10-20-2016, 10:00 AM
I hesitate to post this. Clearly it is an anti-American propaganda piece. Luckily, I know the real patriots among you will see through the lies. I mean, you would have to be pretty gullible to believe what the article claims.
For those gullible enough to believe the article's claims, what do you think about it? Is collecting skulls and skins innocent America fun akin to collecting baseball cards and autographed sports equipment? Is it fun for all races in these modern times, or if black folk start to collect will it be another sign they are taking America from white Americans, who better get busy and take their country back? Should we set up a sub-forum for buying and selling skulls and skins?
(Link and full text of article below.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/opinion/nat-turners-skull-and-my-students-purse-of-skin.html?_r=0
This month, Richard Hatcher, a former mayor of Gary, Ind., delivered what researchers suspect is the skull of Nat Turner, the rebel slave, to Turner’s descendants. The skull had been kept as a relic, sold and probably handed down through generations, for nearly 185 years. If DNA tests confirm that the skull is genuine, then Turner’s family will have the opportunity to lay their famous relative to rest.
Many were shocked when National Geographic reported the existence of the skull, the same day that “The Birth of a Nation,” a new movie about Nat Turner, was released. But the traffic and trade in human remains — from the fingers, toes and sexual organs of executed enslaved people, to the hair and nails of the victims of the Holocaust — are part of our history. Some Americans were not surprised at all by the news; they might even have some “family heirlooms” of their own hidden in their homes, waiting to be shared with their children.
Turner was hanged in southeast Virginia on Nov. 11, 1831, for leading a rebellion of slaves that left some 55 white people dead. Those who came to witness his death then decapitated and skinned him. They bragged about it for decades. One participant, William Mallory, also known as Buck, gloated so much about having skinned Turner that it was listed in his own obituary.
Turner’s skull was not the only one in circulation. Nineteenth-century newspapers occasionally advertised that a decapitated head had been discovered. Sometimes they were found on trains, left on the side of the road, or impaled on stakes following executions. Public hangings — of people of all races — were a routine part of early American life. Vigilantes often took trophies, proof, in their mind, that “justice” had been served. They made purses of skin and took the grease from the flesh, and used it as oil. These souvenirs were then passed down through generations.
Three years ago, during a lecture in my introduction to African-American history course, I talked about my own research into Turner’s skull. I had been tracing its post-mortem journey while finishing a book about the value of enslaved people in life and after death. One student, who always sat up front but rarely spoke, raised his hand and said he could confirm my research from personal experience.
He came from a family of medical doctors four generations deep, and his father had a purse made of human flesh. This purse, he explained, was unique in that it was divided into sections of different colored skin, one of which came from a black person. The class was silent.
The purse had been passed down through the male heirs in his family, and soon it would be his. He was hesitant to speak about it, but something moved him to share. That night he went home and asked his father if he could bring it to class. His dad said no. Could he take a picture? Again, no. That was the end of the conversation.
The souvenirs that weren’t handed down within families were often sold. There was an active market in skulls at the time of Turner’s death. The field of scientific racism was on the rise, and doctors and anthropologists studied the size and shape of craniums to try to buttress theories about racial superiority. Samuel Morton, a craniologist, had the largest collection in the world, with more than 130 agents making purchases for him on just about every continent. By the late 19th century, he owned more than a thousand human skulls. Many of them can now be found in the Samuel George Morton collection at the University of Pennsylvania Museum.
Local physicians took possession of Turner’s skull after his execution, and it was most likely studied at medical schools in Virginia, and as far north as Ohio and perhaps Indiana.
In 2002, Mr. Hatcher, the former mayor, who had been attempting to found a civil rights museum, received the skull from activists who had gotten it from a family of physicians who had owned it for three generations. Filmmakers who had made a documentary about Nat Turner later connected him to Shanna Batten Aguirre and Shelly Lucas Wood, Turner’s descendants.
We will never know all of the deceased who experienced such “post-mortem consumption,” as I call it. But the phenomenon continues today, even in the form of images of black death that do not involve dismemberment. What else to call the photo of Trayvon Martin’s body that George Zimmerman retweeted after shooting him? Twitter took it down, knowing it was an act of utter disrespect, but not before it had been shared many times.
Such consumption is part of American history. If I can teach a class and have one student with a relic in his family’s possession, I know there are others. Will you not come forward and admit to collecting ghostly relics of the past? I recognize that, at one point, these “trophies” served as evidence that justice had been served, but now it’s time to bring justice to those who were desecrated. Returning these body parts to descendants, or at least granting them a respectful burial, will help our nation heal from the sin of slavery and its ugly afterlife.
For those gullible enough to believe the article's claims, what do you think about it? Is collecting skulls and skins innocent America fun akin to collecting baseball cards and autographed sports equipment? Is it fun for all races in these modern times, or if black folk start to collect will it be another sign they are taking America from white Americans, who better get busy and take their country back? Should we set up a sub-forum for buying and selling skulls and skins?
(Link and full text of article below.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/opinion/nat-turners-skull-and-my-students-purse-of-skin.html?_r=0
This month, Richard Hatcher, a former mayor of Gary, Ind., delivered what researchers suspect is the skull of Nat Turner, the rebel slave, to Turner’s descendants. The skull had been kept as a relic, sold and probably handed down through generations, for nearly 185 years. If DNA tests confirm that the skull is genuine, then Turner’s family will have the opportunity to lay their famous relative to rest.
Many were shocked when National Geographic reported the existence of the skull, the same day that “The Birth of a Nation,” a new movie about Nat Turner, was released. But the traffic and trade in human remains — from the fingers, toes and sexual organs of executed enslaved people, to the hair and nails of the victims of the Holocaust — are part of our history. Some Americans were not surprised at all by the news; they might even have some “family heirlooms” of their own hidden in their homes, waiting to be shared with their children.
Turner was hanged in southeast Virginia on Nov. 11, 1831, for leading a rebellion of slaves that left some 55 white people dead. Those who came to witness his death then decapitated and skinned him. They bragged about it for decades. One participant, William Mallory, also known as Buck, gloated so much about having skinned Turner that it was listed in his own obituary.
Turner’s skull was not the only one in circulation. Nineteenth-century newspapers occasionally advertised that a decapitated head had been discovered. Sometimes they were found on trains, left on the side of the road, or impaled on stakes following executions. Public hangings — of people of all races — were a routine part of early American life. Vigilantes often took trophies, proof, in their mind, that “justice” had been served. They made purses of skin and took the grease from the flesh, and used it as oil. These souvenirs were then passed down through generations.
Three years ago, during a lecture in my introduction to African-American history course, I talked about my own research into Turner’s skull. I had been tracing its post-mortem journey while finishing a book about the value of enslaved people in life and after death. One student, who always sat up front but rarely spoke, raised his hand and said he could confirm my research from personal experience.
He came from a family of medical doctors four generations deep, and his father had a purse made of human flesh. This purse, he explained, was unique in that it was divided into sections of different colored skin, one of which came from a black person. The class was silent.
The purse had been passed down through the male heirs in his family, and soon it would be his. He was hesitant to speak about it, but something moved him to share. That night he went home and asked his father if he could bring it to class. His dad said no. Could he take a picture? Again, no. That was the end of the conversation.
The souvenirs that weren’t handed down within families were often sold. There was an active market in skulls at the time of Turner’s death. The field of scientific racism was on the rise, and doctors and anthropologists studied the size and shape of craniums to try to buttress theories about racial superiority. Samuel Morton, a craniologist, had the largest collection in the world, with more than 130 agents making purchases for him on just about every continent. By the late 19th century, he owned more than a thousand human skulls. Many of them can now be found in the Samuel George Morton collection at the University of Pennsylvania Museum.
Local physicians took possession of Turner’s skull after his execution, and it was most likely studied at medical schools in Virginia, and as far north as Ohio and perhaps Indiana.
In 2002, Mr. Hatcher, the former mayor, who had been attempting to found a civil rights museum, received the skull from activists who had gotten it from a family of physicians who had owned it for three generations. Filmmakers who had made a documentary about Nat Turner later connected him to Shanna Batten Aguirre and Shelly Lucas Wood, Turner’s descendants.
We will never know all of the deceased who experienced such “post-mortem consumption,” as I call it. But the phenomenon continues today, even in the form of images of black death that do not involve dismemberment. What else to call the photo of Trayvon Martin’s body that George Zimmerman retweeted after shooting him? Twitter took it down, knowing it was an act of utter disrespect, but not before it had been shared many times.
Such consumption is part of American history. If I can teach a class and have one student with a relic in his family’s possession, I know there are others. Will you not come forward and admit to collecting ghostly relics of the past? I recognize that, at one point, these “trophies” served as evidence that justice had been served, but now it’s time to bring justice to those who were desecrated. Returning these body parts to descendants, or at least granting them a respectful burial, will help our nation heal from the sin of slavery and its ugly afterlife.
JOHN ROBERTS: From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly so that you will come to know the value of justice... I wish you bad luck, again, from time to time so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life and understand that your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either.
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