Denmark Vesey
By 2010 broke new ground in Confederate nostalgia arguments–defining Denmark Vesey as a terrorist. Global War on Terror indeed.
But there’s now a Vesey statue up in Charleston, honoring the man who planned a slave rebellion in the heart of the slavery beast. There are some angry white people in Charleston.
I will say this. If Vesey had killed every white person in Charleston to free himself and other slaves from the horrors of being raped, beaten, and killed by masters, from seeing their children and siblings and parents and spouses sold, from being paraded naked before white people to be examined like a horse before being purchased (the Paul Giamatti scene in 12 Years a Slave was especially good on this), from having their labor and lives stolen from there by a system that sought to brutalize labor and whose intellectual giants would later commit treason in defense of slavery, leading to the death of 750,000 Americans, if he did all of these things, Denmark Vesey would not be a terrorist.