Partial funding for the production of Our Place Our Time is made possible by a grant from the Allison Jay and LLW Parsons Foundation.

Next on Our Place Our Time, we'll lift the curtain on some young performers who consider themselves Gonnabys.

We'll finish our story of the bloodiest slave revolt in American history and meet two artists from different backgrounds whose art reflects their lifestyles.

Hello and welcome to Our Place Our Time, the cultural magazine show for Hampton Roads.

I'm Vian Webb, and thank you for being with us.

Later on in our program, we're going to bring you part two of our story of the Southampton Slave Revolt of 1831.

But first, we want you to meet a lively group of performers who call themselves the Gunnabees.

They're going to be stars someday.

They're the singers, actors, and dancers of Center Stage, an organization that trains children in the performing arts.

Producer Mike Sinclair met with the Gunnabees backstage at a rehearsal of their upcoming show and he brought back this report.

All the singing, dancing and excitement you see around me is a dream come true for Bargie Day Walker.

In 1983, Walker decided to bring the theater to kids who otherwise wouldn't be able to experience it and the result was center stage.

My purpose in creating the program was to give children who might never have the opportunity to be involved in the arts a chance at developing their talent, those inner city children, those disadvantaged children, those children who do not have money for dance and drama lessons.

That was my intention in the beginning and we still offer scholarships to children who are without.

I had, I had a couple of friends.

One was an artist, Jerome Johnson, and his wife Jackie Johnson was a dance teacher.

And so I started with the two of them and they were volunteer.

We didn't have to have any money.

And all those couple of years at Reverend McNair's church annex, there was, there was just no money and I was not charging the children any money.

It was just all free, whatever kids I could find.

And people liked the idea.

And so they brought their children, those that they did not bring, I ran around with my husband's station wagon to pick them up.

Walker, a Norfolk native, was a professional singer of gospel, jazz, and rhythm and blues.

She even had a hit song in 1951 called Little Red Rooster.

She toured the country with her music, but when she returned to Norfolk, she wanted to do something for children.

I spoke with Doris Parrish and Virginia Bryant, two long time friends of Walker's and board members of center stage.

First of all, I'd say Marjorie believes in what she does, plus she is a performer.

She's warm, she's giving, she's concerned.

She loves children and she really loves what she's doing.

And I think these are some of the elements that really keep this program going.

At this time, when students' children are being pulled in so many directions and things and so many instances have little structure, I'm glad to see something that develops children.

She has a positive image and it helps a student or a child to have a certain amount of identity.

He, he begins to focus on himself to see what he can do, he or she can do.

Now I am a retired counselor.

And so I've been involved with young people all of my life and I've seen so many of them that they have no self-esteem at all.

And that's so important.

She gives this to them.

The program gives it.

The Gonna Bees is the title of Center Stage's current production.

Written by Walker, he tells the story of Center Stage and many alumni of the program are returning to perform in the show.

Kids start here.

Those who are interested in theater continue in theater and those who will come back for this Gonnabe's performance.

We're having a big show on the end of kids who started with center stage in 85, 86.

They're coming back to perform.

So the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

So you'll be seeing those who were interested in theater and they continued in it.

You'll find them in the BTW Playmakers.

You'll find center stage kids in the Norfolk Repertory Theater.

Many of them are in the hurrah players.

We have to have something to bale what's being offered on the streets.

And when we can have people dancing in the streets instead of killing each other in the street, I think that we will have gained a great deal.

And this is what I see happening because boys can participate in this.

A larger number of her students are boys.

She's got a group of tap dancers.

I think they're all boys, aren't they?

All boys.

Terrific.

They really are troopers because she's one.

10-year-old Anthony Green is one of the young performers in the show.

His mother, Elaine, is on the board of Center Stage.

What does being involved with Center Stage do for your kids?

I have seen the development of Anthony grow, maturing as they say.

Starting out, he was very active.

Very hyper is the word.

Couldn't keep him still.

The director was going crazy in the beginning trying to get Anthony directed to the points of where he should go.

But now Anthony has really developed.

In fact, he concentrates a lot more on what he's doing and he's gotten a couple of leads in some of the productions that they have done.

I Talked with some of the kids in the show and had the chance to ask Anthony why he likes center stage.

But I like to let my talents out.

First we'll visit Leo President, President Reagan.

Here he is.

First of all, I like to say word up to the brothers.

15-year-old Moby Lamelle started in center stage at age six.

He now does stand up comedy as a hobby and to pick up some extra money.

He plans on becoming an engineer one day and apreciates what he learned through center stage.

No, I probably be in the streets.

Probably, I don't know.

I probably run the streets with my cousins or something, you know?

But since center stage, I've been staying alive, doing well, staying out of trouble, really discipline.

You know, the group really teaches you good discipline and teach you how to stay aware of things.

Our kids need pieces that are going to speak to them in their today's world, in their situations.

What can I do to pull myself up and brush myself off and get going with life?

And, and so that's my, my focus to try and help them find out who they are and what they want to be about because we can all be about something.

You can see the gonna bees of center stage and performance at Oscar Smith High School on November the 23rd and again at the Chrysler Museum Theater on November 30th.

160 years ago this month, the slave Nat Turner was hanged for having planned and led the bloodiest slave revolt in American history.

Last week, we began a two-part report on the history of the Nat Turner Revolt.

In order to find the places in Southampton County where the events of the slave revolt took place, you have to know where to look and you have to drive off the paved roads.

Producer Tim Morton and two historians who have family ties in Southampton County found that there's still a lot to see that recall the times of Nat Turner.

Last week, at the conclusion of the first part of our report, we left the conspirators on the eve of the revolt that changed American history.

It was at Cabin Pond on August 21st, 1831 that Turner and four others met to plan the revolt.

This is where the conspiracy was put together or, or hatched.

I'm sure Turner had it put together in his mind, but we got his four confidants here.

They had a, a dinner, a last dinner of sorts before the before the revolt was to begin.

He... A 19th century engraver imagined the early morning scene.

At about 2:00 AM on August 22nd, Turner and his cohorts started out on their holy and bloody course.

Bill, what do you think Nat Turner looked like?

I know what his description indicates that he looked like.

He was about five, six, seven, weighed about 150 pounds.

He was of course in his 31st year when the insurrection occurred and his 31st birthday was during the, the time of hiding.

All the drawings we have of Turner were done after his death, but these 19th century ones were based on a description in a proclamation which offered a reward for Turner's capture.

The thing about Nat is not so much his appearance as his great intelligence.

Even his intended victims gave him credit for being an honest man, a sober man up to the time of the insurrection, an almost exemplary slave.

He was well educated by even white standards in those days.

In terms of having had access to books, he was encouraged to read and to write.

And I want to point out that Nat Turner was what?

Well, he was born in 1800.

Nat Turner was very, very significant in that his mother was came directly from Africa to Virginia.

So she was not an, an acculturated black.

She had not been, her spirit had not been broken.

As a matter of fact there's a say that she tried to kill her baby Ned, instead of seeing him raised as a slave when he was an infant.

Turner and his cohorts covered an astonishing amount of ground over the two days of the revolt.

One historian has estimated they walked, ran or rode on horseback more than 75 miles.

Turner, in his confession, mentions 17 houses members of his band entered or attacked.

By the time the conspirators got to the lane leading to the Catherine Whitehead House, their number had increased to 15.

Turner described the attack on the Whitehead house in vivid detail.

As we approached the house, we discovered Mr.

Richard Whitehead standing in the cotton patch near the lane fence.

We called him over into the lane and Will, the executioner, was near at hand with his fatal ax to send him to an untimely grave.

As we pushed onto the house, I saw Will pulling Mrs.

Whitehead out of the house and at the step he nearly severed her head from her body with his broad ax.

Turner next told of the only person he admitted to killing himself.

Ms.

Margaret, when I discovered her, had concealed herself in the corner formed by the projection of the cellar cap from the house.

On my approach, she fled, but was soon overtaken.

And after repeated blows with a sword, I killed her by a blow on the head with a fence rail.

Comment for me on the official response to the revolt.

I'm thinking particularly of Governor Floyd and federal officials in Hampton Roads.

It was immediate.

It was also independent.

Of course, given the communications of the day, the first response that was received in Richmond brought the governor and his people into action with whatever state authority they had.

But at about the same time, the word was reaching people down in Norfolk in Portsmouth.

And the Norfolk City Council went to the commandant or sent a, a representative to the commandant at Fortress Monroe requesting that the federals also get involved.

Still in the first day of the revolt, in the early afternoon, Turner, with now about 50 mounted conspirators, rode on the Southampton County seat of Jerusalem.

They were stopped here at Parker's Field, less than three miles from town by a troop of mounted militia.

Though apartly nobody was killed on either side, the revolt began to fall apart.

Between Turner and Jerusalem was the Nottaway River.

In Jerusalem were food, guns and ammunition.

Now with a diminished force, Turner sought to cross the Nottaway downriver at the Cyprus Bridge.

By the time they reached this point, they had visited all, virtually all the houses they were going to visit by surprise.

And had reached this point after the skirmish at Parker's Field, which would have put it early evening.

Of course in the August days, the sun hangs high in the sky so it doesn't get dark until late.

So I would say somewhere between six and eight in the evening.

Riding up to the far end of the bridge, Turner saw that it was guarded.

Storming across its one lane would have been folly.

He and his party turned away and eventually rode back to where they had come from.

At the height of the rebellion, how many slaves had joined Turner?

And weren't there some free blacks?

There were a number of free blacks.

There was also at least one white indentured servant.

They had 60 people.

About two thirds would have been bondsmen, slaves.

How many people had Turner and his group killed by this time?

That would have been the number, I think, the total number about.

Was it about a year?

Yeah.

It was the total number.

Total number of people that Turner and his men, had killed was fixed by that time.

This doesn't sound right, but the number varies between 55 and 57.

Turner and the remnant of his force worn out, spent the night here at Buckhorn Quarter.

Well, the sun rose at Buckhorn Quarters.

They mounted up and this is the first place they came to.

Belmont, the home of Dr.

Simon Blunt, was in 1831, one of the most impressive estates in the county and is still today.

Turner and his men rode up and fired a gun to see if anyone was at home.

The answer was rifle fire from upstairs and downstairs windows.

Blunt's slaves joined their master in defending the house.

One or more of Turner's men were killed.

Several including his trusted and best lieutenant Hark were captured.

Turner and a remnant of about 20 men fled.

There was one more small skirmish, then Turner alone went into hiding.

He remained in hiding through September into early October when for the first time he began to go out and try to eavesdrop and find out what was going on.

He hid under a stack of fence rails out in the middle of a field, which is where people wouldn't expect him to be hiding.

He was a very ingenious individual.

He finally was cited there in mid-October by a slave by the name of Red Nelson, whom we remember from early in the story.

He was one of the first slaves to spread the alarm that there was an insurrection.

Turner fled again and now stayed mostly on the move.

More than 1,500 militia and state troops haunted him in a 60 mile area.

Turner, as if fixed by fate, never left the fields and places he knew from childhood.

He stayed hidden for more than two months till the morning of October 30th.

A farmer by the name of Benjamin Phipps, a poor man, but an industrious man was walking along a road not too far from here and a troop of cavalry passed him by.

And he paused, put his gun down against a tree and Nat Turner hiding in his, under his tree, hearing the horses pass, thought that the danger had passed and poked his head out whereupon, of course, he was apprehended by Phipps who demanded to know, "Who are you? "

And Turner answered, "Honestly, I am Nat Turner."

Benjamin Phipps brought Nat Turner here, which was a local reporting place for the search.

And within an hour, more than a hundred people had gathered members of search parties, women, children.

And it, it was a kind of an unruly scene and was bound to get more unruly so that he was protected until he could begin the journey into Jerusalem the next day, which took quite a number of hours and was attended along the whole route by people coming out to gawk, some to shout and curse, many just to watch the procession.

So it was a long ordeal for Turner going into Jerusalem.

Approximately 30 to 40 of those involved were apprehended.

The jail at Jerusalem at one time held approximately 50 people who had been brought in on suspicion.

Some of these were released without any trial.

Some of them were released after trial.

A number were found not guilty who were brought to trial.

Approximately 20 or a few less were actually hanged after having gone through the judicial process having been found guilty.

And approximately the same number were found guilty, but not executed.

The execution was not automatic.

In the instance of many of the younger slaves who had participated or who had done so only on a, a tangential way, recommendation to the governor was for transportation.

And that meant you were sold down to the deep south.

On November 11th, 1831 near noon in Jerusalem, Nat Turner was hanged from this tree.

The town Nat Turner wanted desperately to get to, the place where for himself and his fellow slaves he sought deliverance he would not recognize today.

Even the name Turner knew Jerusalem was changed more than a century ago to Cortland.

It has been said that the Southampton slave revolt and the harsh Southern reaction to it made the Civil War inevitable.

Other than a couple of highway markers, there are no reminders today in Southampton County of Nat Turner and the 1831 revolt.

There is still the memory of it though.

You see and read the Civil War memorials in Southampton with a deeper and sadder understanding.

Jose and Vesna Dovis are an unlikely couple that share a common passion.

Jose was born in the Italian Alps.

Vesna is a native of Argentina.

They live now on the Eastern Shore where together they make art.

Producer Kim Simon Fink visited the Dovis' home and workplace.

There is always paintings all around you, you know, all everywhere you look.

If you are close to nature, you tend to respond the same way.

And so the, the subjects are, you know, animals or flowers or landscapes or whatever around us.

And and we feel close to, to all these subject and these patterns and so we put them in our clay, you know, and we adorn our house with them.

Tucked away in a quiet cove along the Chesapeake Bay in Exmore, Virginia, artists Jose and Vesna Doves are never far from their work or their home.

The two are intertwined, one mutually sustaining the other.

We like to live in a simple life and I feel like it's a very important part of every hum - every human being to, to, to look for for things like that to, to do in their life, you know, to have a, a good lifestyle.

And that includes almost everything.

Everything you do.

The way, the way you think, the way you, you eat, the way you, you grow your you know, a family, the way you teach and so on.

And so I, I would say that our art is a consequence of that lifestyle more than anything else.

Dovas' work blends two culturally distinct design traditions.

At age 10 in his hometown of Kuase in the foothills of the Italian Alps, he was trained in the art of pottery with the traditional style of painting known as Maiolica, a type of earth and wear Renaissance design technique.

Today, Dovis artfully combines his young training with the simplistic beauty of early American inspired designs.

The influence of living in America is based, most on the country style and the colonial style that is that you see so much around here.

And it comes from the the first colonies probably that brought their ceramics and their art from, from Europe also from, from England.

Handmade, Dovis's stoneware is characteristically country.

Blue borders are common signature design features along with the classic maiolica styled renderings of his animal subjects.

Functional as they are beautiful.

The tiles, pictures, plates and mugs further emphasize the importance of art in the Dovis lifestyle.

He's a very good artist.

He's very sure he's developed a wonderful technique and he's very sure of what he's doing.

Like I'm jealous sometimes because like he can take a piece of clay and make it into a plate, right?

The, the shape he wants and he can do it rather than it's going to be exactly as he wants.

In my clay work, there is also a, a mostly feeling that goes into a not so much technique as a feeling.

Even sometimes I find things, you know, like I, accidentally I, I discover something that is a good way of using it.

I don't use it again.

Raised in Argentina, Jose's wife, Vesna, works both in clay and on canvas.

Their art and approach are individually distinctive, though they share common objectives.

She's also, is very attracted to, to art and, and she has very strong feelings and is a very emotional person.

And so we we feel very good about working together.

Her work is as I said, very emotional, sensitive and expressive.

It's difficult to describe it.

And the dialogue comes from, from the art itself.

Unlike her husband, Vesna works from a more elective palette.

I can, I'm free, you know, to use what colors I want on, on canvas or on paper or on wood.

And, and sometimes I feel like doing everything in black and white or in one color.

You know, I'm, I'm very, I'm not really restricted to anything.

Vesna and Jose enjoy their freedom, both in their careers as artists and in their role lifestyle on the Eastern Shore.

With the first of their three children now in college and their art exhibited and Seoul throughout the region, the Dovises have found success.

Next week on Our Place Our Time, we're going to take a stroll through an historic Portsmouth Cemetery that has just recently achieved state landmark status.

Then we're going to visit Middlesex County and meet Ronnie Russell, a farmer whose red winter wheat has garnered national awards.

And then we're going to slow down so that we can view an art exhibit that we most often see when we're going 55 miles an hour.

I'm Vian Webb.

Thank you for being with us for this edition of Our Place, Our Time.

And I invite you to be with us again next week.

Partial funding for Our Place, Our Time has been made possible by the Arts Commission of the City of Chesapeake with additional support from the Arts Commissions of the Cities of Virginia Beach, Newport News, Norfolk, Hampton and Williamsburg.

Partial funding for the production of Our Place, Our Time is made possible by a grant from the Allison J and LOW Parsons Foundation.