The Black Avenger in Atlantic Culture by Grégory Pierrot, and: The Life and Legend of Bras-Coupé: The Fugitive Slave Who Fought the Law, Ruled the Swamp, Danced at Congo Square, Invented Jazz, and Died for Love by Bryan Wagner (review)

When the runaway slave named Squire (known in legend as "Bras-Coupé") was killed in 1837 after years of marronage in the swamps surrounding New Orleans, the city authorities ordered that his body be dismembered and displayed in the Place d'Armes as a warning to the Black population. There his body remained for days, giving those enslaved and free people of color time to witness the scene—whether led there by curiosity or coercion. Not unlike the insurrectionaries of 1811 whose heads were placed on pikes for all in New Orleans to see, Squire's body provided an official response to the threat of African American autonomy. Perhaps with the Nat Turner insurrection fresh in mind, the authorities found ample reason to make an example of Squire. For white authorities, the public display was intended as an explicit threat to any who might consider running away, living in the swamps, or plundering plantations. The display was also intended to transform the legendary Bras-Coupé back into the runaway Squire: to conclude his story and control the narrative. The threat of a Black hero, free in the wilderness, to inspire and potentially to lead an insurrection would have been more dangerous to white authorities than the potential depredations he might commit against property. The narrative power of Bras-Coupé and other Black avengers is the subject of these two books: The Black Avenger in Atlantic Culture by Grégory Pierrot and The Life and Legend of Bras-Coupé by Bryan Wagner.

Pierrot frames his study with recent cinematic representations of the Black avenger trope. His Introduction claims Django, Jamie Foxx's character in Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained (2012), as a direct descendant of other Black avengers in the Atlantic tradition: "the extraordinary black leader who would lead his fellow enslaved to deliver righteous retribution on their white oppressors" (9). He concludes his book musing about Ryan Coogler's Black Panther (2018), with Prince T'Challa's cousin, Erik "Killmonger" Stevens, inheriting the role of Black avenger. Between these contemporary references, Pierrot examines several characters, from the Renaissance to the Progressive Era, who exemplify the trope. Reaching back to ancient Rome for founding myths, Pierrot argues that Black avenger narratives have been used historically not only to critique slavery but to reinforce the borders of national identity. Beginning with the prototypical rebel slave (Spartacus) and the catalyzing agent for political action (Lucretia), the various examples in the book are understood as reenactments or inversions of these "original patterns," whether the fictional creations of Martin Delany and Sutton Griggs, or the real Haitian revolutionary Toussaint L'Ouverture. The royal slave of Aphra Behn's Oroonoko (1688), for example, embodies the exceptional qualities of the Black avenger—the status and pedigree necessary to enact revenge—with which Behn's audience would find sympathy. Oroonoko's own failure dooms his fellow enslaved who are incapable of enacting vengeance themselves, and threats posed by the Black avenger are safely (though brutally) exorcised by the narrative. In the end, the Black avenger trope has "contributed to deny, stifle, and obfuscate the portrayal of Black collective agency and its very reality" (14). As such, the Black avenger is a sacrificial figure, dying on the altar—and for the benefit—of white identity.

Bras-Coupé, the subject of Bryan Wagner's book, is a particular incarnation of the Black avenger not mentioned by Pierrot. Bras-Coupé's legend extends far beyond the basic facts of Squire's outlawry, as reflected in Wagner's subtitle: "The Fugitive Slave Who Fought the Law...