pWith the Ta-Nehisi Coates-authored emBlack Pantherem comic book series 2016 recent films emDjango Unchainedem 2012 and emThe Birth of a Nationem 2016 Nate Parker's cinematic imagining of the Nat Turner rebellion and screen adaptations of Marvel's emLuke Cageem 2016 and emBlack Pantherem 2018 violent black redeemers have rarely been so present in mainstream Western culture. Grgory Pierrot argues, however, that the black avenger has always been with us the trope has fired the news and imaginations of the United States and the larger Atlantic World for three centuries.pp ppThe black avenger channeled fresh anxieties about slave uprisings and racial belonging occasioned by European colonization in the Americas. Even as he is portrayed as a heathen and a barbarian, his values--honor, loyalty, love--reflect his ties to the West. Yet being racially different, he cannot belong, and his qualities in turn make him an anomaly among black people. The black avenger is thus a liminal figure definin