The Darien Insurrection of 1899 and the Origins of the McIntosh Militia

Authors

Elliot Ferro, Savannah College of Art and Design

Abstract

The Darien insurrection has been portrayed in historical literature as a lone victory of African American self-defense against racist violence in the Jim Crow south. This portrayal ignores the observable cause of the insurrection as a natural extension of decades of black political organizing in McIntosh County. In beginning to center the story of the Darien insurrection in Darien's home of McIntosh county it becomes clear how the insurrection was not a spontaneous event but a planned protest organized by a long surviving political machine. In recognizing the long history of political organizing by Tunis Campbell, a case can then be made how his political machine survived in McIntosh county long after his flight from Georgia, and preserved its central organ: the black civilian militia. Within this context a surprising victory for African American self-defense becomes the unsurprising success of decades of black militancy.

First Page

58

Last Page

72

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Ferro, Elliot (2023) "The Darien Insurrection of 1899 and the Origins of the McIntosh Militia," Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History: Vol. 13: Iss. 2, Article 5.
DOI: 10.20429/aujh.2023.130205
Available at: https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/aujh/vol13/iss2/5