Venture Smith's Narrative and the Invention of the Concept "African American"

In the famous series of letters published in the decade before the declaration of American independence, Hector St. John de Crevecoeur asked what is an American? He did not include enslaved Africans in his enquiry. From the late eighteenth century, the publication of various slave narratives began to address issues of the identity of former slaves in exile in the English-speaking world. Among those narratives was that of Venture Smith. Unlike others, Smith did not insist in describing himself as African in his narrative. Instead, he prefers to describe himself as African born but having spent sixty years residing in the United States. Smith's distinctive signifier opens up issues about the origins and history of the term ‘African-American' and why it took on particular significance of describing people of African descent living in the United States. This paper seeks to explore those issues, thereby highlighting the importance of Venture Smith's narrative as a defining story in the history of slavery and freedom in the Americas.