Nat Turner's Rebellion

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with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe to bring the past alive. In August 1831, a rebellion erupted in South Hampton County, Virginia that would send shockwaves across the United States, led by a preacher named Nat Turner, a man enslaved from youth. This violent insurrection challenged the brutal system in a way that white American

slayvers had long feared. Turner believed that he had been chosen by God to lead his people out of bondage. And over the course of just two days, he and his followers carried out the most

significant slayver billion in American history. Their sponsor came swiftly and violently.

“Consequences of this event and its dreadful aftermath reshaped laws,”

deepened racial fears, and polarized divisions across the South. To retell the story of this seminal event, we're lucky to be joined by Dr. Vanessa Holden, the University of Kentucky, where she is the associate professor of history of African-American and African studies and serves as the director of the Central Kentucky Slavery Initiative. Her work includes the award-winning surviving South Hampton, African-American women and resistance in Nat Turner's community.

Hello, I'm your host, Don Wilden, and welcome to American History Hit. Vanessa, nice to be with you. Hi, glad to be here. Before we discuss the events of the rebellion itself, let's look at what led up to its outbreak. When and where does this happen? And why is this

“locale important and the timing especially important? Well, in many ways South Hampton County”

isn't all that important until this rebellion happens. It's an out-of-the-way place that could be just about anywhere. And that's part of the reason it's so frightening for so many insolvers across the United States. And as the rebellions publicize and folks elsewhere get word, it's shocking, because this doesn't seem to be a place where something like this could happen. It's not Charleston or Richmond with a large free person of color, you know, population that's

super visible. It's not a place where a rebellion has happened before. And so in some ways the ordinaryness of South Hampton County really is part of why it's so shocking. Interesting. It's in Virginia right on the border with North Carolina. It's not on the James River, but it has access to Virginia's big waterways. And it's the sort of place that by the 1830s is sort of struggling with the decline of tobacco, the movement of insolvers and enslaved people out of the state of

Virginia to other places where slavery is more profitable. And you would think that it would kind of stay a sleepy out of the way sort of place. Yeah. And then this happens. Virginia had long been of course the forefront of the slave economy in the United States, Alexandria right there. And the timing of this is what's interesting to me. I mean, we're 30 years from the Civil War. This is deep early republic stuff here. And we're several decades away from the moment when the U.S. Congress abolished

the international slave trade. But this just led to further expansion within the domestic trade, right? Yeah. So the folks who are involved in slavery, whether they're in slavery or themselves, or they're involved in the shipping or many auxiliary industries connected to the slave trade. They knew that the Atlantic slave trade would be abolished in 1808. They knew this was coming. And something that starts happening is they start to develop other systems in other ways

to make money on slavery. And some of that does have to do with the domestic trade.

1808 is a little early for massive Westward movement. But most Americans post-revolutionary war

have an eye on land over the mountains, the Appalachian Mountains. And they expect to be able to move out there regardless of the fact that Native Americans are already there and they're their home lands. And in certain states where slavery is a major part of the economy, they fully expect to be able to take slavery and enslaved people with them. Where I live now in Kentucky is sort of the proving ground for this belief. But fairly quickly after the close of the Atlantic slave trade,

and into the Gulf Coast or to travel overland into the near West. Tennessee, Kentucky, those areas.

“It's an extraordinary fact. Tell me if this is true. The slave trade was the largest industry”

in the whole state of Virginia. And by 1830 nearly 40 percent of the state of Virginia's population

was enslaved. Correct? Yes. Right on the eve of the American Revolution, we're looking in that 40 to 45 percent range. Of course, there's a small percentage of folks who are free people of color, but overwhelmingly African Americans and recently arrived Africans are enslaved. And we are looking at almost a 50/50 population. And then we see a massive population shift and where enslaved people live in the upper south into the cotton south. Mississippi, Alabama,

Georgia. Those demographic dynamics are such a big part of the story that most people are including myself do not understand clearly enough how that all works over those centuries really.

“How prevalent among white and slaveers were fears of an insurrection a revolt among those enslaved?”

I mean, of course, in the backdrop of all of this is the Haitian Revolution, which has happened

at the latest part of the 1700s into the 1800s. So, in slaves really fully expected that hence slave people did not want to be enslaved, kind of myths of a kinder gentler or pastoral sort of version of slavery. Those myths crop up much later in the Antebellum era, 1850s. And really are popularized after the Civil War as a myth of how people felt about slavery and enslaved people. At the time, in slavery fully expected that enslaved people did not want to be enslaved that given the chance

they would rather be free. And they really did set up systems with the technology that they had at the time to surveil people because they were worried. Of course, it was a delicate balance. They had to both project mastery that they absolutely were in control and there's no way that you know, they could possibly be overthrown at the same time that they regularly sent out slave patrols that depending on the state they had laws about carrying firearms everywhere they went,

including to church on Sundays. They were vigilant about being afraid of poisoning, being afraid of arson. And to be honest, enslaved people perpetually resisted with slave but like there's perpetual, whether it was in tiny ways or large ways, just perpetually kind of chipping away at the confidence of enslaveders, whether it's stealing a little bit of extra food, helping someone along their way as they're running away, slowing down work, or any number of other

actions fear was there. But they couldn't be as forthright about it because they needed to project that they were in complete control. What happened in Haiti was extraordinary, of course, and they would have known hundreds of thousands of enslaved people rose up. The burning of 180 sugar plantations, killings of some 4,000 white people, this was big news, of course. And at the point of the event of our conversation, this is 30 years ago or so. And so it's new news. I mean,

it's still in that fresh in people's minds about how big this could get. And the obvious lesson from this is how organized this revolution was. And so disorganizing them would have been the point,

“right? I mean, what would have been the strategy through surveillance and other means?”

Yeah. Well, and the idea being, if you could catch one or two people sneaking out when they should it, you know, maybe that'll prevent other instances. There also was sort of a little bit of an understanding that if you don't strike the right balance rate that that could also topple the systems. So they do expect that enslaved people are sneaking out at night. They do expect that folks might go true in for short periods of time. But there's also a cost risk evaluation there.

There are laws about gathering. There are laws about church services. There are laws about who's allowed to move where when and needing specific permission to travel even if it's a part of someone's labor as an enslaved person. So there is this kind of, you know, dance of trying to hold on really tight and keep control, but also understanding that there's no way you could possibly watch someone 24 hours a day. And Haiti, of course, is deeply disturbing. It's a place where the

revolutionary rhetoric of the age of revolutions is applied to a group of people that certainly

American elites did not plan on including their revolution. But would rather not see it a very

a free black nation. That was terrifying. And America was a place where refugees from Haiti,

“so plantation owners, some enslaved people that they brought with them and did up. They ended up in”

Virginia. They ended up in South Carolina. They ended up in New Orleans. And so there are people who could talk about exactly what happened. And of course, that's incredibly terrifying to a slave elite that would like to hold on to power. Let us talk about the man at the center of the story today, Nat Turner. Born in 1800, African American enslaved, as I said, since youth on a plantation in this county where we were talking about things happening, South Hampton County, Virginia.

Here, as we've also mentioned, the black population outweighs the white, he was a remarkable kid. One of these incredibly smart kids taught himself how to read and write how I have no idea.

It's amazing how these stories unfold. Can you discuss his characteristics and what led him to this

“place? Yeah, something that I think is really interesting about Nat Turner. We do actually have”

jailhouse confessions that he dictated to a local lawyer. And certainly the local lawyer, you know, noted interpretations, speaks in there, but there's enough of his own voice that, you know, we still get sort of a glimpse at least what he intended when it came to leading this rebellion. And really, he begins with his community. He talks about his parents. He talks about his grandmother. And he talks about the ways that they imbued in him a sense of

specialness and uniqueness that they encouraged his unique talent and his unique intellectual ability.

And he is a little bit of an odd duck. He spends a lot of time alone. He has a really significant conversion experience that leads into some of the religiosity that he expresses about their really being feeling like he's been called by God to lead this rebellion. And to the extent that he even says, you know, to his interviewer, you're calling this a rebellion. Right? But who here is defending the way things should be versus trying to, you know, make

up a fake system to enslaved humans, you know, and of course his interviewer recoils her that and tries to cast him as sort of insane or, you know, oh, he's, you know, just Uber religious,

“that's what this is. But he has a point about what exactly is a rebellion in a situation like this.”

Yeah, some of the semantics to say the least, when we come back after this short break, we'll talk about how net-turners rebellion unfolds. We're back with Professor Vanessa Holden discussing net-turners rebellion. Vanessa, would you describe the rebellion as a spontaneous thing or had it been very carefully planned? Well, it is sort of a mix of both. So, Turner talks about waiting for a sign, you know, that he's going to know the appropriate moment to put these God or

Dane plans in motion. And he does describe a couple of signs over the course of his life. The most famous one is sort of a cosmic or astrological. That's probably an eclipse, a solar eclipse. He takes us as his sign that this is time to really enact the things he's come to believe that he and all enslaved people deserve to be free. But he does a do it alone. So, he begins to build a community of co-conspirators, a core group of men from his neighborhood, and they start planning

around February 1831 and continue to meet and kind of discuss how and what they want to do. And these guys, some of them are, guys, he would have known his whole life. They come from neighboring farms. Some of them are kind to each other. And something else to know about Southampton is that with the exception of a few large landowners, most folks, most enslaveders and white landowners in the county are sort of close to what the South would call a middle class. They have sort of

mid-sized farms. They practice mixed agriculture. Southampton is one of the few places in Virginia that can grow cotton, so some of them have cotton patches, but they also have orchards and agricultural corn or wheat or they have livestock. And so there's a whole kind of, there's sort of tinier places. They're not these big sprawling plantations. Many places in slave people either live in the same structure as their enslavers, sort of sleeping on the floor and the downstairs level,

or very nearby sleeping in kitchens, which were out buildings at the time. In some cases,

where there's a huge separation between where enslaved people are living and working and where

white and slaveers are living and working. One has story in kind of Greenberg calls it an intimate rebellion because these folks also grew up with the white people who owned them. They all grew up in the same county. They were kids together. Obviously, their lives took separate directions because of race and class and enslaved status. So something to know as we get into describing the rebellion route and what happens along the way is these rebels, co-conspirators, they know the people

they're killing. They're not these distant, you know, absentee landowners or something like that. They're folks who they sometimes work alongside on a plantation where they're 30 enslaved

“people. That's the tax bracket you need to be in and roughly half of those folks are children.”

Inslavers are in the fields, right? They're next to enslaved people. So it's important to remember as they are moving from home to home and we really get into the rebellion that they know each other.

Yeah, it's really, really amazing. The eclipse you speak of just to keep us on track with events,

February 1831, Turner witnesses that slow solar eclipse takes it as a sign from God to begin preparing for this struggle. Plans are laid out on August 13, 1831, an atmospheric disturbance causes the sun to appear a blueish green, another divine sign for, for Nat Turner. The rebellion will begin a week later on 21 August 1831. Sunday night, how does it begin? Take us through it. Well, it starts with a barbecue, believe it or not. So very near to where Nat Turner was enslaved

“on the Travis place, Joseph Travis was a character maker. There is a place called cabin pond and”

he and his co-conspirators met at cabin pond. They had a stolen peg that they barbecue. They had a little bit of brandy, which is a product the county was famous for. So believe it or not, it starts with a barbecue. And in the early hours of the morning, very, very late at night,

that kind of midnight zone, they moved to the Travis place to have their first attack. And so they

begin by killing Turner's directance laborers. And this includes both Joseph Travis and his wife, Sally Travis, Sally Sun, putting them more from our previous relationship, and an unnamed infant child. And then they begin collecting what weapons they can, drilling in the front yard, and really their plan is to move from place to place in the neighborhood. And they do not plan to spare

“women and children. They plan to kill every white man woman in child, they encounter. Which is”

unique. They're other slave revolts where certain white Americans are spared, whether they're Quakers or women and children. But that is not the case here. And really, that begins an entire morning of farmed, farmed to farm, to farm, murdering the inslavers that they encounter. We're talking about a bold endeavor here. This is marching on a route, as you mentioned it, where how many people are in this group, and it's growing as they go. Yes.

Yeah, it grows from about five to ten, and then over the course. There are estimates that it could be up to 50 people or a little bit larger. That's a little bit unclear. But they really either people volunteer, or they impress men and boys as they go. And later in the trial record, folks say, well, I didn't really want to go a log, but that, of course, you would say that that you're trial for info. But yeah, no, they continually grow over the course of the rebellion.

And what's this because the seeds had been planted where their messages through networks, you know, we're going to do this thing, and we're going to come looking for other people to join as we go. Was that that level of organization? So something to know is August in this part of Virginia is what's called lying in season. It's incredibly hot. The crops don't need the kind of tending that they need to the rest of the growth cycle. You're sort of waiting for the cotton to open

up, and you're waiting for the harvest season to start. So it's a time when white folks are going to revival meetings, and African Americans are doing kind of supplemental gardening and laborer for their own subsistence. And so folks likely would have known something was a foot. When it was going to start, how it was going to start, that may have been less clear, but they knew they would have known, you know, these guys keep meeting something is a foot. Turner preached this final sermon,

are you joining or are you not? This rebellion happens over a period in the actual events happen

“over a period of about two days. And then there's an extended period we'll talk about. But”

does he have a specific mission and objective to this? Is there a goal involved about where they're heading? Yeah. So the historical consensus is that Turner was likely trying to cross the notaway river that biceps have been county to go to the county seat. At the time it was called Jerusalem today. It's Courtland, Virginia, but to get to the county seat and get to the armory from which they could then expand outward because they'd have more arms. So there's a sort

of strategic objective. And in fact, the place where the rebellion begins to break down is later in the afternoon, not Monday when they reach a place called Cyprus Bridge. They're going to cross the river and go to Jerusalem and they're met with local militia. And there's a little bit of a skirmish. And it's at that point in the afternoon that some folks scatter, some folks hunger down at a place called Ridley's quarter, a local slave quarter on a plantation nearby. That's about the time

the things really begin to fall apart. So they try to make that move. They try to make that strategic get to that strategic point and they can't get across the river. There's also what's called the the Great Dismal Swamp, right? That geographically might have been a place where people were trying to get to. Yeah, it's not too far to the east of Southampton County. Southampton County itself also is full of ponds and swamps. So it's part of the, it's got the same sort of, you know,

Florida, it's the same kind of geographical space. And the Great Dismal Swamp is not super far and there are already folks who are a maroon community that live in the swamp at this point. One of the biggest fears of enslaveders is that those maroons are going to also rise up and join. We don't know for certain if Turner had plans to disappear into that swamp, but it is a distinct possibility. Right. So just to review things, this all began on the night

of Sunday, August 21st, 1831. Now we're in Monday and it really happens fast as we're discussing.

“That's why I'm trying to keep track of it. It doesn't get a little, yeah. Monday, the 22nd of”

August, hot, oh my god, you can only imagine the temperatures even this is time. All of these events happened throughout the morning. By midday, some 15 homesteads have been sacked and approximately 60 white people had been killed and Turner's group was beginning to, you know, they were running

into problems at that point. That's when things start to go awry as you mentioned and they first

come into contact with this militia at a place called Parker's Farm. Talk to me about this militia, how organized were they on the other side in responding to this kind of thing? I would have thought after, you know, centuries of worrying about this, they'd have a system in place. Well, it's important to note that the word was not out to white people in South Hampton, the rebellion was a foot until really mid-morning because they murdered people, right? They were murdering the

people who would have set out the alarm, right? So it does take a moment for the word to get out in the militia to assemble. At that time in Virginia, all white men of age were expected to serve in the local militia. They would have regular mustard days. Sometimes these were more male bonding events, the actual military training of any kind, so they were expected to be armed to be ready, whether they're defending themselves from a foreign invasion or a local slave

revolt, they were expected to serve. So they began to assemble across the river and it actually is by happened stance that they run into Turner and his men trying to cross the river at the times that they do. They don't have any kind of reconnaissance that says that that's where they're

“headed, they just happen to run into each other and that's how you end up with with Parker's field”

and the little skirmish that we talked about. So this militia is made up of just local guys of age and some have military experience, some do not, but they would have fully expected to have

had to defend themselves against labor billion at some point. Vanessa, all this while no one knows

in the white society, this is going on, when does news break out and how? So as best we can tell, the rebels themselves and we know that from Turner's confession, that they're notified at Richard Porter's house and Porter was a, he was doing well for himself. He's got a nice two-story home. We know that by the time that Rebels reach the Porter plantation, Richard Porter's house, that word has gotten out likely an enslaved person has run ahead and told,

And we partially know that through the testimony and court of a woman named Venus and corroborating

that with Turner's own confessions. By Monday night, news had spread far beyond Southampton County that this rebellion was underway. The governor gets news, John Floyd, orders cavalry, infantry, and artillery to be sent to crush this rebellion before it goes statewide. I mean,

“that's how big this was again. Federal troops are also mobilized from nearby Fortress Monroe.”

3,000 eventually are raised to put down Nat Turner's rebellion of some 50 or 60 people. It's an extraordinary moment that happens that is a display of what an emergency was at hand. Tuesday, 23rd of August, by morning armed militia were swarming around the, in the surrounding area. In a number of ambulances and incursions, Turner's group is whittled down. I mean, they're actually battling each other, right? Well, there is a disturbance in the middle of the night

that wakes up Turner's force that's encamped at what's called Ridley's quarter. It's at a local plantation, a slave quarter. And he loses probably half of his force in the commotion folks just flee in fear. They know that by this point, militia's been warned. They know that likely reinforcements are coming. Then this is a really dangerous situation. So he loses about half his force over the course of the evening. The next morning, there is an attempt to move on

and really kind of like reconstitute the rebellion. And they're ultimately just completely

thwarted by militia, folks scatter in all directions. Number are killed while they try to run. And then many more are rounded up and imprisoned. With the exception of Turner himself, there are almost 50 folks who are imprisoned in the local jail. Only one of whom is a woman, but includes grown men and a handful of boys, really young teenagers. And so it happens really, really quickly that it's put down. And in fact, they don't actually need the full force that's

that's been raised to do it. And then comes the aftermath and trying to piece life back together. And in many ways, this is even a more dangerous time than during the rebellion itself. Yes, you're absolutely right. It's nearly 60 white men, women and children who are dead at the end of the rebellion. It's a little harder to actually put a finger on and just how many African Americans do. Yeah, about double, right? Of course of the rebellion. Yeah. After the break,

Vanessa and I will discuss the immediate aftermath of this revolt and the lasting legacies of the whole event. I just want to review the casualty estimates of this situation. So people understand, Turner's force kills an estimated 55 to 65 white people. Some of whom were children, as we mentioned, historians generally agree that the white militias, the mobs, that that got involved, killed up to 120 black people, the majority of whom had nothing to do with the rebellion.

Within a week, nearly all the rebels have been captured, killed or executed. So explain what happened to Nat Turner, he escapes. Yeah, and in some ways, this is sort of the most interesting part of his confessions is describing where he goes and what happens, post rebellion. So there's a lot of rumor, we should say that. This is where the dismal swamp rumor gets started and folks are concerned. You know, what we don't have the leader is this rebellion even over. If we don't have the leader,

“where did he go? Did he go to the great dismal swamp? Did he get to a boat in Norfolk?”

Can go to New York? Where is this guy? Turns out he's exactly in the neighborhood where he was enslaved. He ends up not very far from cabin pond after trying to hide out and steal food at a

couple of other neighboring farms. He ends out in a dugout cave, which is basically dig a sort of

shallow hole in the ground and then cover it over with rocks leaves debris. And so he lives in this kind of shallow dugout cave from the end of August through October. Wow, 10 weeks. So he's missing for a really long time and very quickly self-hamptons, leaders move to try the folks that they've been prison. And those trials are less about getting to the bottom of what happened during the rebellion and way more about projecting that the right folks are in charge

again and also making sure that insolvers are reimbursed for a loss of property. So at the time, in Virginia, if an enslaved person is executed by the state of Virginia, their insolver is entitled

“to compensation. So it's important to remember the trials or the sort of motivation for having trials”

is not really about justice. Let's take up the story from there because we're heading for the account that is so famous from this, which is the book that is written by a white man about this

the local jail, which is really a small wood-clad building with two cells in it. I think sometimes

“people imagine a jail like a modern prison. And we're talking about a very, very small place that's”

very close to the courthouse and the courtroom. That's actually a very quick walk between the two buildings at the time. Is this in Jerusalem? In prison there. Yes, so this would be in Jerusalem, now courtroom, Virginia. And he's in prison there. He's deposed. And then he's also interviewed while he's imprisoned. And part of that interview or what is prepared to be a transcription of that interview becomes the published book The Confessions of Nat Turner. And

enough of his voice is represented in that book. It's Thomas Gray. Who was he? How did he end up in the situation? There was a little case of mistaken identity for a while, but he's actually a local

lawyer. And so he basically takes the opportunity. There's some rumor that Turner is paid what are

called "hocakes" are these little corn-fried corn cakes. And for his testimony, it doesn't really make any sense that he would be paid at all. And like I said, in reading the document, there's enough of a glimpse of Turner's own character and own kind of really unique personality that kind of comes through. Even though you can tell it's been edited that this is a money-making endeavor, you know, it's sensationalized in some ways. Right. And hardly objective. This man is an elderly

slave-holding lawyer. This is the person who's interviewing that Turner. But as a result, we get this book,

“which is valuable. Can you explain this account in how it reads? Is it a dialogue of sorts?”

Not exactly. So there is a little bit of a preamble that explains who Turner is. And then

sort of opening question. Turner gives a pretty long account. And then there's one or two little interjections that are kind of a question to him. But really it's, it purports to just be a sort of solid narrative that Turner recounts. From his earliest days as a child to his time as a fugitive, and then sort of his concluding ideas now that he's facing death. At some point, there's the question, do you not find yourself mistaken now as and do not regret your actions to which Turner

replies was not Christ crucified? And by the end of this so-called confession, Turner is in high spirits. He's perfectly willing to, as he says, willing to suffer the fate that awaits me. I imagine this

“sold a lot of copies. Yeah, it has survived, right? But at the time was it a very popular, yeah,”

it must be very popular. I don't know that I have a sense of how big of a seller it was. I'm sure great hope that he would make a lot of money on it. But there is a way that because of the confession, we see Turner kind of, there's a historical person who is now Turner. And then there's this kind of archetype of the rebellious slave that permeates American culture and shows up all over the place. And actually kind of continues to show up in American popular culture and media. There's sort of

a version of Nat Turner for every generation. November 5th, 1831, this is all happened over a few months. Turner is found guilty of committing insurrection and sentenced to hang. He did not plead guilty. He was hanged on November 11th, 1831. The lasting legacies of this event are legion. I imagine this really jolted the, the white populations into a more organized approach. This eventually it lands with the, the fugitive slave act. All kinds of things happen, you know, for various

reasons. But Nat Turner had a lot to do with all of it, right? In this Antebellum period. So there's the initial outburst of fear shock, like I said, South Hampton is a sort of place that you wouldn't think anything remarkable. What happened? Let alone America's most famous slave rebellion. And so there's a way in which southerners really see their own home county in South Hampton. You know, it's not a big city. It's not a remarkable place in some ways. And so there

is a wave of fear. But as often happens when it comes to a prominent resistive events, there's the initial shock. There's an initial outpouring of sort of increased slave patrols fretting in the state house, you know, what should we do? Should we move to abolish slavery, even they debate this in the Virginia State House? They don't abolish slavery, but they debate it. And a couple things happen. It turns out that post rebellion, the harshest laws passed are actually

passed in regard to free people of color, not in slave people or in slaveers. But really,

colonization movement to move free people of color from Virginia to West Africa with varying

“results, because it's one of those things that sounds super great on paper, but when it comes to”

getting rid of your only blacksmith, you know, little towns are like, well, maybe not, maybe that that person. So that kind of goes up and down. And we do see sort of a lasting effect culturally. Here at Peter Stowe writes a novel. Not that novel. She writes a novel called "Dread of the Greated Wismal Swamp." That's vaguely Turner. He becomes this kind of archetypal rebellious slave,

sort of always lurking, you know, in the background of America's conscience. And the move to really

make Turner the center of things is also sort of a strategic move that if there's just one leader, right, if there's just one person who had undo influence on other enslaved people, then the issue is the system of slavery. The issue is just that one leader. And we do know that the rebellion couldn't have happened without widespread community involvement. And as I explore my own work without the involvement of women and children, who two groups of people, particularly black women,

who local authorities were very reticent to punish or even call into question. And it's not because they didn't know they almost certainly were involved. There's a level of access that black

women had to fight families and to the community more broadly that it was way easier to kind of pin

“everything on one leader. Now, now Turner was of course very important and he certainly was the”

leader of this rebellion. But there's a bigger story here about the importance of resistance in black culture that really there's a huge move to really subdue and really deflect from post-rebellion. Right, storytelling of this is hugely important. New anti-literacy laws. I mean, they attack the education of black people. Anti-literacy laws are passed in most not all slave states that criminalize the education of enslaved people and in some cases all persons of color.

Restrictions being put in place for black people to hold religious meetings without a license to white minister. All kinds of steps are taken to sort of intrude on what had been assumed to be okay as far as the way people black society was living at that time. And these laws pass and African Americans still holds a little bit. Yeah, they don't. Right. So that's part of that

“day. It's we talked about earlier where you could make all the laws you want and you know resistance”

is still going to be pervasive. How are the perceptions of Nat Turner's rebellion been interpreted in your opinion? You teach this course. I imagine are you are your students generally aware of the event as you work with them? I would expect not as much as you'd like. Sure, I do think if students know any name of any slave rebellion leader they know Nat Turner or maybe they've heard of Tucson over sure and Haiti but typically they'll have heard of Nat Turner. The ins and

outs of the rebellion what happened not particularly. And they probably they have no idea who Gabriel was. He attempted to lead a rebellion the year Nat Turner was born. They almost certainly

have never heard of Dunmar Visi who tried to lead a revolt in South Carolina in the 1820s. They

haven't heard of the German coast rebellion in New Orleans in 1811. And something that often happens is they they maybe know that there are lots of rebellions and maroon communities elsewhere in the Atlantic world in the Caribbean famously in Jamaica. There's a maroon community. Famously in Jamaica later in 1831 there's a massive slave revolt. Maybe they know those things but they have this impression that African-Americans didn't resist or didn't rebel. And so a lot of the work that I do is talk

about all of the many ways that folks resisted perpetually and that the times that does bubble over into big large-scale rebellion and revolt. Dr. Vanessa Holden, associate professor of history of African-American and African studies serves as the director of the central Kentucky slavery initiative at the University of Kentucky. Her book Surviving South Hampton, African-American Women and Resistance in that Turner's community, I have ordered myself. It won the James Brissard

Book Prize from the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic. What's next near career? How can we track your work? So right now I'm doing a host of digital humanities projects that you'll be able to see launch in the next couple months about the history of slavery in Kentucky and preserving Kentucky's historical documents. I've also begun to work on a project with a good friend and archaeologist at James Town of Virginia, but not in the 17th century. We're looking

as a maroon community that sells there during the war. So some good Virginia history coming up

“and working where I live in Kentucky on local histories of enslavement. We appreciate your time today.”

Thank you so much. Thanks.

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