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The Other American Revolution(s)
When American Revolution is discussed, the “accepted” PSE (Photosensitive Epilepsy) inducing Kaleidoscope of images include, mostly white minutemen, frontier fighting tactics, powdered wigs, long coats and muskets. These images are ingrained in the collective psyche of America as a nation. What is less known is that America had many mini-revolutions that are not taught or discussed in most classrooms or in most public spheres. One of these revolutions was planned for the same day and in as righteous a cause as the one championed by the minutemen army of Washington and Lafayette.
When Alexis DE Tocqueville, the French political theorist and historian, landed in NY in 1831, for a nine month tour of the US, Nat Turner, a Black Slave, was planning a revolution for the Fourth of July of the same year in Virginia. Tocqueville predicted, “If ever America undergoes great revolutions, they will be brought about by the presence of the black race on the soil of the United States.” He went on to add, “They will owe their origin, not to the equality, but to the inequality of condition.”
How prescient, indeed!
These fantastic and most American of Revolutions (incorrectly labelled Rebellions), have been set aside and treated differently from the “American” Revolution of 1775–1777 against the British overlords. It is time to treat hundreds of these…
