Nat Turner's confession, our long, bloody strugle for liberation

“I heard a loud noise in the heavens, and the Spirit was loosened, and Christ had laid down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and that I should take it on and fight against the Serpent, for the time was fast approaching when the first should be last and the last should be first.”
--Nat Turner

Today, November 10th, is the date Nat Turner confessed to a lawyer that he lead a slave rebellion. It resulted in the death of 55 people. On this date, only a few days after Barack Obama has been elected the first African American president of the United States, the daddy is reflecting on Turner's confession and the rebellion he lead as just one pivotal moment in our long, bloody struggle for liberation: to be treated equally as American citizens, to be respected as human beings.

In the confession, Turner said he talked to God, that God compelled him to strike out against slavery.

The daddy is feeling this poem by iampunha. It's taken from an online blog called Progressive Historians for Our Future.
--------------
Nat Turner Talked to God

death is what awaited
him
and he knew it

but death
was preferable
to not living
only

brea
thing

for someone else's bottom line
and someone else's family

but
today
no more
for Nat Turner

177 years ago
a few hours ago
Nat Turner's soul said
"My body is bought, but my soul is no man's"
and struck out…

in a way
as a slave change
that
they hurt you to make you decide
if the pain is worth it
you're dead from the time you're born
and if you try to
and if you escape
once you kill
you've burned your only bridge
so by any means necessary

i don't blame him one bit

Nat Turner talked to God
and then met him
(our president talks to god
and lies to the rest of us)

someday
my father promises me
(without saying 'promise' but meaning it all the same)
he and i
will meet Nat Turner

i'd like to meet that man
------------------------

Born: 2 October 1800

Died: 11 November 1831 (execution by hanging)

Birthplace: Southampton County, Virginia

Best known as: Leader of the 1831 slave rebellion

Two good books about Nat Turner and Black slave rebellions:
1. Black Rebellion: Five Slave Revolts by Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Product Description: Black Rebellion, a fascinating account of five slave insurrections, among them the story of the Maroons, escaped slaves in the West Indies and South America who successfully resisted larger British armies while living an independent existence for generations in the mountains and jungles of Jamaica and Surinam; of Gabriel Prosser, who recruited about 1,000 fellow slaves in 1800 to launch a rebellion throughout Virginia; of Denmark Vesey, an ex-slave, seaman, and artisan, fluent in several languages, who conspired in 1822 to kill the white citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, and take over the city; and of the revolutionary mystic Nat Turner, who in 1831 organized and led the most successful and dramatic slave revolt in North America. The author also describes how whites responded with panic, sweeping arrests, mass executions, and more repressive laws in a futile effort to crush the slaves’ insatiable desire to be free.

2. The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner’s Fierce Rebellion by Stephen Oates

From audio file:
"Nat Turner is an American enigma. Was he a saint? A visionary? Were those visions authentic? How could he have come from the mild Virginia Tidewater society of 1831? Oates answers these questions and more in his vivid portrait of Turner, the slave society that nurtured him and the changes wrought in that society because of him. Reader John McDonough adopts a scholarly, but highly engaged, tone that is patient, thorough and deliberate. At the same time, his voice is resonant with the mystery he's exploring. Its burry roughness holds the listener and creates an intimacy that matches the author's own familiar tone and takes all the difficulty out of doing history." P.E.F. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

New York Times
"A penetrating reconstruction of the most disturbing and crucial slave uprising in America's history.... A vivid and excellent narrative account."