Blackhead Signpost Road needs another sign

[struggle4progress]

Published 11:28am Saturday, August 15, 2015
By Alfred Brophy

In Southampton County, the scene of the 1831 Nat Turner slave rebellion, there is a move afoot to rename “Blackhead Signpost Road.” The road takes its name from a rebel whose severed head was placed on a pole as a warning to others. One of the first historians of the rebellion, writing in 1900, said that the signpost was “ever afterwards painted black as a warning against any future outrage.”

It is likely that the slave involved was Alfred, a blacksmith owned by Levi Waller, whose wife and children were murdered in the rebellion. According to a petition Waller filed with the Virginia legislature asking for compensation, Alfred was first caught by a small band of the local militia. They disabled him “by cutting the longer tendon just above the heel in each leg” and left him there by the side of the road as they went in search of other rebels. Then a group of mounted militia from Greensville County came along. They tied Alfred to a tree and shot him, because they “deemed that his immediate execution would operate as a beneficial example to the other Insurgents — many of whom were still in arms and unsubdued” ...

The movement for renaming is being led by Mr. John Ricks, a retired Marine who lives in Southampton. He told the County Commissioners in July that “this is 2015, this is not 1860” and the name is “an insult. … those roads shouldn’t be there. We don’t need that. We really don’t” ...

But maybe what is needed more than removing the road name and thus facilitating forgetting of the rebellion and the violence from the dark days of slavery is yet another sign. It should tell us where the road name came from and what it has meant. We should remember who Alfred was and what happened along the New Jerusalem-Cross Keys Road (now known as Meherrin Road). Another sign can help us remember who we are and where we came from and maybe it can help us plot a course for a better future, too.

http://www.tidewaternews.com/2015/08/15/blackhead-signpost-road-needs-another-sign/

[mia]

1. A sad story that should never be forgotten.

Thanks for sharing this history.

[struggle4progress]

3. There have been several road segments similarly named in the US

Negro Head Road was originally the colonial stage road that ran from Point Peter in New Hanover County to Duplin County ... In Duplin County a slave called Dave, who belonged to Sheriff Thomas K. Morrisey, was tortured until he confessed to being a ringleader of a planned slave revolt ... Fearful whites reacted by seizing Dave and his alleged accomplice Jim. The two men were killed and their heads stuck on poles as a warning ... In Wilmington, 15 blacks were arrested. The 6 who were tried and convicted were killed; their heads, too, wound up on poles ... One was placed at Point Peter at the beginning of Negro Head Road ...
http://ncpedia.org/negro-head-road

[jmowreader]

4. I'm not sure of the motivation behind the name...

but in Benewah County, Idaho, just a little east of Benewah Lake, there is a hill named Negro Brown Hill. Until the late 1980s, Negro Brown Hill had a different name and you can probably figure out what it was. No one knows who "Negro Brown" was, but it wouldn't surprise me to find out some poor bastard got lynched on that hill and the name stuck.

[Liberal_in_LA]

2. thank you for posting this.