USA – april 7, 1817
In the annals of slave rebellions, Nat Turner’s name looms large. The insurrection he led in Southampton County, Va., in 1831, involved the murders of 55 white men, women and children and sent shock waves throughout the slaveholding southern states.Legislatures enacted more stringent codes restricting the rights of slaves and free blacks, and sectionalism replaced nationalism as the sharply divided country inched inexorably toward civil war. Turner was hanged but outlived his villainous persona to inspire a 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by William Styron and more recently a 2016 film, “The Birth of a Nation.” Denmark Vesey, in Charleston, S.C., and a Richmond-area slave named Gabriel, are lesser known but still prominent figures in the history of slave rebellions…(read more from source below).
