recovering the history of slavorable and repeatedly saying, but women weren't involved in this.

Women didn't do this because they performed there to interrote correctly, um, and men were manly. And so there's this like huge pushback happening, right, And so then you know, you can get in the seventies and eighties to get a rise of feminist historians, you know, women the black and white no, uh, And they were saying, okay, all right, So if women didn't figure prominently in flavor bolts, they were very figured

prominently in slav resistance generally. So, but they're asked for more individual, less violent, you know, uh, but and also possibly more effective. Right, so trying to to to highlight resistance on a broad scale, which is always a good thing, right,

you know. Um, but they never went back and questioned the fundamental assumption about women and there and so when I got into graduate school and I wanted to uh study flavor bolts and slave resistance, and I kept seeing these, you know, every book I picked up, like it will be like, Okay, it's gonna be you know, in the first within the first pretty pages, there's gonna be some statement about how women didn't do this, you know. Um, I was like, this is this There's something wrong about this.

So everything I just told you, this is what I ended up learning, right um And and I was like, I bet that there are women involved, and this is what I want to do my dissertation research on. And my dissertation advisors like, well, even if that's true, you're not going to find the records. That's not can be sources and so so what that's what someone needs to do is to tell me I can't do something. So then I started and I started finding women all over

the primary sources, and so that became my work. UM my dissertation that and my PhD. I have published academic articles about it, and I have a forthcoming graphic novel

about it. UM where that I write and that's being illustrated by an artist, is about what I you know about the story of how this history was sort of varied and why and how to uncover it with a process UM so needs to go through to actually uncover and sort of recovered these stories to women in the archives, you know who fought and died reading flavor volts and participating in flavor volts. So who are some of those

women who fought in flavor volts. So I think it's important for me to put a situate myself after historian, like we get you have to specialize on a in a time period in place and my my my focus is British America in the eighth century, right, I mean that's how specific you need to focus. Um. There are women, um like if you study you know in Latin America and uh they're there are women named in and some of some of the revolts that happened in Cuba, I'm have been names at the top of my head. Um.

But here in in what became the United States. Um, I've done a lot of my reach on two revolts in colonial New York. One in seventeen o eight, which I am, which I'm the one who uncovered, and then at seventeen twelve revolt in seventeen twelve, so the eight revolts. Um, there were four slaves executed for killing um, a family of slaveholders. Um, and uh they were prevented from killing others and the woman the three men involved were hung and the woman was burned at the stake. UM. Her

name was never recorded. He was referred to as the Negro Wench or the Negro seen. And I spent a year trying to find her name, and it may never we never, maybe that we never find it. UM there was there was actually a trial, and if there was a trial, there was a court record. But I've been told UM at several archives throughout New York that that that that record, those records were destroyed in a fire.

There was a bunch of the big fire in New York that is throwing a lot of of its historical records. I still haven't given up. There's a couple of leads I can still check down. But I looked for her name here in New York and also UM in England because it was the English colony at the time. In seventeen flow, there were four women whose names are in the court record for that revolt UM Sarah, Abigail, Amba,

and Lily Um. Two of those women were convicted Uh Sarah and ab Gail, and two Lily and Amba were were acquitted. UM. The two who were convicted were sent today. And one of those women and it's not clear in the court records, Uh, which one, whether it was Sarah Abigail had her execution stayed because she was pregnant. Um. This was done not because out of sort of any kindness to the mother. It's because someone owns that baby,

um and UM. And then there's a lot of correspondence between the colonial governor of New York at the time and Queen Anne's Privy Council. He's requesting a pardon for her um, saying, you know, she's given birth, she's been in the jail, you know, her conditions in a wolf of state. Um. But he never received his permission for the pardon. And it's never mentioned whether it was Sarah

or Abogail UM. So uh, these are these are the kind of mine fields you come across researching slavery in general, but particularly when you try to research you know, when you're going back thus far, you know, and uh, you know this isn't an antebellum period early during the establishment of slavery, um and um. There were three other women

are named who committed suicide before capture. And there's there's it's a it's it's an interesting thing, which will we talked about more in the graphic novel Um but You. But it can be traced by the names of the slaves of there were I think twenty one trial together. Amba is a is an Acan name, Uhcan speaking language from what is now Ghana, and a large percentage of

the slaves involved for a Coom speaking UM. And there's been really sort of a lot of documentation of methods and types of resistance of of people in the Akhane diaspora. So from that information and could contrast with colonial records, I was able to discover like the kind of oaths that they took in preparation for UM the revolt UM and the also the the incentive to either win the fight, die in the fight, or kill yourself commit suicide UM.

Because not just because you don't want to be captured, tortured and killed, there's that, but also because if if that happens, if you die in the fight or or kill yourself, bookfill capture you, you you join the ancestral plane UM and can continue the fight. So those are those are some names and UH and I have more information about those of people. But again it's it's a little tricky because I don't I'm not exactly sure what happened to which one of them you know? Um, I'm

my educated guest. I mean one was definitely executed immediately after the revolt and um, because only the queen did give issue a pardon and it never came. Um, I'm assuming that she was executed. Um. But the Queen Queen Anne died um before responding to letters, and there was a new king and the governor got reassigned and then the record just falls silence. We'll be back with more conversation with Dr Rebecca Hall soon, but we're going to

take a quick break h m hm. And the work that you do of re kind of reclaiming the history and the memory of people and really uncovering stories that haven't you know, seeing seeing much lighter, if any at all, um. And also how you talked about you know, this women and Slaver's revolts for several reasons have been excluded. There's a mentioned in your work of an event called Celia's Conspiracy. And one thing that I'm very interested in it is language.

And you talk about in your article yes yes, and you and you talk about how you specifically choose because Celia wasn't mentioned, but she was mentioned as being someone who was instrumental in the event and labeling it Celia's conspiracy, very intentionally to put her name up front at the top of that, the naming of it. So what is

this the significance? Can you can you talk? Can you tell me about your feelings about the significance of naming and using language when it comes to reclaiming women's stories when it came to resistance and slav revolts. So are absolutely okay? So, um, you know, we've already talked about how women's involvement in revolt and we definitely should talk about slaveship revolts too, uh, but that that that women were involved in and led flavor volts in that act

in different ways and reasons why that was raised. One of the things gave that if you know, the historian goes to the record, assuming that this is not something women did, then they're they're never going to name a slave revolt after the women involved. So so many slavor volts are named after who people at the time decided with a leader or who historians subsequently decided was the reader.

You know, the Denmark Stacy revolt with Nack Turner revolt that you know their name after specific men, and in this revolt that you're referring to, you know, there's a detailed interrogation of one of the enslaved men involved in the revolt where he talks about this woman, Celia, and how he had inspired this revolt and planned it. But they don't ask that. Interrogators at the time don't ask

any questions. They don't ask any more questions about this woman who decided the time, decided, you know, organized it. And so that's just the kind of silencing that that happens, both at the time because of gender assumptions and also by subsequent um silencing by current historians because of their gendered assumptions. You mentioned slaveship revolts. Yeah, okay, so now I'm just gonna ask what what what was it that

is you know, still compelling about slaveship revolts. Okay, Well, first of all, this is really, um, this is I think it very important issue in the history or historiography of slavery in general, slave resistance and specific For a long time, historians thought that revolts on slaveships we're very rare. Um mainly because um, it was basically suicidal. You know, if you're in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. And you know, you don't come from a culture that's technology

that knows how to operate shifts or whatever. Your your best case scenario is, you know, you're going to die and take the white people who are slaving you with you. Um. So people thought, yeah, it's just it didn't happen very often. But then with the rise of sort of digital capacity and digital humanities, historians all over the world who are studying the Atlantic slave trey. You know, we're talking about hundreds and thousands of slaveships. We're pulling their information into

a centralized data base. And in the nineties, uh, you know, it was set up so that you could actually query the database. And what they found out was that one there was a slave the revolt on one in ten voyages, which was really shocking. And I'm not an economic historian, but it had a really big impact on, for example, costs associated with the trade. There's analysis that show that it prevented others from being traded, made the cost you know, um,

because of the costs and the issues involved. UM. But I have done a lot of reading about issues of

prevention about slaveship revolts. But um, the other. But then on these quantitative historians, you know, when they looked at the data and they wanted to say, okay, why would there be a revolt on one ship and not another, Like what's the you know, big difference between the two ships types of ships that you know what the liners of revolt and the number one this difference was that on the ships where there were more revolts, there were

more women. And the historians, seeing that, you know, specifically said, but you know, women weren't involved in this type of organized, violent, active resistance, so this must be like a statistical fluke um. But when when I you know, was England going through hundreds and hundreds of slaveship captain flogs and tip sergeant flogs that you know describe and and insurance supports that documents this, it becomes a very clear like in England that the practice was that women were once the ship

had left the African coast. Uh while on the coast everybody was changed below deck because there was a fear of what they called cut offs where people from the Africa who would come and attack the ship and free them invite people on it. Once the ship was in the Atlantic and away from the possibility and cut of cut off. Um. Women were kept on deck and unchanged um and for some pretty you know, nefarious reasons, uh, you know, in terms of crew having access to women, um,

et cetera. But also because there was a thought that you know, these women aren't really the danger. But that's

also where the weapons were kept. And so you can see and you know, Captain's supports repeatedly things like, uh, you know anything from uh we had was a third revolt, you know, and uh, but we keep checking the men's change and we don't understand, um, how these people you know are being killed or you know, the women, or they'll actually mentioned the women, like the men got hold of the weapons and or free men below, or or women were the ones who did the entire revolt um.

And this is I think this is a really important story about place, super bolts and resistance and that you know that has just been erased it both in the ways again, the way people documented things at the time and the way historians later looked at the records. There's this amazing book written by a settle Off s Real

He's a Patian historian, called Silencing the Past Um. And he he looks at this sort of back and forth process of how records are, how what what's documented impacts how we understand you know, it's easy to say, oh, histories written by the victors, but that's a generalized statement that doesn't tell us very much. You know, we have to understand the ways in which people written out if

we're going to recover them. He gives an example what I thought was really useful of of, you know, silencing that happens in the in the actual chronicling of an event. Now that you see somebody's chronicling events, that they're getting everything down, you know. And his example is like, okay, a baseball game. You go to a baseball game. I don't go to a baseball game my finding deadly boy.

But anyway, you go to a baseball game and you've got the the sportscaster, person who's announcing, like the person who that's bad and the second run and whatever whatever they do, you know, but they're not talking about how many hot dogs were sold in the stands, right because

it's irrelevant. It's irrelevant. And so similarly, you know, if you can't see that women are capable of violent acts, he said, oversist, you're not recording them, you know, and and you know and and you know the assumptions that

are made. I mean a lot of these a lot of the cultures from which people were treated had quite developed female marshy traditions, you know, So the idea that suddenly women who come from cultures where they insact, you know, fight, they are soldiers or um or readily defendat their villages or whatever, you know, are suddenly like stereo types of European women who you know wouldn't do that. Again, those are stereotypes. So there's a lot sort of a lot of pieces at work, um, a lot of moving parts.

Let's take a short break and we'll be back with Dr Rebecca Hall afterwards. M h m hm. It's already a lot of people who are there's historical revisionism or you know, negating things that happened in the past. Like it's already hard for a lot of Americans to come to terms with the fact that slavery had been and

it has consequences. And just you pointing out, well, even within the history that's written and that's told in you know, you know, people calling slaves, wage laborers or whatever it was they called in that day that US textbook that's already white people are learning today. And the fact that you're saying that you know things. Even the history that is written is also very there's a lot of nuance to it where it's like there are a lot of

things that were left out. So it just seems like getting people to go even beyond you know, the negating that they're doing of history that actually happened, to understand that history happened. But there's also even what's written, you know, may seem solid and may seem like it's written so that's what happened. Like No, there's even a layer beyond that that we have to discover who people are like you are uncovering these types of things. It just makes me.

I try not to be too cynical or too you know, pessimistic about it, but when I when I see that people are you know, denying things like the Holocaust that have histories that are you you really can't deny, but are being Denny right, um, And it makes me feel a little bit you know, discourage sometimes, but you know, it's really good to know, you know that I can you know, speak to people like you who are constantly

uncovering things that makes me feel a lot better. So that's that's just my own person my own personal you know feelings. Um uh, and just kind of fear, you know, of like how we look back at history and how we continue to learn about history and realize what we that we were wrong and that we can change and that things change. Um, that's that's that's my personal feelings. Yeah, no,

I get it. And when I present this work, I've been doing a lot of presenting of the work outside of sort of academic becoming since getting involved in the Pross graphic novel of writing process. And I see how strong, what a strong emotional impact it has on people, on African Americans in particular pal empower and they find this work and it reminds me, you know, yeah, it's not just me. It's not just some weird thing I'm interested in. This is something really important, you know. And and I

have you know, also taught high school. Um and the way the way slavery and the slave trade is taught is itself a crime, you know, it's just horrific. Um. So I've seen I've seen um, you know where people you know, usually I would go to an event and be like Okay, can someone raise your hand if you you know, you know of what slave revolts, and you know, a couple of hands will go up, you know, like, uh,

maybe Nat Turner, you know. Uh, it's people, don't they just you know, history is a dangerous thing and um, and it's it's not taught. I mean, and so you know, I'm hoping you have to be able to intervene in that, you know, by using the scraps of novel format and being able to you know, get this book, um, you know because it stott picked up by a major publisher, by slim an introducer. Um. But you know, being able to get this something that can be assigned you know

in colleges and high schools as well. Um. And you know, if I don't know if you've followed the blow back that's happened since the The New York Times fifteen nineteen stories, but I mean, like, yeah, it's incredible. You know, it's just the people just they don't want to I mean, they know, whether they're centers, they don't want to hear it.

They you know. So uh, speaking of speaking of the sixteen nineteen projects, I will like to know how your experience, you know, you're you're immersed in these stories of flavorable and resistance and black resistance and history. But at the same time, you know, we're constantly creating stories of black resistance and revolt. And how how is it for you

to do that research? Is there anything that comes up and in and you when you're doing that research and also interacting with the world and in a in a United States that's constantly embroiled in you know, race issues and resistance and dissent. Um. Can make sure I'm understanding your question. Um, it's like, what is it like to be as a historian research and what I research in the context of a of a country in denial? Exactly? Yes, Well, I mean I think that this is this is a

this is the fight. This is this is the fight. Um, this country is ill. It is and you know it is bordering on terminally ill. And you know it's sickness of racism and you know, I mean racial capitalism. And we can't go into a bunch of stuff. But there's never been um, any kind of truth the reconciliation process in this country. Um, no, no, you know there's been no and and and and we people after the country be able to come to terms with our history, um

or or we're not going to make it, you know. UM. And the idea that you know, slavery you know, is the irrelevant historically or happened so long ago. I mean, you know, my paternal grandparents were born slaves. Uh and I'm fifty six. Um, that's very unusual, but that it was physically possible. My dad was like in this mid sixties when I was born, and he was born in the youngest child, and my grandmother was born in eighteen

sixty one and my grandfather was born in eighteen six. Um. The fact that it's even physically possible for it to be two generations removed. Show if this happened just a second ago, you know in our country. UM. Indeed, at a minimum a truth and reconciliation process in order to

sort of move forward to heal. I mean, if we don't understand these formative parts of of of who we are, you know, American slavery and it's after sex, Native American genocide, these kinds of things, then we don't understand what's going on around us and don't know how to address it. Yes, so it is the work very true. Is there anything else you would like to add about slave revolts, are resistance or anything else that came up that you will

be interested in talking about. I can't think of anything else the top of my head. UM, definitely, UM. I tried to update my website, so I definite would like to refer people to my website that has information on the ongoing progress of the graphic novel as well as UH. That's a link to um scholarly articles published on the topic. UM. Then that is red Hall PhD dot org and UH, and you can also follow me on Twitter at Weight Revolt. Thanks for listening to the interview. We'll be back with

another conversation very soon, so stay tuned for that. If you want to give us a show and let us know what you thought about today's interview, you can do that by email at Unpopular at I heart media dot com, or you can hit us up on social media. We're on Twitter at underscore Unpopular Show, We're on Instagram at Unpopular Show, and we're on Facebook at this is Unpopular. So let us know what you think and we'll be back soon. Hi.