Frightened slaveowners cast the rebel leader as a monster. Scholars have misunderstood his religiosity. A new creative history comes closer than ever to giving us access to Turner’s visionary life.
Several recent books offer a more complete, bottom-up picture of the role sailors and Black political actors played in making the Atlantic world.
After all, writing one’s own history, too, is an act of emancipation.
A gripping biography of the leader of the slave revolt that led to Haiti’s independence, described as ‘the first black superhero of the modern age, the work under review promises to be the definitive study of the epocal revolutionary figure.
Across the Americas, stories abound of enslaved peoples utilizing the small window of “a little restricted liberty” afforded by the Christmas season to escape bondage.
After premiering to prolonged standing ovations and plenty of critical acclaim, the slave revolt drama, Birth of a Nation, set off the fiercest bidding war Sundance has ever seen. Fox Searchlight has come out on top, landing the drama in a record-breaking $17.5 million deal, the biggest purchase in Sundance history.
Herbert Aptheker, to introduce the man by his highest prestige, was an early scholar of African American uprisings against slavery, and in his middle years, the director and coordinator of the W.E.B. DuBois Papers, one of the great archival triumphs of US history at large. For many in the 60s, through his books and public apperances, a generation became aware of the Communist Party, U.S.A.
Reader Comments - We need a special prosecutor ((Cornell William Brooks, NAACP); Ferguson, Racism, Economic Inequality, Michael Brown, Police Militarization; Racism and Misuse of Genetics; Rosetta Comet; Jewish Resources for Resisting Nationalism; Robin Williams; Israel, Gaza and Hamas;
NFL's New Low - Asks Performers to Pay to Play at Super Bowl;
Today in History - Nat Turner's Rebellion; Tomorrow - Fannie Lou Hamer & the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
Reader Comments - Pardon for Snowden; BDS and Israel; Turkey; NAFTA; North Carolina; Bill de Blasio; John Handcox; Philadelphia schools; Art Spiegelman; Obamacare;
Announcements - Memorial for Steve Kindred -NYC -Feb.8; Pete Seeger gets first Woody Guthrie Award -NYC - Feb.22; Student activists scholarships available; Preserve Mother Jones monument in Illinois; Save the Village photo exhibit -NYC;
This week in history - largest slave revolt in U.S. history
Spread the word