A Journal of Research in Africana Studies
Freedom: Volume 3
Murder in Kenansville: Black Liberation Struggles in Antebellum North Carolina and the Kenan Legacy of Violence
By Melissa Story, M.A.
University of North Carolina, WilmingtonPublished in Freedom: Volume 3
Keywords
African American history, Abolition, Freedom and liberation struggles, White Supremacy, Antislavery
Abstract
Liberty Hall, a home in Duplin County, North Carolina that was once the enslaved labor farm of the Kenan family, is the beating heart of Kenansville. It was restored throughout the 1960s and 1970s by a Kenan patriarch who reinserted his family name and the white supremacy it represents. Public places meant to intimidate Black people in North Carolina—by glorifying the Confederacy and supporting antebellum aesthetics—was reinforced in the renovating of Liberty Hall. A tour guide at the home shared that local students recently visited the site to learn a curated version of the Kenan legacy, one that casts them as benevolent enslavers and heroes of a lost cause.
This essay discusses the oppression of Black people by the Kenan family in Kenansville, North Carolina during the antebellum era. Special attention will be paid to a suspected uprising of enslaved people in 1831 and the subsequent murder of its presumed leaders. The goal of this research is to shed light on the collective memory of Kenansville and its relationship to the built environment. Additionally, this work strives to pull enslaved individuals from the margins and into the center of historical discourse. It may help explain white supremacy that persists in the region through the modern era. The intended audience is anyone with an interest in American slavery, white supremacy, or the history of North Carolina. This work rejects the self-curated narrative the Kenan family has presented for centuries, one of paternalism and beneficence as enslavers. Through extravagant philanthropy, the Kenan family has laundered their name.