Enslaved Africans articulated antiracist claims of equality during the Revolution

Evidence

The British (and some Americans) immediately began questioning the authenticity of a slaveholder throwing a freedom manifesto at the world. No one could question the authenticity of Phillis Wheatley’s 1774 words—“in every human Breast, God has implanted a Principle which we call love of freedom”—or the Connecticut Blacks, who a few years later had proclaimed, “We perceive by our own Reflection, that we are endowed with the same Faculties with our masters, and there is nothing that leads us to a Belief, or Suspicion, that we are any more obliged to serve them, than they us.” All over Revolutionary America, African people were rejecting the racist compact that asserted that they were meant to be enslaved. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 260

Categorization

• XREF: Precursors to the antiracist tradition Kendi tracks; echoes of the reader’s own library on enslaved voices claiming humanity.