Nat Turner’s Massacre Apologists

The Dr. Martin Luther King Memorial Commission of the Virginia General Assembly announced that it will spend taxpayer money to erect a statue honoring Nat Turner who was the leader of a drunken slave rebellion that massacred fifty-five whites in the Southeastern part of the state in 1831. Most of the victims were women and children hacked to death with hatches and axes. Thirty-one year old Turner was the slave of a white family headed by Joseph Travis whom Turner considered “a kind master.” Nonetheless, on Sunday 21 August Turner gathered six other male slaves in the woods near the Travis household where they feasted on roast pig and apple brandy. By mid afternoon he announced that the group would “rise that night to kill all the white people.”