*If you haven’t seen Nate Parker’s movie, “The Birth of a Nation” about the life of Nat Turner, an enslaved preacher who led the bloodiest slave revolt in American history, the reality is that Turner, accompanied by a small army of his brethren, the group fought their way through the countryside of Southampton County, Virginia, with hopes of ending the scourge of slavery. When it was all over, more than 55 whites were killed.
But as you already know, it didn’t work out the way Turner had envisioned. The local militia put down the uprising within 48 hours, but Turner managed to escape. However, after two months he was captured, tried, and on November 11, 1831 he was hanged from a tree in the town of Jerusalem, now Courtland, Virginia.
Flash forward to this weekend and the National Geographic is reporting that that Turner’s descendants received the slave-revolt leader’s skull over the weekend from Richard Gordon Hatcher, the 83-year-old former mayor of Gary Indiana. Turner’s great-great-great-great granddaughters, Shannon Batton Aguirre and Shelly Lucas Wood, arrived from Washington, DC to accept the remains.
It’s an interesting story of how Hatcher, who served as the first black mayor of Gary from 1968-1987, came to be the owner of Turner’s skull. Again, NatGeo says Hatcher received his skull from Franklin and Cora Breckinridge, civil rights activists in Elkhart, Ind., who donated the skull to Hatcher in 2002.
The Breckenridges received it from Bob Franklin, also of Elkhart, Ind., who says the skull was passed down in his family for three generations.
Franklin’s grandfather, Dr. Albert Gallatin Franklin, was a physician in Richmond, Va., who in around 1900 received the skull from a female patient who inherited it from her father—one of the doctors who handled Turner’s body after he was executed, according to National Geographic.
Franklin’s father apparently tried to actually donate it to the Smithsonian, but the museum said it did not accept human remains, and so he gave it to the Breckenridges, who eventually donated it to Mayor Hatcher who was building a Civil Rights Hall of Fame project in the state.
As of now, Aguirre and Wood will give the skull to National Geographic studios which will conduct a DNA test and analysis for age. The Turner descendants will in turn provide DNA samples, and if they match, will take the skull and lay it to rest with their other descendants.
Wow. What an interesting story.
You can Read MORE at National Geographic.
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