![]() In Turner's time the closest Jews - no more than a handful - would probably have been in Petersburg 50 miles away. The Jewish population even today is virtually nonexistent. There has never been a single synagogue or temple in Southampton County. While Jews have a long and prominent history in many areas of the South, particularly in port cities like Charleston and Savannah and New Orleans, they were never drawn to rural Tidewater Virginia. It may be the least Jewish place in America, a region known to the present day mostly for its production of peanuts and pork. For one thing, even were one to succumb to the sickness of antisemitism, rural Southeast Virginia, where Turner lived and died, is a poor place to look for targets. ![]() But until that night at Howard, as best as can be determined, no one ever linked them with the death of Nat Turner. In the long history of antisemitism, Jews have been hysterically accused of all sorts of wondrous offenses, from murdering Jesus to controlling the Federal Reserve. 23, in a now-famous evening at Howard University, a law student named Malik Zulu Shabazz opened a call-and-response chorus of Jew-baiting with his audience by asking, "Who is it that caught and killed Nat Turner?" Like the vast majority of 19th century American blacks, whose spirituals repeatedly call forth the image of the Children of Israel in bondage in Egypt, he identified with the Jewish people. ![]() 11, 1831, after leading a short-lived but bloody insurrection, he could never have imagined the use to which his death would be put 163 years later.įor Turner, whose inquisitive mind taught him to read and immersed him deeply in the Bible, saw himself, by virtually all accounts, as an Old Testament prophet called by God to lead his people. WHEN A mystical slave named Nat Turner was formally hanged by the deputy sheriff of Southampton County, Va., on Nov. ![]()
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