As Black History Month opens this year, people are still talking about how the film “The Birth of a Nation,” created by Nate Parker, actor, screenwriter and director, set a new sales record at the Sundance Film Festival. The $17.5 million distribution deal from Fox Searchlight came after a bidding war among several companies, according to various news reports.
The film, with a name that recalls the infamous 1915 silent film depicting the Ku Klux Klan as heroic, is about the rebellion Nat Turner, an enslaved, literate Virginia preacher, led against slavery in August 1831.
Inspired by his “visions” from God, Turner recruited dozens of fellow slaves and some free people in Southampton County, Va., to band together, sweep through the countryside and go house to house, killing almost every white person they encountered, an estimated 55 to 65 people over several days. It was reported to be the highest number of deaths for any uprising against slavery in the South. The rebellion was soon suppressed, but Turner managed to hide out for a couple of months before being captured, tried and hanged.
The state of Virginia eventually executed 56 people for their part in the rebellion, and white mobs retaliated, killing up to 200 blacks in the area, innocent or not. The rebellion struck such fear across the South that new and harsher laws were enacted to discourage similar uprisings by further restricting the education, assembly and movement of African-Americans.
As we begin Black History Month, the interest in Nat Turner’s rebellion could be a catalyst for reading and studying other rebellions against enslavement and related topics. Historically, very little has been taught about the insurrections in schools, and many people are unaware of the history.
Diversebooks.net has some offerings on this topic that can help fill in the blanks, as well as many others on black history. They include:
Calling Out Liberty: The Stono Slave Rebellion and the Universal Struggle for Human Rights, by Jack Shuler, $45, (List Price: $50), University of Mississippi Press, September 2011, ISBN: 9781604732733, pp. 224.
