Race of the insurgent determined whether revolt was martyred or pathologized

Evidence

The disdain for violent Black revolutionaries lurked in the shadow of the praises for John Brown, however. Black slave rebels never became martyrs and remained madmen and madwomen. Never before had the leader of a major slave uprising been so praised. Not since Bacon’s Rebellion had the leader of a major antislavery uprising been White. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 552