Antebellum oration was the sole Black performance venue free of minstrel distortion

Evidence

In the antebellum years, the only way for Black people to perform on a stage for a white audience as the Black people they actually were was as orators. Frederick Douglass was the most incandescent and most famed orator of that era. But his peers included, for starters, William C. Nell, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Charles Lenox Remond, and Henry Highland Garnet, whose most famous address, often referred to as “The Call to Rebellion,” which he delivered at the 1843 National Colored Convention in Buffalo, urged enslaved Americans to revolt. Abolitionist barn burners tingled spines, inflamed hearts, blew minds. Oration served as absolute anti-minstrelsy—Black people summoning galvanic vocal performances in their own skin for a cause. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1125

Categorization

• CANDY: A tidy fact: Henry Highland Garnet delivered ‘The Call to Rebellion’ urging enslaved revolt at the 1843 National Colored Convention.