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American Dark Age

Racial Feudalism and the Rise of Black Liberalism
  • Keidrick Roy and Keidrick Roy
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2024
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About this book

How medieval-inspired racial feudalism reigned in early America and was challenged by Black liberal thinkers

Though the United States has been heralded as a beacon of democracy, many nineteenth-century Americans viewed their nation through the prism of the Old World. What they saw was a racially stratified country that reflected not the ideals of a modern republic but rather the remnants of feudalism. American Dark Age reveals how defenders of racial hierarchy embraced America’s resemblance to medieval Europe and tells the stories of the abolitionists who exposed it as a glaring blemish on the national conscience.

Against those seeking to maintain what Frederick Douglass called an “aristocracy of the skin,” Keidrick Roy shows how a group of Black thinkers, including Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Hosea Easton, and Harriet Jacobs, challenged the medievalism in their midst—and transformed the nation’s founding liberal tradition. He demonstrates how they drew on spiritual insight, Enlightenment thought, and a homegrown political philosophy that gave expression to their experiences at the bottom of the American social order. Roy sheds new light on how Black abolitionist writers and activists worked to eradicate the pernicious ideology of racial feudalism from American liberalism and renew the country’s commitment to values such as individual liberty, social progress, and egalitarianism.

American Dark Age reveals how the antebellum Black liberal tradition holds vital lessons for us today as hate groups continue to align themselves with fantasies of a medieval past and openly call for a return of all-powerful monarchs, aristocrats, and nobles who rule by virtue of their race.

Author / Editor information

Keidrick Roy is a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. In 2025, he will be Assistant Professor of Government at Dartmouth College. He has received national attention through media outlets such as CBS News Sunday Morning and the Chicago Review of Books and appears in the HBO documentary Frederick Douglass: In Five Speeches. He has curated two major exhibitions at the American Writers Museum in Chicago on Black American figures, including Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, and Ralph Ellison.

Reviews

"Pointing to how feudal imagery is still a mainstay of far-right ideologues . . . Roy makes a persuasive case that studying these antebellum thinkers is critical today. It’s a sophisticated reassessment of America’s political history." --- "American Dark Age is a model monograph, and scholars of American political, racial, intellectual, and democratic history will benefit from wrestling with its ideas for some time to come."---Benjamin E. Park, Journal of Southern History --- "American Dark Age is an exceptional piece of both conceptual analysis and historical synthesis. It is unmissable reading for scholars of liberalism, American political thought, and Africana political theory."---Philip Yaure, Political Theory --- "American Dark Age: Racial Feudalism, and the Rise of Black Liberalism makes an impressive contribution to the scholarship on the political philosophy of race and the possibilities for African American social advancement."---Alford A. Young, Jr., Ethnic and Racial Studies --- "American Dark Age is a brilliant study of a dark chapter in American history. . . . Highly recommended." --- "Black liberalism is too long neglected, and Keidrick Roy’s American Dark Age brings black liberals back onto center stage where they belong."---Paul Crider, Liberal Currents --- "American Dark Age should become a watershed in our understanding of a crucial cohort of actors in American history, and also in rethinking the liberal political tradition."---Paul Rosenberg, Salon --- "I just loved American Dark Age. . . . The book is just good scholarship. . . . I appreciated Roy’s excavation of the Black liberal tradition in American thought — giving voice to a group whose ideas deserve a renewed look in our own anti-democratic moment."---Zack Beauchamp, Vox --- "Winner of the International Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society Book Award, Government and Politics Category" --- "Finalist for the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, Gilder Lehrman Center" --- "Winner of the Best Book Award, American Political Thought Section of the American Political Science Association" --- "Winner of the Phillis Wheatley Book Award in Research, Cultural Impact, and Storytelling, Sons and Daughters of the Middle Passage" --- "Winner of the S-USIH Book Prize, Society for U.S. Intellectual History"

Topics

  • Publicly Available

    Frontmatter

    i
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    Contents

    vii
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    Prologue: Feudalism, American Style

    ix
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    Introduction

    1
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  • PART I RACIAL FEUDALISM
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    Chapter 1 What Was “Feudalism”?

    23
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    Chapter 2 Jeffersonian Confusions

    42
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    Chapter 3 Proslavery Elaborations

    67
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    Chapter 4 Black Critiques

    98
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  • MIDDLE PASSAGE
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    Chapter 5 Cheating Social Death

    137
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  • PART II BLACK LIBERALISM
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    Chapter 6 What Was Black Liberalism?

    157
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    Chapter 7 “Almost Living in the Dark Ages”: The Literature of Black Liberalism

    169
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    Chapter 8 “The Philosophy of His Crimes”: Black Women’s Interventions

    184
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    Chapter 9 “Why Am I Black?”: Frederick Douglass and Identity-Aware Liberalism

    209
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    Epilogue: Up from Feudalism

    233
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    Acknowledgments

    243
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    Notes

    249
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    Bibliography

    311
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    Index

    341
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    A Note on the Type

    351
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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
September 30, 2024
eBook ISBN:
9780691252506
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691252506
eBook ISBN: 9780691252506
Keywords for this book
Racial; Slavery; Feudalism; Jefferson; Douglass; Liberal; Hierarchy; Racial feudalism; Liberalism; Aristocracy; Ideology; Liberty; Ideology racial; Ideology racial feudalism; Medieval; Antebellum; Jacobs; Laws; Enlightenment; Claims; Racial hierarchy; Nature; Skin; Human; Power; Rights; Nation; Language; Abolitionists; Moral; Framework; Proslavery; Death; Freedom; Modern; Philosophy; Writings; Equality; Eighteenth century; Clotel; Aristocratic; Subordination; Civil war; Critique; Slaveholders; Knowledge; Constitution; Capitalism; Scholars; Civil; Cultural; Webster; Fealty; Economic; Color; Negro; Spiritual; Racial feudal; Sentiment; Liberal ideas; Prejudice; Belief; Slavery racial; Caste; Identity aware; Independence; Influence; Spirit; Blood; Philosophical
Audience(s) for this book
For a non-specialist adult audience
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