Traditions of Resistance in the Black Diaspora

African resistance to American slavery originated at the moment African slavery in the Americas began. The first recorded enslaved Africans landed in Hispaniola (today Haiti and the Dominican Republic) in 1502. Within months the Spanish governor wrote the king of Spain, asking him to stop sending enslaved Africans because “they fled among the Indians and taught them bad customs and never would be captured.” These self-liberated Africans formed several maroon communities across Hispaniola that went to war with the Spanish for decades. The first rebellion (1519-1534) was led by Enrique, a Taíno noble, and supported by hundreds of African freedom fighters like Lemba whom the Spanish described as “extremely able and very knowledgeable” and Juan Vaquero, which translates as John Cowboy—most cowboys in sixteenth century Hispaniola were Fulani, Wolof, or Mandingo. In 1522, the first recorded slave revolt was instigated by Maria Wolof on the Hispaniola plantation of Christopher Columbus’ son. In 1531 Rodrigo Lopez “de color negro” won his freedom in Santo Domingo’s court. In 1547 Lemba was killed by an enslaved Afro-Spanish soldier who was rewarded with freedom.

The liberation strategies established in early sixteenth century Hispaniola—marronage, revolt, legal recourse, and military service—became ubiquitous throughout the Americas. The 1733 liberation movement in St. John epitomized the complex and dynamic web of these strategies. Some 150-300 enslaved and formerly enslaved individuals wrested control of the island of St. John (now part of the US Virgin Islands) and held it for eight months against Danish, Dutch, English, and French forces. St. John’s maroon community was coeval with the Danish founding of the colony in 1718; the original settlers included sixteen enslaved individuals, “of whom some escaped into the bush.” As the plantation system expanded, the maroon population grew at an increasing pace. According to Danish records based on the testimony of suspected rebels, enslaved individuals named as King Claes, Printz van Juff, Kanta, Juni, Prince, and Thoma, took control of St. John’s military fort during a delivery of firewood, in which they had concealed weapons. They killed all but one of the Danish soldiers—drunk and hidden under his bed—who escaped to tell the tale. The freedom fighters then initiated an island-wide event by signaling with cannon fire as had been prearranged. A woman named Breffu was among those who took up arms and today she is recognized as a founding figure of St. John.

Like the American revolutionaries George Washington and Thomas Jefferson half a century later, the St. John rebels sought to govern the island’s plantation system not to overturn it. This may in part explain why some enslaved individuals alerted, protected, and fought alongside their enslavers. The governor promised rewards to “negroes who distinguished themselves” against the rebels, so he armed thirty-three enslaved men. Whether to join rebel troops or support state backed militias was a recurring existential, political, and fluid calculation for many enslaved people.

In addition to enslaved combatants, the Danish forces included St. Thomas’ Free Negro Corps and its captain, Mingo Tamarin, enlisted to quell the rebellion. The maroon troops secured ammunition and reinforcements from external sources and held the colony for half a year against the English, to whom the Danish had appealed for support. Ultimately the rebels’ supplies were exhausted, and they were outnumbered and overpowered by French forces from Martinique, which also included a free Black corps. Twenty-four of the resisters took their own lives in lieu of surrender, famously diving off a cliff, while others were promised pardons but were tortured and executed instead.¹

Franz Claasen was freed as a result of the St. John Revolt. Danish records from 1738 offer that a “loyal negro” was given a parcel of land in return for “help during the Rebellion.” The St. John Historical Society contends that this individual was Franz Claasen, an enslaved man who reported to the maroon forces as a ruse that he had already killed his enslavers. Because of Claasen’s intervention, the enslaver family escaped and ultimately their St. John plantation was deeded to Claasan. Wittingly or not, he gained freedom, security, and property as the result of his actions against the rebel cause. In many uprisings for freedom, enslaved informants were granted freedom and safety while the freedom-seeking rebels were punished with mutilation and death.

The 1733 St. John Revolt also illustrates how some rebels who betrayed their colleagues for their own survival may have “recycled themselves” as veterans to organize additional resistance efforts. A St. John rebel named Will who escaped capture by Danish forces, perhaps by turning in evidence, resurfaced in records during a revolt in Antigua in 1736, where he was spared in return for testifying against co-conspirators. Will was ultimately executed for his leadership in the 1741 conspiracy of New York. While the participation of the same individual in liberation movements in St. John, Antigua, and New York was probably unusual, Will’s case underscores the fact that “rebellions fed upon one another—news of one inspired others hundreds of miles away.”

The free Black militia members, Black officers, and enslaved soldiers pressed into service to quell the rebellion on St. John reflect yet another traditional avenue for freedom and security in the Americas with deep roots. The participation of Black soldiers in colonial militaries was widespread starting with the arrival of Black conquistadors like Juan Garrido who landed in Hispaniola in 1502, served with Cortez, and was ultimately appointed town crier in what is today Mexico. Enslaved soldiers were often granted freedom for their service, such as Juan Valiente who participated in a conquest campaign in Chile in 1535 and was made captain, awarded freedom, and granted property where he and his wife Juana de Valdivia, who had been enslaved by the governor, raised their family in freedom. While Black soldiers could be pressed into service to subdue Indigenous, enslaved, and maroon liberation struggles, military service conferred rights and civic protections to countless African-descended families throughout the colonial Americas. Black officers and soldiers were vital to independence and abolition throughout Latin America in the nineteenth century and played a critical role in the abolition of slavery in the Danish Caribbean in 1848, alongside enslaved and free people.

In the wake of the 1733 St. John Revolt, many planters chose to resettle in St. Croix, the newest acquisition for the Danish West Indian colonies. However enslaved people in St. Croix threatened rebellion in 1746 and again in 1759 under the leadership of a free man of color named William Davis. In the following century, Black residents of St. Croix, enslaved and free, enacted widespread protests and petitions that brought slavery in the Danish West Indies to an end. In 1815 St. Croix’s free Black military mutinied. The following year, 331 signatories representing the free colored population in the Danish West Indies sent a petition to the king requesting rights, setting in motion a series of legislative changes. In 1848 an island-wide strike by enslaved people in St. Croix prompted the immediate abolition of slavery throughout the Danish West Indies by gubernatorial fiat.

Resistance to slavery was an ever-present part of life across the Americas. People of African descent sought freedom through legal channels, military service, marronage, collective action, subtle resistance, and overt warfare. Throughout the hemisphere, African-descended people took up arms, both for and against the state, as maroons and militia, rebel slaves and regular army officers, and as Patriots and Royalists, to stake claims to rights. What unites these different strategies for security and autonomy was well described by Benjamin Quarles’ assessment of the American Revolution and the many thousands of African Americans who chose to fight with the Patriots and the many more thousands who sided with Britain. Their “major loyalty was not [necessarily] to a place or a people, but to a principle:” freedom.