Birth of a Nation: The Book

We're all eagerly awaiting the release of Nate Parker's movie, Birth of A Nation.  Now Simon and Schuster has an announcement up on their website about a companion book to the movie, Birth of a Nation: Nat Turner and the Making of a Movement.  Cribbing now from Simon and Schuster's website:

This official tie-in to the highly acclaimed film, The Birth of a Nation, surveys the history and legacy of Nat Turner, the leader of one of the most renowned slave rebellions on American soil, while also exploring Turner’s relevance to contemporary dialogues on race relations.

Based on astounding events in American history, The Birth of a Nation is the epic story of one man championing the spirit of resistance as he leads a rough-and-tumble group into a revolt against injustice and slavery.

Breathing new life into a story that has been rife with controversy and prejudice for over two centuries, the film follows the rise of the visionary Virginian slave, Nat Turner. Hired out by his owner to preach to and placate slaves on drought-plagued plantations, Turner eventually transforms into an inspired, impassioned, and fierce anti-slavery leader.

Beautifully illustrated with stills from the movie and original illustrations, the book also features an essay by writer/director, Nate Parker, contributions by members of the cast and crew, and commentary by educator Brian Favors and historians Erica Armstrong Dunbar and Daina Ramey Berry who place Nat Turner and the rebellion he led into historical context. The Birth of a Nation reframes the way we think about slavery and resistance as it explores the passion, determination, and faith that inspired Nat Turner to sacrifice everything for freedom.

Further to this topic, I have an article about the trials in the wake of the Nat Turner rebellion, which sorts through the limited evidence we have in each case to see various levels of (supposed) involvement in the rebellion, as well as the prosecution and defense lawyers, and the claims made by slave-owners to the Virginia legislature for slaves killed during the rebellion.  There's been a lot written about Turner, the context of slavery and religion in Virginia around the time of the rebellion, the violence in the aftermath, and how the rebellion affected both the anti-slavery and pro-slavery movements down to the Civil War.  But I think one area that (maybe not completely surprisingly) has escaped a lot of attention are the trials.  I had once planned to call this piece "micro trials and macro history," with the idea that the trials were very short.  At their height several defendants were tried each day.  My thought was that these tiny trials gave an important insight into how the legal system was concerned with re-establishing order and shoring up the slave system.  But as I worked through each of the trials and the supporting documents (such as notes about witnesses compiled by the prosecutors) it became apparent that there were a lot of stories to be told about the rebellion, beyond the function that the trials served in shoring up slavery.

The illustration is the Sussex County Courthouse, where some slaves were tried in the wake of the rebellion.  Most of the trial were in Southampton, but the courthouse where those trials took place is no longer standing.  The Southampton courthouse was built shortly after the rebellion.

Update: These days my posts on race and legal history often get extreme reactions.  This is further evidence, as I've pointed out before, of the relevance of talk of race in American legal history.  I usually take down those comments, but I think this one needs to stay up for the time being.  Of course, the person commenting on this hasn't bothered to read my article; if (I'm guessing he) had, he would have seen that I am much, much more interested in seeing what the rebellion and the violence and trials afterwards say about the legal system than in making a judgment about Nat Turner.  Anon's comment makes me look forward to Birth of a Nation even more than I did before, because obviously there's an important debate about how we should view Turner, the rebellion, and effect of his violence and that in the wake of the rebellion.

On further reflection, I want to add that  Anon's veiled threat that I should be fired  is exactly why tenure is still relevant.  And let's just be clear: Anon is saying I should be fired because I have the audacity to talk about the trials in the wake of a rebellion.  If it were up to Anon, I take it the only discussion we could have is that Nat Turner was a murderous thug.  No discussion of the violence in the wake of the rebellion that put it down (which gave us the name Blackhead Signpost Road) -- or that resulted in some innocent slaves being killed.  And I guess no discussion of the ways that the slave-owning society mobilized the legal system to protect slavery.

Further update: As of July 20, we have the cover art for the book.  I've posted it above.

Comments

[Anon]

Nat Turner was a murderous thug, and you should be ashamed of yourself for celebrating him. (As much as you may try to dusguise it as innocent academic inquiry, it is clear that you view Turner as a hero.). Your work is an argument against the very concept of tenure.

[anon]

Prof Brophy

I agree in the main with your response to Anon, and, certainly, with the notion that you should not be fired!

And, I believe that you are capable of working up history with a view toward relating the law as it was effected in past days.

However, I cannot agree that you do not reveal bias in your summaries on this site. These days, we are constantly bombarded by lawyers posing as psychiatrists, misusing terms of art and throwing around notions of "bias" that is undiscovered in the individual himself.

Although I find most of these assertions risible, I do note that you probably do not. Therefore, take a page from your own book, so to speak, and examine your pov.

You and I debated at length the trials of an individual afforded extraordinary measures of due process, in an era when that due process was often denied to black men, to correct injustices at the trial court level.

But, you could not bring yourself to admit it. YOu could only see the injustice, not the efforts of the "all white" appellate courts, including the Supreme Court of the United States, on behalf of this man. And, despite three convictions, the last of these after two reversed convictions, you could not even admit the POSSIBLITY of the man's guilt.

In this dialogue, you were biased. And, your post above does portray this man as a hero. Perhaps, then, you would find some individuals who commit heinous acts today heroes as well based on race, ethnicity or political motivations with which you agree?

This would be a fertile self-examination, I think. Professor, perhaps you might test the bounds of your own prejudices! And, perhaps, rather than dismissing others perceptions of your biases so quickly, however ill informed or inartfully stated, you might examine the possible truth in this assertion.

[Alfred L. Brophy]

anon,

Thanks for the kind words about my job security. Of all the reasons to fire me, that I write on Nat Turner is pretty far down the list!

Regarding the great Jess Hollins debate. If anyone other than you and me cares about this (highly unlikely, I know), I want to remind them that you were focused at least initially on what crime Hollins committed and how he could be convicted several times (once he pled guilty because of fear of a lynching): http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2014/12/jim-crow-trivia-question-1.html

The most salient lesson of the Hollins case isn't that sometimes the legal system *eventually* worked after laughably biased treatment. Recall that Jess Hollins died in prison because after he received a life sentence he didn't want to appeal and risk a retrial and a death sentence. What an outcome. And I'd add what an indictment of the Jim Crow Oklahoma legal system.

I want to say that your asking about this led me to look more deeply at it. And that's what led me to the NAACP papers and then to find Karl Llewellyn's "lost" foreword to the NAACP's brief urging prosecution of lynchers: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2619895

Thanks for pushing that issue. We obviously disagree dramatically about how to interpret Jess Hollins, but I learned a lot from our exchange and it improved my thinking and work.

To return to the issue of Nat Turner, I have often wondered (though not in print that I recall) how the Turner rebellion altered the trajectory of the slave south. I think it's entirely possible the rebellion made further anti-slavery action harder in the short term. I've written some about violence by slaves in regard to Sarah Roth's book on anti-slavery and pro-slavery thought