On Oct. 18, 1526, during an outbreak of white-on-white violence in San Miguel de Gualdape—the first European settlement in what would become the United States—a group of Black thugs sprang into action.
“Some of the Negro slaves independently set fire to [a leader’s] house,” The Washington Post reports. “[A]s the fire burnt they all gathered to kill him; and in this way they managed to escape.”
The white people returned to Spain, leaving the self-emancipated Africans behind. But two centuries later, a group of Congolese boys in the hood of South Carolina continued the tradition started by America’s slave revolt. Led by a gangbanger named Jemmy, the 1739 Stono Rebellion shook the entire country and spawned the Negro Act of 1740, which proclaimed “all negroes and Indians… mulattoes or mustizoes…and all their issue and offspring, born or to be born, shall be, and they are hereby declared to be, and remain forever hereafter, absolute slaves.”
Great American thugs include “bandit” and “leader of the late insurrection” Nat Turner; the “slanderous and dirty-minded mulatress” Ida B. Wells; “rapist, pervert thug that wasn’t religious at all,” Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, Rosa Parks, Medgar Evers and peaceful civil rights protesters who were dedicated to nonviolence.
Let’s not forget the gangs themselves. Race-based human trafficking was fine, but the anti-slavery movement was controlled by “violent, raving abolitionists.” The gang headquarters known as Emanuel A.M.E. was burned for raising young literate thugs. Lynching was necessary; the anti-lynching movement protected “Black brutes who would attack the womanhood of the South.” The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the NAACP, the Nation of Islam, the Black Panthers, SNCC, the Universal Negro Improvement Association and even anti-gang organizations were considered dangerous fronts for gangs.
Of course, you knew all that. But can you name any significant Black artist, athlete or teacher who hasn’t been tied to Black thuggery?
W.E.B. Du Bois was a “militant negro leader” who was attacked by the government. Booker T. Washington was much less militant; white people plotted to kill him, too. Paul Robeson was a beloved football player and actor before he became “the most dangerous man in America.” Josephine Baker was a threat. Billie Holiday wrote dangerous songs. Aretha Franklin was down with thugs. So were Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Sidney Poitier, James Brown, Tupac, Biggie and every single great voice in Black culture.
In America, any Black person who resists oppression automatically becomes a dangerous criminal. There is nothing you can do about it.
And it all began 500 years ago.
So, Happy Thugiversary!
Today’s Reading List
Before 1619: The secret history of the first African Americans by Michael Harriot
How the Red Summer of 1919 Created Black Gangs by Michael Harriot
Kings and Pawns: Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America by Howard Bryant
The Slave Revolt They Don’t Teach You About by Garrison Hayes
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