BOOKS
BLACKLASH
THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER.
By
William Styron. Random
House. $6.95.
"I don't know what to tell my son when he goes off to school.
It
may be different for the colored man up North, or even over in New
Orleans and the big cities like that, but out here it's Mississippi, with
only the fields here and the store and the sheriff here, and you know
when they don't like what a colored man does, they just goes and takes
matters into their own hands.
"My boy, he's doing something real different. I don't know how
it come about. Not with my help, anyway. He's marching, that one is.
They signed him up to march. Some one did, out of Jackson, I think. A
civil rights man. He got my boy's ear. He told him that we're still
slaves - and I can't deny it- and we shouldn't be. Well, of course, I
agree there, too. We're not supposed to
be
slaves no more; and that was
to be gone a long time ago, my daddy told me. His daddy, he was the
son of one, but he was supposed to be the last one, though I can't really
see what difference it makes, to call us a slave or not. We live the same
way, and it doesn't make any difference what the name of us is.
"But my boy, he's all fired up. They got
him
to be like that. They
kept on telling him things, about how bad it is, and how we've got to go
get things for ourselves, the colored man, and stand up to the white
people, stand up real strong. Well, that was a lot of wild talking, that's
what I thought. But they came and said we could have our kids go to
the white school, and things like that, if we wanted, and all we had to
do was
petition
them,
petition
the white people and they'd go along.
"That's the biggest piece of foolishness I'd ever heard, when I heard
it. First I thought my boy was pulling a big joke on me, but then I
decided it was himself he was fooling - because he kept on saying, 'I'm
going, Daddy,' and 'I'm going, Daddy,' until I thought he was in bad
trouble, yes sir, real bad trouble, in his head.
"But his mother, she sided with him, and she said yes, he should
