Nature of Slavery in Ante-Bellum South
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In his book Singing the Master, Roger D. Abrahams examines the nature of slavery in the ante-bellum South, how some of the institutions of slavery developed, and what those institutions meant to slave and master. He shows in the course of his book how what can be called a specifically African-American culture developed on the plantations, a culture that would emerge after the war and expand into something different from white society and from the slave society of earlier times. One of the more important social institutions examined by Abrahams is the corn-shucking festival, and Abrahams bases his text on stories told by ex-slaves, accounts written by slaves and masters, and other sources telling of this festival. Abrahams delves into these stories to determine the nature of the festival, its meaning to both master and slave, and its legacy in terms of how black society developed. The author indicates that while many may believe there is nothing new to determine about the era of slavery, there is in fact a good deal to be learned: Yet there remains a lack of understanding of how African American cultural forms emerged in the midst of a society that systematically repressed the slaves. The cultural production of slaves needs to be reconsidered if we are to begin to describe effectively the dynamic, expressive interrelations of the two cultures living side by side, which has never been adequately described (xvii). Abrahams says he will use the harvest corn shucking as a rep
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ramatize their success for themselves and their neighbors. The planters also exercised their power by the very act of tolerating the corn festival. They would bring the field hands into the yard, address them individually and collectively, feed them well, and so play the part of the kind and demanding patriarch. Abrahams says that the local social structure was translated into the harvest ceremony in the form of spectacle. The corn shucking mirrored the realities of plantation life and magnified those aspects of that life which the planters wanted to celebrate and bolster.
The slaves, as noted, alleviated the monotony of slave life through the festivals and also performed their form of drama in the ceremony and in the various relationships that constituted the festival and its surroundings. Abrahams sees the festival as a key element in the development of what he calls the African American style. The style, spirit, and social and aesthetic organization of the festival he traces to sub-Saharan Africa, the original homeland of the slaves, and he sees the resulting festivities as owing much to the mindset and expressive talents of the blacks now enslaved in the New World. He sees the corn-shucking as embodying an attitude tow
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1465
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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