Whenever human beings interact, they rub off on one another. The ways in which they rub off on one another can rarely be predicted. When this involves large groups of people over extended periods of time this often leads to …
Miscegenation in the Antebellum South
Sexual relations between Blacks and Whites was the worst kept secret about the institution of slavery. Consider this quote from Mary Chesnut, “Our men seem to think themselves patterns – models of husbands and fathers. But in reality, like the …
“Ain’t I a Woman?”
Until you read a slave narrative or two you really don’t have any idea really, just how oppressive slavery was. How its vile sickness seeped into and touched every single aspect of a slave’s life. Most of us just think …
Did Blacks Own Slaves?
Yes, there were Black slave-owners in the Antebellum South; less than half of all Black slave-owners owned just a single Slave, most likely this slave was one of their family members whom they had purchased from their former owners. So …
Abolitionists Were Really Liberal, Right?
Conservatives in 1831 tried and convicted Nat Turner, a Virginian slave of leading a slave revolt. His punishment? Turner was hanged, skinned, dismembered, and his body parts were distributed souvenirs to the family of his victims. I don’t even think …
Sherman’s Bootstraps
The emancipation of the enslaved African in the final throws of the Civil War was nothing like you see in the movies. In movies, we are often presented with a clear hero and a clear villain. The hero’s goal is …
Unintended Consequences: Southern Drawl
The distinctive Southern drawl we know today is the unintended consequence of southern Planter’s children imitating the broken English of their enslaved African caretakers who few English words they could pronounce, they did so with heavy African intonation. “Our children …
It All Starts with Binah
My family begins in America with an adolescent girl named Binah, my 6th great grandmother, an enslaved African who had her first child, a boy, at the age of 12 in 1778. Binah was owned by a man named Darling …