Friday 21 August 2020

Nat Turner (2/10/1800 -11/11/31) His Legacy of Rebellion Remembered.

Nat Turner was born October 2, 1800 in slavery on a plantation  of Benjamin Turner in Southampton County.Virginia, about twenty miles from the North Carolina border. His mother was named Nancy, but nothing is known about his father. 
Over the years, Turner worked on a number of different plantations. Turner's experience was typical of slaves on southern plantations. He had little freedom; he could not legally marry, travel without his master's permission, own property, or earn money. He was forced to work long, hard hours in the fields for meager rations of food and clothing, and if he refused he faced the whip or other punishment. And, like many slaves, Turner was sold several times to different masters. Each time, he was forced to leave family and friends and move to a different plantation. It was this brutal, demeaning, system of slavery that Nat Turner sought to overthrow. He sought not only his own freedom, but to dismantle the entire system of slavery and liberate African Americans from white tyranny.  
In his twenties, Turner was a spiritual leader among his fellow slaves, and many people, including his mother and grandmother, believed that he had been chosen by God to do great things. Then, in the 1820s, he had a series of visions through which he believed God was commanding him to prepare himself for a great battle against evil. During the religious revivals of the Second Great Awakening, many Americans from all walks of life experienced visions or believed that God spoke directly to them, and Nat Turner’s belief that God had destined him for a special purpose reflected the religious fervor of his time. But the purpose for which he believed God had chosen him was extraordinary. In February 1831, a solar eclipse seemed to Turner to be the sign he was waiting for, and he began preparations for an insurrection. On August 13, the sun appeared blue-green in the sky, and Turner and his friends took this as the final sign.
Today on August 21st, in what  has become known as the Southampton  insurrection  he and 5 other slaves, killed their master  and his family, and joined about 60 other slaves from other plantations in Southampton County, Virginia, and started  a general revolt, because they could  no longer face race oppression and slavery in a hypocritical nation founded on  revolutionary ideas of freedom and equality.  As an act of necessity and as a as a means of survival  they were forced to use violence as means to an end, in an effort to escape their daily lives of burden and suppression. They killed mercilessly  and attacked whites without regard  to age or sex believing tht killing all the whites they encountered  was the only way they might have a chance of fulfilling the cherished  goal of freedom for which thy were willing to sacrifice their lives. 
His rebellion became one of the bloodiest and most effective in American history. Igniting a culture of fear, as the insurrection spread from plantation to plantation. Somewhere between 55 to 65 people were  killed by the rebels before the revolt was brutally put down. Nat managed to escape, and eluded  capture for a couple of months, but on October 30, 1831was arrested He was represented by attorney Thomas R. Gray, who documented Turner’s statement. During his prosecution, Turner pled not guilty, stating that his rebellion was the act of God. On November 11, 1831, he was convicted and sentenced to death by hanging in Jerusalem, Virginia of the crimes of conspiracy to rebel and making insurrection. 
He had given all slaves a chance to see freedom and herald it on it's way. He died as he had lived, with courage and conviction,  apparently he walked to the hanging tree, without showing a sign of fear, famously refusing to speak any last words. we will always remember him, a man whose breath was forever free.
After he was hanged his body was then mutilated.He never received an official burial and Turner’s headless bones were presumably buried in an unmarked grave.Many believed his death was made a symbol of warning to other would-be insurgents.
And unfortunately in the aftermath, many slaves who had , had nothing to with the rebellion, were beaten, tortured and murdered. New legislation was passed that further restricted people rights. laws were passed to make it illegal to teach slaves to read and write, and their travel was severely restricted. 
It would be a long road, but from this point on, there would be no turning back. Nat Turner actions  acted as a catalyst for the many struggles that lay ahead, leaving a mythic footprint for those who came later, and  he became a powerful symbol of black autonomy and it's fight and struggle for freedom and emancipation.
Over the years, Turner has emerged as a hero, a religious fanatic and a villain. Turner became an important icon to the 1960s Black power movement as an example of an African American standing up against white oppression.
Others have objected to Turner's indiscriminate slaughtering of men, women and children to try to achieve this end. As historian Scot French told The New York Times, "To accept Nat Turner and place him within the pantheon of American revolutionary heroes is to sanction violence as a means of social change. He has a kind of radical consciousness that to this day troubles advocates of a racially reconciled society. The story lives because it's relevant today to questions of how to organize for change."
His rebellion made it clear that slaves were not content with their enslavement and as a result and August 21, 1831, remains an important date in American History
Turner was the subject of William Styron's 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Confessions of Nat Turner.
Turner’s life and uprising was also the subject of the 2016 film, The Birth of a Nation, which was directed, written by and starring Nate Parker. The film won the Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.

"Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read man's history, is man's original virtue, it is through disobedience that progress has been made - through disobedience and through rebellion."
- Oscar Wilde

No comments:

Post a Comment