A Philadelphia crowd stripped Belley’s tricolor cockade for being black

Evidence

One of the white delegates, Louis Dufay, entered the town and was immediately surrounded by a murderous crowd, surviving thanks to the protection of a woman who led him through the side streets of the city. Another crowd boarded the ship and attacked the other delegates. They were particularly brutal to Belley. They took his sword, his watch, his money, and his papers, and attacked him for “daring” to serve as an officer and “commanding whites.” Belley responded that if he knew how to “save whites and defend them” there was no reason he could not command them. The crowd demanded that he remove his tricolor cockade, shouting that a black man should not be allowed to wear one. When he refused, they tore it off. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 583

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: Foreshadows the later stripping of Black soldiers’ symbols and the reaction against Black citizenship in the US, e.g., the violence against Black veterans after WWI.