Black artistic creation itself was read by white observers as a transgression.

Evidence

The talented create as much as they think. … Intellect, some call it. Uppity, some call it. Du Bois enjoys under cover of night what we sing throughout the day. The mind has leapt, so to speak, upon the parapets of prejudice; the mind has leapt, so to speak, over the mute of proper into arpeggios of jazz. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 935

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the project’s reframing thesis that the same act (a Black mind producing art) was simultaneously a claim on citizenship and a provocation in the eyes of the dominant culture — the ‘deviation vs design’ framing the reader is tracking.