By Lawrence Hamm
Photo: Facebook
The 16th annual commemoration of the Nat Turner Slave Rebellion will be held today, Thursday, August 21, 2025, 5:00 pm at Nat Turner Park, 171 Muhammad Ali Avenue in Newark, New Jersey.
The program will take place near the entrance of the park at the intersection of Muhammad Ali Avenue and Jeliff Avenue. It is sponsored by People’s Organization for Progress (POP) and Friends of Nat Turner Park.
“We are having this commemoration because we believe that it is important to remember that black people did not passively accept slavery. We rebelled against it,” Lawrence Hamm, Chairman, People’s Organization For Progress stated.
“Black people fought against slavery in Africa. We rose up against our captors on the slave ships. And we rebelled against it on the plantations, in the towns and cities of the north as well as the south,” Hamm stated.
“This is the history that President Trump would ban and erase from our museums, textbooks, schools and universities, cultural institutions, government agencies, news and information companies, social media, data bases, and other areas of society,” he said.
Trump recently announced that he was going initiate a review of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington to eliminate exhibits that are deemed to be “divisive” or “woke.” He said he would send in lawyers to perform this task and he has appointed someone to oversee the effort.
“Trump wants to do away with this history because it doesn’t fit into his racist and white supremacist narrative of American history. He wants to promote a history that downplays the cruelty, injustice and horrors of slavery,” he said.
“Trump is attempting to whitewash American history. This is censorship and we are absolutely opposed to it. We are opposed to what he is doing to our museums, with the curriculum at our educational institutions, and similar efforts in other areas,” he said.
“Erasing a people’s history is a step toward erasing a people. This is what fascists have done in the past. This is what they are doing today. This is a form of cultural genocide,” Hamm said.
“Our armed resistance to slavery took place for several hundred years during the period of colonization in the western hemisphere and continued for nearly a century after American independence,” he said.
“Perhaps the greatest slave rebellion of all was the Civil War, when more than 200,000 enslaved black men escaped from bondage and joined the ranks of the Union Army. They took up arms, helped to defeat the Confederacy and ushered in emancipation,” he said.
“Of the hundreds of slave rebellions in this country, perhaps the best well known is the Nat Turner uprising. Today marks the 194th anniversary of the Nat Turner Rebellion, also known as the Southampton Insurrection which began on August 21,1831 in Southampton County, Virginia,” he said.
Scores of enslaved and free black people participated in the rebellion. As many as 65 whites may have been killed, and possibly 200 blacks. In the aftermath of the uprising Nat Turner was hanged and 56 other slaves were executed for their participation.
“Nat Turner’s Rebellion and the hundreds of other slave uprisings in the United States inspired and gave momentum to the abolitionist movement, led to the Civil War, and helped bring about the end of slavery in this country,” Hamm stated.
“We have this observance each year because we believe it is important to remember what Nat Turner and his comrades did. They fought back. They died in battle. Their courage and their sacrifice was a major contribution to black people’s struggle against slavery,” he said.
Hamm said it was fitting to have the observance in a park named after the slave rebellion leader. Nat Turner Park was officially opened in July of 2009. Located in the Central Ward, it covers nine acres and is the largest city owned park. It is the only park in the United States named after Nat Turner.
For more information call the People’s Organization For Progress (POP) at (973)801-0001.
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