Nathaniel Turner’s brief life of thirty-one years
occurred during what is commonly called the "National
Period." He was born October 2, 1800, in Southampton County,
Virginia, five days before Governor James Monroe ordered
Gabriel Prosser’s execution. A lunar eclipse occurred on the day of his
birth. It was a time of great changes and great contradictions.
Eight years before the official end of the U.S. African slave trade,
Nathaniel came screaming into the world, a first generation American, his
mother having been kidnapped in some unknown African village.
That same year, 1800, the United States (eleven
years old) elected as its third president
Thomas Jefferson of
Virginia, author of the
Declaration of Independence and an apologist
for slaveholding ("Administration of Justice," pp.
133-139). Southampton records, however, do not make apparent the
personal intimacy under which Turner’s parents conceived their
son. Nor does the folklore surrounding his birth adequately respond
to troubling questions, such as the identity and status of the
father.
As in the lives of other legendary men, the fine
details of Turner‘s birth were made a mystery to veil, I suspect, individuals
in high places. Critical scholarship, nevertheless, still requires
us to cut away the dross and extrapolate that which we know and find
reasonable within the inhuman context of American slavery. According
to oral reports, Turner’s mother was transported to Jamestown from
Africa and sold on the auction block in Suffolk, Virginia. The
agreed impression is that this African female was in her mid or late
teens.
Then in his mid-30s, Benjamin Turner of Cross
Keys (Southampton County), according to Gilbert Francis, bought
Turner’s mother "some time between January and March of
1800." If this timeline is indeed accurate or near true, this
African female became impregnated as soon as she was purchased by
Benjamin Turner. Married with two children and possibly a wife with
child, Ben Turner gave his new female slave the name "Nancy," which
was also the name of his teenage daughter.
Francis’ timeline, however, generates questions
concerning the "who" of Turner’s parents. In short, we
are uncertain who was Nathaniel Turner’s father (Nat Turner
Insurrection—1831, tape 1). But clues exist that run counter
to the standard view.
Most often it is claimed, including by Turner
himself, that his "father" was a slave. The time of his
birth and his complexion suggest that his "slave father"
was not his biological one. According to the Governor of Virginia’s
1831 Proclamation, Nat Turner was of a "rather bright
complexion." The Governor’s description also concluded that
Turner was "not a mulatto." Of course, the Governor did
not know the truth of Turner’s parents. In use of the phrase
exactingly
"not a mulatto" the Governor's words could have only meant Turner could not be mistaken for a
white man because of nose, hair, or other physical features.
For Turner had a "large flat nose" (Tragle,
p. 421) and other Negro features. Some have felt a need to account
for Turner’s complexion. According to Gilbert Francis, a local
folklorist, Turner’s mother was from the Nile Valley and was of an
"olive color." Of course, there are no records to sustain
Francis’ tale of Nancy’s Nile Valley origins.
Francis’ account for Turner’s "bright
complexion" runs counter to the norm of the African trade and
that of human behavior. His tale suggests Nathaniel inherited his
complexion from his mother rather than his father. That a slave was
exported from East Africa to Virginia seems highly unlikely.
Moreover, even if Nancy of the Nile Valley was of an "olive
complexion," that hue is usually considered darker than a
"bright complexion."
This account of the geographical origins of
Turner’s mother leaves us in doubt of the full veracity of Francis’
tale and causes us to suspect that this story was manufactured by
Nathaniel's white family and sustained by their co-religionists
to mask sexual impropriety, namely, a slave master’s rape of his
female slave.
Francis’ account of Turner’s early years also
included the story that Nancy tried to kill her baby because
"she did not want her baby to grow up in slavery" (Nat
Turner Insurrection—1831, tape 1). But such radical
"abolitionist sentiment," such "savage
nobility," seems contrived, especially coming from a newly
arrived African, whose culture sanctioned slavery (Lovejoy, p. 14).
Though it makes good melodrama, Nancy’s
supposed natural repugnance to slavery, extraordinary in any
setting, goes unaccounted and unsubstantiated. It is thread-bare
fabrication. This tale of
attempted infanticide is of the same material as the one of the Nile
Valley origins to account for Turner’s complexion..
Both tales (fabrications) are incredible. The attempted
"child
murder" probably did occur, but not as a result of the reasons
Francis and others have given. Francis is too Christian, too much of
a Southern traditionalist, and upright to provide the more saucy
aspects of Virginia slavery in the Jefferson tradition. This tale of Nancy’s "natural
repugnance" to slavery seems designed to divert culpability
away from Benjamin Turner her master and possible rapist.
That a young terrified African girl would make
a free sexual alliance with an American slave immediately on
stepping off a slave ship seems too incredulous, doubtful and
baffling, a play on the racial stereotype of the looseness of
African sexual morality. And the lust of black American Christian
male slaves.
That Nancy, Nathaniel Turner's unquestioned
African mother, was raped during the middle passage
before she was sold to Ben Turner is a possibility. But then there
would not have been a need for the tale of Nancy’s Nile Valley
origins to account for Nathaniel's complexion. Moreover, Gilbert
Francis descendant of a Cross Keys slaveholder, reckons her
conception immediately after reaching the shores of Virginia.
That the young slaveholding Benjamin Turner fathered Nancy’s son
seems most likely. This actuality would then explain not only the
emphasis on the young African girl’s color as "olive,"
but also her threat on her child’s life. At the sight of her
newborn, Nancy was shocked by her son’s complexion, which marked
her shame and the man who ravished her. Benjamin Turner saved the
baby’s life, according to Francis, and placed the child in the
hands of Harriet and Tom, the surrogate grandparents on the Turner
estate, to be raised (The Southampton Insurrection—1831,
tape 1).
In that he was raised by his
"grandparents," Turner, most likely, was speaking of
Harriet and Tom when he spoke of his "mother" and
"father" or his "parents." Seemingly, he
recognized them as both parents and grandparents at different stages
or in particular contexts of his life. This fusion of grandparents
and parents in conversation still exists in many African-American
families.
Judging by their status, Harriet and Tom must
have been part of Ben Turner’s inheritance when he came of age.
That is, Harriet and Tom had been owned by his father and were
probably about Ben Turner’s thirty-four years or older. Tom, the
so-called grandfather, may have also been the nameless father who
ran away.
His family having prospered during the Revolutionary War
(1775-1783), Ben Turner was, thus, at least, a second-generation
slaveowner. We have no evidence, however, that Ben Turner bought
slaves other than the young African girl whom he renamed Nancy. If
Gilbert Francis is correct about Ben Turner’s religiosity, this
instance of slave buying may have occurred on impulse, rather than
for economic reasons.
Though they lacked full command over their son,
Nathaniel’s grandparents (probably in concert with their master, Ben
Turner) named him "Nathaniel," which in Hebrew means
"gift of God." His parents (grandparents) raised Nathaniel
partially within the Cross Keys household of Ben Turner. This
community of thickly situated farms, amidst great swamps, was within
twenty miles of towns with Hebraic names; to the northeast,
Bethlehem, and to the east, Jerusalem.
Even the name of Turner’s village seemed to
possess the air of religious and Christian significance: the image
of crossed keys called to mind the legend of Peter as
gatekeeper holding the keys to heaven and hell (Matthew 16.18-19).
During his life, Nathaniel Turner, it seems, confined himself to the world
of Cross Keys and Jerusalem. Though there are stories of his having
traveled outside of Southampton, his primary concern and interest
was restricted to Cross Keys and Ben Turner’s Methodist society.
Sources
Consulted
Francis, Gilbert, and Katherine Futrell.
Nat Turner
Insurrection—1831. Southampton County Historical Society Living Library, 4 tapes.
Jefferson, Thomas.
"Administration of Justice."
In
Notes
on the State of Virginia. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1964.
Lovejoy, Paul E. "The African Diaspora: Revisionist
Interpretations of Ethnicity, Culture and Religion under Slavery."
Studies in the World
History of Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation, II, 1 (1997).
Tragle, Henry Irving.
The Southampton Slave Revolt of
1831: A Compilation of Source Material. Amherst: The University of
Massachusetts Press, 1971.
* *
* * *
Nathaniel
Turner:
Christian
Martyrdom in Southampton
A
Theology of Black Liberation
By Rudolph Lewis
Chapter 3 The Confessions and
Folklore /
Chapter 5 The Bible and Biblical Typology* *
* * *
 |
The Southampton Slave Revolt of 1831
A Compilation of Source Material
By Henry
Irving Tragle
This case book
on the most significant slave revolt in American
history adds an important dimension to the study of
slavery in the United States. Tragle has not only
collected all the extant primary documents (the
trial record, newspaper accounts, letters, diaries
and other contemporary sources, most of which are
published here for the first time), he made several
trips to Southampton County to retrace the steps of
the rebels and to interview the present inhabitants,
both black and white, on the local traditions
surrounding Nat Turner.—University
of Massachusetts Press
The most
important single work ever published on the Turner
rebellion. Tragle's research is an example of
historical detective work at its best.—Eric
Foner, New York Review of Books |
Tragle's
methods are as important as what he has found. So much can be
done, he reminds us, with such non-narrative sources as tax
records and manuscript census returns, or by means of a patient
reworking of familiar soil.—Gerald
W. Mullin, The Journal of American History. 489
pages.* * *
* *
* *
* * *
 |
Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
* * * * *
|
The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
 |
* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
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Black World
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Enjoy!
* * * * *
The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
* *
* * *
The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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update 28 June 2008
