The local community around the Nat Turner rebellion
The 1831 Southampton
Rebellion led by Nat Turner involved an entire community. Vanessa M.
Holden rediscovers the women and children, free and enslaved, who
lived in Southampton County before, during, and after the revolt.
Mapping the region's multilayered human geography, Holden draws a
fuller picture of the inhabitants, revealing not only their
interactions with physical locations but also their social
relationships in space and time. Her analysis recasts the Southampton
Rebellion as one event that reveals the continuum of practices that
sustained resistance and survival among local Black people. Holden
follows how African Americans continued those practices through the
rebellion’s immediate aftermath and into the future, showing how
Black women and communities raised children who remembered and heeded
the lessons absorbed during the calamitous events of 1831.
A bold challenge to
traditional accounts, Surviving Southampton sheds new light on
the places and people surrounding Americas most famous rebellion
against slavery.