WEEK 5 – SLAVE LIFE AND CULTURE

SLAVE CODES It was illegal for slaves to : read and write, attend church services without the presence of a white person Own property or possess weapons testify in court against a white person. leave their home plantation without a written pass from their masters. Gather in groups lift a hand against a white person even in self-defense. A runaway slave refusing to surrender could be killed without penalty. The status of the slave was transmitted by the mother Baptism did not prevent slavery

Housing on the plantation Slave quarters built by slave owners, like these pictured on a South Carolina plantation, provided more than basic shelter. Slave quarters were the center of the African American community life that developed during slavery. SOURCE: Collection of The New-York Historical Society. Photograph by G.N. Barnard, Bagoe Collection, ca. 1865, negative number 48169.

Slave Quarters, Carter’s Grove Plantation, Virginia

CLOTHING

FAMILY TIES

AFRICANISMS = “those elements of culture found in the New World that are traceable to an African origin” E. Franklin Frazer, in The Negro in the United States (1949) = tabula rasa, Sambo = passive, docile Melville Herskovits, in The Myth of the Negro Past (1941) Blend of European, Native-American and African practices

Language:bogus, bug, phony, yam, jamboree, jazz, and funky >>> GULLAH language in South Carolina Cuisine: deep-fat frying, gumbos, and fricassees Music: spirituals, work songs, call and response pattern Agriculture: cultivation techniques of rice and sweet potatoes Spiritual practices: burial pratices, conjurors Folklore: Brer Rabbit Tales,

NIGHT FUNERALS African cultural patterns persisted in the preference for night funerals and for solemn pageantry and song, as depicted in British artist John Antrobus’s Plantation Burial, ca. 1860. Like other African American customs, the community care of the dead contained an implied rebuke to the masters’ care of the living slaves. SOURCE: John Antrobus, Plantation Burial. Oil painting. The Historic New Orleans Collection. #1960.46.

Syncretic practices in the West Indies Candomblé in Brazil

The Wall of Rememberance, New York African burial Ground

1701, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts Colossians 3:22, “Servants, obey in all things your masters”. "I can’t help knowing my duty. I am to serve God in that state in which He has placed me. I am to do what my master orders me.” “That you do not ask for the holy baptism out of any design to free yourself from the Duty of Obedience you owe to your Master while you live.” « The baptizing of any ... Slave shall not be any Cause or reason for the setting them or any of them at Liberty. » (New York, 1706) Conversion to Christianity does not make « the least Alteration in Civil Property ; that the Freedom which Christianity gives is a Freedom from the Bondage of Sin and Satan ... but as to their outward condition [slaves] remained as before even after baptism. » (Bishop of London, 1727)

RELIGION - 1725: In Williamsburg, Va. = first Black Baptist church is founded. - 1758: the African Baptist Church/Blue Stone Baptist - 1773-1775: The Silver Bluff Baptist Church in Silver Bluff, South Carolina. - 1784: St. George's United Methodist Church