Maroons of the Borderland

A suppressed history of what could be and what once was. This chapter invokes the historical Maroons—self-liberated Pan-African Americans who built autonomous communities during the 400+ years of slavery—and imagines modern equivalents. Restoring to collective memory how our ancestors exited the system and forged sovereignty, even if they had to carve it into the landscape of their oppression.

Photo credit:

Slave Hunt, Dismal Swamp, Virginia by Thomas Moran, 1862