Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 May 2025
In the days leading up to Jamaica’s 1865 Morant Bay rebellion, and in a circulated letter written after the initial violence outside the Morant Bay courthouse on October 11, Black Native Baptist deacon Paul Bogle called on other residents of St. Thomas-in-the-East to join him in fighting for the rights of the parish’s Black residents. He framed the events that were unfolding as a race war and urged others to join the cause, “Skin for skin!” Chapter 2 traces the interpretive history of this slogan, drawn from Job 2:4, and shows how it came to be used within the international anti-slavery movement. In using the phrase, Bogle aimed at a Black alliance that would cut across ethnic, religious, and class lines and that would be willing to meet White violence with a violent Black response. Although the rebellion was crushed, Bogle’s vision has lived on, shaping the experience of race in Jamaica today.
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