I find this really interesting - we often hear about forcible conversion of enslaved people, but less about denying enslaved people access to Christianity as another way religion and imperialism co-constitute each other. Slave owners, convinced that baptism would make enslaved and free blacks “rebel and cut our throats,” as the governor of Barbados put it in 1675, refused to listen. Missionaries, desperate to gain slave owner approval, tried to convince slave owners that conversion to Christianity would make enslaved people more obedient. Gerbner’s question is specifically about access to Christianity, but in a film about a revolution, the issue of crossing-over seems broadly pertinent.īefore 1750, historical records tell the same story again and again. Here’s what I’ll be looking for (since this a new-to-me film, too!): Given Gerbner, I suspect this might reflect enslavers’ desires to prove enslaved Black people were not entitled to conversion or the privileges of Christian belonging. Knowing that Turner’s confessions were mediated (at least) by a transcriber and that their publication was politically motivated, why do we think Turner’s account sounds so biblical? I’m really curious about the extensive religious - and explicitly Christian- language and imagery present in this document. Regardless of when you watch, be sure to refer to the readings as much as you can in your reaction tweets! Notes on Turner’s confessions If you can’t watch with the class, be sure to LT your responses before our next meeting on 6 October. They tied Alfred to a tree and shot him, because they “deemed that his immediate execution would operate as a beneficial example to the other Insurgents - many of whom were still in arms and unsubdued.” The official signpost describing the rebellion led by Nat Turner is a few miles distant.Here’s what’s on the #NUcults #NatTurner hashtags. Then a group of mounted militia from Greensville County came along. They disabled him “by cutting the longer tendon just above the heel in each leg” and left him there by the side of the road as they went in search of other rebels. According to a petition Waller filed with the Virginia legislature asking for compensation, Alfred was first caught by a small band of the local militia. I t is likely that the slave involved was Alfred, a blacksmith owned by Levi Waller, whose wife and children were murdered in the rebellion. One of the first historians of the rebellion, writing in 1900, said that the signpost was “ever afterwards painted black as a warning against any future outrage.” Brophy provides some additional detail that was new to me: In Southampton County, the scene of the 1831 Nat Turner slave rebellion, there is a move afoot to rename “Blackhead Signpost Road.” The road takes its name from a rebel whose severed head was placed on a pole as a warning to others. Al Brophy of the UNC Law School describes the history of the road's name this way: Blackhead Signpost road isn't very long and isn't named after a facial blemish.
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