January 13, 2025 • 48 mins
Margaret talks to Sophie about the largest and longest-lasting maroon community in what became the United States.
https://daily.jstor.org/constructing-the-white-race/
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-04-02-0080
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/events-african-american-history/san-miguel-de-gualdape-slave-rebellion-1526/
https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/05/peter-h-wood-strange-new-land-excerpt.html
J Brent Morris, Dismal Freedom
Modibo Kadalie, Intimate Direct Democracy
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to Cool be Booted Cool Stuff. You're
a weekly reminder that you too can live in the
swamps and kill slavers. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and
I guess this week you might have heard of her.
It's Sophie Lickterman. Hi, Sophie, how are you?
Speaker 3 (00:22):
What if they haven't heard of me.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Well, then I have done a poor job of Or
maybe it's the first time you've listened to the show,
That's what I'm saying. Yeah, well, in which case, Sophie
Licktterman is also the producer of this show. And the
reason that Sophie is the guest is because, as we
record this, Los Angeles is having a bit of a
fire problem, and some of that might have had to
(00:47):
deal with the defunding of the fire department to fund
the police. But unfortunately, you can't shoot fire. I'm willing
to bet that a lot of people have tried.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Oh, I'm so sure a lot of people have tried.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yeah, it's really I mean, I grew up in Los Angeles,
I'm very familiar with fire season. But you know, this
level of wind that La has experienced, it's just like
climate change. Is terrifying, and I'm so sorry to the
people that have lost loved ones in their and their homes.
We do have a list of mutual aid funds that
(01:24):
people can donate to, Margaret, do you want to read
those out?
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah, although I'll explain the reason that you're the guest
is that our guest lives in LA and is okay,
but is busy doing mutual aid, because that's the kind
of guests we have on But this list of mutual
aid venmos that people can donate to was vetted by
Kozon Media's James Stout for the Los Angeles fires of
twenty twenty five at People's Struggle. SFV Supplies and Distribution
(01:52):
for the San Fernando Valley at Sundays Dash thirteen twelve.
The you know one three one two. This is they
deliver supplies to encampments and things like that. K Town
for All K T O w N F O R
A l L does emergency supply distribution for the unhoused.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
They're a wonderful mutual aid organization. I can't say enough
nice things about K Town for All.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Hell Yeah, J Town Action, J T O W N
A C T I O N. What you'd expect, well,
except that it's the letter J, not like J A
Y or something. J. Town Action does mutual aid to
unhoused folks in Little Tokyo. Eight and A Street Solidarity
a E T N A Street Solidarity does direct relief
(02:43):
for the unhoused in the San Fernando Valley. Dykes are kosher,
which is an important thing to know. But dikes R
kosher is d y k E s A R e
k O s h e R. I think we're also
going to put this in the show notes, but I'm
still going to read them out. And they do mostly
east side and skid row and they have three plus
drivers doing that work. F T s l A and
(03:08):
not there's a knockoff f T s l A dash.
That's not who you're looking for. Ft s l A
makes meals for firefighters. All Power Books a l l
PO w R Books is community bookstore that distributes supplies.
And Seventh Street Collective, which is s e v E
(03:31):
n t H s T c O L l e
c t i v E and that is a Long
Beach emergency response preparation group. And one of the reasons
that donating directly to mutual aid groups. Is good is
because the larger organizations, the ones that people from out
of town know about to donate to, right, I'm not
(03:52):
even going to necessarily knock them, but they tend to
rely on actual on the ground mutual aid groups to
do the sort of final mile problem anyway, And if
you want to cut out the middleman and support direct
mutual aid, you're gonna your dollars will go further and
they'll do it much faster. So you know that is
(04:13):
I mean, I have a bias towards this, but I
just like have found that to be true in my
own limited experience with disaster response. But Sophie, I'm really
excited about this week's episode. This has been on my
list since the very beginning. This is like one of
the cool history stories that made me care about cool
(04:34):
history because this week we are going to talk about
one of my favorite topics of all time, Maroon communities.
And normally I'd be like, have you heard of maroon communities?
But you've been on the podcast as the producer, and
I've done numerous episodes about maroon communities. But I'm like curious,
Like I'm curious, you know, kind of what you come
into it. Have you heard of the Great Dismal Swamp?
Speaker 1 (04:57):
No? Hell yeah, And obviously you told me the topic beforehand,
and I like did not look things up.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Yeah, which is good because that's the way it's supposed
to be. I don't know why. I just find the
format more fun that way.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
It seems like a really good dinner party conversation that
you're having where you're telling somebody an epic tale and
they're like reacting to It's that's yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Totally, totally. It's compared to like the I'm not trying
to talk shit on other podcasts. Other podcasts are fine.
I less enjoy when two experts on a subject talk
about the thing, because then instead of one person representing
the audience, it's just like listening to two instructors at
the same time or whatever. Anyway, and that's why we
use this format now everyone knows, because some of us
(05:42):
prefer it. So we are not talking about just any
maroon community this week. We are talking about the granddaddy
of United States maroon communities. For anyone who doesn't know
what I'm talking about when I say maroon community, Maroons
are people who have self emancipated from slavery.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
People free societies.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Yeah, well, basically just like the shit that when I
say keeps me up at night, I mean in the
positive way where it keeps me up at night, because
I just like read about this shit for fun, and
like anywhere there's been a community of like three or
three thousand people trying to live free and succeeding. I
just fucking love that shit. This one lasted for hundreds
(06:23):
of years, and when I first heard about this, it
kind of changed how I understood us history. And yeah,
it's been on my list since the very beginning of
planning this show. Tell me, well, it's North Carolina's pride
and joy. Although Virginia can claim it too. Lesser Virginia
can claim it too. The Great Dismal Swamp. I have
(06:46):
only been to the Great Dismal Swamp once I went
for an Earth First gathering like twenty two years ago.
I had just gotten out of I don't know why
I put in this thing about my own experience with it,
but I did tell us I just got out of
jail from a protest in DC.
Speaker 4 (06:59):
Because this is a dinner party and we're having a
really lovely conversation.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
All right, totally, yeah, exactly and basically like after we
all got out of jail, like they rest like seven
hundred of us, and when we all got out of jail,
a bunch of us just like walked into cars pretty
much and headed down to northeastern North Carolina to go
sleep in the swamps and talk about how to defend
them with earth firsters.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
I have some good memories from that trip. Like one time,
one of the forest defenders from the West Coast was
showing us how to climb trees, and the tree sits
isn't a good story, is a bad story. And she
got her breast caught in the descending device because she
was climbing naked, and she and someone had to climb
up and rescue her. And that put the fear of
(07:41):
tree climbing into me.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
Oh my god, I thought you were going to say
there was like a nipple that flew off.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
I was terrible.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
No, no, god, everything they survived this, okay, Yeah, they
were okay, The breast was okay, they were okay, Yeah, totally.
There was like some bruising, but no, it actually was
all right because they were able to like take the
weight off of it right away. Yeah, But then they
were just like stuck.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
I thought you were about to say it was a
flying nipple story. I had visuals that nobody should have.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Well we could. I mean I wish I was less honest,
because that would be a better way to tell the story.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
Yeah, but your moral magpie.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
I know, I've learned that justice sensitivity is a neuro
atypical trait, and now I understand why the world is
the way it is, is that it's an atypical trait.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
But also the thing I remember about that trip is
a gigantic spider, Like I swear it was the size
of my hand that was inside my tent.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
That's a nope for me, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
I know, I actually decided that I would rather sleep
outside where if there were any spiders, they weren't stuck
with me, and so I just like went and curled
up my sleeping bag by the fire instead. But the
main thing I remember about the Great Dismal Swamp was
the story that one of the local organizers told of
the history of the area of the Maroon communities.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
But one thing about the Great Dismal Swamp is that
I got so excited about it that I forgot to
do the rest of the intro credits.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
Where we're we're just fucking it up today.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
I know it would have gone terribly if I hadn't
pause to say that our audio engineers Rory Hi, Rory Hi, Rory,
and our theme music was written for us by unwoman.
But the main thing I remember about the Great Dismal
Swamp was the story that the local organizers told of
the history of the area, of the maroon communities, the
folks who are often called swampers, which is a like,
(09:33):
I don't want to mess with someone who that's their description.
I don't want that. It's not the prettiest title, you know, Yeah,
but I wouldn't want to mess with a swamper.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
No, definitely not.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
As long as there's been oppression, there have been people
who have learned that if you just live somewhere that
is an absolute pain in the ass to build roads in,
you can avoid that oppression the mountains. You know, it's
across history. There's like anthropology, but about this the art
of not being governed that I haven't finished reading yet.
(10:04):
My dad read it, and my dad read it and
was like, no, wonder you live in the mountains, But
if where you live is hard to get in and
out of. Not even hard to live, but hard to
get in and out of. You have less government overall.
So people resisting the creation of nation states have fled
to the mountains since forever. And it's like, why partisan
struggle happens in the mountains or whatever. Swamps, Yeah, swamps
(10:26):
are at least as much of a pain in the
asses mountains, and they are full of huge spiders and
you can't build anything there.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Apparently huge spiders.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Oh I know, it was probably only really the size
of my palm, but that is still that's huge. That's
too big for a spider for us, that's not good. Yeah,
it's not the spider's fault that I feel that way,
But it's just I have limits, you know. And it's
less that it's impossible to live in these places, and
(10:56):
more like it's impossible to set up state infrastructure and
methods of control and extract value from there. People live
in mountains and swamps and shit, and they always have,
but they're hard to project power into and they're hard
to economically extract from. I mean, people do it. Don't
get me wrong. I lived in I live in West Virginia.
This is one of the most economically extracted from places
in the country. But the way they do that is
(11:18):
they literally blow up the mountains. So whenever I research
a topic for this show, I go through sort of
an exploding head meme diagram of progressions of the versions
of this story. There's the clickbait summary that's too pat
and just too cool and too radical, and everyone is
perfect politics and everything was great, and then I stumble
upon the rejection of that story. I usually then on
(11:41):
top of that find the real story, which is sort
of usually a synthesis of the two. And that's how
this story was. I actually ended up back where I started,
way more than I thought I would. The first story
I heard about the Great Dismal Swamps was that it
was a place where for centuries people fleeing enslavement, Indigenous
people and poor white people lived in harmony, free from
(12:03):
the rule of law, and waged war on the slave
society around them. Clearly, I am drawn to this, right,
that is a perfect story for me. There is nothing
wrong here, you know. And then I heard a counterpoint,
which was still describing an amazing place, that the Maroon
community the Dismal Swamp was there, but it wasn't some
(12:23):
multi racial paradise. It was just a place where mostly
black people lived, and it wasn't at war with the
slave society. It was just trying to keep its head
down and survive. That was the story that like replaced
the initial story in my head. This was still this
is where I was at when I started my research,
and I was like, well, I'm covering that. That sounds amazing,
you know. But the thing is it was both of
(12:46):
these things at different times for different people, over the
course of hundreds of years, and they absolutely led endless
raids and wars on slave society out of these swamps.
So don't worry if that's what you're here for, there's
going to be raids. The short version of the story
is for centuries, people escaping oppression, white, Black and indigenous,
(13:07):
especially by the end mostly black, moved into the least
hospitable part of the East Coast and built a multi
generational community, or rather like dozens of different communities. They
led raids on nearby plantations and they helped countless people
escape to freedom. For the most part, they kept their
heads low rather than doing raids for survival. But there
(13:28):
was like different communities that had different vibes around this.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Yeah, that's step two on the don't mess with us
checklist is we won't bother you if you don't bother us.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, And I can only imagine there was
like some pretty annoying conversations in between these two groups
where they're like, could you please stop raiding? Whenever you raid,
they raid back, and people are like, yeah, but I
want to go kill the guy who owned me, And
people are like that's fair, valid, but yeah, yeah, both
(13:58):
sides have a point, you know. Yeah, but we don't
have a lot of records of what they actually talked
about internally because well, I'll talk about it they didn't.
Yeah yeah. And then like even less than basically this
was like they chose to be in the dark place
on them be swamps.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Yeah, bad, bad place for things to not disintegrate.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Yeah, totally. Oh yeah, that's probably like endless journals that
just oh man, that are swamp I know, I want
to read them.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
By the time of the Civil War or during the
Civil War, they were in a gorilla war against the Confederacy,
and they put their lives on the line to help
other people find their freedom again and again because the
maroons of the Great Dismal Swamp were some of the
coolest people in American history. The problem is we mostly
have conjecture. In the past twenty years or so, there
(14:50):
have been more archaeological expeditions which confirmed a lot of
what people had been conjecturing, but we still don't really
know all the details. One abolition is journalist of the
nineteenth century named Edmund Jackson visited the place and he
wound up writing, quote, how long this colony has existed,
what is the amount of its population? What portion of
(15:11):
the colonists are now fugitives? And what are descendants of fugitives?
Are questions not easily determined, And we kind of just
don't have any better answers now than we did then. Well,
we have slightly better answers now because after the end
of the Civil War some of the people left, and
then they talked about what they did. You know, they're like, oh, yeah,
I lived in the swamps for four years, or oh
I grew up there or whatever, you know, but only
(15:34):
a couple of those stories, fair enough. What they didn't
have in the swamps was advertisements. I actually don't know
how they knew what products and services to enjoy. They
might not even have that's not sure. I do know
they had products and services because there's archaeological evidence of
an instrument maker who lived there, which is the coolest
(15:55):
job ever. There's the guy who just made banjos in
the swamp for people who are rating slave society amazing.
So this show is sponsored by di y Banjo's only
if you promise to attack slavers, but it's also sponsored
by all of this other stuff. And we're back, We're bad.
(16:23):
I like Banjo's. One time I was talking to this
person and I was like, I don't know if you
remember me, and she was like, of course I remember you, Magpie.
You taught me how to play banjo. And I looked
at her. This is a period of my life where
I drank a lot and I said I knew how
to play banjo.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Ah, that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Because apparently at some point I had learned how to
play banjo, and then, while drunk at a party, shown
this person how to play Banjo's amazing. Completely forgotten that
that happened.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
Good for you, Magpie, Thanks thanks.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
And that's why drinking and your early twenties leads to
a lot of stories that you can't tell because you
don't know them anyway. So for most of the people
living in the swamp, anti maroon laws meant that it
would be one hundred percent legal for people to just
outright murder them for like centuries. Basically, like if you
live in the swamp, someone could just like come by
(17:18):
and shoot you and get away with it, right, So
they they kept pretty closed lipped about what they were
up to. People didn't want to talk much about the
huge multi century crime they were all committing together. And
my lord, if you're going to do a good crime,
it should be multi century bad crimes. You should just
keep them short.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
That's so funny.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
It's so funny. There are two books that are my
main sources for this. Both came out in twenty twenty two.
I wish I knew what that. Neither one references the other,
but I'm like, I'm so curious. One is the sort
of main history book on the subject. It is called
Dismal Freedom by Jay Brent Morris, and it seems to
(17:59):
be the main historical book collecting all the evidence that
we have. It comes out from University of North Carolina Press.
It's more of a history book. The other book is
called Intimate Direct Democracy by Mediebo Cadale, and it is
more of a social history. It presents where the Maroons
of the Swamp stood as practitioners of direct democracy and
egalitarian social structuring, and like kind of how they tied
(18:22):
into the larger abolitionist and anti colonial struggle that was
happening at the time. They're both good. There's this huge
swamp called the Great Dismal Swamp. It straddles the border
from North Carolina to Lesser Virginia, sometimes referred to as
Virginia by people who don't live in West Virginia. I'm
trying to start a fight between two states, but no
(18:43):
one else here actually calls regular virgin way. I've decided
that West Virginia, which is my adopted home and not
where I am from. So I'm kind of opposer saying this,
but because it exists because it didn't want to fight
for the Confederacy, I'm like, well, it's clearly Greater Virginia,
and so I don't know why Virginia it gets to
be Regular Virginia and West Virginia has to be West Virginia.
I think there's West Virginia and then Lesser Virginia. That's
(19:05):
my theory.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Hagpie, what the fuck? I know, stop trying to make
people fight.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Well, it's particularly bad right now because as I'm recording this,
people and in Lesser Virginia don't have any running water
because of an ice storm, or at least in Richmond, Virginia.
And oh I did it. I slipped up in Richmond
Lesser Virginia. They don't have any running water right now. Wow,
So sorry about y'all's water situation. Anyway, there's a swamp.
(19:35):
It crosses between well, at the time it was just Virginia,
and by at the time it didn't have any name.
Well whatever, Anyway, I'm gonna cover a lot of history.
The Carolinas don't even exist at the start of this story.
Big swamp used to be about two thousand square miles,
which is a meaningless number to me until I looked
it up. Do you have any sense of how big
two thousand square miles is?
Speaker 1 (19:56):
No?
Speaker 3 (19:56):
I have. That does not compute in my brain. Ever.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
I know if someone could say twelve thousand square miles
or twelve million square miles and they could be the
same size, and I would not go, you know, hold.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
On two thousand. It's a Delaware miles. I don't think
about Delaware ever, no offense.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Oh right, I'm from well, not there, but close enough.
It's a it's more than a Rhode Island.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
Wait, I'm looking at a graphic.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
For those other people that don't think about it, it says.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
You know, but it's a terrible graphic. I take it back.
I don't care about that graphic.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
To comparing it to like a number of dinosaurs something that.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Just doesn't matter. How big is two thousand square miles.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
That's more than a mosquito could fly at a fortnight.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
That's nothing. None of these things do anything for me.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
All right, Well, Rhode Island is like fifteen hundred, but
you all have states that are the size of like Europe.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Yeah, I was gonna say, I'm a West Coast galley.
Los Angeles is five hundred square miles, so you're telling
me it is four four lays. So that's large and
in charge.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Yeah, that's also wild that LA is a third the
size of one of the states.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
But anyway, but also like one of the top three
economies in the world.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Yeah, no, it makes sense. These days, there's about a
thousand square miles left overall of the swamp, but the
actual portion of it that is like truly the untouched
and protected swamp, is way smaller than that, because everything
that happens in the United States is the story of
the loss of ecosystems. Yep. Originally it ran all the
(21:34):
way from the Chesapeake Bay up north to the album
Maral sound in the South, which I clearly probably know
how to pronounce. I didn't look it up, so I'm
probably wrong, which is annoying because it's a word that's
gonna come up again and again, and if you're from
that area, you're gonna get just like slightly grouch. Here
with me every time I say album Marley, album Marl,
(21:55):
album Marl. I'm going with album Marle. See how it goes.
Not all of the swamp was completely impenetrable, but a
lot of it was. And like these days, the I've
read like anecdotal stories whenever people are trying to talk
about how remote the Dismal Swamp is. Yeah, they say
that special forces like parachute in the middle of it
to test their metal against nature. Well that's nice, yeah,
(22:19):
but they're doing it against the tiny version m so
they ain't got nothing on an old maroon. It's the
first place I ever saw intact old growth forest besides
like an old oak tree here or there or whatever,
because I am not an West Coast girling. The swamp
is a wonderful place and people have been fleeing there
(22:39):
since the very first white people showed up anywhere near it.
People have been fleeing into this swamp since before English
people showed up.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
That's wild.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Yeah, people have been living near and alongside the swamp
for a really long ass time. There's archaeological evidence of
settlement in the area by the early woodlanda culture about
which little is known. By the sixteenth century, about a
dozen different peoples lived in the swamp, and these were
generally smaller tribes, clans, nations that were less prosperous than
(23:11):
like the Cherokee who lived just west of them. And
the first white settlement in the area did not last.
In fact, it sort of presages the rest of the story.
About six hundred or seven hundred Spanish folk showed up
in fifteen twenty five with one hundred and slaved Africans
in tow and the trip went badly for the white
(23:32):
people in that group. From the beginning, their flagship ran
aground the indigenous interpreters they brought along with them, pieced
out and took off into the forest, and the settlers
built a settlement called San Miguel de Gualdape, and they
had the first known slave re volt in North America,
(23:52):
pre dating even the English showing up, because all the
settlers were starving and they were arguing, like, it's funny
because it it also predates, like, well, I'll get to
the complicated nature of how the slave trade started in
North America and like how like sixteen nineteen was the
first time that like unfree Africans arrived or whatever, and
so we're sti talking about like one hundred years before that. Cool,
(24:12):
But all the settlers were starving and they're arguing, like, hey,
should we go back home? And they started in fighting,
and the guy who wanted to stay was arrested by
the people who wanted to leave, and the enslaved people
were like, the fuck all this. They actually rescued the leader,
the one who was arrested, set fired to a bunch
of the buildings, and then fucked off into the woods
(24:33):
to join the local indigenous people. And that's the end
of anyone hearing about them. They had a successful slaver
vault and disappeared to go live in the woods with
people who liked them.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
That's crazy.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Yeah, that's the that's the true story of the founding
of America. By fifteen twenty seven, one hundred and fifty
Spanish survivors went back home. It was not a successful settlement.
In sixteen oh seven, the English people showed up founded Jamestown,
the first permanent settlement by the English in North America.
And within two fucking years people were already rebelling. Like
(25:10):
when there was like only like one hundred people there,
people were fucking off and running into the woods.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
Incredibly cool.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Yeah, because they brought a bunch of indentured servants with them.
About two thirds or three quarters of the people who
were in the first wave of English settlements were indentured
servants and legally unfree. This isn't slavery. And people like
to argue like crazy about that, mostly white people who
want to feel oppressed. But you don't have to argue
(25:40):
that indentured servitude to slavery in order to feel oppressed.
The indentured servants, who were all white at first, they
were oppressed. It was a fucked up and unfree situation.
By sixteen oh nine, they started running away and joining
the Powatans, which is a confederation of indigenous group that
the English had imediately shown up and murdered and enslaved
(26:02):
and shit like. Literally, by the end of this first
century of English settlement, ninety percent of the Powatan population
is gone and the rest will be scattered. Wow, it
would be really fun to teach American.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
History because it's just such a It'd be like it
would have been my dream history teacher.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
I would have had a real hard time sticking to
the syllabus if it was provided to me by the state,
because like, I didn't learn that, Like when they first
showed up, immediately people were like, not a hell with this,
you know, I'm not starving for you rich people, like
because in sixteen o nine to sixteen ten was the
starving Time in Jamestown. I probably did learn about this
(26:41):
in school. I just didn't care because these people didn't
feel like the protagonists to me. You know, Yeah, people
were starving to death, thus the name starving Time, and
they ate dogs and people and it was bad. So
people were like, well, I could die for you, the
guy who owns my contract or I could get the
(27:05):
fuck out of here and go into the woods and
hang out with these people who are perfectly nice. And
so they fled, not all of them, but a ton
of them fled despite being told they would be executed
if they were caught.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Do love an or they're like, yeah, I could do
that thing that sounds really fucking awful, or literally anything else.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Yeah, high risk, high reward, get the fuck out of here.
And also, at some point there's no risk because you're
just dead either way, you know, right. I was gonna
write that all these first indentured servants who fled were white,
because black people weren't transported to the British colonies until
sixteen nineteen, and the first ones were indentured servants. But
these folks weren't white yet because whiteness is a social
(27:43):
category didn't exist in older conceptions of slavery. You could
enslave people for life if they were a different religion
than you. If they converted to Christianity, you were supposed
to set them free. This is obviously not a good system, right,
but it has a convert to Christianity, get free. Loophole,
like wasn't going to work for people, specifically the Spanish
(28:05):
and the Portuguese colonies, the Catholic colonies. By sixteen fifty,
you have hereditary, lifelong enslavement based on race in the
Spanish and Portuguese colonies. English people were like, well, that
sounds good for the economy. Sign us up. That's my
British accent. I can't do a British accent. And they
did this when Charles the Second was restorative throne after
(28:27):
the English Civil War, which you can listen to our
episode about the Levelers if you want to hear more
about that, and the king Charles the Second was like, hell, yeah,
let's do the slave trade thing. Sign us up and
we'll talk more about Charles the Second in a little bit.
Don't worry. I know you're like, I hope there's more
Charles the Second in here. Even before that, the English
settlers were like, you know, it sucks that we go
(28:49):
through all this work to get these people here and
like make them work for us without paying them, but
then we have to let them go at the end
of it, Like where's the where's the profit in that?
Besides the prophit I've already gotten out of them, So
why don't we just come up with loopholes where if
people do anything we dislike, we extend their contracts. By
sixteen forty two, you have runaway labor laws, which means
(29:13):
fugitive slave laws in America are literally older than slavery
in the colonies. The idea that like, if a worker
runs away, you're gonna hunt them down and maybe kill
them is really really baked into this country.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
Jesus Christ, I fucking hate America.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Yeah, for any strong American patriots, you're not gonna like
this episode.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Yeah, pool should ask USA scam ass country.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
It absolutely is a scam country. That's like the core
of so much of what the stuff that relates to.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
All this scam ass country.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
By the sixteen sixties, you have race based slavery in
the US going off like crazy, And I want to
go on a rabbit hole down. The wildest thing I
learned on the side while researching all of this.
Speaker 4 (30:06):
Like at a dinner party, would you have like a
side story?
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Oh, this is great side question?
Speaker 2 (30:12):
All right. So, not only was Benjamin Franklin very racist,
especially in his youth, he goes abolitionist near the end
of his life, but like he believed that we should
keep America white. So that are you ready for this?
So that we could look good to space aliens, sir,
(30:33):
literal outer space aliens living on Mars and Venus is
why we should make America white, Sir. I'm gonna read
you the quote.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Sir.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Ben Franklin wrote a piece in seventeen fifty one called
Observations concerning the Increase of Mankind. In it, he lays
out the colonial American mindset of race. And I think
because I actually started reading this piece because I was
trying to understand the colonial conceptions of racial categories, right yeah,
because I started talking about how the people who ran
(31:07):
away were black and tawny, and I was like, what
the fuck is tawny? Why do why is a new
racial category being But I'll tell you about tawny. According
to Ben Franklin quote, the number of purely white people
in the world is proportionately very small. All of Africa
is black or tawny. Asia is chiefly tawny, America exclusive
(31:31):
of newcomers wholly so. And in Europe the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians,
and Swedes are generally what we call a swarthy complexion,
as are the Germans. Also, Yeah, that's right, the fucking
Swedes and Germans aren't white. That's how fucking anyway.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Crazy.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
The Saxons only accepted who with the English make the
principal body of white people on the face of the Earth.
I could wish their numbers were increased. And while we
are as I may call it scouring our planet by
clearing America of woods and so making this side of
our globe reflect a brighter light to the eyes of
(32:15):
inhabitants in Mars or Venus, Why should we, in the
sight of superior beings, darken its people. Why increase the
suns of Africa by planting them in America, where we
have so fair an opportunity by excluding all blacks and
tawnis of increasing the lovely white and red. But perhaps
(32:35):
I am partial to the complexion of my country, for
such of partiality is natural to mankind. So like, he's
doing so many things here.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Heday, he's all over the place, and just like so
stupid and like, ah, okay, yeah, what do you go.
I'm like a bathel if you just threw I know,
I know, there's so much going on here.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Ramble so much ramble rmble.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
I love the like, well, everyone's racist for their own race.
That's not true. You have to teach kids that race
exists and that they should hate people for looking different,
you know, correct, correct, And he makes up four races
and he puts everyone in them from a scale of
bad to good. Yeah, black, tawny, swarthy, and white. And
(33:23):
he's saying that English people are whiter than Swedish people
by complexion, which is just funny.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
Guy's I'm like this guy, Ben Franklin. It's like I
keep forgetting that it's that it's Ben Franklin and not
just some random asshole. He's, you know, mister elite asshole,
mister mister ceo of asshole them.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
I know. And he's like the science man who's on
our money, right yeah, And so he's developing this race
science in order to make us more beautiful to aliens.
And I was thinking, like, this has to be a
literary device, right, and like on some level it is.
But apparently a lot of the Founding fathers real all
about that alien thing. I mean, to be fair, like
(34:06):
it's pretty reasonable to be like, well, those other worlds
there might be aliens there. I'm not. I'm not mad
at him for believing it. But you shouldn't do racism
to look good to aliens, correct, especially if your hypothesis
is that everyone thinks that the way they look is
the best. Well, then why would aliens like any of
us at all? If everyone's racist like you? Anyway?
Speaker 1 (34:28):
America scam mass country. We have an American mass country
speaking of scams? Is that what you're about to do? No?
Speaker 2 (34:36):
No, All of our products are individually hand vetted by
no one an algorithm. Here's the ads.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
And rebeca ya.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
But we're not at Ben Franklin Times yet, We're still
in sixteen ten of Jamestown. I just had to skip
ahead one hundred years because I got really excited about.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
That guy in the Aliens, like at a dinner party,
telling a story out of order.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
Just funny because like during the course of my week,
on an average week, I talked to at least one
of my friends and excitedly tell them the story. And
that actually helps me figure out which parts are like
the exciting parts, you know, the part that I can't
wait to tell my friend, you know. Absolutely so when
indentured servants in Virginia were like, I'm good, I don't
(35:30):
want to be owned by a guy. For another several years,
they fled south southern coastal Virginia aka near the swamps,
became the place for people who wanted to actually live free.
And it was interesting because it was even understood then,
right because like in America scam propaganda, you get told like,
live free means exploit other people's labor and become rich,
(35:51):
because that's what the founding fathers were all about. Sure,
it was even understood by a lot of people then.
To live free was not to live.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
Wealthy, to live sustainably.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
If you want to be wealthy, you stay in Plantation Town. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
Sustainably yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
If you want to live free where people don't tell
each other what to do and you all just get
along with each other, you go into what would have
been called the Indian territories, you go into you know,
you go outside the colonies. So in order to live free,
you don't want to have a state at all. So
there's this whole uncolonized region between English Virginia and Spanish Florida,
(36:29):
and that's where people white and black went for decades
before the founding of the Carolinas. Some went into the
swamps themselves and formed the start of what later became
the Dismal Swamp Maroon communities. Others more of them settled
around the area, especially around the Albemarle Sound. You'd think
I would looked it up during a break, but I didn't.
(36:51):
This history of this time feels a little bit blurry,
So I'm gonna I'm not gonna say this next little
bit with the most confidence, but I referenced everything they
could right Over the course of the sixteen hundreds people
fleeing colonial government went to the Albemarle Sound and was
now North Carolina, the southern end of the Great Dismal Swamp.
(37:12):
There they formed an independent assembly of people, the albamarl Assembly.
I told you I was going to say this name
a lot. And they worked within the Tuscarora Confederacy, which
was a confederacy of three tribes in the area. And
they had a culture built on a galitarian values, like
avoiding the idea of having rich landowners who control everything.
And they also wanted to avoid racism between white, black,
(37:34):
and indigenous people, so they had a tri racial setup,
and that is going to play a huge part in
everything that is to come and as part of why,
it's just like, I don't know, it's such a cool story.
The Anglican Church was largely kept out of the region.
People practiced and it wasn't a big deal, and you'd
have like priests or pastors or whatever, but they'd like
practice in private because the Anglican Church was seen as
(37:55):
like basically an institute of the state and they didn't
want that there. Quaker mission Quakers mentioned, sorry, yep, no, yeah, yeah,
this is like actually North Carolina is heavily Quaker at
this time because they had more religious freedom, especially once
you actually have a yeah Carolina in a couple of decades.
But yeah, yeah, so everyone take a drink. Quakers were mentioned,
(38:17):
and Quaker's found more acceptance there.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Sick.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
By the sixteen sixties, King Charles the Second, who I
told you I was going to come back to he
was ruling in England and he granted Carolinas to a
bunch of English people, even though it wasn't his to
give away. Imagine doing that.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
Why do they do that? Yeah, why do they think that's? Okay?
Speaker 4 (38:38):
Just imagine just imagine somebody being you know, let's go
even like super basic.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
Okay, let's go potatoes. It's it's fucking good people to
close up.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
You have just made a magical, delicious, let's go baked
potato for one, and you have your fork and you're
about to take a bite of it.
Speaker 4 (38:58):
And not only do they take your potato, but they
take your fork and give it to some guy you've
never met.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
I know, I know, and like and not not a
hungry guy.
Speaker 4 (39:09):
Not a hungry not not a guy who's hungry, not
a guy who doesn't have a baked potato or a.
Speaker 5 (39:13):
Fork, a guy who has a lot of potatoes, guy
who's drowning of potatoes and forks, yeah, and all the fixins.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
Yeah, and uh, just like you're like, excuse me, that's
my potato.
Speaker 4 (39:25):
That's my fucking potato, motherfucker.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (39:28):
And then and then.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
They're like, oh, was this your potato? Well, now I'm
gonna call it New York potato.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
Or totally we're gonna name it after Sophie. We stole
your potato.
Speaker 4 (39:42):
Yeah, I took my Sofie potato, and now they're gonna
call it.
Speaker 5 (39:45):
I don't know, Harry, Well, they might still call it
a Sophie potato forever, but or your descendants will have
to fight for to rename Sophie Potato but not actually
be given back to them.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
Yeah yeah, anyway, Uh so yeah Carolina, no, no, no, no,
this is a good this is a good side quest
and uh we're both hungry. I think is also part
of what's happening. Definitely Carolina now has a government, but
for decades longer, several generations. The album Marl Assembly continues
its a galitarian, anti authoritarian ways because power projection is
(40:20):
a very different, like it's a very different thing to
be like I'm in charge and then have a way
to tell people you're in charge and make that happen.
A lot of anthropology is like literally around the study
of like, but could the king tell anyone what to do?
You know?
Speaker 1 (40:30):
Well, I love when I love when some guy that's
definitely not in charge tries to tell people they're in charge,
and then someone else who's actually in charge just walks
in the room and everybody realizes this is that that
person's in charge. It's one of my favorite scenarios.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
That is the vibe of what's happening in Northern Carolina
right now. Because okay, because Carolina was the entire region
between Virginia and Florida is like one big entity, and
it was. The government was in Charleston, which was far
to the south of Northern Carolina and like not easy
to travel. So in Northern Carolina and people are like,
all right, whatever we're doing. For a couple decades, people
are just kind of doing whatever they want. Yeah, it
(41:07):
gains a reputation Northern Carolina as a rogues harbor, which
is always a good time. If you have a choice
between living in a rogu's harbor and not living in
a rogues harbor, you should live in a rogue's harbor.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
So my dog's called my house.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Yeah, exactly. The governor of Virginia around this time said, quote,
as regards our neighbor, North Carolina is and always was
the sink of America, the refuge of our renegades until
in better order, it is a danger to us. So
if you live in North Carolina, you should have some
pride about that. It was full of quote pirates and
(41:41):
runaway servants, and it didn't have a government. I mean,
it did have a government, but not one that was
good at projecting power. And the Arbor Marlay Assembly is
doing its thing. And someone complained at the time that quote,
all sorts of people, even servants, negroes, Aliens, Jews, and
common sailors were admitted to vote. So hey, the first
(42:06):
place that black people were able to vote in North
America probably was the Assembly around the Sound, because you
had a sort of democratic thing actually happening, unlike whatever. Anyway,
I'll talk more about the American Revolution later when we
get to it. And this place was sometimes referred to
disparagingly as the Quaker Leveler Republic, and that is not
(42:28):
a bad thing to be at all. And in this
case levelers for people haven't listened to my episode about
the Levelers. They're this English radical group that was trying
to level the difference between the rich and the poor,
which we need right now. But this place, with the Assembly,
it was not an outright utopia. There were slavers there
(42:50):
and there were enslaved people, the substantially fewer than elsewhere.
One historian I read talked about how it managed to
stay oddly egalitarian despite some people owning each other, like
wasn't trying to be like and it's totally fine now, right,
but there just like was a difference between plantation culture
and like the comparison it used I think they talked
about being like on both ends of the saw cutting.
(43:11):
You know, it was like old timey saws where you
cut down a tree with like a two person saw.
You know, you're going to be like everyone's equal when
you're holding the saw. It's the kind of vibe that
they claimed again, it's slavery, it's bad, right.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
They also, despite allowing that, they had this policy of
allowing runaways, including runaway and slave people to come and
stay there and be unharrassed. So even though some people
weren't free there, other people were harbored as fugitives from
It seems messy, that's what it seems like. It seems messy.
(43:48):
And then like debtors, they pass this law that when
you show up your debt is a racer, like we're
not gonna no one can come and get you for
your debt. And I was a little bit like, well,
what's that about. Is it like, oh, you went bankrupt.
I think that's a reference to indentured servitude because that's
your death.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
Oh okay that that yeah, yeah, that seems logical.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
And the radical vibe of the area started to ebb.
By sixteen ninety or so, what.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
An excellent sentence you wrote there. The radical vibe of
the area started to ed by sixteen ninety or so,
just like, what a great sentence, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3 (44:28):
Feel like people.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Don't realize how hard it is to like write about
history and make it sound like uniquely your own. But yeah,
like the radical vibe of the area started to ebb
by sixteen ninety or so.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
So Magpie and writing a script where you know you're
going to read it aloud and you want it to
sound natural when you read it aloud. It is like
a had to compliment that I refuse to go back
and listen to my first episodes.
Speaker 3 (44:53):
They don't exist. What do you mean?
Speaker 2 (44:55):
Oh yeah, what I want? Yeah, although some of them
are good, but yeah, yeah. But by sixteen ninety nine,
an Anglican deputy governor declared the Church of England is
the official state religion of the Carolinas and made everyone
pay a tax to support the church. Worse than that,
he came up with a way to drive the Quakers
out of office because they did this thing where they
(45:18):
decided that all officials needed to swear an oath to
the new Queen Anne of England and Quakers are forbidden
by the religion from swearing oaths. And the reason is
kind of cool. Quakers are already forbidden to lie, So
you can't swear an oath saying you're telling the truth
because that implies you ever lie, so like you're always
(45:40):
telling the truth. Therefore you can't swear an oath.
Speaker 3 (45:43):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
So all of the Quakers were kicked out of office
in the Carolinas, and you get this tiny uprising called
Carry's Rebellion, where the people being ousted from power tried
really hard not to be ousted from power, and the
Royal Navy intervened. I had this whole thing where I
was like writing in paragraphs and paragraphs about this, but
then I was like, Okay, Kerrie's Rebellion is absolutely a
(46:03):
side quest here. And the Royal Navy intervened, and the
Quaker leveler Republic fell, and the people who'd been living
for generations in this anti authoritarian, anti racist settlement, some
of them fled into the less settled interior of the state,
but others fled into the great dismal Swamp, and they
probably weren't alone there even already. Certainly they were about
(46:28):
to not be alone there at all. Because a ton
more people are going to come and they're going to
lead gorilla wars against slavery for centuries. But we're not
going to talk about it today. We're going to talk
about it on Wednesday. But first, well, how are we feeling?
I guess we haven't really gotten to the maroons yet.
We've just gotten to some people.
Speaker 3 (46:48):
I mean, it's a context episode. It's great.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
Oh yeah, that's right, I forgot I still do that. Yep.
Speaker 3 (46:55):
Fuck Ben Franklin, I'm having a good time.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
Yeah, well, anything you want to plug here at the
end of the first episode.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
It's a great question. I mean the organizations we plugged
at the top and then yeah, uh, you know, just
follow all the cool Zone Media shows at cool Zone
Media on Blue Sky, Twitter and Instagram.
Speaker 2 (47:17):
Yeah, And I'll say, if you're looking at all this
stuff happening elsewhere, maybe you don't live in Texas or
Richmond or LA right now, but you're looking and you're like, oh,
that's going to eventually happen where I'm at, or maybe
it already has, or maybe you do live in one
of those places. There's never a wrong time to start
getting prepared. And I think that I guess This is
a plug for my other podcast, Live Like the World
(47:38):
Is Dying, in which I talk alongside other co hosts
about preparedness and how it's not just like a right
wing people and bunkers thing, but it's not as intimidating
as you think it is. To get started. Really at
the very beginning, preparedness looks like try and have about
three days where the food, water, and power for like
cell phones, you know, like battery banks or whatever, like
(47:58):
little tiny ones in your house, plus a go bag
ready to go in case of emergencies. That's the that's
the start, you know, and that'll get you through a lot.
And by being individually prepared, you are in a better
position to help the communities around you. So that's that's
what I'll say here at the end of this episode.
And if you're living through a hard time, good luck,
(48:20):
and I hope we're all able to take care of
each other and support mutual aid and see you Wednesday.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media and more podcasts and cool Zone Media.
Visit our website Foolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever
Speaker 3 (48:43):
You get your podcasts,
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to Cool be Booted Cool Stuff. You're
a weekly reminder that you too can live in the
swamps and kill slavers. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and
I guess this week you might have heard of her.
It's Sophie Lickterman. Hi, Sophie, how are you?
Speaker 3 (00:22):
What if they haven't heard of me.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Well, then I have done a poor job of Or
maybe it's the first time you've listened to the show,
That's what I'm saying. Yeah, well, in which case, Sophie
Licktterman is also the producer of this show. And the
reason that Sophie is the guest is because, as we
record this, Los Angeles is having a bit of a
fire problem, and some of that might have had to
(00:47):
deal with the defunding of the fire department to fund
the police. But unfortunately, you can't shoot fire. I'm willing
to bet that a lot of people have tried.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Oh, I'm so sure a lot of people have tried.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yeah, it's really I mean, I grew up in Los Angeles,
I'm very familiar with fire season. But you know, this
level of wind that La has experienced, it's just like
climate change. Is terrifying, and I'm so sorry to the
people that have lost loved ones in their and their homes.
We do have a list of mutual aid funds that
(01:24):
people can donate to, Margaret, do you want to read
those out?
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah, although I'll explain the reason that you're the guest
is that our guest lives in LA and is okay,
but is busy doing mutual aid, because that's the kind
of guests we have on But this list of mutual
aid venmos that people can donate to was vetted by
Kozon Media's James Stout for the Los Angeles fires of
twenty twenty five at People's Struggle. SFV Supplies and Distribution
(01:52):
for the San Fernando Valley at Sundays Dash thirteen twelve.
The you know one three one two. This is they
deliver supplies to encampments and things like that. K Town
for All K T O w N F O R
A l L does emergency supply distribution for the unhoused.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
They're a wonderful mutual aid organization. I can't say enough
nice things about K Town for All.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Hell Yeah, J Town Action, J T O W N
A C T I O N. What you'd expect, well,
except that it's the letter J, not like J A
Y or something. J. Town Action does mutual aid to
unhoused folks in Little Tokyo. Eight and A Street Solidarity
a E T N A Street Solidarity does direct relief
(02:43):
for the unhoused in the San Fernando Valley. Dykes are kosher,
which is an important thing to know. But dikes R
kosher is d y k E s A R e
k O s h e R. I think we're also
going to put this in the show notes, but I'm
still going to read them out. And they do mostly
east side and skid row and they have three plus
drivers doing that work. F T s l A and
(03:08):
not there's a knockoff f T s l A dash.
That's not who you're looking for. Ft s l A
makes meals for firefighters. All Power Books a l l
PO w R Books is community bookstore that distributes supplies.
And Seventh Street Collective, which is s e v E
(03:31):
n t H s T c O L l e
c t i v E and that is a Long
Beach emergency response preparation group. And one of the reasons
that donating directly to mutual aid groups. Is good is
because the larger organizations, the ones that people from out
of town know about to donate to, right, I'm not
(03:52):
even going to necessarily knock them, but they tend to
rely on actual on the ground mutual aid groups to
do the sort of final mile problem anyway, And if
you want to cut out the middleman and support direct
mutual aid, you're gonna your dollars will go further and
they'll do it much faster. So you know that is
(04:13):
I mean, I have a bias towards this, but I
just like have found that to be true in my
own limited experience with disaster response. But Sophie, I'm really
excited about this week's episode. This has been on my
list since the very beginning. This is like one of
the cool history stories that made me care about cool
(04:34):
history because this week we are going to talk about
one of my favorite topics of all time, Maroon communities.
And normally I'd be like, have you heard of maroon communities?
But you've been on the podcast as the producer, and
I've done numerous episodes about maroon communities. But I'm like curious,
Like I'm curious, you know, kind of what you come
into it. Have you heard of the Great Dismal Swamp?
Speaker 1 (04:57):
No? Hell yeah, And obviously you told me the topic beforehand,
and I like did not look things up.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Yeah, which is good because that's the way it's supposed
to be. I don't know why. I just find the
format more fun that way.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
It seems like a really good dinner party conversation that
you're having where you're telling somebody an epic tale and
they're like reacting to It's that's yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Totally, totally. It's compared to like the I'm not trying
to talk shit on other podcasts. Other podcasts are fine.
I less enjoy when two experts on a subject talk
about the thing, because then instead of one person representing
the audience, it's just like listening to two instructors at
the same time or whatever. Anyway, and that's why we
use this format now everyone knows, because some of us
(05:42):
prefer it. So we are not talking about just any
maroon community this week. We are talking about the granddaddy
of United States maroon communities. For anyone who doesn't know
what I'm talking about when I say maroon community, Maroons
are people who have self emancipated from slavery.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
People free societies.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Yeah, well, basically just like the shit that when I
say keeps me up at night, I mean in the
positive way where it keeps me up at night, because
I just like read about this shit for fun, and
like anywhere there's been a community of like three or
three thousand people trying to live free and succeeding. I
just fucking love that shit. This one lasted for hundreds
(06:23):
of years, and when I first heard about this, it
kind of changed how I understood us history. And yeah,
it's been on my list since the very beginning of
planning this show. Tell me, well, it's North Carolina's pride
and joy. Although Virginia can claim it too. Lesser Virginia
can claim it too. The Great Dismal Swamp. I have
(06:46):
only been to the Great Dismal Swamp once I went
for an Earth First gathering like twenty two years ago.
I had just gotten out of I don't know why
I put in this thing about my own experience with it,
but I did tell us I just got out of
jail from a protest in DC.
Speaker 4 (06:59):
Because this is a dinner party and we're having a
really lovely conversation.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
All right, totally, yeah, exactly and basically like after we
all got out of jail, like they rest like seven
hundred of us, and when we all got out of jail,
a bunch of us just like walked into cars pretty
much and headed down to northeastern North Carolina to go
sleep in the swamps and talk about how to defend
them with earth firsters.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
I have some good memories from that trip. Like one time,
one of the forest defenders from the West Coast was
showing us how to climb trees, and the tree sits
isn't a good story, is a bad story. And she
got her breast caught in the descending device because she
was climbing naked, and she and someone had to climb
up and rescue her. And that put the fear of
(07:41):
tree climbing into me.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
Oh my god, I thought you were going to say
there was like a nipple that flew off.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
I was terrible.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
No, no, god, everything they survived this, okay, Yeah, they
were okay, The breast was okay, they were okay, Yeah, totally.
There was like some bruising, but no, it actually was
all right because they were able to like take the
weight off of it right away. Yeah, But then they
were just like stuck.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
I thought you were about to say it was a
flying nipple story. I had visuals that nobody should have.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Well we could. I mean I wish I was less honest,
because that would be a better way to tell the story.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
Yeah, but your moral magpie.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
I know, I've learned that justice sensitivity is a neuro
atypical trait, and now I understand why the world is
the way it is, is that it's an atypical trait.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
But also the thing I remember about that trip is
a gigantic spider, Like I swear it was the size
of my hand that was inside my tent.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
That's a nope for me, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
I know, I actually decided that I would rather sleep
outside where if there were any spiders, they weren't stuck
with me, and so I just like went and curled
up my sleeping bag by the fire instead. But the
main thing I remember about the Great Dismal Swamp was
the story that one of the local organizers told of
the history of the area of the Maroon communities.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
But one thing about the Great Dismal Swamp is that
I got so excited about it that I forgot to
do the rest of the intro credits.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
Where we're we're just fucking it up today.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
I know it would have gone terribly if I hadn't
pause to say that our audio engineers Rory Hi, Rory Hi, Rory,
and our theme music was written for us by unwoman.
But the main thing I remember about the Great Dismal
Swamp was the story that the local organizers told of
the history of the area, of the maroon communities, the
folks who are often called swampers, which is a like,
(09:33):
I don't want to mess with someone who that's their description.
I don't want that. It's not the prettiest title, you know, Yeah,
but I wouldn't want to mess with a swamper.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
No, definitely not.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
As long as there's been oppression, there have been people
who have learned that if you just live somewhere that
is an absolute pain in the ass to build roads in,
you can avoid that oppression the mountains. You know, it's
across history. There's like anthropology, but about this the art
of not being governed that I haven't finished reading yet.
(10:04):
My dad read it, and my dad read it and
was like, no, wonder you live in the mountains, But
if where you live is hard to get in and
out of. Not even hard to live, but hard to
get in and out of. You have less government overall.
So people resisting the creation of nation states have fled
to the mountains since forever. And it's like, why partisan
struggle happens in the mountains or whatever. Swamps, Yeah, swamps
(10:26):
are at least as much of a pain in the
asses mountains, and they are full of huge spiders and
you can't build anything there.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Apparently huge spiders.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Oh I know, it was probably only really the size
of my palm, but that is still that's huge. That's
too big for a spider for us, that's not good. Yeah,
it's not the spider's fault that I feel that way,
But it's just I have limits, you know. And it's
less that it's impossible to live in these places, and
(10:56):
more like it's impossible to set up state infrastructure and
methods of control and extract value from there. People live
in mountains and swamps and shit, and they always have,
but they're hard to project power into and they're hard
to economically extract from. I mean, people do it. Don't
get me wrong. I lived in I live in West Virginia.
This is one of the most economically extracted from places
in the country. But the way they do that is
(11:18):
they literally blow up the mountains. So whenever I research
a topic for this show, I go through sort of
an exploding head meme diagram of progressions of the versions
of this story. There's the clickbait summary that's too pat
and just too cool and too radical, and everyone is
perfect politics and everything was great, and then I stumble
upon the rejection of that story. I usually then on
(11:41):
top of that find the real story, which is sort
of usually a synthesis of the two. And that's how
this story was. I actually ended up back where I started,
way more than I thought I would. The first story
I heard about the Great Dismal Swamps was that it
was a place where for centuries people fleeing enslavement, Indigenous
people and poor white people lived in harmony, free from
(12:03):
the rule of law, and waged war on the slave
society around them. Clearly, I am drawn to this, right,
that is a perfect story for me. There is nothing
wrong here, you know. And then I heard a counterpoint,
which was still describing an amazing place, that the Maroon
community the Dismal Swamp was there, but it wasn't some
(12:23):
multi racial paradise. It was just a place where mostly
black people lived, and it wasn't at war with the
slave society. It was just trying to keep its head
down and survive. That was the story that like replaced
the initial story in my head. This was still this
is where I was at when I started my research,
and I was like, well, I'm covering that. That sounds amazing,
you know. But the thing is it was both of
(12:46):
these things at different times for different people, over the
course of hundreds of years, and they absolutely led endless
raids and wars on slave society out of these swamps.
So don't worry if that's what you're here for, there's
going to be raids. The short version of the story
is for centuries, people escaping oppression, white, Black and indigenous,
(13:07):
especially by the end mostly black, moved into the least
hospitable part of the East Coast and built a multi
generational community, or rather like dozens of different communities. They
led raids on nearby plantations and they helped countless people
escape to freedom. For the most part, they kept their
heads low rather than doing raids for survival. But there
(13:28):
was like different communities that had different vibes around this.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Yeah, that's step two on the don't mess with us
checklist is we won't bother you if you don't bother us.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, And I can only imagine there was
like some pretty annoying conversations in between these two groups
where they're like, could you please stop raiding? Whenever you raid,
they raid back, and people are like, yeah, but I
want to go kill the guy who owned me, And
people are like that's fair, valid, but yeah, yeah, both
(13:58):
sides have a point, you know. Yeah, but we don't
have a lot of records of what they actually talked
about internally because well, I'll talk about it they didn't.
Yeah yeah. And then like even less than basically this
was like they chose to be in the dark place
on them be swamps.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Yeah, bad, bad place for things to not disintegrate.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Yeah, totally. Oh yeah, that's probably like endless journals that
just oh man, that are swamp I know, I want
to read them.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
By the time of the Civil War or during the
Civil War, they were in a gorilla war against the Confederacy,
and they put their lives on the line to help
other people find their freedom again and again because the
maroons of the Great Dismal Swamp were some of the
coolest people in American history. The problem is we mostly
have conjecture. In the past twenty years or so, there
(14:50):
have been more archaeological expeditions which confirmed a lot of
what people had been conjecturing, but we still don't really
know all the details. One abolition is journalist of the
nineteenth century named Edmund Jackson visited the place and he
wound up writing, quote, how long this colony has existed,
what is the amount of its population? What portion of
(15:11):
the colonists are now fugitives? And what are descendants of fugitives?
Are questions not easily determined, And we kind of just
don't have any better answers now than we did then. Well,
we have slightly better answers now because after the end
of the Civil War some of the people left, and
then they talked about what they did. You know, they're like, oh, yeah,
I lived in the swamps for four years, or oh
I grew up there or whatever, you know, but only
(15:34):
a couple of those stories, fair enough. What they didn't
have in the swamps was advertisements. I actually don't know
how they knew what products and services to enjoy. They
might not even have that's not sure. I do know
they had products and services because there's archaeological evidence of
an instrument maker who lived there, which is the coolest
(15:55):
job ever. There's the guy who just made banjos in
the swamp for people who are rating slave society amazing.
So this show is sponsored by di y Banjo's only
if you promise to attack slavers, but it's also sponsored
by all of this other stuff. And we're back, We're bad.
(16:23):
I like Banjo's. One time I was talking to this
person and I was like, I don't know if you
remember me, and she was like, of course I remember you, Magpie.
You taught me how to play banjo. And I looked
at her. This is a period of my life where
I drank a lot and I said I knew how
to play banjo.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Ah, that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Because apparently at some point I had learned how to
play banjo, and then, while drunk at a party, shown
this person how to play Banjo's amazing. Completely forgotten that
that happened.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
Good for you, Magpie, Thanks thanks.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
And that's why drinking and your early twenties leads to
a lot of stories that you can't tell because you
don't know them anyway. So for most of the people
living in the swamp, anti maroon laws meant that it
would be one hundred percent legal for people to just
outright murder them for like centuries. Basically, like if you
live in the swamp, someone could just like come by
(17:18):
and shoot you and get away with it, right, So
they they kept pretty closed lipped about what they were
up to. People didn't want to talk much about the
huge multi century crime they were all committing together. And
my lord, if you're going to do a good crime,
it should be multi century bad crimes. You should just
keep them short.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
That's so funny.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
It's so funny. There are two books that are my
main sources for this. Both came out in twenty twenty two.
I wish I knew what that. Neither one references the other,
but I'm like, I'm so curious. One is the sort
of main history book on the subject. It is called
Dismal Freedom by Jay Brent Morris, and it seems to
(17:59):
be the main historical book collecting all the evidence that
we have. It comes out from University of North Carolina Press.
It's more of a history book. The other book is
called Intimate Direct Democracy by Mediebo Cadale, and it is
more of a social history. It presents where the Maroons
of the Swamp stood as practitioners of direct democracy and
egalitarian social structuring, and like kind of how they tied
(18:22):
into the larger abolitionist and anti colonial struggle that was
happening at the time. They're both good. There's this huge
swamp called the Great Dismal Swamp. It straddles the border
from North Carolina to Lesser Virginia, sometimes referred to as
Virginia by people who don't live in West Virginia. I'm
trying to start a fight between two states, but no
(18:43):
one else here actually calls regular virgin way. I've decided
that West Virginia, which is my adopted home and not
where I am from. So I'm kind of opposer saying this,
but because it exists because it didn't want to fight
for the Confederacy, I'm like, well, it's clearly Greater Virginia,
and so I don't know why Virginia it gets to
be Regular Virginia and West Virginia has to be West Virginia.
I think there's West Virginia and then Lesser Virginia. That's
(19:05):
my theory.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Hagpie, what the fuck? I know, stop trying to make
people fight.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Well, it's particularly bad right now because as I'm recording this,
people and in Lesser Virginia don't have any running water
because of an ice storm, or at least in Richmond, Virginia.
And oh I did it. I slipped up in Richmond
Lesser Virginia. They don't have any running water right now. Wow,
So sorry about y'all's water situation. Anyway, there's a swamp.
(19:35):
It crosses between well, at the time it was just Virginia,
and by at the time it didn't have any name.
Well whatever, Anyway, I'm gonna cover a lot of history.
The Carolinas don't even exist at the start of this story.
Big swamp used to be about two thousand square miles,
which is a meaningless number to me until I looked
it up. Do you have any sense of how big
two thousand square miles is?
Speaker 1 (19:56):
No?
Speaker 3 (19:56):
I have. That does not compute in my brain. Ever.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
I know if someone could say twelve thousand square miles
or twelve million square miles and they could be the
same size, and I would not go, you know, hold.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
On two thousand. It's a Delaware miles. I don't think
about Delaware ever, no offense.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Oh right, I'm from well, not there, but close enough.
It's a it's more than a Rhode Island.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
Wait, I'm looking at a graphic.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
For those other people that don't think about it, it says.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
You know, but it's a terrible graphic. I take it back.
I don't care about that graphic.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
To comparing it to like a number of dinosaurs something that.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Just doesn't matter. How big is two thousand square miles.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
That's more than a mosquito could fly at a fortnight.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
That's nothing. None of these things do anything for me.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
All right, Well, Rhode Island is like fifteen hundred, but
you all have states that are the size of like Europe.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Yeah, I was gonna say, I'm a West Coast galley.
Los Angeles is five hundred square miles, so you're telling
me it is four four lays. So that's large and
in charge.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Yeah, that's also wild that LA is a third the
size of one of the states.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
But anyway, but also like one of the top three
economies in the world.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Yeah, no, it makes sense. These days, there's about a
thousand square miles left overall of the swamp, but the
actual portion of it that is like truly the untouched
and protected swamp, is way smaller than that, because everything
that happens in the United States is the story of
the loss of ecosystems. Yep. Originally it ran all the
(21:34):
way from the Chesapeake Bay up north to the album
Maral sound in the South, which I clearly probably know
how to pronounce. I didn't look it up, so I'm
probably wrong, which is annoying because it's a word that's
gonna come up again and again, and if you're from
that area, you're gonna get just like slightly grouch. Here
with me every time I say album Marley, album Marl,
(21:55):
album Marl. I'm going with album Marle. See how it goes.
Not all of the swamp was completely impenetrable, but a
lot of it was. And like these days, the I've
read like anecdotal stories whenever people are trying to talk
about how remote the Dismal Swamp is. Yeah, they say
that special forces like parachute in the middle of it
to test their metal against nature. Well that's nice, yeah,
(22:19):
but they're doing it against the tiny version m so
they ain't got nothing on an old maroon. It's the
first place I ever saw intact old growth forest besides
like an old oak tree here or there or whatever,
because I am not an West Coast girling. The swamp
is a wonderful place and people have been fleeing there
(22:39):
since the very first white people showed up anywhere near it.
People have been fleeing into this swamp since before English
people showed up.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
That's wild.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Yeah, people have been living near and alongside the swamp
for a really long ass time. There's archaeological evidence of
settlement in the area by the early woodlanda culture about
which little is known. By the sixteenth century, about a
dozen different peoples lived in the swamp, and these were
generally smaller tribes, clans, nations that were less prosperous than
(23:11):
like the Cherokee who lived just west of them. And
the first white settlement in the area did not last.
In fact, it sort of presages the rest of the story.
About six hundred or seven hundred Spanish folk showed up
in fifteen twenty five with one hundred and slaved Africans
in tow and the trip went badly for the white
(23:32):
people in that group. From the beginning, their flagship ran
aground the indigenous interpreters they brought along with them, pieced
out and took off into the forest, and the settlers
built a settlement called San Miguel de Gualdape, and they
had the first known slave re volt in North America,
(23:52):
pre dating even the English showing up, because all the
settlers were starving and they were arguing, like, it's funny
because it it also predates, like, well, I'll get to
the complicated nature of how the slave trade started in
North America and like how like sixteen nineteen was the
first time that like unfree Africans arrived or whatever, and
so we're sti talking about like one hundred years before that. Cool,
(24:12):
But all the settlers were starving and they're arguing, like, hey,
should we go back home? And they started in fighting,
and the guy who wanted to stay was arrested by
the people who wanted to leave, and the enslaved people
were like, the fuck all this. They actually rescued the leader,
the one who was arrested, set fired to a bunch
of the buildings, and then fucked off into the woods
(24:33):
to join the local indigenous people. And that's the end
of anyone hearing about them. They had a successful slaver
vault and disappeared to go live in the woods with
people who liked them.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
That's crazy.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Yeah, that's the that's the true story of the founding
of America. By fifteen twenty seven, one hundred and fifty
Spanish survivors went back home. It was not a successful settlement.
In sixteen oh seven, the English people showed up founded Jamestown,
the first permanent settlement by the English in North America.
And within two fucking years people were already rebelling. Like
(25:10):
when there was like only like one hundred people there,
people were fucking off and running into the woods.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
Incredibly cool.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Yeah, because they brought a bunch of indentured servants with them.
About two thirds or three quarters of the people who
were in the first wave of English settlements were indentured
servants and legally unfree. This isn't slavery. And people like
to argue like crazy about that, mostly white people who
want to feel oppressed. But you don't have to argue
(25:40):
that indentured servitude to slavery in order to feel oppressed.
The indentured servants, who were all white at first, they
were oppressed. It was a fucked up and unfree situation.
By sixteen oh nine, they started running away and joining
the Powatans, which is a confederation of indigenous group that
the English had imediately shown up and murdered and enslaved
(26:02):
and shit like. Literally, by the end of this first
century of English settlement, ninety percent of the Powatan population
is gone and the rest will be scattered. Wow, it
would be really fun to teach American.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
History because it's just such a It'd be like it
would have been my dream history teacher.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
I would have had a real hard time sticking to
the syllabus if it was provided to me by the state,
because like, I didn't learn that, Like when they first
showed up, immediately people were like, not a hell with this,
you know, I'm not starving for you rich people, like
because in sixteen o nine to sixteen ten was the
starving Time in Jamestown. I probably did learn about this
(26:41):
in school. I just didn't care because these people didn't
feel like the protagonists to me. You know, Yeah, people
were starving to death, thus the name starving Time, and
they ate dogs and people and it was bad. So
people were like, well, I could die for you, the
guy who owns my contract or I could get the
(27:05):
fuck out of here and go into the woods and
hang out with these people who are perfectly nice. And
so they fled, not all of them, but a ton
of them fled despite being told they would be executed
if they were caught.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Do love an or they're like, yeah, I could do
that thing that sounds really fucking awful, or literally anything else.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Yeah, high risk, high reward, get the fuck out of here.
And also, at some point there's no risk because you're
just dead either way, you know, right. I was gonna
write that all these first indentured servants who fled were white,
because black people weren't transported to the British colonies until
sixteen nineteen, and the first ones were indentured servants. But
these folks weren't white yet because whiteness is a social
(27:43):
category didn't exist in older conceptions of slavery. You could
enslave people for life if they were a different religion
than you. If they converted to Christianity, you were supposed
to set them free. This is obviously not a good system, right,
but it has a convert to Christianity, get free. Loophole,
like wasn't going to work for people, specifically the Spanish
(28:05):
and the Portuguese colonies, the Catholic colonies. By sixteen fifty,
you have hereditary, lifelong enslavement based on race in the
Spanish and Portuguese colonies. English people were like, well, that
sounds good for the economy. Sign us up. That's my
British accent. I can't do a British accent. And they
did this when Charles the Second was restorative throne after
(28:27):
the English Civil War, which you can listen to our
episode about the Levelers if you want to hear more
about that, and the king Charles the Second was like, hell, yeah,
let's do the slave trade thing. Sign us up and
we'll talk more about Charles the Second in a little bit.
Don't worry. I know you're like, I hope there's more
Charles the Second in here. Even before that, the English
settlers were like, you know, it sucks that we go
(28:49):
through all this work to get these people here and
like make them work for us without paying them, but
then we have to let them go at the end
of it, Like where's the where's the profit in that?
Besides the prophit I've already gotten out of them, So
why don't we just come up with loopholes where if
people do anything we dislike, we extend their contracts. By
sixteen forty two, you have runaway labor laws, which means
(29:13):
fugitive slave laws in America are literally older than slavery
in the colonies. The idea that like, if a worker
runs away, you're gonna hunt them down and maybe kill
them is really really baked into this country.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
Jesus Christ, I fucking hate America.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Yeah, for any strong American patriots, you're not gonna like
this episode.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Yeah, pool should ask USA scam ass country.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
It absolutely is a scam country. That's like the core
of so much of what the stuff that relates to.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
All this scam ass country.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
By the sixteen sixties, you have race based slavery in
the US going off like crazy, And I want to
go on a rabbit hole down. The wildest thing I
learned on the side while researching all of this.
Speaker 4 (30:06):
Like at a dinner party, would you have like a
side story?
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Oh, this is great side question?
Speaker 2 (30:12):
All right. So, not only was Benjamin Franklin very racist,
especially in his youth, he goes abolitionist near the end
of his life, but like he believed that we should
keep America white. So that are you ready for this?
So that we could look good to space aliens, sir,
(30:33):
literal outer space aliens living on Mars and Venus is
why we should make America white, Sir. I'm gonna read
you the quote.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Sir.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Ben Franklin wrote a piece in seventeen fifty one called
Observations concerning the Increase of Mankind. In it, he lays
out the colonial American mindset of race. And I think
because I actually started reading this piece because I was
trying to understand the colonial conceptions of racial categories, right yeah,
because I started talking about how the people who ran
(31:07):
away were black and tawny, and I was like, what
the fuck is tawny? Why do why is a new
racial category being But I'll tell you about tawny. According
to Ben Franklin quote, the number of purely white people
in the world is proportionately very small. All of Africa
is black or tawny. Asia is chiefly tawny, America exclusive
(31:31):
of newcomers wholly so. And in Europe the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians,
and Swedes are generally what we call a swarthy complexion,
as are the Germans. Also, Yeah, that's right, the fucking
Swedes and Germans aren't white. That's how fucking anyway.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Crazy.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
The Saxons only accepted who with the English make the
principal body of white people on the face of the Earth.
I could wish their numbers were increased. And while we
are as I may call it scouring our planet by
clearing America of woods and so making this side of
our globe reflect a brighter light to the eyes of
(32:15):
inhabitants in Mars or Venus, Why should we, in the
sight of superior beings, darken its people. Why increase the
suns of Africa by planting them in America, where we
have so fair an opportunity by excluding all blacks and
tawnis of increasing the lovely white and red. But perhaps
(32:35):
I am partial to the complexion of my country, for
such of partiality is natural to mankind. So like, he's
doing so many things here.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Heday, he's all over the place, and just like so
stupid and like, ah, okay, yeah, what do you go.
I'm like a bathel if you just threw I know,
I know, there's so much going on here.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Ramble so much ramble rmble.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
I love the like, well, everyone's racist for their own race.
That's not true. You have to teach kids that race
exists and that they should hate people for looking different,
you know, correct, correct, And he makes up four races
and he puts everyone in them from a scale of
bad to good. Yeah, black, tawny, swarthy, and white. And
(33:23):
he's saying that English people are whiter than Swedish people
by complexion, which is just funny.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
Guy's I'm like this guy, Ben Franklin. It's like I
keep forgetting that it's that it's Ben Franklin and not
just some random asshole. He's, you know, mister elite asshole,
mister mister ceo of asshole them.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
I know. And he's like the science man who's on
our money, right yeah, And so he's developing this race
science in order to make us more beautiful to aliens.
And I was thinking, like, this has to be a
literary device, right, and like on some level it is.
But apparently a lot of the Founding fathers real all
about that alien thing. I mean, to be fair, like
(34:06):
it's pretty reasonable to be like, well, those other worlds
there might be aliens there. I'm not. I'm not mad
at him for believing it. But you shouldn't do racism
to look good to aliens, correct, especially if your hypothesis
is that everyone thinks that the way they look is
the best. Well, then why would aliens like any of
us at all? If everyone's racist like you? Anyway?
Speaker 1 (34:28):
America scam mass country. We have an American mass country
speaking of scams? Is that what you're about to do? No?
Speaker 2 (34:36):
No, All of our products are individually hand vetted by
no one an algorithm. Here's the ads.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
And rebeca ya.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
But we're not at Ben Franklin Times yet, We're still
in sixteen ten of Jamestown. I just had to skip
ahead one hundred years because I got really excited about.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
That guy in the Aliens, like at a dinner party,
telling a story out of order.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
Just funny because like during the course of my week,
on an average week, I talked to at least one
of my friends and excitedly tell them the story. And
that actually helps me figure out which parts are like
the exciting parts, you know, the part that I can't
wait to tell my friend, you know. Absolutely so when
indentured servants in Virginia were like, I'm good, I don't
(35:30):
want to be owned by a guy. For another several years,
they fled south southern coastal Virginia aka near the swamps,
became the place for people who wanted to actually live free.
And it was interesting because it was even understood then,
right because like in America scam propaganda, you get told like,
live free means exploit other people's labor and become rich,
(35:51):
because that's what the founding fathers were all about. Sure,
it was even understood by a lot of people then.
To live free was not to live.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
Wealthy, to live sustainably.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
If you want to be wealthy, you stay in Plantation Town. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
Sustainably yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
If you want to live free where people don't tell
each other what to do and you all just get
along with each other, you go into what would have
been called the Indian territories, you go into you know,
you go outside the colonies. So in order to live free,
you don't want to have a state at all. So
there's this whole uncolonized region between English Virginia and Spanish Florida,
(36:29):
and that's where people white and black went for decades
before the founding of the Carolinas. Some went into the
swamps themselves and formed the start of what later became
the Dismal Swamp Maroon communities. Others more of them settled
around the area, especially around the Albemarle Sound. You'd think
I would looked it up during a break, but I didn't.
(36:51):
This history of this time feels a little bit blurry,
So I'm gonna I'm not gonna say this next little
bit with the most confidence, but I referenced everything they
could right Over the course of the sixteen hundreds people
fleeing colonial government went to the Albemarle Sound and was
now North Carolina, the southern end of the Great Dismal Swamp.
(37:12):
There they formed an independent assembly of people, the albamarl Assembly.
I told you I was going to say this name
a lot. And they worked within the Tuscarora Confederacy, which
was a confederacy of three tribes in the area. And
they had a culture built on a galitarian values, like
avoiding the idea of having rich landowners who control everything.
And they also wanted to avoid racism between white, black,
(37:34):
and indigenous people, so they had a tri racial setup,
and that is going to play a huge part in
everything that is to come and as part of why,
it's just like, I don't know, it's such a cool story.
The Anglican Church was largely kept out of the region.
People practiced and it wasn't a big deal, and you'd
have like priests or pastors or whatever, but they'd like
practice in private because the Anglican Church was seen as
(37:55):
like basically an institute of the state and they didn't
want that there. Quaker mission Quakers mentioned, sorry, yep, no, yeah, yeah,
this is like actually North Carolina is heavily Quaker at
this time because they had more religious freedom, especially once
you actually have a yeah Carolina in a couple of decades.
But yeah, yeah, so everyone take a drink. Quakers were mentioned,
(38:17):
and Quaker's found more acceptance there.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Sick.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
By the sixteen sixties, King Charles the Second, who I
told you I was going to come back to he
was ruling in England and he granted Carolinas to a
bunch of English people, even though it wasn't his to
give away. Imagine doing that.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
Why do they do that? Yeah, why do they think that's? Okay?
Speaker 4 (38:38):
Just imagine just imagine somebody being you know, let's go
even like super basic.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
Okay, let's go potatoes. It's it's fucking good people to
close up.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
You have just made a magical, delicious, let's go baked
potato for one, and you have your fork and you're
about to take a bite of it.
Speaker 4 (38:58):
And not only do they take your potato, but they
take your fork and give it to some guy you've
never met.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
I know, I know, and like and not not a
hungry guy.
Speaker 4 (39:09):
Not a hungry not not a guy who's hungry, not
a guy who doesn't have a baked potato or a.
Speaker 5 (39:13):
Fork, a guy who has a lot of potatoes, guy
who's drowning of potatoes and forks, yeah, and all the fixins.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
Yeah, and uh, just like you're like, excuse me, that's
my potato.
Speaker 4 (39:25):
That's my fucking potato, motherfucker.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (39:28):
And then and then.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
They're like, oh, was this your potato? Well, now I'm
gonna call it New York potato.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
Or totally we're gonna name it after Sophie. We stole
your potato.
Speaker 4 (39:42):
Yeah, I took my Sofie potato, and now they're gonna
call it.
Speaker 5 (39:45):
I don't know, Harry, Well, they might still call it
a Sophie potato forever, but or your descendants will have
to fight for to rename Sophie Potato but not actually
be given back to them.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
Yeah yeah, anyway, Uh so yeah Carolina, no, no, no, no,
this is a good this is a good side quest
and uh we're both hungry. I think is also part
of what's happening. Definitely Carolina now has a government, but
for decades longer, several generations. The album Marl Assembly continues
its a galitarian, anti authoritarian ways because power projection is
(40:20):
a very different, like it's a very different thing to
be like I'm in charge and then have a way
to tell people you're in charge and make that happen.
A lot of anthropology is like literally around the study
of like, but could the king tell anyone what to do?
You know?
Speaker 1 (40:30):
Well, I love when I love when some guy that's
definitely not in charge tries to tell people they're in charge,
and then someone else who's actually in charge just walks
in the room and everybody realizes this is that that
person's in charge. It's one of my favorite scenarios.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
That is the vibe of what's happening in Northern Carolina
right now. Because okay, because Carolina was the entire region
between Virginia and Florida is like one big entity, and
it was. The government was in Charleston, which was far
to the south of Northern Carolina and like not easy
to travel. So in Northern Carolina and people are like,
all right, whatever we're doing. For a couple decades, people
are just kind of doing whatever they want. Yeah, it
(41:07):
gains a reputation Northern Carolina as a rogues harbor, which
is always a good time. If you have a choice
between living in a rogu's harbor and not living in
a rogues harbor, you should live in a rogue's harbor.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
So my dog's called my house.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Yeah, exactly. The governor of Virginia around this time said, quote,
as regards our neighbor, North Carolina is and always was
the sink of America, the refuge of our renegades until
in better order, it is a danger to us. So
if you live in North Carolina, you should have some
pride about that. It was full of quote pirates and
(41:41):
runaway servants, and it didn't have a government. I mean,
it did have a government, but not one that was
good at projecting power. And the Arbor Marlay Assembly is
doing its thing. And someone complained at the time that quote,
all sorts of people, even servants, negroes, Aliens, Jews, and
common sailors were admitted to vote. So hey, the first
(42:06):
place that black people were able to vote in North
America probably was the Assembly around the Sound, because you
had a sort of democratic thing actually happening, unlike whatever. Anyway,
I'll talk more about the American Revolution later when we
get to it. And this place was sometimes referred to
disparagingly as the Quaker Leveler Republic, and that is not
(42:28):
a bad thing to be at all. And in this
case levelers for people haven't listened to my episode about
the Levelers. They're this English radical group that was trying
to level the difference between the rich and the poor,
which we need right now. But this place, with the Assembly,
it was not an outright utopia. There were slavers there
(42:50):
and there were enslaved people, the substantially fewer than elsewhere.
One historian I read talked about how it managed to
stay oddly egalitarian despite some people owning each other, like
wasn't trying to be like and it's totally fine now, right,
but there just like was a difference between plantation culture
and like the comparison it used I think they talked
about being like on both ends of the saw cutting.
(43:11):
You know, it was like old timey saws where you
cut down a tree with like a two person saw.
You know, you're going to be like everyone's equal when
you're holding the saw. It's the kind of vibe that
they claimed again, it's slavery, it's bad, right.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
They also, despite allowing that, they had this policy of
allowing runaways, including runaway and slave people to come and
stay there and be unharrassed. So even though some people
weren't free there, other people were harbored as fugitives from
It seems messy, that's what it seems like. It seems messy.
(43:48):
And then like debtors, they pass this law that when
you show up your debt is a racer, like we're
not gonna no one can come and get you for
your debt. And I was a little bit like, well,
what's that about. Is it like, oh, you went bankrupt.
I think that's a reference to indentured servitude because that's
your death.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
Oh okay that that yeah, yeah, that seems logical.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
And the radical vibe of the area started to ebb.
By sixteen ninety or so, what.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
An excellent sentence you wrote there. The radical vibe of
the area started to ed by sixteen ninety or so,
just like, what a great sentence, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3 (44:28):
Feel like people.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Don't realize how hard it is to like write about
history and make it sound like uniquely your own. But yeah,
like the radical vibe of the area started to ebb
by sixteen ninety or so.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
So Magpie and writing a script where you know you're
going to read it aloud and you want it to
sound natural when you read it aloud. It is like
a had to compliment that I refuse to go back
and listen to my first episodes.
Speaker 3 (44:53):
They don't exist. What do you mean?
Speaker 2 (44:55):
Oh yeah, what I want? Yeah, although some of them
are good, but yeah, yeah. But by sixteen ninety nine,
an Anglican deputy governor declared the Church of England is
the official state religion of the Carolinas and made everyone
pay a tax to support the church. Worse than that,
he came up with a way to drive the Quakers
out of office because they did this thing where they
(45:18):
decided that all officials needed to swear an oath to
the new Queen Anne of England and Quakers are forbidden
by the religion from swearing oaths. And the reason is
kind of cool. Quakers are already forbidden to lie, So
you can't swear an oath saying you're telling the truth
because that implies you ever lie, so like you're always
(45:40):
telling the truth. Therefore you can't swear an oath.
Speaker 3 (45:43):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
So all of the Quakers were kicked out of office
in the Carolinas, and you get this tiny uprising called
Carry's Rebellion, where the people being ousted from power tried
really hard not to be ousted from power, and the
Royal Navy intervened. I had this whole thing where I
was like writing in paragraphs and paragraphs about this, but
then I was like, Okay, Kerrie's Rebellion is absolutely a
(46:03):
side quest here. And the Royal Navy intervened, and the
Quaker leveler Republic fell, and the people who'd been living
for generations in this anti authoritarian, anti racist settlement, some
of them fled into the less settled interior of the state,
but others fled into the great dismal Swamp, and they
probably weren't alone there even already. Certainly they were about
(46:28):
to not be alone there at all. Because a ton
more people are going to come and they're going to
lead gorilla wars against slavery for centuries. But we're not
going to talk about it today. We're going to talk
about it on Wednesday. But first, well, how are we feeling?
I guess we haven't really gotten to the maroons yet.
We've just gotten to some people.
Speaker 3 (46:48):
I mean, it's a context episode. It's great.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
Oh yeah, that's right, I forgot I still do that. Yep.
Speaker 3 (46:55):
Fuck Ben Franklin, I'm having a good time.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
Yeah, well, anything you want to plug here at the
end of the first episode.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
It's a great question. I mean the organizations we plugged
at the top and then yeah, uh, you know, just
follow all the cool Zone Media shows at cool Zone
Media on Blue Sky, Twitter and Instagram.
Speaker 2 (47:17):
Yeah, And I'll say, if you're looking at all this
stuff happening elsewhere, maybe you don't live in Texas or
Richmond or LA right now, but you're looking and you're like, oh,
that's going to eventually happen where I'm at, or maybe
it already has, or maybe you do live in one
of those places. There's never a wrong time to start
getting prepared. And I think that I guess This is
a plug for my other podcast, Live Like the World
(47:38):
Is Dying, in which I talk alongside other co hosts
about preparedness and how it's not just like a right
wing people and bunkers thing, but it's not as intimidating
as you think it is. To get started. Really at
the very beginning, preparedness looks like try and have about
three days where the food, water, and power for like
cell phones, you know, like battery banks or whatever, like
(47:58):
little tiny ones in your house, plus a go bag
ready to go in case of emergencies. That's the that's
the start, you know, and that'll get you through a lot.
And by being individually prepared, you are in a better
position to help the communities around you. So that's that's
what I'll say here at the end of this episode.
And if you're living through a hard time, good luck,
(48:20):
and I hope we're all able to take care of
each other and support mutual aid and see you Wednesday.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media and more podcasts and cool Zone Media.
Visit our website Foolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever
Speaker 3 (48:43):
You get your podcasts,
Host
Margaret Killjoy
Popular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.