Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019

Lowery recalls a childhood trip to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, a memorial representing every county where a Black person was lynched. There are 804 instances.

He saw a white family nearby. He realized that they couldn’t search for relevant counties because no one in their lineage ever would have been lynched. They have a different history than someone with Black ancestors: “Our American battle has always been over what we allow ourselves to remember” (112). African Americans have not been the ones to write history because they are too often on the losing side of the conflict in America.

Lowery gives a brief history of The Stono Rebellion, an uprising that took place in South Carolina. The state had so many Black people in it in the mid-1700s that a traveler wrote, “Carolina looks more like a Negro country than like a country settled by white people” (112). The Stono rebellion was another example of the white fear that insurrection would result from Black people outnumbering white people. A local militia ended the rebellion, but not before the Black rebels killed more than 20 white people.

The resulting Negro Act of 1740 restricted assembly, education, and more. The Stono Rebellion was bloody and significant, but few seem to know of it.