![]() Thank Geoffrey Kirkland's production design- white plantation houses and those iconic drooping willows-to a stirring, sometimes too intrusive, score by Henry Jackson. Parker has a director's eye for the ironies inherent in the beautiful Virginia mansion (actually filmed in Savannah) and the poverty of the servants' quarters, the empathy of Samuel's mother, Elizabeth (Penelope Ann Miller), and the growing intolerance of her son. In Birth, the progression to violence is slow, even as the ultimate violence comes on us. The owner becomes a symbol of the once proud South now reduced to exploiting human beings, in this case black slaves. In both cases, master might seem at times benign but not over the length of the film. As in 12 Years, Birth takes care to show the close relationship between slave and master, Samuel (Armie Hammer). The film graphically depicts the violence and is equally indulgent showing the growing love between Nate and her. It shows his daily humiliations and hardening in the face of unfettered violence, his growing reliance on the Bible for rebellion, and finally the brutal rape of his wife, Cherry (Aja Naomi King). Yet, Birth is strong in deeply exploring the hero's motivations for the rebellion he eventually foments in 1831. While both men are mercilessly whipped in the two films, 12 Years remains superior in its scope and complexity. But you can now relive that excruciating experience from the religious and moral perspective of a slave, Nat Turner (Nate Parker), in Nate Parker's realistic and dramatic The Birth of a Nation. The incident put fear in the heart of Southerners, ended the organized emancipation movement in that region, resulted in even harsher laws against enslaved people, and deepened the schism between slave-holders and free-soilers (an anti-slavery political party whose slogan was ‘free soil, free speech, free labor, and free men’) that would culminate in the Civil War."Anytime anyone is enslaved, or in any way deprived of his liberty, if that person is a human being, as far as I am concerned he is justified to resort to whatever methods necessary to bring about his liberty again." Malcolm X The antebellum South had not been kind to slaves, if you look only at the award-winning 12 Years a Slave, in which Solomon Northrup, an upstate New York free man, was sold into slavery. An insurrection was planned, aborted, and rescheduled for August 21,1831, when he and six others killed the Travis family, managed to secure arms and horses, and enlisted about 75 other enslaved people in a disorganized insurrection that resulted in the murder of an estimated 55 white people.Īfterwards, Turner hid nearby successfully for six weeks until his discovery, conviction, and hanging at Jerusalem, Virginia, along with 16 of his followers. Sold three times in his childhood and hired out to John Travis (1820s), he became a fiery preacher and leader of enslaved Africans on Benjamin Turner’s plantation and in his Southampton County neighborhood, claiming that he was chosen by God to lead them from bondage.ĭid you know? Fifty-six Black people accused of participating in Nat Turner's rebellion were executed, and more than 200 others were beaten by angry mobs or white militias.īelieving in signs and hearing divine voices, Turner was convinced by an eclipse of the sun (1831) that the time to rise up had come, and he enlisted the help of four other enslaved men in the area. ![]() Turner was born on the Virginia plantation of Benjamin Turner, who allowed him to be instructed in reading, writing, and religion. The rebellion also stiffened pro-slavery, anti-abolitionist convictions that persisted in that region until the American Civil War (1861–65). His action set off a massacre of up to 200 Black people and a new wave of oppressive legislation prohibiting the education, movement, and assembly of enslaved people. Nathanial “Nat” Turner (1800-1831) was an enslaved man who led a rebellion of enslaved people on August 21, 1831.
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