FTV 0509 Confessions Of Nat Turner 1968 by PacificaRadioArchives

This week on From The Vault we reprise our 1968 conversation between Pulitzer Prize winning author William Styron, actor Ossie Davis and writer James Baldwin on Styron's attempt to make his novel Confessions of Nat Turner into a film.

On the Heels of Nate Parker's 2016 Sundance Film Festival success with his film Birth of a Nation, chronicling the life of Nat Turner, the iconic man who led the 1831 Slave Rebellion in Virginia, we thought this was the perfect moment to tell the story of the Nat Turner film that was almost made in 1968.

At stake, one of the hero's of the African American struggle for Freedom in America was told from a "White" perspective. Included in this fictional characterization of Nat Turner created by Styron was Nat Turner's thoughts of rape and other harm to the White community which enslaved him. To hear the incredible polemics used by Ossie Davis to push back on this project is priceless.

Nate Parker's film Birth of A Nation takes the story of Nat Turner and the Slave Rebellion he led to the screen from the African American perspective. We imagine Ossie Davis and James Baldwin smiling down on this moment.

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