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The Birth of a Nation : a Roundtable The Birth of a Nation : A Roundtable Civil War History, Volume 64, Number 1, March 2018, pp. 56-91 (Article) Published by The Kent State University Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/cwh.2018.0004 For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/686074 Access provided by Penn State Univ Libraries (5 Mar 2018 18:29 GMT) 56 Civil War History The Birth of a Nation A Roundtable Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation (2016) is the second major motion picture fo- cusing on slavery to be released since 2013 and part of the growing genre of films that have shifted the popular narrative of slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruc- tion. While historians of the nineteenth century have long understood the Lost Cause’s problematic nature in defining the narrative of slavery and the Civil War era, popular history, especially that presented through the medium of film, has been slower to tackle this subject. Through the first half of the twentieth century, Hollywood films tended to glorify the war, and the realities of chattel slavery—the driving force behind secession—were downplayed. The miniseries Roots and the filmGlory fought bravely against the imagery of the Lost Cause and paved the way for more recent films 12 Years a Slave and The Birth of a Nation, which challenge audiences’ understandings of chattel slavery and the impact of that institution on American society and history. Hollywood’s interest in the Civil War era is not new, though a concerted effort to illuminate its truly complex nature of has emerged relatively recently. Films such as 12 Years a Slave, Lincoln, The Free State of Jones, and The Birth of a Nation, in the broadest sense, challenge the popular narratives of the nineteenth century and in doing so expand our understanding of the period’s nuances, including but not limited to the complicated relationships, identities, and beliefs that ultimately defined the lives of men and women, free and slave. The Birth of a Nation is the first feature-length film to focus on the events leading up to the 1831 slave upris- ing led by Nat Turner in Southampton County, Virginia; like the earlier 12 Years a Slave, it gives viewers an intimate look into the brutal realities of chattel slavery Civil War History, Vol. LXIV No. 1 © 2018 by The Kent State University Press 56 The Birth of a Nation 57 in the American South and the heartbreaking desperation of the men and women forced to toil under the harshest of conditions for their masters’ financial gain. Turner’s revolt was a defining moment in southern history and the history of slavery, for in its suddenness and brutality it reflected all that white slave owners feared: the armed insurrection of their property. Certainly, at its basic level, the institution of slavery must have been somewhat unsettling for southern whites, who often found themselves outnumbered in their homes by men and women forcefully kept in bondage. Indeed, as J. William Harris points out in his foundational study Plain Folk and Gentry in a Slave Society, slave owners were acutely aware of their precarious situation. “Slavery,” he writes, “created by its nature, the possibility of a slave revolt. The potential combination of fanatical outside agitators and black rebels seemed increasingly menacing during the antebellum period.”1 Nat Turner’s revolt in particular, Eugene Genovese notes “especially stood out as a ‘cataclysm’ and a ‘fierce rebellion’ . for the primary reason that it drew a considerable amount of white blood.”2 Nate Parker’s version of the event that reinforced the fears of white southerners (which carried over to the postwar period as a means of justifying the violent preservation of the race line) warrants historical analysis and contextual- ization; thus, in this edition of Civil War History we bring together scholars whose work focuses on this pivotal period in the history of American slavery to discuss the merits of the “Hollywoodification” of Nat Turner’s (in)famous revolt. Vernon Burton (VB) is Creativity Professor of Humanities, professor of history, sociology, and computer science at Clemson University. He is author of numerous books on nineteenth-century America, including In My Father’s House Are Many Mansions: Family and Community in Edgefield, South Carolina (1985), The Age of Lincoln (2007), and Penn Center: A History Preserved (2014). Kenneth S. Greenberg (KG) is Distinguished Professor of History at Suffolk University and has written extensively on the institution of slavery. His works include Masters and Statesmen: The Political Culture of American Slavery (1988), Honor and Slavery: Lies, Duels, Noses, Masks, Dressing as a Woman, Gifts, Strangers, Humanitarianism, Death, Slave Rebellions, the Proslavery Argument, Baseball, Hunting and Gambling in the Old South (1997), and Nat Turner: A Slave Rebellion in History and Memory (2003). He also served as cowriter and producer of the film Nat Turner: A Trouble- some Property. John Craig Hammond (JH) is an associate professor of history at Penn State Univer- sity, New Kensington. He is the author of Slavery, Freedom, and Expansion in the 1. J. William Harris, Plain Folk and Gentry in a Slave Society: White Liberty and Black Slavery in Augusta’s Hinterlands (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1985), 39. 2. Eugene Genovese, From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts in the Making of the Modern World (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1992), 44. 58 Civil War History Horrid Massacre in Virginia, Illus. in: Authentic and impartial narrative of the tragical scene which was witnessed in Southampton County. [New York], 1831. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Early American West (2007) and the coeditor of Contesting Slavery: The Politics of Bondage and Freedom in the American Nation (2011). Catherine Stewart (CS) is the Richard and Norma Small Distinguished Professor of History at Cornell College, where she teaches courses on slavery, history and film, and public memory. She is the author of the recently published Long Past Slavery: Representing Race in the Federal Writers’ Project (2016). Ryan Keating (RK) is associate professor of history at California State University, San Bernardino and book review editor for Civil War History. RK: This film is a captivating account of the 1831 revolt led by Nat Turner in South- ampton County, Virginia. But watching it, I couldn’t help feeling that there was some context lost in the storytelling—that someone unaware of the history of this event would be somewhat lost and/or confused. I wonder if you could first speak, briefly, The Birth of a Nation 59 to the potential role this film may play in expanding our understanding of the his- tory of slavery, broadly, and the history of Nat Turner’s rebellion, more specifically. CS: Nate Parker’s important film, The Birth of a Nation, ends with a note that tells viewers how hard southern whites worked to suppress the memory of Nat Turner and his rebellion, in part by desecrating his body, which was “flayed and dismembered, his skin sewn into relics, his flesh churned into wagon grease . all in hope of preventing a legacy.” Parker aims to restore that legacy by writing into that historical absence with not one, but two films. His documentary Rise Up: The Legacy of Nat Turner, available as a bonus track on the DVD, reveals how the suppression of that history continues to this day. In the town of Courtland, Vir- ginia, where Turner lived and died, there is no public memorial to commemorate Turner or the rebellion or the many African Americans (both free and enslaved) who were killed in reprisal. This is a town in which, as historical archaeologist Kelley Fanto Deetz observes, descendants of the victims of the rebellion, black and white, live side by side, and where memorials to the Lost Cause in the form of statues and Confederate flags mark a landscape where the bodily remains of African Americans who were executed for taking part in the revolt have literally been paved over. Deetz states in the documentary, “There’s actually very little public history here on Nat Turner. That story is something that has been very much suppressed in a lot of ways. It’s a moment of pride for some, and a moment of shame for many in this county.” Both the documentary and The Birth of a Nation make the case that Turner’s rebellion has a significant if largely unheralded legacy, one that African Americans should take pride in, and that rightfully places Turner among a national pantheon of American heroes who took up arms against their oppressors in a fight for liberty. Parker’s film situates Turner’s uprising firmly within a larger historical narra- tive of a people and a nation’s fight for freedom and emancipation by gesturing backward, at the start of the film, to the revolutionary origins of the American nation and forward, at its conclusion, to black soldiers who fought for the Union, decisively helping to win the Civil War and their freedom. The film begins with a quote from Thomas Jefferson: “Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever,” to highlight the paradox of a nation forged out of a revolution for liberty, freedom, and democracy, but one that continued to embrace slavery. Its final image shows a young boy who participated in the uprising witnessing Nat Turner’s dignified acceptance of his own execution by hanging. A close-up of the boy’s tearful face dissolves into the face of a man, now leading a regiment of black soldiers into the fray of the Civil War.
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