" American Dark Age is a brilliant and provocative exploration of the ways in which the concept of feudalism shaped the views of nineteenth- and twentieth-century intellectuals, both Black and White, about America's racial landscape." --Annette Gordon-Reed, author of On Juneteenth "In this original work of political theory, Keidrick Roy develops the notion of racial feudalism, which flowered in the slave South and the Confederacy. Roy also shows how African American abolitionists confronted this reactionary medievalism by developing a distinct Black liberal tradition. American Dark Age astutely illuminates the contest that still roils American history and politics today." --Manisha Sinha, author of The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920 "Keidrick Roy illuminates the racial feudal obsessions of the generations that paradoxically celebrated the Declaration of Independence while ardently championing a slave system that betrayed its most revolutionary ideals. In exposing these medieval fascinations, Roy gives center stage to the Black abolitionists whose resistance ensured that the Civil War wasn't just fought for the Union but for the values of liberal democracy. American Dark Age is a remarkably fresh and provocative work of scholarship, one worth serious consideration in our more 'modern times.'" --Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

, Harvard University " American Dark Age is a book of both historical and philosophical importance. Roy provides a major intervention with his focused analysis of medieval feudalism in the American context, as well as careful elucidation of the importance of racial feudalism to the thinking of the 'great democrat' Thomas Jefferson and nineteenth-century African American thinkers." --Melvin L. Rogers, author of The Darkened Light of Faith: Race, Democracy, and Freedom in African American Political Thought.