''The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South'' is a book written by American
historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the stu ...
John W. Blassingame. Published in 1972, it is one of the first historical studies of
slavery in the United States
The legal institution of human chattel slavery, comprising the enslavement primarily of Africans and African Americans, was prevalent in the United States of America from its founding in 1776 until 1865, predominantly in the South. Sl ...
to be presented from the perspective of the enslaved. ''The Slave Community'' contradicted those historians who had interpreted history to suggest that
African-American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...
slaves were docile and submissive "
Sambos" who enjoyed the benefits of a
paternalistic
Paternalism is action that limits a person's or group's liberty or autonomy and is intended to promote their own good. Paternalism can also imply that the behavior is against or regardless of the will of a person, or also that the behavior expres ...
master–slave relationship on
southern plantation
A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The ...
s. 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.
Although the importance of ''The Slave Community'' was recognized by scholars of American slavery, Blassingame's conclusions, methodology, and sources were heavily criticized. Historians criticized the use of slave narratives that were seen as unreliable and biased. They questioned Blassingame's decision to exclude the more than
2,000 interviews with former slaves conducted by the
Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...
(WPA) in the 1930s. Historians argued that Blassingame's use of psychological theory proved unhelpful in his interpretation. Blassingame defended his conclusions at a 1976 meeting of the
Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History
The Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) is an organization dedicated to the study and appreciation of African-American History. It is a non-profit organization founded in Chicago, Illinois, on September 9, 1915 ...
and in 1979 published a revised and enlarged edition of ''The Slave Community''. Despite criticisms, ''The Slave Community'' is a foundational text in the study of the life and culture of slaves in the
Antebellum South
In History of the Southern United States, the history of the Southern United States, the Antebellum Period (from la, ante bellum, lit=Status quo ante bellum, before the war) spanned the Treaty of Ghent, end of the War of 1812 to the start of ...
.
Historiographic background
Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
Ulrich Bonnell Phillips (November 4, 1877 – January 21, 1934) was an American historian who largely defined the field of the social and economic studies of the history of the Antebellum South and slavery in the U.S. Phillips concentrated on t ...
wrote the first major historical study of the 20th century dealing with slavery. In ''American Negro Slavery'' (1918), Phillips refers to slaves as "
negro
In the English language, ''negro'' is a term historically used to denote persons considered to be of Black African heritage. The word ''negro'' means the color black in both Spanish and in Portuguese, where English took it from. The term can be ...
es, who for the most part were by racial quality submissive rather than defiant, light-hearted instead of gloomy, amiable and ingratiating instead of sullen, and whose very defects invited paternalism rather than repression." ''American Negro Slavery'' is infused with racial rhetoric and upholds perceptions about the inferiority of black people common in the
southern United States
The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, or simply the South) is a geographic and cultural region of the United States of America. It is between the Atlantic Ocean ...
at the time. Although African American academics such as
W. E. B. Du Bois criticized Phillips's depiction of slaves, the book was considered the authoritative text on slavery in America until the 1950s.
Phillips's interpretation of slavery was challenged by
Kenneth M. Stampp
Kenneth Milton Stampp (12 July 191210 July 2009), Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor of History Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley (1946–1983), was a celebrated historian of slavery, the American Civil War, and Reconstr ...
in ''The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South'' (1956) and
Stanley M. Elkins in ''Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life'' (1958). Stampp's study lacks the racist interpretation found in ''American Negro Slavery'' and approaches the issue from the position that there is no innate difference between blacks and whites. He questions the reality of plantation paternalism described by Phillips: "the reality of ante-bellum paternalism ... needs to be separated from its fanciful surroundings and critically analyzed."
[Kenneth M. Stampp, ''The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South'' (1956; New York: Vintage Books, 1989), p. 322, .] Elkins also dismisses Phillips's claim that
African American slaves
The legal institution of human Slavery#Chattel slavery, chattel slavery, comprising the enslavement primarily of List of ethnic groups of Africa, Africans and African Americans, was prevalent in the United States, United States of America ...
were innately submissive "Sambos". He argues that slaves had instead been infantilized, or "made" into Sambos, by the brutal treatment received at the hands of slaveowners and overseers. Elkins compares the process to the infantilization of
Jews
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
in
Nazi concentration camps
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, (officially) or (more commonly). The Nazi concentration camps are distinguished from other types of Nazi camps such as forced-labor camps, as well as concen ...
.
Like Phillips, Stampp and Elkins relied on plantation records and the writings of slaveowners as their main
primary source
In the study of history as an academic discipline, a primary source (also called an original source) is an artifact, document, diary, manuscript, autobiography, recording, or any other source of information that was created at the time under ...
s. Stampp admits that "few ask what the slaves themselves thought of bondage."
Historians dismissed the written works of slaves such as the 19th century fugitive slave narratives as unreliable and biased because of their editing by
abolitionists
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people.
The Britis ...
. Scholars also ignored the 2,300 interviews conducted with former slaves in the late 1930s by the WPA
Federal Writers' Project
The Federal Writers' Project (FWP) was a federal government project in the United States created to provide jobs for out-of-work writers during the Great Depression. It was part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a New Deal program. It ...
. As historian
George P. Rawick points out, more weight was often given to white sources: the "masters not only ruled the past in fact" but also "rule its
written history
Recorded history or written history describes the historical events that have been recorded in a written form or other documented communication which are subsequently evaluated by historians using the historical method. For broader world his ...
."
The 1970s, however, witnessed the publication of revisionist studies that departed from the traditional
historiography of slavery. Focusing on the perspective of the slave, new studies incorporated the slave narratives and WPA interviews: George Rawick's ''From Sunup to Sundown: The Making of the Black Community'' (1972),
Eugene D. Genovese's ''Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made'' (1974),
Peter H. Wood
Peter Hutchins Wood (born 1943 in St. Louis, Missouri) is an American historian and author of ''Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion'' (1974). It has been described as one of the most influenti ...
, ''Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 Through the Stono Rebellion'' (1974), Leslie Howard Owens's ''This Species of Property: Slave Life and Culture in the Old South'' (1976),
Herbert G. Gutman's ''
The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750–1925'' (1976),
Lawrence W. Levine
Lawrence William Levine (February 27, 1933 – October 23, 2006) was an American historian. He was born in Manhattan and died in Berkeley, California. He was noted for promoting multiculturalism and the perspectives of ordinary people in the ...
's ''Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom'' (1977), and
Albert J. Raboteau
Albert Jordy "Al" Raboteau II (September 4, 1943 – September 18, 2021) was an American scholar of African and African-American religions. Since 1982, he had been affiliated with Princeton University, where he was Henry W. Putnam Professor of R ...
's ''Slave Religion: The "Invisible Institution" in the Antebellum South'' (1978). One of the more controversial of these studies was John W. Blassingame's ''The Slave Community''.
Blassingame's argument
In ''The Slave Community'', Blassingame argues that "historians have never systematically explored the life experiences of American slaves." He asserts that by concentrating on the slaveowner, historians have presented a distorted view of plantation life that "strips the slave of any meaningful and distinctive culture, family life, religion, or manhood." Blassingame outlines that the reliance on planter sources led historians like Elkins to mimic planter stereotypes of slaves such as the "submissive half-man, half child" Sambo. Noting the
agency slaves possessed over their lives, he contends, "Rather than identifying with and submitting totally to his master, the slave held onto many remnants of his
African culture
African or Africans may refer to:
* Anything from or pertaining to the continent of Africa:
** People who are native to Africa, descendants of natives of Africa, or individuals who trace their ancestry to indigenous inhabitants of Africa
*** Ethn ...
, gained a sense of worth in the quarters, spent most of his time free from surveillance by whites, controlled important aspects of his life, and did some personally meaningful things on his own volition."
[Blassingame, ''The Slave Community'', p. xii.]
African cultural retention and slave culture
According to Blassingame, African culture was not entirely removed from slave culture through the process of enslavement and "was much more resistant to the bludgeons 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. He asserts that the retention of African culture acted as a form of resistance to enslavement: "All things considered, the few Africans enslaved in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century America appear to have survived their traumatic experiences without becoming abjectly docile, infantile, or submissive" and "since an overwhelming percentage of nineteenth-century Southern slaves were native Americans, they never underwent this kind of shock
he_Middle_Passage.html"_;"title="Middle_Passage.html"_;"title="he_Middle_Passage">he_Middle_Passage">Middle_Passage.html"_;"title="he_Middle_Passage">he_Middle_Passageand_were_in_a_position_to_construct_psychological_defenses_against_total_dependency_on_their_masters."
Blassingame_asserts_that_historians_have_discussed_"what_could_be_generally_described_as_slave_'culture,'_but_give_little_solid_information_on_life_in_the_quarters."_He_argues_that_culture_developed_within_the_slave_community_independent_of_the_slaveowners'_influence._Blassingame_notes,_"Antebellum_era.html" "title="iddle_Passage">he_Middle_Passage.html" ;"title="Middle_Passage.html" ;"title="he Middle Passage">he Middle Passage">Middle_Passage.html" ;"title="he Middle Passage">he Middle Passageand were in a position to construct psychological defenses against total dependency on their masters."
Blassingame asserts that historians have discussed "what could be generally described as slave 'culture,' but give little solid information on life in the quarters." He argues that culture developed within the slave community independent of the slaveowners' influence. Blassingame notes, "Antebellum era">Antebellum
Antebellum, Latin for "before war", may refer to:
United States history
* Antebellum South, the pre-American Civil War period in the Southern United States
** Antebellum Georgia
** Antebellum South Carolina
** Antebellum Virginia
* Antebellum ...
black slaves created several unique cultural forms which lightened their burden of oppression, promoted group solidarity, provided ways for verbalizing aggression, sustaining hope, building self-esteem, and often represented areas of life largely free from the control of whites."
Blassingame notes that many of the folk tales told by slaves have been traced by African scholars to Ghana, Senegal, and Mauritania to peoples such as the Ewe people, Ewe, Wolof people, Wolof, Hausa people, Hausa, Temne people, Temne, Ashanti people, Ashanti, and Igbo people, Igbo. He remarks, "While many of these tales were brought over to the South, the African element appears most clearly in the animal tales." One prominent example discussed by Blassingame is the Ewe story of "Why the Hare Runs Away", which is a
stories. Southern slaves often included African animals like elephants, lions, and monkeys as characters in their folk tales.
As Christian missionaries and slaveowners attempted to erase African religious and spiritual beliefs, Blassingame argues that "in the United States, many African religious rites were
." Voodoo priests and conjurers promised slaves that they could make masters kind, harm enemies, ensure love, and heal sickness. Other religious survivals noted by Blassingame include funeral rites, grave decorating, and ritualistic dancing and singing.
Slaveowners and state governments tried to prevent slaves from making or playing musical instruments because of the use of drums to signal the
in 1739. Blassingame, however, points out that in spite of restrictions, slaves were able to build a strong musical tradition drawing on their African heritage. Music, songs, and dances were similar to those performed or played in Africa. Instruments reproduced by slaves include drums, three-stringed banjos, gourd rattles, and
s.
Still, Blassingame concludes that cross-cultural exchanges occurred on southern plantations, arguing that "
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
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 slowly replaced African religious survivals and represented another aspect of slave culture which the slaves used to create their own communities. While ministers preached obedience in the presence of the slaveowners and other whites, slaves often met in secret, "invisible" services unsupervised by whites. In these "
against slaveowners.
Slave marriages were illegal in southern states, and slave couples were frequently separated by slaveowners through sale. Blassingame grants that slaveowners did have control over slave marriages. They encouraged monogamous relationships to "make it easier to discipline their slaves. ... A black man, they reasoned, who loved his wife and his children was less likely to be rebellious or to run away than would a 'single' slave."
Blassingame notes that when a slave couple resided on the same plantation, the husband witnessed the whipping and raping of his wife and the sale of his children. He remarks, "Nothing demonstrated his powerlessness as much as the slave's inability to prevent the forcible sale of his wife and children."
Nevertheless, Blassingame argues that "however frequently the family was broken it was primarily responsible for the slave's ability to survive on the plantation without becoming totally dependent on and submissive to his master."