1792-Dec.: Fearing the consequences of “false rumors,” the Virginia legislature enacted a law targeting the “busy-headed people” who divulged news of foreign…

1792-Dec.: Fearing the consequences of “false rumors,” the Virginia legislature enacted a law targeting the “busy-headed people” who divulged news of foreign revolutions. This “Act against divulgers of false news” sought to criminalize the oral transmission of political events that might destabilize the racial order. Rulers in the Old Dominion recognized their inability to control the tide of information and resorted to legal repression as a final defense. The act betrayed a profound sense of powerlessness in the face of the “common wind” that carried subversive ideas across the Atlantic. By targeting the spoken word, the state acknowledged that informal speech was a primary site of resistance for the disenfranchised.