August 1831

Nat Turner, an enslaved preacher in Southampton County, Virginia, led the most significant slave rebellion in American history, resulting in the deaths of 55 white slaveholders before being suppressed. The rebellion sent shockwaves through Southern society and led to harsh new restrictions on Black people, but also demonstrated the fierce determination of enslaved people to be free. Turner became an enduring symbol of Black resistance and the violent contradictions of American slavery.

While Turner's Southampton uprising was suppressed, the intellectual resistance it ignited was lasting. Black writers and orators pointed to Turner as proof that slavery could not endure. The Virginia legislature debated emancipation in 1832 — the last such debate in a Southern state. Frederick Douglass later called Turner 'a martyr' and David Walker's Appeal was seen as its ideological precursor.