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SUSAN C. DOVE FUND
WILLIAM STYRON’S NAT TURNER
TEN BLACK WRITERS RESPOND
MAY 1 3 2002
WILLIAM STYRON’S
l"
NAT TURNER
TEN BLACK WRITERS
RESPOND
Edited by John Henrik Clarke
BEACON PRESS Boston
Vincent Harding gratefully acknowledges permission
to quote from “Note on Commercial Theatre” from the
Selected Poems of Langston Hughes, published by Alfred A.
Knopf, Inc., and copyright 1948 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Copyright © 1968 by Beacon Press
Library of Congress catalog card number: 68-27519
All rights reserved
Beacon Press books are published under the auspices
of the Unitarian Universalist Association
Printed in the United States of America
Second printing, August 1968
CONTENTS
Introduction by john henrik clarke vii
I. Nat’s Last White Man
by Lerone Bennett, Jr. 3
II. THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER and
the Dilemma of William Styron
by Alvin F. Poussaint, M.D. 17
III. You’ve Taken My Nat and Gone
by Vincent Harding 23
IV. The Confessions of Willie Styron
by John Oliver Killens 34
V. The Manipulation of History and of Fact:
An Ex-Southerner’s Apologist Tract for
Slavery and the Life of Nat Turner; or,
William Styron s Faked Confessions
by John A. Williams 45
VI. The Failure of William Styron
by Ernest Kaiser 5°
VII. William Styron s Nat Turner—Rogue-Nigger
by Loyle Hairston 66
VIII. Our Nat Turner and William Styron s Creation
by Charles V. Hamilton 73
IX. Back With the Wind: Mr. Styron and the Reverend
Turner
by Mike Thelwell 79
William Styrons Nat Turner: ten black writers RESPOND
Appendix: The Confessions of
the text of
Nat Turner . . .
(1831)
AS REPORTED BY THOMAS R. GRAY 93
Notes on Contributors
119
INTRODUCTION
In a review of the book that is the subject of the essays
collected here, the historian Herbert Aptheker has said:
“History’s potency is mighty. The oppressed need it for
identity and inspiration; oppressors for justification, ration¬
alization and legitimacy. Nothing illustrates this more clearly
than the history writing on the American Negro people.”
The contributors to this book have all addressed them¬
selves to the same subject, each in his own way. The subject:
The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron. No event
in recent years has touched and stirred the black intellectual
community more than this book. They are of the opinion,
with a few notable exceptions, that the Nat Turner created
by William Styron has little resemblance to the Virginia
slave insurrectionist who is a hero to his people. This being
so, then why did William Styron create his Nat Turner and
ignore the most important historical facts relating to the real
Nat Turner? These historical facts are far more dramatic
than the imaginary scenes that were created for this novel.
Why did William Styron make Nat Turner a celibate with
rising lust for what he has called “a pure white belle with
swishing skirts”? Why did he ignore the fact that Nat Turner
had a wife whom he dearly loved? Thomas Wentworth Hig-
ginson, the Colonel of the famous Black Regiment that dis¬
tinguished itself in the Civil War, in his writings about Nat
viii William Styron’s Nat Turner: ten black writers respond
Turner, thirty years after the event, established the fact that
Nat Turner had a wife—a slave wife on a plantation separate
from that of his master. Higginson further points out that
the very separation and helplessness of a man to protect
his mate was part of the explanation for Nat Turner’s revolt
against slavery and the plantation system. Great literature
is made out of this kind of material. Why did William Styron
fail to use it?
The contributors to this book collectively maintain that
the distortion of the true character of Nat Turner was delib¬
erate. The motive for this distortion could be William Sty¬
ron’s reaction to the racial climate that has prevailed in the
United States in the last fifteen years. Nat Turner, a nine¬
teenth century figure, seems to have been used to make
a comment on a twentieth century situation. Why did the
character of Nat Turner in Styron’s novel vacillate between
being a rebel and an uncle tom? Why in spite of his noble
calling was he unable to conquer his lust for a white woman?
Is there a difference between William Styron’s stereotyped
portrayal of Nat Turner and the current racial bigots’ opin¬
ion of civil rights leaders?
In addition to reducing Nat Turner to impotence and im¬
plying that Negroes were docile and content with slavery,
Styron also dehumanizes every black person in the book.
Nat’s mother, according to Styron’s account, enjoys being
raped by a drunken Irish overseer.
In a review in the magazine Psychology Today (January
1968) Dr. Lloyd T. Delany warns readers that “These are the
confessions of Styron, not Nat Turner, for there exist sig¬
nificant historical discrepancies. . . .” The book’s implica¬
tions about human motivations, he continues, “contain not
only serious error, but subtly support certain stereotype
views of the most ardent racists.”
Why has the book received so much applause from the
established press and a large number of well known “schol¬
ars who, in praising this book, display their ignorance of the
