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Nat Turner was an enslaved African-American preacher who led a four-day rebellion of enslaved and free black people in Southampton County, Virginia in 1831. Turner was recorded simply as "Nat" by Benjamin Turner, the man enslaving this family. When Turner died in 1810, Nat was inherited as property by Benjamin's son Samuel Turner.

Nat Turner, enslaved preacher and prophet, marshaled dozens of his followers for a violent revolt that left fifty-five white people dead in Southampton County, Virginia. As the myth of the contented slave dissolved, the South panicked. Captured, tried, and convicted, Turner dictated his confessions to a local lawyer. Though some questions endure around the reliability of the narrative, as well as the place that such a complex figure should occupy in our historical consciousness, what is inarguable is that this 1831 rebellion marked an inflection point in America’s racial conflict.