HISTORY - The Largest Slave Revolt in U.S

8/4/2016 HISTORY: The largest slave revolt in U.S.
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HISTORY: The largest slave revolt in U.S. history

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January 04, 2011
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Breath of Life
EDrum
The largest slave revolt
in U.S. history is
commemorated

By Littice BaconBlood, NOLA.com |
The TimesPicayune
Follow on Twitter
More than a century before the first modern
day civil rights march, there was Charles
Deslondes and his makedo army of more
than 200 enslaved men battling with hoes,
axes and cane knives for that most basic
human right: freedom.
http://kalamu.com/neogriot/2014/01/09/historythelargestslaverevoltinushistory/ 1/19
8/4/2016 HISTORY: The largest slave revolt in U.S. history | NeoGriot

They spoke different languages, came from
various parts of the United States, Africa and
Haiti, and lived miles apart on plantations
along the German Coast of Louisiana. Yet
after years of planning at clandestine
meetings under the constant threat of
immediate death, they staged a revolt on
Jan. 8, 1811, that historians say is the largest
uprising of enslaved people in this country.
“Slavery was very harsh and cruel, but the
slaves themselves were not mindless chattel
with no aspirations and no basis for
humanity,” said John Hankins, executive
director of the New Orleans African
American Museum. “This revolt
demonstrates that there were people willing
to make the ultimate sacrifices to better not
just themselves but other people.”
A year of events planned
To mark the 200 year anniversary of that
revolt, Destrehan Plantation, in conjunction
with Tulane University and the African
American Museum, located in Treme, is
organizing a yearlong look at the uprising
that reverberated around the fledgling nation
because of the large number of enslaved
people involved, its military strategy and
oddly enough, because it demonstrated that
all was not well among those held in
bondage.
“I don’t think the United States as a whole
understood that the enslaved black
population were as unhappy as they were,”
said Hazel Taylor, the special project
coordinator at Destrehan Plantation. “Slave
owners had a tendency to say that (slaves)
were happy. What this did was put
awareness on the people who were being
oppressed.”
The revolt, which started in St. John the
Baptist Parish about 30 miles west of New
Orleans, also raised awareness of the
harshness of the slave system and fueled the
abolitionist movement, Taylor said.
It occurred just a year before Louisiana
gained statehood and 50 years before
Louisiana and 10 other southern states voted
to secede from the union in favor of forming
the Confederacy. One of the central issues
driving the secession, historians say, was an
attempt to keep slavery legal because of its
huge economic benefits for farmers.
Still the battle remains largely unheard of
outside historical circles, according to Taylor
and others who hope the year’s events will
change that.
“These were real people and we have many
of their names and we hope to encourage
people to continue to study these brave
individuals,” Hankins said. “We want to
provide the platform for a discourse about
these moments in history and in this case a
very important movement. What we want to
do is put the Slave Revolt of 1811 into the
national discourse to give it just due.”
David Grunfeld, The TimesPicayune /
Art by renowned River Parishes artist
Lorraine Gendron depicts the revolt by
enslaved people in 1811 in St. John and
St. Charles parishes that reverberated
around the country. The art hangs in the
around the country. The art hangs in the
Destrehan Plantation exhibit
commemorating the 200year
anniversary of the revolt.

The series of commemorative events kicks
off Saturday with the opening of an exhibit at
Destrehan Plantation that features the art
and sculpture of the revolt by local artist
Lorraine Gendron and documents that give
accounts of the uprising.
“It’s an introduction to the subject, a museum
exhibit that you can walk through and get a
whole picture of what happened,” Taylor said.
Uprising started on Woodland Plantation
While historians may differ on whether there
was one specific catalyst for the uprising, the
historical accounts of the events that
unfolded on Jan. 8 are generally uniform.
It started in LaPlace on the Woodland
Plantation, led by Charles Deslondes, the
son of an enslaved black woman and her
white owner.
Deslondes, along with more than 200 others
known mainly by first names, were headed to
New Orleans in the hopes of joining with
other revolutionminded free and enslaved
black people.
Historian Daniel Rasmussen spent two
years researching the revolt as part of his
senior thesis at Harvard University and has
expanded his initial work into a recently
published book, called “American Uprising:
The Untold Story of America’s Largest Slave
Revolt.”
He is scheduled to discuss his book Friday at
the LaPlace library and Saturday at the East
Regional Library in Destrehan.
According to Rasmussen, the revolt had
been planned for years and was “highly
organized.”
“There were 11 separate leaders of the
revolt, representing various different ethnic
groups. In my book, I profile a few of these
leaders, mainly Charles Deslondes, Kook,
and Quamana. Kook and Quamana were
Asante warriors brought over from Africa a
mere five years before,” Rasmussen said.
“Charles Deslondes was the halfwhite son of
a planter who had risen to the rank of driver,
but was, actually, the ultimate sleeper cell,
plotting revolt. These leaders took advantage
of clandestine meetings in the cane fields
and taverns of the German Coast, the slave
dances in New Orleans, and the vast
network of slave communications that
extended throughout the Caribbean.”
Inspired by Haitian revolt
Rasmussen and other historians say the
revolt was inspired by the 1791 events in
Haiti where the enslaved population took
over that island nation and abolished slavery.
These revolutionists had similar dreams as
they marched to the beat of drums and under
waving banners toward New Orleans.
“These three men, each with different
insights and abilities, had planned their
insurrection and spread word of the uprising
through small insurrectionary cells distributed
up and down the coast, especially at James
Brown’s plantation, the Meuillion plantation,
and the Kenner and Henderson plantation,”
Rasmussen writes in his book.
Along the way they burned plantations and
crops and collected weapons and
ammunition. Two white planters were killed;
their wives and children were spared.
Rasmussen said his research, which
included accounts from court records and the
ledgers of some planters, held some
surprises for him.
“I realized that the revolt had been much
larger — and come much closer to
succeeding — than the planters and
American officials let on. Contrary to their
letters, which are the basis for most accounts
of the revolt, the slave army posed an
existential threat to white control over the city
of New Orleans,” he said. “My biggest
surprise as I dug into the sources was . . . .
just how close they came to conquering New
Orleans and establishing a black Republic on
the shores of the Mississippi.”
Revolt came to tragic end in Kenner
But their dreams of freedom were not to be
realized.
On Jan. 10 at Jacques Fortier’s plantation
near presentday River Town in Kenner, the
makeshift army was forced to turn back after
encountering a detachment of military troops,
but found their retreat blocked by a group of
local militia organized by planters. The
number of insurgents killed when they were
forced back to an area close to present day
Norco varies: Some say 40 to 66, but the end
result was that the uprising was stopped in
Kenner.
Historians say some survivors were able to
escape into the swamps, while others were
returned to bondage.
On January 13, 1811 a tribunal convened at
Destrehan Plantation and after three days of
hearings, 45 men were either sentenced to
death or sent on to New Orleans for further
trials. Those sentenced to death, among
them Charles Deslondes, Kook and
Quamaan, were executed by a firing squad
and beheaded.
Their heads were stuck on poles and placed
along the river levee from New Orleans to
LaPlace in an attempt to discourage similar
rebellions.
“”It was really brutally put down,” said
Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, a New Orleans author
and historian who is now an adjunct history
professor at Michigan State University. “It
was incredibly bloodthirsty in the way the
elite put it down, cutting people into little
pieces, displaying body parts.”
In 2000, Hall, 81, published a database on
enslaved Africans in Louisiana compiled over
14 years that offers rare snippets of
information on slaves, such as skills, ages
and places of origin, frequently missing from
historical documents.
And like many of those enslaved, Hall said
the 1811 revolt has not received the historical
attention of other seminal events.
“There’s been a historical amnesia about
anything that showed a really bitter
exploitation and violence directed on the
slave and former slave population,” Hall said.
“A lot of historians didn’t want to talk about it
and a lot of the public didn’t want to hear
about it. But that’s evidently changing and
I’m glad I lived long enough to see it.”
Littice BaconBlood can be reached
at lbaconblood@timespicayune.com or
985.652.0951.
>via: http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2011/01/the_largest_slave_revolt_in_us
__________________________

July 1, 2013
New Orleans 1811
Slave Revolt
tour raises funds to
rebuild libraries in Haiti

by Leon A. Waters
A New Orleans based nonprofit is working to
rebuild libraries in Haiti. The organization is
called Bibliotheque Parrainage (BP). It
means Library Patronage. Bibliotheque
Parrainage assists libraries in Haiti through
the country’s National Library, Bibliotheque
Nationale. Founded in 2011, the goal of
Bibliotheque Parrainage is to provide
resources to the National Library that will be
of assistance to public libraries across the
country.
Libraries in Haiti have operational
challenges. Some of them do not have stable
electricity to operate; some have unstable
solar power; and others function in the
evening when bursts of electricity become
available. Besides the challenges of
structural repair, which includes roof
renovations, many of Haiti’s libraries are
seeking fraternal assistance inside and
outside the country.
Charles Deslonde, leader of
the 1811 slave revolt, the
largest slave rebellion in
U.S. history
This includes opportunities to partner with
the National Library in areas such as the
sharing of periodical databases for use by all
Bibliotheque Nationale patrons. This also
includes partnership opportunities to
enhance and upgrade staff and students in
advanced librarian science, utilizing advance
technological training and study. Creating the
opportunity to bring staff and students to the
United States to receive such training and
study is critical to revolutionize the role that
libraries can play in Haiti’s future.
During the July 4th weekend in New Orleans,
Bibliotheque Parrainage is hosting a
fundraising bus tour of the Louisiana 1811
Slave Revolt, the largest slave revolt in the
United States.
Inspired by the Haitian Revolution, the revolt
occurred in the parishes of St. John the
Baptist, St. Charles and Orleans. The revolt
was led by a former enslaved man named
Charles Deslonde. The aim of the revolt was
to abolish slavery and establish a free
republic to be governed by the former
enslaved people.
This educational adventure will retrace the
route of the former enslaved rebels. The tour
will enlighten the visitors on how Deslonde’s
rebels carried out the revolt. The visitors will
visit some of the locations where the slave
rebels fought U.S. troops and militia and
other locations related to the revolt.
The visitors will learn what happened,
discover the gains made and the foundation
laid for further revolts. A descendant of the
rebels will escort the visitors to numerous
stops where significant actions occurred.
Funds raised from this July 4th weekend
adventure will be used for assistance to the
Nationale Bibliotheque in Haiti. In this way,
we who reside in the United States will
extend a supporting hand to the Haitian
people.
Schedule for the 1811 Slave Revolt Bus Tour
Join the 1811 Slave Revolt Bus Tour on
Friday, Saturday or Sunday, July 57.
Departure is at 9 a.m. with boarding time at
8:45 a.m. at 500 Canal St., in front of the
New Orleans Sheraton Hotel. Visitors are
encouraged to wear comfortable clothing and
no sandals. The tour is approximately three
and a half hours; tickets are $50 per person.
Participants may go online to purchase
tickets: www.bibliothequeparrainage.eventbrite.com.
For more tour information, call (504) 432
9901.
“Deslonde Revolt 1811” – artist unknown

The president of Bibliotheque Parrainage is
Ms. Valencia Hawkins, who is a recent
retired librarian of 26 years of service from
the New Orleans Public Library. Ms. Hawkins
served the citizens of New Orleans in the
official post as associate director of Central
Public Services, Outreach and
Programming.
Those in New Orleans know very well the
role libraries can play after a natural disaster.
Their natural disaster was Hurricane Katrina.
The main library located in downtown New
Orleans was mostly spared from the horrific
damage that impacted most of New Orleans.
Hence, the main library played a real critical
role in the restoration of New Orleans. The
library was a center for information, disaster
relief assistance that included medicalhealth
resources, housingshelter resources and
foodfinancial resources.
Funds raised from this July 4th weekend adventure will be used
for assistance to the Nationale Bibliotheque in Haiti. In this way,
we who reside in the United States will extend a supporting
hand to the Haitian people.
Despite the living conditions of most of Haiti’s
people, the Haiti people sent $40,000 to
assist New Orleanians to rebuild and
recover. Such a very poor country made
such a humble sacrifice. Bibliotheque
Parrainage feels that libraries assist in the
building of communities; certainly, as
Bibliotheque Parrainage expounds, those of
us who reside in the United States can do
more.
Louisiana’s heroic 1811 Slave Revolt
One of the most suppressed and hidden
stories of African and African American
history is the story of the 1811 Slave Revolt.
The aim of the revolt was the establishment
of an independent republic, a Black republic.
Over 500 Africans, from 50 different nations
with 50 different languages, would wage a
fight against U.S. troops and the territorial
militias.
1811 Slave Revolt – artist unknown

This revolt would get started in St. John the
Baptist and St. Charles parishes, about 30
miles upriver from New Orleans. At that time,
New Orleans was the capital of what was
called the Orleans Territory. The revolt
sought to capture the city of New Orleans
and make New Orleans the capital of the
new republic.
The principal organizer and leader of this
revolt was a man named Charles, a laborer
on the Deslonde plantation. The Deslonde
family had been one of the many San
Domingo slave holding families that fled the
Haitian Revolution (17901802). The
Deslonde family fled to Louisiana for refuge.
In their escape, the Deslonde family brought
their chattel property, Charles and others,
with them.
The Deslonde family acquired land and
restarted their slave holding sugarcane
operations in St. John the Baptist parish. The
ideas of slave rebellion had been inspired by
the Haitians’ defeat of Napoleon and his
allies, who included President George
Washington. The victory of Africans in
gaining their freedom in Haiti had a powerful
and stimulating effect on Africans held in
bondage all over the world, especially in the
Western Hemisphere. It gave enormous
encouragement to the Africans on plantations
in Louisiana. To capture the city of New
Orleans, Charles Deslonde’s strategy
consisted of a twopronged military assault.
One prong of the attack would be to march
down the River Road to New Orleans. The
rebels would gain in number as they moved
from plantation to plantation on the East
Bank of the Mississippi River from St. John
the Baptist parish to New Orleans. They
were intent on creating a slave army,
capturing the city of New Orleans and
liberating the tens of thousands of slaves
held in bondage in the territory of Louisiana.
The other prong of attack was to involve the
enslaved Africans inside the city of New
Orleans in a simultaneous uprising. Here the
rebels would seize the arsenal at Fort St.
Charles and distribute the weapons to the
arriving slave army. The twopronged attack
would then merge as one and proceed to
capture the strategic targets in the city.
On the evening of Jan. 8, 1811, Charles and
his lieutenants would start the revolt. The
rebels would elect their leaders to lead them
into battle. They elected women and men.
The leaders were on horseback. Several
young warriors marched ahead of them with
drums and flags. Men and women
assembled in columns of four behind those
on horseback.
Author and historian Leon
Waters speaks on the 1811
Slave Revolt, the largest in
the U.S. He is descended
from the rebels.

The rebels rose up on the plantation of Col.
Manuel Andry (today the city of LaPlace) in
St. John the Baptist Parish. They
overwhelmed their oppressors. Armed with
cane knives, hoes, clubs and a few guns, the
rebels marched down the River Road toward
New Orleans. Their slogan was “On to New
Orleans” and “Freedom or Death,” which
they shouted as they marched to New
Orleans.
However, despite their best efforts, they were
not able to succeed. The revolt was put down
by Jan. 11 and many of the leaders and
participants were killed by the slave owners’
militia and U.S. federal troops. Some of the
leaders were captured, placed on trial and
later executed. Their heads were cut off and
placed on poles along the river in order to
frighten and intimidate the other slaves. This
display of heads placed on spikes stretched
over 60 miles.
The sacrifices of these brave women and
men were not in vain. The revolt reasserted
the humanity and redeemed the honor of the
people. The uprising weakened the system
of chattel slavery, stimulated more revolts in
the following years and set the stage for the
final battle, the Civil War (18611865) that put
an end to this horrible system. The children
and the grandchildren of the rebels of 1811
finished the job in the Civil War. Louisiana
contributed more soldiers – over 28,000 – to
the Union Army than any other state.
These women and men of 1811 represented
the best qualities of people of African
descent. They were people of exceptional
courage, valor and dedication. These were
women and men who put the interest and
welfare of the masses above their own
personal desires. These were people who
understood that the emancipation of the
masses is a precondition for the
emancipation of the individual.
The sacrifices of these brave women and men were not in vain.
The revolt reasserted the humanity and redeemed the honor of
the people.
Remember the Ancestors! Remember the
women and men who carried out the largest
African uprising on American soil.
Author and historian Leon A. Waters,
publisher and manager of Hidden History
Tours, chairman of the Louisiana Museum of
African American History and descendant of
the 1811 rebels, can be reached
atleonawaters8@gmail.com. Bibliotheque
Parrainage can be reached
at bparrainage@gmail.com.
>via: http://sfbayview.com/2013/neworleans
1811slaverevolttourraisesfundstorebuild
librariesinhaiti/
#Kalamu ya Salaam #neogriot #neogriot
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