Nat Turner rejected uplift suasion in favor of direct armed rebellion

Evidence

ONE ENSLAVED VIRGINIAN did not share Garrison’s view that enslaved Africans should wait while White abolitionists and refined free Blacks solved the problem through nonviolent tactics of persuasion. This preacher rejected uplift suasion, and he rejected racist talk of Black behavior as part of the problem. On the evening of August 21, 1831, Nat Turner and five of his disciples, believing they had been given a task by God, began their fight against the problem in Southampton County. Turner killed his master’s family, snatched arms and horses, and moved on to the next plantation. Twenty-four hours later, about seventy freed people had joined the crusade. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 457

Categorization

• XREF: Turner’s rejection of ‘uplift suasion’ is an early Black articulation against the assimilationist position — directly relevant to the reader’s need to place arguments in Kendi’s three-way scheme.