Talk:The Delectable Negro

Medicinal grease?
The claim that Turner's body was 'turned into "medicinal" grease' doesn't appear anywhere in the Nat Turner's slave rebellion article. I don't have access to The American Historical Review - is this claim supported widely? JezGrove (talk) 21:12, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
 * That his body was made into some kind of grease is, I think, widely supported. Other accounts suggest that it was used for soap or axle grease. Woodard supports the medicinal claim in a couple ways. He cites an editoral by J. S. Musgrave which quotes a text saying "Nat's body was boiled up, his oil saved and sold for a long period as a panacea for all ills and known as 'Nat’s grease.'" (p. 92) He also cites William Sydney Drewry who wrote in The Southhampton Insurrection (1900) that Turner's body was "delivered to doctors, who skinned it and made grease of the flesh. Mr. R. S. Barham’s father owned a money purse made of his hide." (p. 172) Drewry goes on to say that Blacks from the region swore off castor oil, concerned that it might be "old Nat's grease". gobonobo  + c 06:06, 24 August 2020 (UTC)