An interesting question I’ve asked myself, and one I’ve been asked – plenty of times by others, from both white and black folks.

The first time I remember hearing his name I was sixteen. I had just driven my grandmother in her hot new Impala convertible to Southampton County, Virginia to attend a family affair. It was a distant-family to me – most of the people there would be great or great-great aunts and uncles and 2^nd and 3^rd cousins. People whom I did not know in a place I had never been before – but I didn’t care. Because my grandmother was a pretty cool gal who I liked being with, and I, a young chic who just got her driver’s license, would get to drive a really cool car on a trip  – out of town. So away we went, with our short hair styles blowing in the wind.

Upon arrival introductions were made then my grandmother stayed indoors with her siblings and cousins while I went outdoors with the younger folks to explore the grounds and the town. What town?  I thought. We were at my great aunt’s Gracie’s house which was on Courtland’s main street with the courthouse less than a block away – but I didn’t see much else except houses and a few closed businesses. Oh well, my distant cousins and I wandered out back into a small open field and walked until we came to a side street – and that’s when and where the stories came to be told to this out-of-towner.

“You see over there, right over there?! That’s where they hung Nat Turner!” one of them said.

I thought, oh my god, they had to hang a Turner?

“They hung him up on a tree – a big one that’s not there anymore. And everyone cheered!” another chimed in.

Oh my god, I thought again, but I didn’t ask any questions.

(You don’t know who Nat Turner is?
He was slave who killed a bunch a white people . . .)

“And after he was dead, they cut his off head and skinned him!”

I don’t know which one said that – I was terrified by the thought of it, and horrified by the glee with which these kids were telling this story. I finally found my voice and asked, “Why, what had he done?”

“You don’t know who Nat Turner is? He was slave who killed a bunch white people who lived  all around here. When they caught him – they gave him what he deserved, right over there” was the answer I received.

I don’t really remember if I said anything or not, only that one of them grabbed my hand to run with them over to the site where the tree once stood, and then over to the courthouse. Where in both places they kept giving more of the gory details of a murdering maniac named – Nat Turner.

I know when I showed my ignorance and they told me who Nat Turner was, a slave from long ago – that I felt relief. Because after all – I was attending a Southampton Turner family event, a white Turner family, I didn’t want to think a family member of mine had to be executed for murdering people. I was relieved all right, but thoughts of Nat Turner would haunt me for a good while afterwards. He went away as I went away to college and then on to a successful career as a physical therapist. It wasn’t until sometime after I sold my practice at age 45, when I began to throw myself into the arts – that Nat Turner returned.

I was reading the New Yorker in preparations for a trip to New York. I wanted to check out museum exhibitions. A picture from one being held at The New York Historical Society hit me like a ton of bricks. It left me cold – I think it may have stopped my heart for a moment – it certainly took my breath away. It was a black and white photograph of the lynching of two black men, who were surrounded by a crowd of white people. One young woman with blond hair faced the camera – this person looked just like a cousin of mine. The tree with hanging bodies looked just like the one I imaged when I heard those stories. And just like that, Nat Turner entered my psyche again.

         (. . . could I be related to this man who had haunted me for forty years?)

 I went on to see that exhibition titled, Without Sanctuary, at The New York Historical Society in September 2000. I purchased a book there, titled A Festival of Violence: An Analysis of Southern Lynchings. 1882-1930. During that same trip I went to the Schomburg Center where I purchased a collection, Great African American Writers: Seven Books, which included Narratives of Sojourner Truth and Fredrick Douglas, The Souls of Black Folks, Up From Slavery, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and Selected Poems. And so it began, my sojourn as a writer into the realm of this dark area of American history – of slavery and lynchings and racism. Later when I opened The Venue on 35^th, a storefront performing arts space which was in a predominately African-American neighborhood and served the local poetry community, Nat Turner kept popping in poets’ pieces. I knew then I had to look more into Nat, to write about Nat myself and possibly answer some of the questions which had arisen. His name was Turner, was he owned by one of my relatives in the past, when he rebelled – did he kill any of my relatives, and finally – was his mother impregnated by one of my past relatives – could I be related to this man who had haunted me for forty years?

In 2008, I wrote my piece about Nat Turner. Later in 2015 I made a second piece from the first. But to date, I haven’t attempted to answer those questions. In 2017 I moved to another town and into a house where my next door neighbor is a writer, she does family ancestry books. I’m hearing Nat’s haunting call again . . .