The Stono Rebellion directly produced South Carolina’s repressive Negro Act of 1740

Evidence

The South Carolina Commons House of Assembly passes the Negro Act, making it illegal for enslaved Africans to move freely, assemble in groups, grow food, earn money, or learn to read and write. These restrictions come in response to the Stono Rebellion, the largest uprising of enslaved people in the colonies to date. It was spearheaded the previous year by a man named Jemmy, who was most likely Kongolese. Jemmy led a band of roughly twenty men southward from the Stono River, killing white people, burning plantations, and recruiting new fighters along the way. Their goal was to reach Spanish Florida, which offered freedom to fugitives, but before they could escape South Carolina, they were defeated by a white militia. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 255

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how did enslaved people know Spanish Florida offered freedom, and what did that promise do to their political imagination of Spanish as an ally?
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s prior work on ritual sacrifice and state coercion — the rebellion suppression here shows another mechanism (militia violence) by which colonial order was stabilized.