YEAR: 1831

Nat Turner’s Rebellion

Nat Turner was an enslaved preacher in Southampton County, Virginia who led fellow enslaved people in an armed uprising that killed dozens of white slaveholders and their families in the summer of 1831. This was not a spontaneous rebellion — Turner was a careful organizer and meticulous planner, using his status as a preacher to move from plantation to plantation to gather intelligence, recruit comrades, and obtain arms. 

The rebellion was crushed by the Virginia state militia and Turner, along with dozens of others, were executed. White mobs lynched masses of Black people in the aftermath — both enslaved and free — and Virginia developed a much tighter regime of surveillance and repression, curtailing what little freedom of movement and access to literacy enslaved people had. Nat Turner’s Rebellion shows the ingenuity of the oppressed, even under the most brutal conditions, and the critical importance that literacy and organization have for resistance.