Vanessa Holden, interviewed for Time, discusses the role women played in the Southampton Rebelion (also known as the Nat Turner Rebellion) and their absence from the recent film, Birth of a Nation:

“Slavery wasn’t evil at the hands of one evil master; it wasn’t only evil in moments of extreme violence and torture or extreme moments of deprivation; it wasn’t only evil when families got separated. It was evil every moment of every day. In turn, resisting slavery always meant making a conscious decision to do harm—economically, socially, physically, mentally, emotionally—because the system was abhorrent,” Holden says. “It’s important to remember that the violence [in Southampton] was a direct response to the specter of violence that was American slavery. It’s not fair to the historical subjects that I study, the women, to assume that they could only be victims of that violence…”

Read it all: Nat Turner and the Forgotten Women Who Resisted Slavery | TIME