Last week, President Donald Trump described the recent protests as “rioting” by an “angry mob”. His linguistic framing of the widespread unrest was supplemented by the very title of the 1807 measure he threatened to invoke: the rarely used “Insurrection Act”, which allows states to request federal troops to help squelch internal disturbances.
Much of the resulting press coverage settled on the more neutral descriptor “chaos”, a theme amplified by Trump’s allies. A Fox News op-ed on Monday proclaimed: “The rioting, looting and wave of arson hitting cities around the nation following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police is much like the disturbances that convulsed American cities in the 1960s.”
The word “riot”, as well as the terms “mob”, “chaos” and “insurrection”, is alarming language that creates a deliberate mode of understanding in the listener. These words are often used to delegitimize and dismiss Black movements – to make them appear too far removed from civil society to be taken seriously. Yet these terms are often in conflict with reality. They also obscure the perspective of those most qualified to judge: the participants themselves.
While many politicians and pundits have attempted to dismiss the current uprisings as “riots” – intimating that they are mere free-for-alls that lack purpose – that could not be further from the truth. Many of the uprisings that white Americans and Europeans have historically termed “riots” were, in fact, concentrated efforts to overturn systems of oppression in the United States and across the globe.
This was certainly true for the leaders and participants of the Haitian revolution, which erupted in 1791 and brought an end to slavery in Haiti. The Black men and women who gained their freedom from the French were regarded as troublemakers and agitators. Not surprisingly, the events that unfolded during the Haitian revolution were regarded by white observers as chaotic – Thomas Jefferson wrote to his daughter in March 1791 that the rebels were “a terrible engine, absolutely ungovernable”. But this organized force, aligned for a simple cause, led to the founding of the first republic governed by former slaves who had emancipated themselves. “We are ready to die for liberty,” the Haitian rebels cried at the battle of Crête-à-Pierrot.
Like the leaders of the Haitian revolution, the organizers of the 1831-32 revolt in Jamaica, led by Sam Sharpe, set out to bring an end to slavery. The Black men and women who revolted against white enslavers were clear about their intentions: they only wanted wages for the backbreaking work in the sugar cane fields. But the island’s white militia suppressed the rebellion after five weeks of military reprisals, kangaroo courts and on-the-spot executions.
In 1822, in Charleston, South Carolina, the freed carpenter Denmark Vesey planned a revolt among enslaved people timed to go off on Bastille Day, 14 July – a choice freighted with the symbolism of liberty. He did not seek rioting or “chaos” or an overthrow of the government, but simple freedom for his allies. The plot was foiled and Vesey was executed.
A similar motive of simple freedom inspired the literate preacher Nat Turner to gather a band of like-minded enslaved people and fight against the dominant slaveholding structure in Southampton county, Virginia, in 1831. One of the first uses of the Insurrection Act, in fact, was a panicked response to this effort. President Andrew Jackson sent artillery and soldiers to Norfolk and other surrounding cities. (They never saw action, and their presence was eventually regarded by local white residents as less a comfort than a top-down menace.)
In all these rebellions, enslaved people understood realpolitik as well as any diplomat. The power structure does not agree to reform itself out of benevolence. There is instead a cost/benefit analysis at work. At some point, the trouble and expense of maintaining a clearly broken system outweighs the costs of reform and concession.
This was what finally convinced the British parliament to emancipate 800,000 enslaved people in the Caribbean after the Jamaican uprising. Most of the organizers did not live to see it, but they testified from their jail cells about their crystal-clear goals. “Liberty is sweet,” Samuel Cunningham told his interrogator.
These and other resistance efforts to the unjust system of slavery were seen by many as chaotic – and as riots that caused great disturbance in local communities. Yet they had structure and logic behind them, even when others could not see them. This is also true for today’s uprisings against police violence. While many have described these events as “riots” lacking any basis and purpose, the activists who led these protests aim to disrupt a system of American policing that targets Black people and other people of color. Their motives are as plainly unriotous as those of any of the historic revolts in the Americas.
The current protests have already become the most widespread set of civil disobedience actions the nation has ever seen. One of their most remarkable aspects is the lack of central coordination, combined with a unity of purpose as clear as what Cunningham said from his jail cell: abusive and unequal policing must stop. Whatever property damage occurs on the margins, by uninvolved actors, is a sideshow to this urgent purpose.
The protests against the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Tony McDade contain a welter of motivations but one unifying theme. The current order of policing – in which Black people are treated far differently from white citizens – can no longer be countenanced. The structure must be upended. Whether that involves a full-blown dismantling versus less intrusive reform measures is a matter of disagreement, but the basis for grievance is near universal.
The United States may soon reap extraordinary benefits from this temporary upending of the usual order, just as Sharpe’s revolt in Jamaica saved Britain from the far more costly judgment over slavery coming to the United States three decades later.
“There is cause to be thankful even for rebellion,” wrote the abolitionist Frederick Douglass. He added, “It is an instructor never a day before its time, for it comes only when all other means of progress and enlightenment have failed.”
Keisha N Blain is an associate professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh and the author of Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom
Tom Zoellner is the author of Island on Fire: The Revolt that Ended Slavery in the British Empire
