In 1828, American Conservatives were still debating the pros and cons of Christianizing enslaved Africans. It had only been 6 years since Denmark Vesey’s conspiracy had been suppressed in South Carolina.
And there were still those factions of white conservatives who laid the blame for the near success of Vesey’s conspiracy on “black religion”. After Vesey was hung, the authorities closed the AME church Vesey had founded in Charleston and even went so far as to level the building.
Soon several laws were passed in the state legislature that were designed to greatly restrict the movements of free blacks. For example, one of the laws passed said that if a free black ever left the State of South Carolina, for any reason whatsoever, they were forbidden to return to the State. Then to add insult to injury, every free black in the State was now required to carry papers with them at all times from designated white “guardians” to vouch for their character.
But they didn’t stop there.
They also passed the Negro Seaman’s Act which would eventually be ruled unconstitutional by the Federal Government because it required free black sailors, even if they were foreign nationals, to be held in city jail for the entire duration that their ships were in port in Charleston to keep them from interacting with the slaves or free blacks living in Charleston.
But after such laws were put in place, southern whites started to let down their guard and relax a little feeling they had put measures into place that would ensure that nothing like Vesey’s conspiracy could ever happen again.
Soon pious slave-owners began building chapels on their plantations for use by their enslaved Africans. Often slaves from several plantations would use the same chapel for their services and the slave-owners would split the cost of construction and paying for the minister. By the 1820s slave-owners had actually begun demanding that a full time white minister be appointed specifically to service black congregations. By 1830, Blacks represented 45% of the Baptists in South Carolina and the Southern Baptist Convention conservatively estimated that they had 150,000 Black members when the actual number was closer to 400,000 enslaved Africans.
Slave owners had one concern and one only and that was to make sure their slaves worked. An enslaved African could expect nothing more than the bare necessities of life from his master. Enslaved Africans were only fed and clothed enough to be strong enough to do their jobs.
The time it would take to teach slaves how to speak, read or write the English language properly would’ve added nothing to growing their wealth. In fact, it would’ve cost him money. All a slave owner cared about was that his slave knew enough English to do what he was told. So although enslaved Africans had been in the United States since 1619, no resources had ever been appropriated for teaching enslaved Africans anything about speaking, reading and/or writing English, American culture, customs, or morals.
So imagine the shock these ministers felt when they began leading these congregations of enslaved Africans and they discovered that they couldn’t teach these enslaved Africans the gospel because they didn’t even understand English. Many were appalled at how little English these enslaved Africans knew. So for the first time since 1619, for the first time in 181 years, someone had allocated the resources to teach enslaved Africans the English language.
This is something they are not going to tell you in your Church on Sunday. The reason that enslaved Africans flocked to the church in such high numbers was not because they were so enamored with the gospels. It was because the Church was the only place where they could learn how to speak, read and sometimes even write the English language.
Think about it, when Europeans immigrated to the United States their parents were from the Old Country and might not have known a lick of English, but their children learned to speak, write and read English when they enrolled in school. For enslaved Africans, the church was their school.
Unfortunately, older slaves got the short end of the stick in this arrangement. Often the language barrier was too great, and time and time again it proved that the older the slave the more resistance the ministers faced when he asked them to give up their traditional African beliefs. This gave ministers no choice but to focus what little resources they had on teaching slave children Christianity instead of the adults. As a result, a disproportionate amount of time and resources were spent on Sunday school than regular services.
So all the while that these young impressionable children were learning how to speak, read and sometimes write English all of their lessons were placed within the context of Christianity. They weren’t learning to read “See Spot Run” they were learning to read the Bible. They were also being taught their traditional African beliefs were based on superstition, dark magic and the Devil.
Just ask Pat Robertson.
These children were told that they did not deserve freedom, that everything in this world works according to God’s plan and that they were enslaved because it was God’s will. They were told that it was the Devil who was creating desire in their hearts to be free and that anyone who ran for freedom would be excommunicated from the church and denied a place in heaven when they died.
They were asked to memorize passages in the Bible like this one in Ephesians 6:5
“Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.”
Oh and here is my personal favorite. Timothy 6:1-2
“1All who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God’s name and our teaching may not be slandered. 2 Those who have believing masters should not show them disrespect just because they are fellow believers. Instead, they should serve them even better because their masters are dear to them as fellow believers and are devoted to the welfare[a] of their slaves.”
These young children were taught prayers like “blessed are the patient, blessed are the faithful, blessed are the cheerful, blessed are the submissive, blessed are the hardworking, and above all, blessed are the obedient.”
If you ask me this was a high price to pay for your children to learn how to read and write but slave parents were willing to pay it.
With total control over the message, and having total, unfettered access to these young, impressionable children to indoctrinate them properly, I ask you, “What could go wrong?”
