...This chapter looks at the debate between Thomas Jefferson and David Walker—an African American author—over whether New World African intellectual culture should be an entrance examination to the early American polity. It provides a reading of Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia...

...This chapter recounts the antebellum period, describing the political and social contexts of two African American interpreters: Absalom Jones and David Walker. In 1808, Absalom Jones delivered his celebrated “Thanksgiving Sermon” based on Exodus 3 to a well-established congregation...

... from the dominant social order. Through the work of David Walker, Henry Box Brown, William and Ellen Craft, Charles Chesnutt, James Weldon Johnson, and Mamie Till-Mobley, the book examines how Black writer-activists have engaged in an aesthetics of redress: modes of resistance that show how Black...

... Minich Crip Theory McRuer Dred Scott v Sandford McRuer Robert Minich Julie Avril exclamation points slavery Backscheider Paula Bynum Tara “Punctuation for the Reader—A Teaching Approach” Backscheider “Why I Heart David Walker” Bynum Adorno Theodor Brody Jennifer DeVere Lasky Joseph...

... African Andrews William Attucks Crispus Dumas Alexander Monticello professionalization vernacular science Yaszek Lisa “black founding fathers” Newman empire Griggs Sutton Imperium in Imperio Griggs Mexican American War racial uplift University of Virginia Jefferson Banneker David Walker...

... reversal of the foundational terms of citizenship. Tracing the “queasiness” of this time-shifting alliance with white racial innocence, the chapter sets a contemporary performance of archival reenactment against the creative engagement with citizenship portrayed in David Walker's 1829 Appeal...