Nat Turner: A Slave Rebellion in History and Memory

Kenneth S. Greenberg gathers a distinguished group of historians to offer provocative new insights into the most important slave rebellion in American history. They explore Nat Turner's slave community, the place of women in his insurrection, and his religious visions. Greenberg notes the impossibility of ever knowing such basic facts as Nat Turner's real name, the nature of his physical appearance, and his place of burial. Louis Masur places Turner against the backdrop of the nation's sectional crisis, and Douglas Egerton puts his revolt in the context of rebellions across the Americas. We trace Turner's passage through American memory in fascinating interviews with William Styron on his landmark novel, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and with Dr. Alvin Poussaint, one of the "ten black writers" of the 1960s who bitterly attacked Styron's vision of Turner. Nat Turner has always been controversial, an emblem of the searing wound of slavery in American life. This book offers a clear-eyed look at one of the best known and least understood figures in our history.