On September 14, 2022, Douglas Richardson presented “'Yellow Man Vincent' and the 1835 Slave Insurrection Scare” as part of the History Is Lunch series.
A state historical marker in Hinds County titled “Indian Trading Post” memorializes an early nineteenth century business operated by Robert Bell and “his yellow man Vincent” and the Bell-Vincent Scholarship at Millsaps College in Jackson that was endowed by the sale of the land more than a century later.
“I regularly drove past the marker and was intrigued by the story hinted at on it,” said Richardson. “But when I began to research Bell and Vincent, I found a dark and tragic series of events.”
Robert Bell was a prominent citizen of Clinton who died in 1835. In his will he freed the enslaved Vincent—described as “nearly white”—and provided $100 for him to relocate to a free state. But Vincent chose to stay with Bell’s widow and young daughter.
Around the same time, a man named Virgil Stewart set off a panic amongst southern slave owners when he published a pamphlet announcing a planned slave uprising he had uncovered set for Christmas Day.
“By June of 1835, Mississippi was a powder keg of fear, paranoia, and suspicion,” Richardson said. “When a woman in Madison County reported overhearing plans for a local rebellion, it proved to be the spark that set off an explosion of violence resulting in the deaths of eighteen whites and an unknown number of enslaved people.”
Douglas Richardson graduated from the University of Mississippi School of Medicine and received postgraduate education from Johns Hopkins Hospital, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, St. Mary’s Hospital (London, England), and Karolinska Hospital (Stockholm, Sweden). His appointments include attending pathologist, Vanderbilt University Medical Center; Pathologist in Chief and Director of Laboratories, Research Medical Center, Kansas City; and Chief of Pathology and Medical Director of Laboratories at River Oaks Hospital in Flowood, Mississippi. Since retiring Richardson has undertaken research and writing projects on various aspects of Mississippi history, including the 1875 Clinton Massacre.
History Is Lunch is sponsored by the John and Lucy Shackelford Charitable Fund of the Community Foundation for Mississippi. The weekly lecture series of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History explores different aspects of the state's past. The hour-long programs are held in the Craig H. Neilsen Auditorium of the Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum building at 222 North Street in Jackson and livestreamed on YouTube and Facebook.
