What is Rest as Resistance? A History Every American Needs to Know

If you’ve ever felt guilty for resting—like you should be doing something more productive—you’re not alone.

For Black Americans especially, this guilt isn’t just cultural conditioning. It’s the echo of a history that many of us were never taught.

Rest as resistance isn’t a trendy phrase. It’s a framework for understanding why rest feels so hard for so many of us—and why claiming it anyway is a revolutionary act.

The Systematic Denial of Rest

To understand rest as resistance, we have to understand what rest was taken from.

For generations, Black Americans were not just denied rest—they were systematically excluded from the protections that guaranteed it.

The Pullman Porters

From the late 1800s through the mid-20th century, Pullman Porters were the Black men who worked on luxury sleeper trains, serving wealthy white passengers.

Before 1926, these men worked 400 hours per month—more than 11,000 miles of travel—before they qualified for overtime. They worked 20-plus hour days, often sleeping in small closets between train cars.

In 1925, A. Philip Randolph founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first major Black labor union in American history. It took 12 years of organizing, but in 1937, they finally won a contract: monthly hours reduced to 240, with guaranteed rest periods.

Rest wasn’t given. It had to be fought for. (Source: A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum; “Rising from the Rails” by Larry Tye)

Sharecropping and the Myth of Free Labor

After the legal end of slavery, a new system emerged to ensure Black labor remained available and cheap: sharecropping.

Sharecroppers worked land they didn’t own in exchange for a portion of the harvest. But the arrangement was designed to create debt—debt for tools, seeds, housing, food purchased on credit.

Labor was measured by daylight, not hours. Sunup to sundown. No weekends. No concept of “time off.” The debt cycles made it nearly impossible to leave.

The message was clear: your body is for working. Rest is not for you. (Source: Smithsonian NMAAHC; “The Warmth of Other Suns” by Isabel Wilkerson)

Inherited Guilt

Understanding this history changes something.

When you feel guilty for resting—when sitting still makes you anxious, when you can’t stop calculating what you “should” be doing—that’s not a personal failing.

That’s generational programming.

For centuries, rest was positioned as something Black Americans didn’t deserve, couldn’t have, and should feel guilty for wanting.

That message gets passed down. In how we parent. In how we work. In the internal voice that says “you haven’t earned the right to stop.”

Rest as Resistance: Reclaiming What Was Stolen

Rest as resistance isn’t about being lazy. It’s not about rejecting hard work or ambition.

It’s about reclaiming something that was systematically denied. It’s about healing the generational wound that says rest must be earned.

When you light a candle and allow yourself five minutes of stillness—when you exist without producing—you’re not being indulgent.

You’re honoring every ancestor who couldn’t.

Your great-grandmother who worked sunup to sundown. Your grandfather who traveled 11,000 miles before earning overtime. The women in your lineage who were never “off the clock.”

They worked so hard so that one day, someone in their lineage could rest.

That someone is you.

How to Begin

Unlearning generations of programming doesn’t happen overnight. But it can start small.

Light a candle. Take three deep breaths. Put your phone away for five minutes.

Notice the guilt when it arrives—because it will. And instead of obeying it, get curious about it. Where did this come from? Whose voice is this, really?

Rest isn’t a reward for productivity. It never was.

Rest is resistance. Rest is repare. Rest is your birthright.

Claim it.

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IncluScent makes luxury candles rooted in the philosophy of rest as resistance. Every candle is an invitation to reclaim what was denied to your ancestors. Shop our Sanctuary candle—white sage and lavender for when you need a soft place to land.