The Slave Community: Plantation Life In The Antebellum South

Chelsea Griffin
The Slave Community: Plantation Life In The Antebellum South
By: John W. Blassingame
African American History – HIST 3881
Dr. Arwin Smallwood
The University of Memphis

The slave community during the early centuries of North America brought forth the process of capturing, preservation of culture, and the element of survival. Slaves were traded and sold by their own people. Native born Africans and their American born descendants
“africanized” the south, and strong willed, rebellious slaves and free blacks decided to not stand for their forced institution by breaking away from their physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual restraints. The “peculiar”institution [1] of southern slavery became the most trivial and horrifying
Africans believed in a Creator whom they worshiped through prayers, sacrifices, rituals, songs, and dances. They also believed in lesser important Gods that represented each aspect of life. Elements of African religion included publicly supported priests, sacred festivals, funeral rites, dirges and wakes, dances and festivals that celebrated joy and thanksgiving, sacred objects and images, and charms and amulets for protection against evil spirits [5]. Christians believed in Jehovah, Jesus, the Holy Ghost, and the Saints. The African funeral belief that those lost “go home” is a trait that is now incorporated in funerals but African traditions like songs, dances, feasts, festivals, funeral dirges, amulets, prayers, graves, images, and priests [6] are also elements that have been incorporated into funeral processes. However, some Africans did not assimilate and still preserved their
Like religion, many elements were fused together with those of the Europeans. Nonetheless, some aspects of African culture are extremely distinctive. Dances, folk tales, music, magic, and language patterns of West African culture [7] are examples of this assumption. Music, specifically, played a major role in the preservation of African culture in the New World.
Instruments like drums and guitars were used, and changes in tone, along with clapping and stomping [8], are traits that made African music so distinctive. Improvisation and the call and response method described the type of music that was so highly different from that of the Europeans. The variation in rhythm is another trait that distinguishes African music from that of Europeans.
The elaborate movements, and excited rhythms of the dances that accompanies this music was an act that Europeans could not understand. Along with the singing and dancing used to tell stories during folk tales, the assimilation and revolts through the language barriers, and the creation of the magic of voodoo, Africans were able to obtain strength in their culture that has been passed down through the generations. Even through the will of the Europeans to take every element of their culture from their instruments to the development of the first slave code, African culture was mixed and retained.
African