Hello rightwingy,
I don't know why it should not be. It's wrong to sugar-coat our history or lie to schoolchildren about our past. No country is all good all the time. We need to be realistic in the way history is told.
And if the story of
Turner's Rebellion is told in schools, it should also include the story of the white retaliation which followed the rebellion. It's equally appalling:
"Within a day of the suppression of the rebellion, the local militia and three companies of artillery were joined by detachments of men from the USS Natchez and USS Warren, which were anchored in Norfolk, and militias from counties in Virginia and North Carolina surrounding Southampton.[33] The state executed 56 black people, and militias killed at least 100 more.[35] Another estimate was that 120 blacks were killed, most of whom were not involved with the rebellion.[1][2]
Rumors quickly spread among that the slave revolt was not limited to Southampton and that it had spread as far south as Alabama. Fears led to reports in North Carolina that "armies" of enslaved people were seen on highways, and that they had burned and massacred the white inhabitants of Wilmington, North Carolina, and were marching on the state capital.[31] Such fear and alarm led to whites attacking blacks throughout the South with flimsy cause. The editor of the Richmond Whig described the scene as "the slaughter of many blacks without trial and under circumstances of great barbarity".[36] The white violence against the black people continued two weeks after the rebellion had been suppressed. General Eppes ordered troops and white citizens to stop the killing:
He will not specify all the instances that he is bound to believe have occurred, but pass in silence what has happened, with the expression of his deepest sorrow, that any necessity should be supposed to have existed, to justify a single act of atrocity. But he feels himself bound to declare, and hereby announces to the troops and citizens, that no excuse will be allowed for any similar acts of violence, after the promulgation of this order.[37]
Reverend G. W. Powell wrote a letter to the New York Evening Post stating that "many negroes are killed every day. The exact number will never be known."[38] A company of militia from Hertford County, North Carolina, reportedly killed 40 blacks in one day and took $23 and a gold watch from the dead.[39] Captain Solon Borland led a contingent from Murfreesboro, North Carolina, and he condemned the acts "because it was tantamount to theft from the white owners of the slaves".[39] Blacks suspected of participating in the rebellion were beheaded by the militia and "their severed heads were mounted on poles at crossroads as a grisly form of intimidation".[39] A section of Virginia State Route 658 remains labeled as "Blackhead Signpost Road" in reference to these events.[40][full citation needed]
White militias and mobs attacked blacks in the area, killing an estimated 200 men, women, and children,[1][2] many of whom were not involved in the revolt.[41][page needed]
During the rebellion, Virginia legislators targeted free blacks with a colonization bill, which allocated new funding to remove them to Africa, and a police bill that denied free blacks trials by jury and made any free blacks convicted of a crime subject to sale into slavery and relocation.[9]"
We'd like to think that America has moved beyond such hatred and ignorance. Sadly, America has not moved beyond hatred and racism. And so we the good people of America must speak up about it. Because to sit quietly and do nothing is to encourage more of it.
