The Obligation of Resistance

            From the plantation, to the auction block, to the free states, enslaved and free black people made powerful efforts to resist the cruelty and inhumanity of slavery. Resistance took the form of violence, community, family, and religious faith. The bodies of enslaved people was under the control of the slaveholder; however, “enslaved people violated plantation boundaries of space and time; in the spaces they created, runaway partygoers celebrated their bodies and did what they could to reclaim them from planter control and view. This re- claimed body, this outlawed body, was the bondperson's third body: the body as site of pleasure and resistance” (Camp 544). The slave body committed political acts as the resisted the authority of their slaveholders. A slave acting in their own pleasure and free will went against the principles of slavery in America. This was community and religious resistance. Slaves came together, risking the punishment of severe beatings to enjoy parties and practice their faith. It was in these spaces of resistance that slaves were able to create their own culture.

            Even in the midst of the slave market, slaves found ways to resist being sold and separated from their families and friends. When slaves were thrown into the slave pens they sought “ to be sold with family members rather than apart from them, to be sold to a rich buyer rather than a poor one, to be sold into the anonymity of the city rather than the isolation of the country, to work in the house rather than the field” (Johnson 187). Slaves negotiated with buyers in order to stay with their families. Slaves would go as far as injuring themselves, or killing themselves or children in order not to be sold. When their resistance against being sold was not enough, enslaved people were forced to create new communities with the new slaves of the plantation. Slaves attempted to take control and navigate where and who they would be sold to.

            Violence was a form of resistance that free and enslaved black people resorted to in order to free their fellow black sisters and brothers. Free blacks had a great influence on enslaved people. David Walker described how it was the obligation of enslaved people to rebel. Enslaved blacks like Nat Turner led revolts against slaveholders. In the Nat Turner Rebellion, 54 white people were killed, and after two months the slaves involved are caught and hung (Class Notes). This rebellion implored the “give me liberty, or give me death” ideology of white Americans during the American Revolution. Resistance in any form was thought to be the responsibility of slaves and free blacks in America.