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Nathaniel
Turner
Christian
Martyrdom in Southampton
A
Theology of Black Liberation
By Rudolph Lewis
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Grant
Allows Creation of Nat Turner Rebellion Tour
By
Linda McNatt
Southampton
Stories have come
down through Rick Francis' family for as long as he can
remember. Great-great grandma and grandpa were at home,
hiding, when in August 1831 Nat Turner went on a rampage
through southwestern Southampton County and killed
nearly 60 people.
It came to be known
as the Nat Turner Rebellion. It lasted two days, but its
impact has endured. Many of Turner's men and other
slaves were executed. Turner was eventually hanged and
skinned, according to historic accounts. Francis said
recently that he's always known it was three family
slaves who saved his ancestors by hiding them inside the
house when Turner's men showed up.
"My family was on
the business end of his ax," said Francis, the clerk of
courts in Southampton County. "When they got to my
great-great-grandfather's house, three slaves, acting
separately from each other, saved the family. They hid
my grandmother in a dark closet. The story goes that one
of Turner's men reached into the closet and touched her
petticoat, but she didn't utter a sound because she had
fainted from fright."
And now, the county
has been handed a $420,000 federal grant to pave Nat
Turner's story in history. The money, with a matching
$105,000 from the Southampton County Historical Society,
will be used to create a driving tour through the
county, marking Turner's path. Historical Society
President Lynda Updike said she hopes the money will
open the gates of tourism to this county, which is a
little off the beaten path of other historic sites in
Virginia.
There are plans for
an "electronic map" at the Rebecca Vaughan House in
Courtland. Vaughan's house was the last place people
were killed in 1831, and it will serve as the visitor s
center for the tour. "Most of the people who come to the
courthouse in Courtland inquire about Nat Turner,"
Updike said. "It's amazing that this is such a topic of
interest. Many believe that the slave insurrection led
to the Civil War."
Turner was 30 when
he led the insurrection of roughly 70 then-current and
former slaves. He interpreted a solar eclipse that
appeared in the early summer of 1831 as a sign from God
that a revolution was to begin. He believed he was meant
to lead it. In the end, Turner was hanged near downtown
Courtland. He was buried in a paupers' cemetery nearby.
Francis said he is
amazed by the area Turner and his men were able to cover
during the two-day insurrection, about 25 miles each
day, looting and killing along the way. Updike said the
insurrection abounds with fascinating stories, such as
that of the slaves who saved Francis' ancestors and a
slave known as Old Ben. Old Ben was owned by Newitt
Harris, who was confined to a wheelchair. When he
learned Turner was on his way, Ben guided his owner to
safety in the woods, then did the same for Harris'
daughter.
Ben was shot on the
day of the insurrection, Updike said, and Harris'
daughter, Charlotte Musgrave, cared for him until he
died. She was said to have frequently reminded her
children, "We wouldn't be here if not for Old Ben."
Updike said she hopes the grant can bring those stories
to a wider audience and help the county in the process.
The historical
society, which moved the Rebecca Vaughan House to
Courtland, hopes to open the tour next year on the 180th
anniversary of the insurrection. "Visitors will be able
now to come here and get a full Southampton County
history experience," Francis said. "It will certainly be
a feather in our economic hat."
The
Virginian-Pilot © August 4, 2010
Source:
Hampton
Roads
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Nathaniel Turner, the Bible,
& the Sword
A
Reconsideration of the 1831 “Confessions”
By
Rudolph Lewis
Biblical
Scholars, Theologians & Other Commentators
on Nathaniel
Turner of Southampton
Compiled by
Rudolph Lewis
Nathaniel
of Southampton or Balaam’s Ass
God’s
Revelations in the Virginia Wilderness
By
Rudolph Lewis
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Zippety Doo Dah, Zippety-Ay: How Satisfactch'll Is
Education Today? Toward a New Song of the South
Dr. Joyce E. King on
Black Education and New Paradigms
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music website >
http://www.kalamu.com/bol/
writing website >
http://wordup.posterous.com/
daily blog >
http://kalamu.posterous.com
twitter >
http://twitter.com/neogriot
facebook >
http://www.facebook.com/kalamu.salaam
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The State of African Education
(April 200)
Attack On Africans Writing Their Own History Part 1 of 7
Dr Asa
Hilliard III speaks on the assault of academia on Africans writing and
accounting for their own history.
Dr Hilliard is A teacher,
psychologist, and historian.
Part 2 of 7
/
Part
3 of 7 /
Part 4 of 7
/
Part 5 of 7 /
Part 6 of 7 /
Part 7 of 7
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Basil Davidson's "Africa Series"
Different
But Equal /
Mastering A Continent /
Caravans
of Gold /
The King and the City /
The Bible and The Gun
West Africa Before the Colonial Era: A
History to 1850
By
Basil Davidson
African Slave Trade: Precolonial History,
1450-1850
By Basil Davidson
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1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus
Created
By Charles C. Mann
I’m
a big fan of Charles Mann’s previous
book
1491:
New Revelations of the Americas Before
Columbus, in which he
provides a sweeping and provocative
examination of North and South America
prior to the arrival of Christopher
Columbus. It’s exhaustively researched
but so wonderfully written that it’s
anything but exhausting to read. With
his follow-up,
1493, Mann has taken it to a
new, truly global level. Building on the
groundbreaking work of Alfred Crosby
(author of
The Columbian Exchange and, I’m
proud to say, a fellow Nantucketer),
Mann has written nothing less than the
story of our world: how a planet of what
were once several autonomous continents
is quickly becoming a single,
“globalized” entity.
Mann not only talked to countless
scientists and researchers; he visited
the places he writes about, and as a
consequence, the book has a marvelously
wide-ranging yet personal feel as we
follow Mann from one far-flung corner of
the world to the next. And always, the
prose is masterful. In telling the
improbable story of how Spanish and
Chinese cultures collided in the
Philippines in the sixteenth century, he
takes us to the island of Mindoro whose
“southern coast consists of a number of
small bays, one next to another like
tooth marks in an apple.” We learn how
the spread of malaria, the potato,
tobacco, guano, rubber plants, and sugar
cane have disrupted and convulsed the
planet and will continue to do so until
we are finally living on one integrated
or at least close-to-integrated Earth.
Whether or not the human instigators of
all this remarkable change will survive
the process they helped to initiate more
than five hundred years ago remains,
Mann suggests in this monumental and
revelatory book, an open question. |
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Ratification
The People Debate the Constitution,
1787-1788
By Pauline Maier
A notable historian
of the early republic, Maier devoted a
decade to studying the immense
documentation of the ratification of the
Constitution. Scholars might approach
her book’s footnotes first, but history
fans who delve into her narrative will
meet delegates to the state conventions
whom most history books, absorbed with
the Founders, have relegated to
obscurity. Yet, prominent in their local
counties and towns, they influenced a
convention’s decision to accept or
reject the Constitution. Their
biographies and democratic credentials
emerge in Maier’s accounts of their
elections to a convention, the political
attitudes they carried to the conclave,
and their declamations from the floor.
The latter expressed opponents’
objections to provisions of the
Constitution, some of which seem
anachronistic (election regulation
raised hackles) and some of which are
thoroughly contemporary (the power to
tax individuals directly). Ripostes from
proponents, the Federalists, animate the
great detail Maier provides, as does her
recounting how one state convention’s
verdict affected another’s. Displaying
the grudging grassroots blessing the
Constitution originally received, Maier
eruditely yet accessibly revives a
neglected but critical passage in
American history.—Booklist |
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posted 5 August 2010
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