The failed slave revolution foreclosed the truer American democracy

Evidence

Du Bois, despite all the diversions and distractions of intellect, social origins, and ambition that had marked his even then long life, had at last come to the Black radical tradition. In the midst of the most fearsome maelstrom his age had seen, and with the pitiable reaction of the declared revolutionary opposition in mind, his purposeful interrogation of the past had led him to the hidden specter of Black revolutionists. Their revolution had failed, of course. And with its failure had gone the second and truer possibility of an American democracy. But until the writing of Black Reconstruction, the only mark on American historical consciousness left by their movement had been a revised legend of their savagery. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1128

Categorization

• XREF: Speaks directly to the reader’s stated arc: the height of the Black radical tradition (slave revolution as truest American democratic possibility) and the historical suppression of its memory.