Nat Turner, Black Prophet: A Visionary History by Anthony E. Kaye with Gregory P. Downs

 Nat Turner, Black Prophet: A Visionary History by Anthony E. Kaye with Gregory P. Downs 2024

Notes from book discussion of Nat Turner: Black Prophet: A Visionary History by Anthony E. Kaye with Gregory P. Downs 2024 

 

Ten of us met on July 26, 2025, to discuss Nat Turner: Black Prophet. The research for the book was all conducted by Anthony E. Kaye, but unfortunately, he passed away before the book was complete. Gregory P. Downs finished the manuscript after Kaye’s death, emphasizing that (p.263), “For Nat and for some of his followers, the reason for hope was not a liberal revolutionary American tradition or even a timeless Black nationalism but something more peculiar, Nat’s religious beliefs.” 

Anthony E. Kaye (left) researched and authored the book but passed away before publication. Gregory P. Downs completed the manuscript and readied it for publication

This book emphasizes how Nat was brought up in a small rural household where he and his parents were enslaved but also worshipped with the enslavers at their Methodist Church. This was not a plantation but a household and some fields. The enslaved and the enslavers attended services led by the patriarch of the enslavers’ family. Services were two and three times a week and were very charismatic. There was the laying on of hands, passing out in “the Spirit,” and other forms of worship we now consider charismatic.  

Nat, (and the author was very clear that he wouldn’t have referred to himself as Nat Turner,) was taught to read at an early age and knew the Bible stories backwards and forward. He was known as a “prophet” in his community. He considered himself a “type” of the Old Testament prophets like Jeremiah and Ezekial. His motivation for the revolt (the only successful revolt that wasn’t betrayed before it could begin,) had to do with bringing on the Kingdom of God. He was extremely influenced by the Book of Revelation and was convinced that God told him to do this.  

Beside the religious fervor that took place during this time, the book also goes into the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, both in which the British offered emancipation to enslaved people who joined their ranks. Nat was born in 1800, so it seems that he would have heard about this from older people in the vicinity. In his revolt of August 22, 1831, Nat and his group killed 55 whites in their local community. The author also makes a point that although Nat was the leader, he pretty much left the actual killing to others. The author hints that this was due to keeping himself in a type of holy sanctification. He was adamant, however, that no whites should survive, not even children and babies.  

Robin began I discussion saying, “I thought it was a hard book to get through. I definitely learned a lot. I skimmed a lot. I think that the information about Nat Turner’s religious zeal was what I learned from it. I didn’t particularly love all the speculation, and the Biblical stuff was too much. It was another important piece of history and another way of looking at it and I’m glad for what I learned.” 

Barb followed up, describing the book as a hard academic assignment. “While it was hard going, I learned as a Jew, about the Method in Methodism. I learned more about the prophetic history and its power for Nat, and I learned about how someone like me, a privileged white person can never understand how it feels to be an enslaved person. Seeing the religious motivation that helped people get through their days and that inspired Nat to a prophetic voice was illuminating for me. I also really appreciated Gregory Down’s postscript where he said that Anthony Kaye was trying to correct a secular misreading of Nat. When he said ‘scholars genially turn Nat’s religious language into a mechanism for conveying a real story, clues to be unraveled for what they revealed about the experience of enslavement or even the weather.  But Tony sought to answer a different question: How do people make hope from no hope? How do radical movements survive periods of the most abject disappointment?’ (p.263)” 

Nancy commented, “I also found it very difficult, and I went back to William Styron’s novel, The Confessions of Nat Turner. This was written in the 1960’s and the difference between that book and this one is huge. This book, Nat Turner Black Prophet reflects much more of what we’ve learned in these book discussions.  

 In this book I learned a new thing, Kaye doesn’t talk about ‘owners’ he talks about ‘people who claimed ownership.’ He doesn’t use the word ‘slave,’ instead he uses “the enslaved.” 

 The whole religious part of it is very complicated. I think that sometimes when people do things because they feel God intended for them to do it, sometimes we’re all lucky and it turns out that it was a good thing for them to do. But sometimes people do horrific things, because they have this zeal and they really think God intends it. I find that really dangerous. I find it dangerous within my own community of Jewish people who think that somehow because somebody said that God said something to Abraham that somehow, we own land that people were already living in. 

 When I was in the South one of the places we visited on one of the trips was the house Dr. King lived in when he decided to take on his leadership role. Evidently people had come to him and asked him to take leadership, he didn’t want to at first and he spent a night sitting at his kitchen table drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and in the morning he went to these people who had asked him and told them, ‘God has commanded me to do this, so I will do it.’ I’m thankful that he did what he did and he’s an incredible hero, but at the same time, it makes me nervous that he said, ‘God told me to do it.’” 

Cruz added, “This was a hard read. I had to take a few breaks. I watch a lot of Finding Your Roots on PBS. Reading this book just reminds me of how we were just referred to as a word and a number, that’s it.”  

Maria said, “I found it very interesting. As an aged adult, I finally got interested in the Bible and I started a Bible Study group in my Quaker meeting. In fact, this has been going on for fifteen years or maybe longer. So, the Bible references in this book were really fascinating. I don’t find it strange that he saw himself as a prophet. He was very bright. He was an exceptional child. Very much like the Old Testament Prophets, that despite the difficulty, he just knew that God was calling him. It was extraordinary. That’s why most of us will never feel that. I also appreciated the references to the multiple slave rebellions. The writer uses the word harem. This kind of warfare is what we’d consider to be genocide. This is Old Testament tradition, ‘wipe them out, don’t just conquer them, wipe them out.’ I also learned a lot of history.” 

Alejandra shared, “I spent the last two weeks at a program for teachers learning about the legacy of slavery in New England. We’re supposed to use that information in creating a curriculum. It felt good to read this book in that sense, especially the tidbits at the beginning of the book, like there was a provision in the Treaty of Paris, that the British were not to take refugees with them, something I had never heard of. Also, in my program, we watched the documentary What Could Have Been, which described the proposal for a college for Black People in New Haven. This happened the same year as the Nat Turner Rebellion.  I really did appreciate the descriptions of who he was as a child and the advocacy his parents tried to make for him.” Alejandra continued, saying, ‘I don’t really like the emphasis on Nat believing that he was especially chosen by God. I think that us regular folks could be more inspired to initiate change, if we had him as an example of just a regular human being.” 

Ann offered, “It was very challenging to read. I missed quite a bit. I thought that what the author (and the members of Nat’s community) referred to Nat as being a prophet, had more to do with him being a person who could see things in a complex way. The thing that struck me pretty hard was based on a book I read called Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding Our Origins and Rediscovering Our Common Humanity by Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods. This book is about humans and dogs. The groups that survive the longest are the friendliest to each other, but anyone (or any dog) that is different in some way, receives aggression. This creates wars and abuse and all kinds of ill treatment.” 

Bonnie told us, “As a very secular atheist person, I don’t believe that there’s a God telling anybody anything. When I first started to read this, I said, ‘Nat is schizophrenic.’  If he hadn’t been taught to read and hadn’t read the Bible, these things wouldn’t have even occurred. I think what he was driven by was righteous anger. But I think his visions were related to weather events. P.99 ‘One historian carefully connected Nat’s heavenly vision to specific weather events. P.107 ‘I heard a loud noise in the heavens, and the Spirit instantly appeared to me and said the Serpent was loosened. Perhaps the noise and the sight were products of a large meteor’s path through the sky, as one historian suggests...’ p.115 ‘Nat saw his sign, a solar eclipse, a message in biblical times and the present day. Four times in the Hebrew Bible, a dark sun warns of God’s unhappiness...’ I think that the word ‘fanaticism’ is an insulting word, I think Nat had righteous indignation.” 

Janice followed up with, “It was a difficult book. I knew nothing about Black and white Methodists worshipping together. I do believe that God is good. It is incongruent that God would inspire you to kill. It was a losing endeavor from the outset. I also give grace to the Black people who wouldn’t join him, they knew it wouldn’t end well for them.” 

Judy added, “A lot of the speculative nature was annoying, but I understand that documents weren’t available. I didn’t know about the split of the Methodist church. Everything we’ve read together adds up. I’m reading Joy- Ann Reid’s Medgar and Myrlie right now. We don’t think of Medgar Evers as a prophet, but he had that commitment.  

The introduction to Nat Turner: Black Prophet, includes the following:  

Local white elites made Nat into a ‘fanatic’ motivated by personal delusions, not by the widespread misery of enslaved people. Virginia’s legislature, however, took the lessons of Nat’s rebellion more seriously, considering it a portent of more uprisings to come, debating the future of slavery, and considering plans for the gradual emancipation and the expulsion of Black people. Black and white abolitionists for their part turned Nat into an icon of armed resistance, a warning to white people about the consequences of slavery. Local Black people made of Nat a folk hero and a harbinger of the rebellion of enslaved people in the Civil War thirty years later. (Introduction xii-xiii).