onfessions of Nat Turner as a case where blacks thought a white could not tell their story, and in any case the novel was seen as a problem because it did not shape the main character in the way that black political leaders would have liked:
Styron's depiction of Turner, though sympathetic, was of an anguished soul, psychically maimed, and ambivalent to the point of paralysis. Not the sort of shining example the new black consciousness demanded, or that, in other circumstances, any patriotic history could tolerate in a national hero.
While this was a flap over a novel, the underlying rationale was applicable to any history as well, and Novick says that the controversy prefigured what would soon be more common assertions that it was blacks who should be the ones to write black history:
Whites were not only writing about blacks, but teaching courses, frequently to overflow crowds, on black history, and habits of black deference had given way to often belligerent assertiveness. A new generation of black historians aggressively challenged the claims
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