(2019-2025)

Critical Places is about how the rebellions of the enslaved are remembered (or not remembered) in the landscape. Through my experience of these places, as witnessed in my photographs, I am marking them as critical places in a topography of historical consciousness, bringing forward how I see these rebellions still echoing in social patterns and economic structures.

Most of what has been written focuses on only a handful of the larger rebellions, all characterized by violent spectacle. But what is left out is the actual scope of these rebellions—that there were over 250 of them, taking place from the very first arrival of enslaved people from Africa through to the Civil War. Also left out is that, as with the many other ways in which the enslaved resisted their bondage, the revolts took many forms, be it conspiracy, murder, escape, or, many times, that they were no more than rumors resulting in death. Little is known about most of these. To get a picture, one has to often read between the lines, and read the silences.

In the fifteen rebellions presented here I try to convey something of this fuller picture. That said, this should not be taken as authoritative accounting or summation of the story of the rebellions of the enslaved. That is not my place, nor am I in a position to do so, and others more qualified will undoubtedly point to rebellions with historical significance that I have not included. I recognize that mine is a more personal choice, corresponding to a more localized, granular view of history, as evinced in the everydayness of the scenes that I photograph.

I have been traveling to these sites, photographing, and then where possible also returning to exhibit the work in a venue associated with the rebellion, presenting the photographs accompanied by a short text telling of the rebellion and of my experience visiting the site. In these exhibitions I work with people met locally to build awareness and initiate a reckoning around modes of remembrance.

To date such exhibitions have been held at the Boyden Gallery, Saint Mary's College of Maryland, the South Slave Cabin Gallery, The Melrose, National Park Service, Natchez, Mississippi, the Southwest Mississippi Center for Culture and Learning, Alcorn State University, Lorman, Mississippi, the Lincoln Colored School, Canton, Missouri, and the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, New York.

In 2025 I was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for this project.

Saint Simon's Island, Georgia. 2021.
The Igbo Landing Mass Suicide of 1803.

U.S.Highway 17 at Wallace River, South Carolina. 2020.
The Stono Rebellion of 1739.

Astoria, Queens, New York. 2020.
The Newtown Revolt of 1708.

Colorado County, Texas. 2022.
The Slave Insurrection Panic of 1856.

La Grange, Missouri. 2022.
The Lin Uprising of 1849.

York, Pennsylvania. 2019.
The Margaret Bradley Conspiracy of 1803

Mike's Ice House. Eagle Lake, Texas. 2022.
The Slave Insurrection Panic of 1856.

The Hanging Tree. Cherry Grove Plantation. Adams County, Mississippi. 2024.
The Second Creek Conspiracy of 1861

15 Rebellions:

The Newtown Revolt of 1708. Astoria, Queens, New York. 2020-2023
A family was murdered by their slaves here in what had once been farm country. That the enslaved included an African woman and her Native American husband points to the multi-racial nature of slavery in early Colonial times, when only being a Christian could free one from enslavement. By the end of the 1700s slavery became restricted to people of the African race. Being Christian was now immaterial.

The Stono Rebellion of 1739. Ravenel and Hollywood, South Carolina. 2020
Accounts from the time describe a drunken, horde of crazed savages leading a violent rampage though the countryside. Scholarship has since shown that these were well trained Kongo warriors fighting their way to freedom. Today's highway still follows their path, with a historical marker—rare for rebellions—by the roadside. This was the bloodiest rebellion of colonial times; the trope of Black "savagery" instilled by it persists to this day.

The Margaret Bradley Conspiracy of 1803. York, Pennsylvania. 2019
An enslaved woman was jailed, accused of attempted poisoning. The arson and rioting that ensued echo "No Justice, No Peace" protests still heard today. In this town dotted with historical markers commemorating its important role in early American history, there is no mention of this rebellion.

The Igbo Landing Mass Suicide of 1803. Saint Simons Island, Georgia. 2021
Oral history tells us of this mass drowning of a shipload of captive Igbo Africans who refused slavery by walking into the creek. That it was long dismissed as legend speaks to the bias against non-archival evidence. The traditional site known as Igbo Landing is situated on private property.

The 1816 Massacre at Negro Fort. Prospect Bluff, Florida. 2024
A mass killing of over 300 men, women, and children in what had briefly existed as a free African-American community. Yet the backlash was lasting; we see here the first iterations of what has since emerged as the pivotal study of continued structural racism in America, Critical Race Theory. The site has been closed to the public since a hurricane struck the area in 2023.

The Easter Rebellion of 1817. Saint Inigoes, Maryland. 2020
A bar brawl that turned into a riot (overpolicing?) took place near the Jesuit slave plantation of
St Inigoes Manor. Many descendants of the enslaved still live in the area today.

The Maroon Raiders of the Great Dismal Swamp. 1823. Suffolk, Virginia and Camden County, North Carolina 2023
Seen at the time as dehumanized "murdering monsters in human shape," today one might admire these men and women who eked out a marginal survival amidst the simmering heat and swarming insects of that swampland. These maroon bands were one of the few successful forms of active resistance to the slave system.

The Nat Turner Insurrection of 1831. Southampton County, Virginia. 2023
In this most infamous of all the rebellions, some 65 white men, women, and children were killed by Nat Turner's band of rebells, and 175 enslaved as well as free Black men and women were killed in retaliation. The extremity of that violence was such that it can be said to have provoked our first major media event, and its notoriety percolates to this day, with tours are offered of "Nat Turner Country." Four people, each with a unique personal connection to those events, guided me through the sites. Also of note are William Drewery's photographs taken in 1900 of all the rebellion sites, a rare and little known photographic record made at a time when the rebellion was still a "living memory."

The Madison County Rebellion of 1835. Madison County, Mississippi. 2021
Mass hysteria over a rumored rebellion led to widespread hangings not only of the enslaved but also of white people alleged to be co-conspirators. Eventually, it all died down and even the town of Livingston where it all took place faded into obscurity, and disappeared. A developer has recently recreated the frontier town as a shopping and dinning destination.

The Cheneyville Conspiracy of 1837. Cheneyville, Louisiana. 2021, 2024
Many rebellions were betrayed before they could get started. In this instance it was the man planning to lead the rebellion who turned himself in at the last minute. While his seven accomplices were hanged, he was awarded his freedom plus a handsome bounty.

The Doyle Stampede of 1848. Northern Kentucky. 2022
In these events we see an example of racial disparity in sentencing: three enslaved rebel escapee "leaders" where sentenced to hang, while the white abolitionist who organized the escape was sentenced to 20 years hard labor. I came across an account of the rebellion told by one of the enslaved. What we know of these rebellions is almost universally told by the enslavers —rarely did the enslaved live to tell their story.

The Lin Uprising of 1849. Lewis County, Missouri. 2022
This uprising is unique in that it was led by a woman, an enslaved farm cook, who plotted to murder her enslavers and escape to freedom. We know of her thanks to the farmer's grandson, recounting what he had heard as a child. Contemporaneous accounts do not mention her, and this rebellion remains little-known.

The Slave Insurrection Panic of 1856. Colorado County, Texas. 2022
An unfounded suspicion led to confessions made under torture, mass floggings and hangings. And then the local Mexican population was scapegoated for having provoked the alleged rebellion, and expelled from the county. A resolution was passed "forever forbidding any Mexican from coming within the limits of the county."

The Winston County Conspiracy of 1859. Louisville, Mississippi. 2021
Both pro and anti-slavery newspapers frequently ran sensational if unverified reports of rebellion, each presenting even the same story in a way that promoted its point of view. Here it was of a traveling photographer hanged in Louisville for fermenting a revolt. Unable to verify the information in any way, I concluded that this was an early example of what we are today all too quick to label as fake news.

The Second Creek Conspiracy of 1861. Adams County, Mississippi. 2021, 2024
About 40 enslaved men were hanged, accused of what was very probably a falsely suspected conspiracy. What happened was kept hidden for 110 years, a testimony to the suppression of inconvenient truths by the rich and powerful. The plantation where the hangings took place is still in the same family, and is closed to the public. I was invited to see the stump of the hanging tree.