Americans from Africa

Old Memories, New Moods

Peter I. Rose

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351532266
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book is the second of a two-volume set exploring the controversies about the experiences of Americans from Africa. It contains essays on the roots of protest, including the original "Confessions of Nat Turner;" the background and character of the Civil Rights Movement; the origins and impact of Black Power; and, finally, in "Negroes Nevermore, " varied views on the meaning of Black Pride.

Included here are selections written by black and white social scientists, psychiatrists, historians, and political figures offered in careful juxtaposition. Among the contributors are Raymond and Alice Bauer, Robert Blauner, Stokely Carmichael, Erik Erikson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Joyce Ladner, C. Eric Lincoln, August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, Tom Mboya, Gerald Mullin, Alvin Poussaint, and Mike Thelwell.

Volume I, Slavery and Its Aftermath, addresses four other issues: the retention of "Africanisms;" the impact of slavery on personality and culture; differences in the experiences of living in the South and North; and matters of community, class and family.

Originally published in 1970, these volumes have stood the test of time. Each of the issues considered still resonate in American society and all are critical to understanding many matters that still confront many Americans from Africa.

I

Black Protest

Who Was Nat Turner?

I saluted them on coming up, and asked Will how came he there, he answered, his life was worth no more than others, and his liberty as dear to him. I asked him if he thought to obtain it? He said he would, or lose his life. This was enough to put him in full confidence. . . . it was quickly agreed we should commence at home on that night, and until we had armed and equipped ourselves, and gathered sufficient force, neither age nor sex was to be spared. . . .

Nat Turner

Melville J. Herskovits was one of the first social scientists to document the haracter of African survivals in the New World. Raymond and Alice Bauer, who worked under the noted anthropologist, were among the first to describe the day to day resistance to slavery that occurred on plantations throughout the American South.

Their essay, originally published in 1942, helped to dispel the myth of docility offered by both proslavery and abolitionist factions. It also served to explain why indirect methods of retaliation including the destruction of property, malingering, feigning disability, and even infanticide were more prevalent than outright revolts.

1

1Day to Day Resistance to Slavery¹

Raymond Bauer Alice Bauer

The tradition that has grown up about Negro slavery is that the slaves were docile, well adapted to slavery, and reasonably content with their lot. A standard work on the Negro problem in the United States says:

The Negroes brought into the New World situation and presently reduced to a perpetual servitude became very rapidly accommodated to the environment and status. The explanation of the comparative ease with which this was brought about doubtless lies in the peculiar racial traits of the Negro peoples themselves. They are strong and robust in physique and so everywhere sought after as laborers. In disposition they are cheerful, kindly and sociable: in character they are characteristically extrovert, so readily obedient and easily contented. More than most other social groups they are patiently tolerant under abuse and oppression and little inclined to struggle against difficulties. These facts of racial temperament and disposition make the Negroes more amenable to the condition of slavery than perhaps any other racial group.²

This concept is gradually being changed as the study of slave revolts, and of the social tension caused by the constant threat of revolt progresses.³ In answer to the question, “‘Are the masters afraid of insurrection?’ (a slave) says, They live in constant fear upon this subject. The least unusual noise at night alarms them greatly. They cry out, ‘What is that’ ‘Are the boys all in? ’”⁴

The purpose of this paper is to study a less spectacular aspect of slavery— the day to day resistance to slavery, since it is felt that such a study will throw some further light on the nature of the Negro’s reaction to slavery. Our investigation has made it apparent that the Negroes not only were very discontented, but that they developed effective protest techniques in the form of indirect retaliation for their enslavement. Since this conclusion differs sharply from commonly accepted belief, it would perhaps be of value if a brief preliminary statement were made of how belief so at variance with the available documentary materials could gain such acceptance.

The picture of the docile, contented Negro slave grew out of two lines of argument used in ante-bellum times. The pro-slavery faction contended that the slaves came of an inferior race, and that they were happy and contented in their subordinate position, and that the dancing and singing Negro exemplified their assumption. Abolitionists, on the other hand, tended to depict the Negro slave as a passive instrument, a good and faithful worker exploited and beaten by a cruel master. As one reads the controversial literature on the slavery question, it soon becomes apparent that both sides presented the Negro as a docile creature; one side because it wished to prove that he was contented, the other because it wished to prove that he was grossly mistreated. Both conceptions have persisted to the present time. Writers who romanticize the “Old South” idealize the condition of the slaves, and make of them happy, willing servitors, while those who are concerned with furthering the interests of the Negroes are careful to avoid mention of any aggressive tendencies which might be used as a pretext for further suppressing the Negroes.

Many travelers in the South have accepted the overt behavior of the slaves at its face value. The “yas suh, Cap’n,” the smiling, bowing, and scraping of the Negroes have been taken as tokens of contentment. Redpath’s conversations with slaves indicated how deep seated this behavior was.⁵ This point of view, however, neglects the fact that the whites have always insisted on certain forms of behavior as a token of acceptance of inferior status by the Negro. The following quotation from Dollard is pertinent:

An informant already cited has referred to the Negro as a “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” He was making an observation that is well understood among Negroes—that he has a kind of dual personality, two rôles, one that he is forced to play with white people and one the “real Negro” as he appears in his dealings with his own people. What the white southern people see who “know their Negroes” is the rôle that they have forced the Negro to accept, his caste role.⁶

The conceptual framework within which this paper is written is that the Negro slaves were forced into certain outward forms of compliance to slavery; that, except for the few who were able to escape to the North, the Negroes had to accept the institution of slavery and make their adjustments to that institution. The patterns of adjustment which we have found operative are: slowing up of work, destruction of property, malingering and self-mutilation.

The sources of our material are: (1) general works on slavery, labor, and the Negro; (2) the journals and the travel accounts of southerners and of visitors to the slave territory; and (3) the biographies and autobiographies of slaves. Most of the secondary sources take some cognizance of the fact that slaves slowed up their work, feigned illness, and the like, but this behavior is regarded as a curiosity. There has been no attempt by those writers who set down such facts to understand their social and economic significance. The journals and travel-books vary greatly in the amount of information they contain. This, of course, is due to the authors’ variations in interest and acuteness. Olmsted’s Seaboard Slave States, for instance, abounds in anecdotes, and in expressions of opinion as to the extent of loafing and malingering. Susan Smedes’ Memorials of a Southern Planter, on the other hand, contains just one foot-noted reference to any such behavior. Life stories of ex-slaves emphasize running away, forms of punishment, and other aspects of slavery that would make interesting reading. Yet while references to slowing up work, or feigning illness, are thus few in number, where they are made they are stated in such a way that they leave no doubt that there was a persistent pattern of such behavior.

Slaveholders ever underate the intelligence with which they have to grapple. I really understood the old man’s mutterings, attitudes and gestures, about as well as he did himself. But slaveholders never encourage that kind of communication, with the slaves, by which they might learn to measure the depths of his knowledge. Ignorance is a high virtue in a human chattel; and as the master studies to keep the slave ignorant, the slave is cunning enough to make the master think he succeeds. The slave fully appreciates the saying, “where ignorance is bliss ’tis folly to be wise.”⁷

We have felt it wise to quote extensively. Much of the meaning of incidents and interpretations lies in the phrasing of the author— in sensing his own emphasis on what he says. Methodologically, in attempting to analyze an existing stereotype, as we are trying to do here, it would seem wisest to present the picture as it appeared to contemporaries, and thus as given in their own words.

II

The Negroes were well aware that the work they did benefited only the master. “The slaves work and the planter gets the benefit of it.”⁸ “The conversation among the slaves was that they worked hard and got no benefit, that the masters got it all.”⁹ It is thus not surprising that one finds many recurring comments that a slave did not do half a good day’s work in a day. A northerner whom Lyell met in the South said:

Half the population of the south is employed in seeing that the other half do their work, and they who do work, accomplish half what they might do under a better system.¹⁰

An English visitor with a very strong pro-slavery bias corroborates this:

The amount of work expected of the field hand will not be more than one half of what would be demanded of a white man; and even that will not be properly done unless he be constantly overlooked.¹¹

Statements of other writers are to the same effect:

It is a common remark of those persons acquainted with slave-labour, that their proportion is as one to two. This is not too great an estimate in favour of the free-labourer; and the circumstances of their situation produce a still greater disparity.¹²

A capitalist was having a building erected in Petersburg, and his slaves were employed in carrying up the brick and mortar for the masons on their heads: a Northerner, standing near, remarked to him that they moved so indolently that it seemed as if they were trying to see how long they could be in mounting the ladder without actually stopping. The builder started to reprove them, but after moving a step turned back and said: “It would only make them move more slowly still when I am not looking at them, if I should hurry now. And what motive have they to do better? It’s no concern of theirs how long the masons wait. I am sure if I was in their place, I shouldn’t move as fast as they do.”¹³

A well-informed capitalist and slave-holder remarked,

In working niggers, we always calculate that they will not labor at all except to avoid punishment, and they will never do more than just enough to save themselves from being punished, and no amount of punishment will prevent their working carelessly or indifferently. It always seems on the plantations as if they took pains to break all the tools and spoil all the cattle that they possibly can, even when they know they’ll be directly punished for it.¹⁴

Just how much of this was due to indifference and how much due to deliberate slowing up is hard to determine. Both factors most probably entered. A worker who had to devote himself to a dull task from which he can hope to gain nothing by exercising initiative soon slips into such a frame of mind that he does nothing more than go through the motions. His chief concern is to escape from the realities of his task and put it in the back of his mind as much as possible.

There is, indeed, a strong possibility that this behavior was a form of indirect aggression. While such an hypothesis cannot be demonstrated on the basis of the available contemporary data, it is supported by Dollard’s interpretation of similar behavior which he found in Southern towns.

If the reader has ever seen Stepin Fetchit in the movies, he can picture this type of character. Fetchit always plays the part of a well-accommodated lower-class Negro, whining, vacillating, shambling, stupid, and moved by very simple cravings. There is probably an element of resistance to white society in the shambling, sullenly slow pace of the Negro; it is the gesture of a man who is forced to work for ends not his own and who expresses his reluctance to perform under these circumstances.¹⁵

Certainly description after description emphasizes the mechanical plodding of the slave workers:

John Lamar wrote, “My man Ned the carpenter is idle or nearly so at the plantation. He is fixing gates and, like the idle groom in Pickwick, trying to fool himself into the belief that he is doing something—He is an eye servant.”¹⁶

Those I saw at work appeared to me to move very slowly and awkwardly, as did those engaged in the stables. These also were very stupid and dilatory in executing any orders given them, so that Mr. C. would frequently take the duty off their hands into his own, rather than wait for them, or make them correct their blunders; they were much, in these respects, what our farmers call dumb Paddees—that is. Irishmen who do not readily understand the English language, and who are still weak and stiff from the effects ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface to the Transaction Edition
• Acknowledgments
• Contributors
• Introduction
• I. Black Protest
• II. In Quest of Community
• Index