Lessons from Nat Turner, 178 Years Later
by Rick Gunderman
Today marks the 178th anniversary of Nat Turner’s attempted slave revolt in Southampton County, Virginia.
Southampton County was an atypical example of contemporary Southern life. Rather than large cotton or tobacco plantations, most plantations and farms were small in this southeastern county owing to poorer soil quality than in the Deep South.
The slavery culture was different in Southampton County as well. Because farms were smaller, families typically owned three or four slaves instead of dozens. Whites in the region, and indeed in the entire state of Virginia, believed that their form of slavery was a benevolent system. They treated “their niggers” better than the whip-happy cotton plantation owners.
Most of the Southern United States had been turned into a virtual garrison, with militias ever-present to prevent an insurrection. In Virginia, most young men volunteered for the militia and ran drills throughout the year, but few believed that a slave uprising was likely in their state, where the slaves were submissive and happy.
Nat Turner was a deeply religious and highly intelligent slave who had lived in Southampton County his entire life. His piety reached a point where, on top of preaching Baptist services, he was convinced that God was sending him visions. These visions would come to instruct him to initiate a slave rebellion.
Turner’s forces started out small but snowballed to include more than 70 escaped and freed African-Americans. Turner took an atmospheric disturbance on August 13, 1831 that made the sun appear bluish-green as a sign to start the rebellion. A week later, his forces were on the move, going from house to house freeing slaves and executing the slaveowners.
Within a day, a white militia twice the size of Nat Turner’s forces and reinforced by three companies of artillery put down the rebellion.
To this day, Nat Turner’s legacy is controversial. On the one hand, some historians claim that he engaged in tactics of indiscriminate slaughter of whites civilians. It has been noted, however, than Turner spared many poor whites because he believed that they “thought no better of themselves than they did of negroes.”
Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676 had convinced the white ruling class of colonial Virginia that poor whites and poor blacks could be united against the establishment, which led to the harshening of racial lines in the colonies. Turner’s refusal to attack poor whites was a bold attempt to reverse a century and a half of a constructed racialized culture.
A contemporary newspaper took note that “Turner declared that ‘indiscriminate slaughter was not their intention after they attained a foothold, and was resorted to in the first instance to strike terror and alarm.’”
It is interesting how history is looked at differently when the participants of a rebellion, insurrection or revolution are white compared to when they are African, Native, Hispanic, Asian, Middle Eastern, etc. Modern readers might find the idea of a band of armed black men terrifying, while at the same time holding a romantic, idealized conception of the American Revolution and the Civil War, where bloodshed was plentiful.
Nat Turner’s rebellion stands out as one of many attempts by slaves in the United States to achieve their freedom by any means necessary. Turner stands in the same tradition of demanding freedom, rather than asking and waiting for it, that motivated George Washington (to an extent), Rosa Luxemburg, Che Guevara and Malcolm X alike.
On this day, the 178th anniversary, all socialists should reflect on how far the fight against racism has advanced, but to also soberly consider how much further we have to go.
Until all of the oppressed people in our respective countries have achieved their liberation, and until the working class has united with them to smash capitalist tyranny in the economy and to bring full democracy to our political systems, we cannot declare victory for the anti-racists. We cannot consider the fight over as long as racist thugs still prowl the streets and sit in parliament.
