Hello Reader,

Today’s featured book opens with a roadside historic marker about the Stono Rebellion, which began on September 9, 1739. While this approaching 287th anniversary doesn't have the same ring as 250, it’s still worth reflecting on this historic moment. Much like the Declaration, the Stono Rebellion was a moment when people sought liberty from an unjust system. But as historian Gautham Rao shows, it was also part of a long, intertwined history of enslavement, law, and policing in America.

Gautham Rao is an Associate Professor of History at American University. Today, he’s sharing details from his second book, White Power: Policing American Slavery.

White Power is the first book in the University of North Carolina’s new imprint, W. Hodding Carter III Books, one that many Sally Franklin’s Bookshelf readers will want to watch. Here’s Gautham to tell us more about this important history.

Tell us about your book in two or three sentences. What's the big story you're uncovering?

We usually think about the history of American law as a story about rights. But my book uncovers how for centuries enslavers built a powerful and violent legal system to police Black Americans—one that continues to haunt American law even to the present.
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What first sparked your interest in this topic?

I was fascinated by the idea that in times of crisis, the government can marshal emergency powers to force people to do extraordinary things. As I started to dig through historical records about slave policing, I noticed this principle everywhere as enslavers saw all enslaved people as potential insurrectionists. And then, as I was working on this for the last twenty years or so, I saw this same justification wielded by law enforcement against people of color. I wanted to tell the long history of what seems like a very contemporary problem.

What's one surprising or little-known detail you discovered in your research?

The most surprising discovery in my work was that enslavers built their legal system by giving themselves formal policing authority over enslaved people who were out in public. Put differently, they deputized whiteness and themselves.
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Why does this story matter for understanding the early American past or the present?

The history of slavery is usually understood through the relationships between enslaved people, their families, and enslavers. While that’s incredibly important, it leaves out the role of law and government. The master’s authority didn’t end at the plantation fence. Rather, they clothed themselves with legal authority to act as their society’s police, including the right to kill. And so, I’m adding this story about the enslaver’s law and government to our understanding of the history of slavery. But this sprawling system that lasted for centuries also unleashed dangerous spirits on American law and constitutionalism. The story at the heart of this book is a critical context to understand the sad stories of racialized policing that we continue to see make headlines in our own society.
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If you could invite readers into one scene from your book, what moment would you choose and why?

I want to take readers back to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the 1850s, when a man named Sherman Booth flouted the federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 to help a suspected fugitive enslaved man named Joshua Glover escape the clutches of slavecatchers. Booth would serve jail time for his actions, but he helped ensure that a tyrannical federal law was all but nullified in Wisconsin. He eventually received a pardon (actually not a pardon but a remission of the money he owed) from President Buchanan just before Buchanan left office and Abraham Lincoln was sworn in.
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What's one historical source, artifact, or place you'd recommend for readers who want to explore this topic further?

So much of the book involves the city of Charleston, South Carolina, a key slave trading port where elite enslavers built their legal, economic, and political empire. In the Gibbes Museum of Art, visitors will see A Slave Tag, No. 227 Mechanic, which is one of the copper collars or badges that enslavers used to track and surveil enslaved people in the city. Not far from there is the Aiken-Rhett House museum, which brings to life the reality that enslavers’ gentility was built on the backs of the enslaved. In the house’s yard, visitors learn that the high walls were built to prevent enslaved captives from running away due to enslavers’ fears of slave rebellions.
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Where can readers learn more about your work?

I have a website (gauthamrao.com) and regularly update my Instagram (@rao__gautham) and Bluesky (@gauthamrao) about speaking appearances, conferences, and publications.

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🎧 Go Deeper

Learn more about enslaved people who self-emancipated with these episodes of Ben Franklin’s World:

🎧 Episode 441: Gregory O’Malley, The Escapes of David George​

🎧 Episode 322: Karen Cook-Bell, Running From Bondage in Revolutionary America​

🎧 Episode 137: Erica Dunbar, The Washingtons’ Runaway Slave, Ona Judge​

🎧 Episode 289: Marcus P. Nevius, Maroonage & the Great Dismal Swamp ​

💬 Join the Conversation

Today our guest historian introduced us to the early American history of policing, what other institution's history are you curious to explore next?

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Thank you for reading and considering.

Have a great week,

Liz Covart

Host, Ben Franklin's World​