Fugitivity: Fleeing captivity and seeking freedom from persecution. In US history, the meaning is linked to Fugitive Slave Laws (1793, 1850) which implied that an enslaved person was acting criminally to escape bondage. While the term emerged from conditions of slavery, Black and Indigenous scholars and activists are reclaiming the word to describe disengagement from structural racism, state oppression, and settler-colonialism (see Nicholson; refusal).