1. Year 8 Class activity 28 & 29 th April

2. Life on a cotton plantation

3. Being a field slave was not at all easy. A field slave worked from sunrise to sunset, but during harvest, they worked an eighteen-hour day. A field worker was out in the field when the first sign of light shone until it was too dark to see. Women field workers worked the same hours as men. Pregnant women were expected to work until the child was born, and after the child's birth the woman worked in the field with the child on her back. At about the age of twelve a child's work became almost the same as an adult's. Children as young as 6 worked in the fields! Cotton Cultivation, U.S. South, 1875 Questions: 1.What hours did field slaves work? 2.Were women treated any differently? 3.What about the children?

4. After a day on a cotton plantation the slaves got in a line to have their cotton weighed and receive their daily food. The minimum amount of cotton to be picked in one day was 200 pounds. One slave, West Turner, remembered after a long day working on the plantation, he and other slaves were required to clean a shoe full of cotton before they were allowed to go to bed. Turner wore a size 14 shoe! Each night he was still cleaning his pile of cotton long after the rest of the slaves had finished. To stop this situation getting worse, he wrapped his feet up very tightly in rags, to prevent them getting any bigger! This is a picture of slaves using a cotton gin. Questions: 4. What jobs did people do on a cotton plantation 5. What upset West Turner? 6. Why might West Turner have enjoyed the invention of the cotton gin?

5. a cotton gin and cotton. Questions: 7. Why was cotton picking such hard work? 8. What happens to cotton once its picked? 9. What happened to cotton plantations as a direct result of Eli Whitney’s invention? A large number of early settlers in America grew cotton. To grow cotton and to pick, gin (remove seeds from the white fluff) and bale it took a great deal of work. Therefore large numbers of slaves were purchased to do this work. The industry was given a boost invention of Eli Whitney's Cotton Gin in 1793. With the aid of a horse to turn the gin, a man could clean fifty times as much cotton as before. This increased the demand for slaves. For example, in 1803 alone, over 20,000 slaves were being brought into Georgia and South Carolina to work in the cotton fields. Cotton balls were picked by hand and as cotton ripens unevenly one field sometimes had to be harvested up to 3 times!

6. The accommodation provided for slaves usually consisted of wooden shacks with dirt floors. According to Jacob Stroyer they were built to house two families: "Some had partitions, while others had none. When there were no partitions each family would fit up its own part as it could; sometimes they got old boards and nailed them up, stuffing the cracks with rags; when they could not get boards they hung up old clothes." Another slave, Josiah Henson wrote that "Wooden floors were an unknown luxury. In a single room were huddled, like cattle, ten or a dozen persons, men, women, and children. We had neither bedsteads, nor furniture of any description. Our beds were collections of straw and old rags, thrown down in the corners and boxed in with boards; a single blanket the only covering." Questions: 10. What were slaves homes like on plantations? According to Jacob Stroyer? 11. Does Josiah Henson agree with Jacob about living conditions for the slaves? 12. Look at the photograph. Do you think this is an accurate image of slave housing? Back up your answer. Slave Life Evidence 1

7. Plantation owners in America had complete freedom to buy and sell slaves. State laws gave slave marriages no legal protection and so husbands could be separated from their wives and children from their mothers. The owner of Harriet Jacobs used the threat of selling her children as a means of controlling her behaviour. Jacobs described how one mother, who had just witnessed seven of her children being sold at a slave-market said 'Gone! All gone! Why don't God kill me?' I had no words wherewith to comfort her." A study of slave records revealed that over 32 per cent of marriages were dissolved by masters as a result of slaves being sold away from the family home. Questions: 13. State 2 reasons why families were separated 14. What affect would separation have on the families? 15. Look at the photograph. Do you think this is an accurate image of a slave family? Back up your answer.

8. Slaves attempted to preserve the culture that they had brought with them from Africa. Attempts were made to stop slaves from continuing with African religious rituals. Drums were banned as overseers feared that they could be used to send messages. They were particularly concerned that they would be used to signal a slave uprising. Slaves would often sing while at work. In his autobiography, Frederick Douglass recorded how slaves "would make the dense old woods, for miles around, reverberate with their wild songs, revealing at once the highest joy and the deepest sadness." The songs told of the slave's loves, work and floggings and served as rhythmic accompaniment to labour. Questions: 16. How could slaves preserve their culture? 17. State 2 reasons slaves have for singing? 18. Why was drumming forbidden? Slave Life Evidence 3

9. Source-based work on life on a cotton plantation

10. Questions: Picture 1 Look at the picture ‘weeding the cotton’. 1.Can you tell who is in charge here? 2.How realistic do you think this is as a picture of daily life on the plantation? 3.Why do you think the artist painted this picture in the way that he has?

11. Questions: Picture 2 Look at this photograph 4. Who are the people in the photograph? 5. Do you think this is a natural photograph or has it been set up? 6. What do you think the purpose of taking this picture may be?

12. Questions:Picture 3 Look at this advertisement. 7. What is this advert for? 8. What does it tell us about the value of slaves? 9. Does this tell you something about the importance of the cotton industry?

13. Questions: Picture 4Look at this graph. 10. What does this graph show? 11. What happens to the production of cotton between 1800 and 1860? 12. Does this tell you something about the importance of the cotton industry?

14. Slave Punishment: According to his testimony, the injuries sustained from a whipping by his overseer kept Peter, a slave, bedridden for two months. Questions: 1.What does this photograph show? 2.Why do you think slaves were punished so harshly? 3.What does this tell us about attitudes towards slaves?

15. Punishment Evidence 2 This engraving shows a man brutally hung up, while still alive, by a hook through his body. In this way a major rebellion by slaves against inhumane conditions was brutally repressed. This graphic depiction of a slave hanging by a single rib while still alive illustrates the extreme cruelty of Europeans in dealing with enslaved Africans in the Americas. Questions: 1.Why has this man been killed? 2.Why do you think plantation owners inflicted such harsh punishments on those who rebelled? 3.The title of the picture uses the word ‘negro’. Why was it used and why is the term offensive today?

16. An artist’s impression of a real example of the brutality of slavery, when a pregnant woman was beaten in Guyana in 1825. Rosa was picking coffee and finding it difficult, as she was heavily pregnant. The plantation manager thought the women were not working hard enough and ordered them all to be whipped by a black overseer and sent back to work. Rosa was sent back to the fields and went into premature labour and gave birth to a stillborn (dead) child. Questions: 1.When and where is the event shown in this picture set? 2.There are two men in the picture. Can you suggest what both of them do? 3.What makes Rosa’s story particularly shocking?

17. Questions: Picture 5 Look at this graph showing the numbers of slaves involved growing cotton. 13. What does this graph show? 14. What does this tell you about the use of slaves in 1860? 15. Does this tell you something about the importance of the cotton industry?