UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — On Monday, Sept. 12, Penn State’s Department of African American Studies will bring together a panel of scholars for an all-day forum dedicated to a seminal event in Black history — the 200th anniversary of the Denmark Vesey plot.
The forum will take place from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Paterno Library’s Foster Auditorium, with a two-hour break from noon to 2 p.m. The event is free and open to the University community and the public.
Participating in the forum are Douglas Egerton, professor of history at Le Moyne College; Ashleigh Lawrence-Sanders, assistant professor of history at the University of Colorado Boulder; Jim Casey, assistant professor of African American studies, history and English and associate director of the Center for Black Digital Research at Penn State; and Panashe Chigumadzi, Zimbabwean-born journalist, novelist and doctoral candidate at Harvard University.
Throughout the day, each panelist will share their scholarship on the life and legacy of Denmark Vesey (c. 1767–July 2, 1822).
Born enslaved in the Danish Caribbean (now the U.S. Virgin Islands), Vesey was later brought to Charleston, South Carolina, where he became an itinerant carpenter. Allowed to keep portions of his earnings from various jobs, Vesey eventually purchased his freedom after winning a lottery.
From there, Vesey embraced African Methodism via the Charleston branch of the Philadelphia-founded African Methodist Episcopal Church. There, he joined a group of like-minded individuals committed to Black liberation.
Using the Book of Exodus as his theological justification, Vesey organized a large group of free and enslaved Blacks to plan a revolt in Charleston that would include seizing the armory, blocking roads and setting diversionary fires throughout the city as a means of liberating the enslaved population. The group, inspired by the French Revolution, picked Bastille Day — July 14 — to launch their insurrection, which Vesey modeled on the successful 1791 slave revolution in Haiti.
However, the group was betrayed from within and Vesey and 34 of his co-conspirators were arrested and hanged, with Vesey the first one killed. Nonetheless, Vesey would serve as a hero and inspiration to abolitionists like Frederick Douglass in the years leading up to and during the Civil War.