To Be Visible without Being Seen in the Age of Nat Turner: A Documentary Archaeology of Free Black Responses to Dissonance in the City of Alexandria, Virginia, 1829–1833

Abstract

For two days in August 1831, an enslaved preacher named Nathaniel Turner and a core group of followers rampaged across rural Southampton County, Virginia, killing some 55 white people. One month later, 46 free Black residents of Alexandria, Virginia, published a petition in the local newspaper, asserting their loyalty to the town. What compelled these 46 men to do this? I explore the connections among the petitioners as well as 238 other free Blacks in Alexandria in 1831, focusing on the concepts of social dissonance and stability. I propose that free Black Alexandrians mitigated the discord in their lives by forming neighborhoods, buying property, putting down roots, and establishing a favorable reputation within the white community. I conduct a documentary archaeology of primary sources to investigate the ways that free Blacks tempered the daily onslaught of racist disruption in their lives, particularly for the period ca. 1829–1833.