Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Nat Turner's run

Doing some research for the next big piece of the website, I was putting together a timeline of Slave Revolts and came across the dates of Nat Turner's revolt. As I entered them in, I realized that, if my math is correct (not a safe assumption), that one hundred and seventy five years ago today, Nat Turner was in hiding after his revolt. The two day action ended in August and he wasn't captured until November. For almost three months, he managed to hide out. What must he have been thinking of? Was he focusing on the first revolt or planning his next one? What would that have been like? It's weird surfing the web and looking up people like Nat Turner. There are all these well-intentioned teachers out there, including the Turner rebellion on their class websites, but blindly referring to it as a "terrible" thing (and Not "terrible" because it didn't succeed or because Turner was killed or because white power ruled the day; no, "terrible" because it was violent). Anyway, a hundred and seventy five years later, something to think about.

1 Comments:

Blogger Renegade Eye said...

Good post.

It is amazing how false consciousness (slave revolts bad) lingers.

I linked to the "History is.." site, with the banner.

7:09 PM  

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