This article analyzes Steven Hahn’s A Nation Under Our Feet (2004) using the theory of hidden resistance. From the slavery era to the Great Migration, African Americans worked out covert strategies to circumvent the economic and socio-political hardships of life in Southern society. Hahn’s work highlights communication networks and rumors as important mechanisms that allowed Black people to resist race-based oppression. This perspective redefines the meanings of politics and the political, thus highlighting African Americans as early-politicized subjects in US history.

African Americans; Hidden resistance; Politics; Political; Communication; Rumor