Last night I saw the Classical Theater of Harlem's Emancipation.  Ty Jones' play that explores the life of Nat Turner. Over the years I've certainly heard and read a lot about Turner's infamous insurrection.  His holy calling.  The aftermath his rampage created against innocent blacks, enslaved and free.  In fact, several years ago my friend-collegue Robert O'Hara wrote a satirical play called Insurrection about a young gay grad student time-traveling with his great-great granddad to Turner's Southampton, Virginia. 

Last night's production was far from satirical.  It was an in-your-face interpretation of the man, mind and madness of Nat.  Of course everybody and their cousin Jimmy were commenting on Malcolm's death.  On the possible sacrilege of a play being performed on the site of his assassination.  On the pure joy of bringing some life back to a place marred with painful ghosts.

However, besides from Ty Jones' great performance as Nat and the play recounting Turner's psychic odyssey, the play had me intrigued by something else.  Nat was living in Southampton County, Virginia.  At the time of his hanging in 1831, Southampton County was populated by a sizable free colored population.  Several of whom were Turners.

Now it's possible the Turner family were poor free blacks bound out to a white family [or at least Nat's father], or they could have been related to the other free Turners in the community.  [Or not.]  My point is this:  how much of Nat Turner's desire to unleash his shackles and rage was influenced by living among free people of color?  If one was enslaved in a community of other slaves and their owners, that was one reality.  But if one was enslaved in a community of free blacks and whites, that seems like something altogether different.  Harriet Tubman, who lived in eastern Maryland [an area where half of its black population were born free], certainly had to be charged by living among and witnessing the lives of these free people.  Right?  She was married to one.  Saw their access to courts, their ability to bring in wages.  It's easy to imagine the grass is greener on the other side if you can see this grass.

Emancipation was a good piece of theater.  Visceral, thought-provoking, but certainly a re-hashing of a journey several times told.  But I do wonder if there needs to be a new component added to the Nat Turner [and Harriet Tubman] legacy. And that would be the impact free people of color had on the enslaved community's reaction to bondage.  Hey, if we're bringing theater to the new Audobon Ballroom we might as well bring something new to the conversation of slavery.