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In August 1822, only weeks after Denmark Vesey had been executed for planning a slave rebellion in Charleston, South Carolina, Rufus King received an anonymous letter that would go down in history.
Inside the envelope was a strongly worded newspaper editorial criticizing abolitionists like himself for encouraging Vesey, but the most frightening message belonged to the sender, who had drawn King's name hanging from the gallows.
Mary Anne Mrozinski, the executive director at the King Manor Museum in Jamaica, held a photocopy of the letter in her hand during a recent interview.
"That's pretty showing," she said. "Here people are enslaved and they're thinking, 'Wait a minute, here's somebody who's saying we ought not to be. What the heck's going on?'"
Hate mail rarely evokes a pleasant reaction, but when Mrozinski looked at that letter from over 180 years ago, she had to grin. In fact, she has been smiling a lot since King Manor earned a spot on...