Welcome to Karen Hunter's awesome. I am Karen Hunter, and today is November 11th. And on this day in 1831,

Nat Turner was put to death. He was hanged. And who was Nat Turner? Well, we're going to talk about it a little bit coming up. I had a discussion about him several years ago with Dr. Gray Carr in something called In Class with Carr. It was among the first weeks of us having weekly conversations every Saturday now, going on 300 consecutive

Saturdays we've been having historical conversations that are rooted in what's going on right

now, but definitely making sure that we remember. And I bring up Nat Turner today because he

imagined overthrowing his oppressors. He was enslaved. He was a man who was known as

a pastor. They gave him a slave Bible. And his job was to go around to the plantations and

indoctrinate enslaved people into being more docile, into obeying their masters, into accepting their fate

as enslaved people.

But a funny thing happened when he started reading.

Even though they gave him a Bible that took out many, many books, especially Exodus and

things that might inspire him, it became very clear because the world can penetrate, bone and marrow.

It became very clear to him that his condition as an enslaved person was definitely against everything that he knew about God.

And he started organizing and got together a group of people who would go from plantation to plantation and

free themselves. And it was going to be brutal and it was going to be violent. He formed a militia

and he was ready. But he got betrayed. An enslaved person and I'm going to get to this in a second.

He was supposed to start his insurrection earlier, but he got sick. So it was supposed to be in

July, like July 4th for the 4th of July. And so he waited a month and it got upended. He got

betrayed. And then he was able to escape capture. A bunch of people got captured. A bunch of people

got sentenced to death and put to death and lynched, et cetera.

He was finally captured October 30th, 1831.

He was tried and convicted and then hanged on this day in 1831.

His ability to evade capture for so long was definitely because of his skills,

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