Writing Freedom into Narratives of Racial Injustice in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley

Book excerpt: Far too many towns and cities across the United States continue to deny the history of the interstate trade of enslaved men, women, and children, and are resistant to recognizing sites associated with enslavement. The Shenandoah Valley of Virginia is one of these regions, and its historical texts and public history sites perpetuate the racist belief that enslaved individuals were not a factor in the establishment and history of this region because the census numbers in the antebellum era were ‘low’. In the case of the valley, myriad discourses have created a false story of the non-presence of African Americans that, as it became increasingly replicated, became more and more thought of as the truth. This book refocuses the study of enslavement and African-American history on the narratives of two individuals who were enslaved in the valley region, Bethany Veney and the distinctively named John Quincy Adams, to help build upon the nascent scholarship of valley enslavement and emancipation. By privileging the narratives, it asserts that enslaved individuals were astute, self-conscious historians who knew that they were forging a literary style, but also amending the historical record that had kept them absent. The book advocates the unearthing of a more complete and equitable American past, but also pushes for an interrogation of how and why false mythological pasts have been constructed and examines the legacies these myths have left behind.