Examples of slave culture in the following topics:
-
- Slave culture in colonial North America was largely a combination of tribal African culture, Christian worship, and resistance.
- In many respects, American slave culture was a culture of survival and defiance against the American slave system.
- African-based oral traditions became the primary means of preserving slave history, mores, and cultural information, and this was consistent with the practices of oral history in African cultures.
- Slaves also drew on other aspects of tribal African culture, such as herbal medicine and prayer.
- Describe how slave culture often paralleled forms of resistance to slavery in the United States
-
- Influenced by restrictive laws and brutal treatment, slaves combined African and Christian customs to form a relatively homogeneous culture.
- Slave culture in the United States drew heavily on a variety of African tribal sources mixed with American Christianity to create a relatively homogeneous American slave culture that contributed to the shape of Southern plantation life.
- Sexual abuse of female slaves was endemic in the South , where cultural patriarchy treated all women (black and white) as property or chattel.
- African-based oral traditions became the primary means of preserving slave history, mores, and cultural information: This was consistent with the griot practices of oral history in African cultures.
- Slaves also drew on other aspects of tribal African culture: such as herbal medicine and prayer.
-
- Using psychology, Blassingame analyzes fugitive slave narratives published in the 19th century to conclude that an independent culture developed among the enslaved and that there were a variety of personality types exhibited by slaves.
- According to Blassingame, African culture was not entirely removed from slave culture through the process of enslavement.
- He asserts that the retention of African culture acted as a form of resistance to enslavement.
- Culture developed within the slave community independent of the slaveowners' influence.
- Identify historian John Blassingame's argument about the formation of slave culture in the United States
-
- Enslaved Africans developed their own independent culture in the New World, drawing on both African and American traditions.
- Using psychology, Blassingame analyzes fugitive slave narratives published in the 19th century to conclude that an independent culture developed among the enslaved.
- According to Blassingame, African culture was not entirely removed from slave culture through the process of enslavement and "was much more resistant to the bludgeon that was slavery than historians have hitherto suspected. " "African survivals" persisted in the form of folk tales, religion and spirituality, music and dance, and language.
- Blassingame concludes that cross-cultural exchanges occurred on southern plantations, arguing that "acculturation in the United States involved the mutual interaction between two cultures, with Europeans and Africans borrowing from each other. " Blassingame asserts that the most significant instance revolved around Protestant Christianity (primarily Baptist and Methodist churches): "The number of blacks who received religious instruction in antebellum white churches is significant because the church was the only institution other than the plantation which played a major role in acculturating the slave. " Christianity and enslaved black ministers represented another aspect of slave culture which the slaves used to create their own communities.
- Slave marriages were illegal in southern states, and slave couples were frequently separated by slave owners through sale.
-
- African slaves engaged in many forms of resistance, from organized
uprisings to the practice of their own native culture.
- The raid was a joint attack by former slaves, freed blacks, and white men who
had corresponded with slaves on plantations.
- African culture and
traditions were maintained throughout the generations by slaves, which in itself, constituted
a form of resistance.
- Cross-cultural exchanges that occurred between African slaves and the individuals they encountered of Western European heritage
also contributed to African-American culture and resistance.
- For instance, Christianity slowly replaced
surviving African religious practices over time to become another important aspect
of plantation life and more generally African-American culture.
-
- The sexual abuse of slaves was a common occurrence in the antebellum South.
- The sexual
abuse of slaves was partially rooted in a patriarchal Southern culture that perceived
all women, whether black or white, as chattel, or property.
- "Slave
breeding" refers to those practices of slave ownership that aimed to influence
the reproduction of slaves in order to increase the profit and wealth of
slaveholders.
- Slave breeding
involved coerced sexual relations between male and female slaves, as well as
sexual relations between a master and his female slaves, with the intention of
producing slave children.
- Concubine slaves were the only class of female slaves who
sold for higher prices than skilled male slaves.
-
- For instance, there were slaves who
employed white workers, slave doctors who treated upper-class white patients,
and slaves who rented out their labor.
- Sexual abuse of
slave women was rooted in and protected by the patriarchal Southern culture of
the era in which all women, black or white, were treated as property, or chattel.
- In
1850, a publication provided guidance to slave owners on how to produce the
"ideal slave":
- In the mid-nineteenth century,
slaving states passed laws making education of slaves illegal.
- In
Missouri, some slaveholders educated their slaves or permitted the slaves to
educate themselves.
-
- Slavery was more than a labor system; it also influenced every aspect of colonial thought and culture.
- Slavery manifested differently in different parts of the British colonies of North America and was an integral part of the economic culture of the Chesapeake (in tobacco) and the lower South (in rice, indigo, tobacco, and eventually cotton).
- In the Chesapeake region, the average slave owner owned one slave.
- Slavery was not as much a part of the economic culture of the North, which tended to focus on the building of industry.
- Until 1808, when the importation of African slaves was outlawed, it was simply cheaper to work slaves to death and buy new ones than it was to take care of current slaves.
-
- The
belief in racial "purity" drove Southern culture's vehement
prohibition of sexual relations between white women and black men, but this
same culture essentially protected sexual relations between white men and black
women.
- In many households, for instance, the way in which slaves were treated
depended on the slave's skin color.
- Darker-skinned slaves worked in the fields
while lighter-skinned slaves worked in the house and had comparatively better
clothing, food, and housing.
- A woodcut from the abolitionist Anti-Slavery Almanac (1839) depicts a slave patrol capturing a fugitive slave.
- Explain how skin color and the relationship between slave and master shaped the slave community
-
- Slave labor and the African slave trade formed the backbone of the American colonial economy.
- Slavery was more than a labor system; it also influenced every aspect of colonial thought and culture.
- Hence, when the Portuguese slave traders started exploring the coast of Africa where it was customary for warring indigenous tribes to enslave each other, they began to buy these slaves for export to the New World colonies.
- In 1660, Charles II created the Royal African Company to trade in slaves and African goods.
- Slaves everywhere resisted their exploitation and attempted to gain freedom through armed uprisings and rebellions, such as the Stono Rebellion and the New York Slave Insurrection of 1741.