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The Rebellious Slave
Nat Turner in American Memory
By Scot French A Conversation with Scot French
Q:
In our popular culture and the history books, Nat Turner is
viewed as something of an archetype: a contradictory mix of
courageousness and depravity. What do these opposite views
reveal about the people who hold them?
Scot French: Like other
"great men" of history who are associated with
slavery, rebellion, and civil war (John Brown, Abraham Lincoln,
Robert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis), Turner is a polarizing
figure. What we think of these men and their place in the
American pantheon reveals a great deal about who we are as a
people. I'm interested in what these images can tell us about
the culture, society, or — more broadly — the spirit of the
age that produced them.
Q: In
The Confessions of Nat Turner the rebel is depicted as a prophet
and bloodthirsty murderer. In either case, he is a man apart.
What did your research reveal about the true nature of Nat
Turner?
Scot
French: Unfortunately the "real" Nat Turner of
history is lost to us. All we have to work with are sketches,
more or less true to life, drawn by people with varying degrees
of proximity to the man and the event that bears his name.
Personally, I was far more intrigued by the minor characters,
the bit players, in the great historical drama known as Nat
Turner's Rebellion. In fact, my book reveals far more about them
— or, rather, us — than it does about the enigmatic figure
of Turner himself.
Q: What
did the "master narrative" provide to the slaveholders
that proved so powerful to their sense of themselves and their
place in society?
Scot
French: The "master narrative," which placed Nat
Turner at the center of a local conspiracy and suppressed rumors
of wider slave unrest, served the interests of white and black
Southerners alike. For the slaveholders, it deflected attention
away from the oppressive conditions that produced slave revolt
and placed the blame for the 1831 uprising on a single deranged
religious fanatic. For the slaves and free persons of color, who
suffered gross persecution in the aftermath of the rebellion,
the narrative exonerated all but Turner and a few "deluded
wretches" of crimes against the white ruling class.
Q: What
sources did you use to flesh out the true Nat Turner? What did
your visits to Southampton County, Virginia, reveal? What of the
mysterious "trunk" and skull? What do these rumors
reveal about the enduring mystery of the man?
Scot
French: Rather than search for the "true" Nat
Turner, I set out to trace the changing image and reputation of
the most famous rebellious slave in American culture and
society. I wanted to know what people living in very different
places and times made of Turner and the event that bears his
name. I quickly discovered, for example, that Turner's Rebellion
looked very different to a slave girl named Beck than it did to
Thomas R. Gray, the white Southampton county lawyer who recorded
Turner's "Confessions" for posterity. It took a great
deal of painstaking research in court and church records to
reconstruct Beck's testimony and reestablish her central role in
the drama — all but neglected in standard histories of this
event.
My visits to
Southampton County introduced me to descendants of slaves and
slaveholders who served as guardians of Turner's memory and
gatekeepers of the historical record. The late Gilbert Francis,
a local lawyer whose great-grandparents narrowly escaped death
at the hands of Turner and his men, regaled me with stories of
his dealings with white Klansmen, black radicals, and Hollywood
filmmakers alike. Another Southampton County native led me on a
wild but fruitless search for a trunk said to contain
Turner-related papers dating back to 1831.
I devote a few
pages in the epilogue of my book to the enduring mystery of Nat
Turner's skull, which somehow made its way from Southampton
County, Virginia (where it was kept by local residents as a
relic), to Wooster, Ohio (where it was displayed in a college
library and natural history museum), to Gary, Indiana (where it
supposedly resides today, a prized artifact of a newly
established civil rights museum). To me, the story of Nat
Turner's skull illustrates the changing fortunes of the
rebellious slave, once the property of Southampton County
slaveholders, today the revered icon of the Civil Rights and
Black Power generations.
Q: How
has the image of Turner been adapted to the times: slavery and
Civil War; Reconstruction and Jim Crow; Civil Rights and Black
Power?
Scot
French: Well now, you'll just have to read the book to find
out, won't you?
Q: What
made William Styron's novel The Confessions of Nat Turner so
controversial? What did that work bring to your research, and
what contact have you had with the novelist?
Scot
French: Styron chose to make Turner a figure with whom
he — and many liberal white Americans of his day — could
identify: a plantation slave with a twentieth-century
intellectual's grasp of history and an ironic sensibility.
Invoking artistic license, Styron built his story around what he
imagined to be Turner's sexually charged relationship with a
beautiful white girl named Margaret Whitehead. This was hardly
the pious black Christian martyr celebrated in Negro History
Week pageants or the black revolutionary so widely admired by
Malcolm X and others! Needless to say, Styron caught hell from
black critics. But he also caught hell from the descendants of
slaveholders who felt that Styron defamed their ancestors as
well.
I devote
considerable attention to Styron's motives in writing The
Confessions and the social and political context in which it was
received. Styron made himself and his papers at Duke available
to me without restriction, which was a tremendous boon to my
research. I admire his willingness to revisit what was obviously
a very painful episode in his life.
Q: Does
"historical relativism" mean that the truth of the
past is largely unknowable by those in the present? Will
society's search for a "usable past" put out of reach
an understanding of the motives of those, like Nat Turner and
others who led the rebellion, who made specific choices in a
specific environment that still echo today?
Scot
French: Historical relativists do not believe that the truth
of the past is largely unknowable by those in the present. They
simply believe that the records of the past can yield no single,
timeless, unassailable "truth" about what really
happened. The best one can hope for is a reasonably accurate
recounting of events built on solid evidence. The most
persuasive truth claims are based on evidence, which is always
open to interpretation and reinterpretation. Sometimes
historians find new evidence, throwing old conclusions into
doubt and raising provocative new questions. Sometimes
historians ask new questions, casting old subjects in a new
light. I like to think I've done a little of both.
Q: Ever
since the decades-old rumors about Strom Thurmond's mixed-race
daughter were proven true, I have been wondering what you think
of this present-day white archetype and how his control of his
personal history sheds light on Southern (and white) historical
narrative.
Scot
French: Though Thurmond was able to control his own personal
history for many years, the "truth" of his
relationship with Essie Mae Williams was well known to many
people for many years — one might call it an open secret. The
same might be said of Thomas Jefferson's relationship with Sally
Hemings, so long affirmed in African-American oral tradition, so
long denied by Jefferson's white descendants and admiring white
biographers. Only now are we, as a society, facing up to the
uncomfortable "truths" about our shared past under
slavery and segregation. But it's still a very painful subject,
and many of us — black and white — would rather forget that
it ever happened.
Q: History
and storytelling are clear passions — not just in your
professional work, but also in your spare time. You collect
antique typewriters, boxes of family letters, diaries, and
photographs dating back to the early eighteenth century. What is
it about the implements of storytelling that so captivates you?
Scot
French: They make me feel connected to people and places
I've never known. There's something incredibly moving in finding
a mark or trace that someone left — perhaps unwittingly —
for posterity. It's up to me, as a historian, to make sense of
that artifact, to give it life by incorporating it into my life
story. / www.scotfrench.com |
