Black History | Slave Life Pictures

Posted on February 1, 2015 by SouthernGirl2

Slave Life- oak alley plantation Built in the 1830s, Oak Alley Plantation in Vacherie, Louisiana was home to over one hundred house and field slaves (photographed 2001). Photo Credit: Philip Gould/CORBIS

About SouthernGirl2

A Native Texan who adores baby kittens, loves horses, rodeos, pomegranates, & collect Eagles. Enjoys politics, games shows, & dancing to all types of music. Loves discussing and learning about different cultures. A Phi Theta Kappa lifetime member with a passion for Social & Civil Justice.
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26 Responses to Black History | Slave Life Pictures

  1. yahtzeebutterfly says:
    February 2, 2015 at 5:36 am

    Song “Steal Away”

    http://youtu.be/0J8f_1RYubw&rel=0

    Uploaded on May 13, 2008 by onichat
    This video features the spiritual “Steal Away” sung by Reverend Pearly Brown. This song was what Pearly called a ‘slave song’, and is done to images of slavery and escape. I also included a short history of Reverend Pearly Brown whenever he narrates.

    Reply
    • yahtzeebutterfly says:
      February 2, 2015 at 5:43 am

      Video:
      “Coded Spirituals”
      http://video.pbs.org/video/2181639247/
      “Many of the well-known Negro Spirituals popular in the United States during the mid-1800s are much more complex than they first appear.

      Historians of the Underground Railroad refer to them as “Coded Spirituals”. What that means is that the words actually have two meanings; one that is immediately apparent and one that’s hidden just below the surface.”

      Reply
    • yahtzeebutterfly says:
      February 2, 2015 at 5:51 am

      http://youtu.be/kJP5AKcFvJM&rel=0
      Published on Mar 17, 2014 by Live Skilled
      William Still…labeled as the “Father of the Underground Railroad,” Still helped hundreds of people find freedom.

      He also maintained historical records of his encounters with people escaping slavery, and made a book of it : “The Underground Railroad”

      Reply
    • yahtzeebutterfly says:
      February 2, 2015 at 5:56 am

      http://youtu.be/2KEAizYOKAc&rel=0

      Published on Sep 1, 2014 by Live Skilled
      On the Shoulders of Giants: Season 2 Episode 3

      Harriet Tubman… legend was growing more and more with each successful trip she made, and she even even gained the name “Moses” for her awesome efforts.

      Reply
  2. yahtzeebutterfly says:
    February 1, 2015 at 10:26 pm

    “We jumped the broom at week before he sold me.”

    This powerful poem tears the heart with its very first line quoted above and grabs the full attention of the listener:

    http://youtu.be/59ym6AZpQSI&rel=0

    Reply
  3. yahtzeebutterfly says:
    February 1, 2015 at 7:41 pm

    http://youtu.be/yHmUPqI6w9g&rel=0

    Uploaded on May 2, 2008 by swflprof
    “A Negro Spiritual with pictures from the Library of Congress and National Archives. I decided on this Spiritual after researching the National Archives for photographs of Slavery. This is a topic I felt should not be ignored, nor exploited, rather remembered lest we repeat history.”</em

    Reply
  7. yahtzeebutterfly says:
    February 1, 2015 at 3:14 pm

    Frederick Douglas on slavery:

    “…I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of the land… I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels. Never was there a clearer case of ‘stealing the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil in.’ I am filled with unutterable loathing when I contemplate the religious pomp and show, together with the horrible inconsistencies, which every where surround me. We have men-stealers for ministers, women-whippers for missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for church members. The man who wields the blood-clotted cowskin during the week fills the pulpit on Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus. . . . The slave auctioneer’s bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave-trade go hand in hand together. The slave prison and the church stand near each other. The clanking of fetters and the rattling of chains in the prison, and the pious psalm and solemn prayer in the church, may be heard at the same time. The dealers in the bodies of men erect their stand in the presence of the pulpit, and they mutually help each other. The dealer gives his blood-stained gold to support the pulpit, and the pulpit, in return, covers his infernal business with the garb of Christianity. Here we have religion and robbery the allies of each other—devils dressed in angels’ robes, and hell presenting the semblance of paradise.”
    ― Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

    Reply
  8. yahtzeebutterfly says:
    February 1, 2015 at 1:41 pm

    Artist Ellen Gallagher created “Coral Cities” an artwork where where she imagines those Africans who jumped over during the Middle Passage adapted to ocean life and live in an imaginary Atlantis.
    http://www.realityunseen.com/realityblog1/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/BirdinHandGALLA34949-Barbor.jpg

    Here is a write-up of her exhibit (and book):

    “Coral Cities features new and recent works and focuses on her ongoing series collectively entitled Watery Ecstatic, which explores the myth of Drexciya, a myth propagated by an underground Detroit techno outfit of the same name in the 1990s. An Atlantis-like underwater world, Drexciya is populated by a marine species descended from women and children who jumped overboard or were thrown from slave ships during the gruelling journey from West Africa to America.

    ” In this series of work their embryonic status is transformed into elaborate mythical figures, half human, half fish, and highly developed underwater species.

    “The exhibition includes the epic painting Bird in Hand, representing a black sailor or pirate from Cape Verde, part tree, part root, whose head spawns a multitude of heads and text.” from drexclyaresearchlab – blogspot

    Reply
  9. yahtzeebutterfly says:
    February 1, 2015 at 1:14 pm

    “Day of Tears” by Julius Lester Book Trailer”

    http://youtu.be/K65eboDN1uc&rel=0

    “On March 2 and 3, 1859, the largest auction of slaves in American history took place in Savannah, Georgia. More than 400 slaves were sold. On the first day of the auction, the skies darkened and torrential rain began falling. The rain continued throughout the two days, stopping only when the auction had ended. The simultaneity of the rain storm with the auction led to these two days being called “the weeping time.”

    Master storyteller Julius Lester has taken this footnote of history and created the crowning achievement of his literary career.”

    Reply
  10. yahtzeebutterfly says:
    February 1, 2015 at 12:25 pm

    Three abolitionists went to the South and collected slave spirituals which they later published as a song book in 1867 entitled “Slave Songs of the United States”:

    http://youtu.be/1JtD_YpyXYU

    Uploaded on Mar 4, 2009 by PBS
    The president of the Mayme A. Clayton Library & Museum in Culver City, California, recently discovered an unusual book in his late mother’s extraordinary collection of African-American artifacts.

    The small, cloth-bound book, titled Slave Songs of the United States, has a publication date of 1867 and contains a collection of 136 plantation songs. Could this be the first book of African-American spirituals ever published? HISTORY DETECTIVES host Wes Cowan visits a music historian in Los Angeles to explore the coded messages and the melodies that laid the foundation of modern blues, gospel and protest songs of future generations.

    He also meets with Washington, DC’s Howard University Choir for a special concert of selections from Slave Songs sung in the traditional style of mid-1800s spirituals.

    Reply
  11. rikyrah says:
    February 1, 2015 at 12:19 pm

    These never-before-seen portraits of former enslaved blacks will move you
    by Blue Telusma | February 1, 2015 at 11:03 AM

    January 31st marked the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery.

    To commemorate the occasion new photos have been released showing some of the men and women who lived through that era – and were finally granted their freedom.

    The portraits focused on a group of 500 people and were taken in the late 1930s, as part of the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP), 70 years after abolition.

    http://thegrio.com/2015/02/01/slavery-portraits-library-of-congress/#s:freed01

    Reply
  12. yahtzeebutterfly says:
    February 1, 2015 at 12:06 pm

    http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51z8dAOhTfL._SX258_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

    Publisher’s weekly book review of “The Old African” by Julius Lester, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney:

    Based on legend, this story by frequent collaborators Lester and Pinkney moves gracefully and affectingly from darkness into light. As the tale opens, a plantation master whips a young slave who has attempted to escape.

    Yet the slaves witnessing this do not see the blood glistening on the boy’s back; instead they see in their minds a picture of water “as blue as freedom.”

    This vision is provided by the Old African, once called Jaja, a wise slave with a unique power to speak to his fellow captives in their minds and “[pull] the pain from the channels of their souls as if it were a worm in the earth.” The narrative then returns to the time of Jaja’s capture from his African village and the Middle Passage (across the “Water-That-Stretched-Forever”) to be sold into slavery.

    Like Tom Feelings’s The Middle Passage , author and artist do not spare readers the horrors that occurred. Lester describes the stripping down of captives and liberties taken with the women; in wordless spreads, Pinkney shows Jaja chained to a man who was just fatally shot. On the journey, Jaja’s wife throws herself overboard and his mentor is beaten to death. Back in the present, the Old African learns that his master wants him dead, and believes “it is time to go home.”

    Two stunning wordless spreads depict the triumphant, uplifting finale, in which the sage leads the captives along the ocean floor to their homeland. By not shying away from the realities of these characters’ daily life, Lester and Pinkney make their victory all the greater. Ages 9-up.

    Reply
  13. SouthernGirl2 says:
    February 1, 2015 at 11:45 am

    The Middle Passage

    Middle Passage

    The Middle Passage did not begin with the transatlantic voyage, but with the capture and sale of Africans, and ended with their forced ‘adjustment’ to life in the Americas. It is one of history’s most horrific chapters, showing the human capacity for both cruelty and insensitivity and strength and survival. It is difficult to calculate the numbers of Africans that were transported; estimates have ranged from five million to 30 million. Further millions died during capture and on the journey across the Atlantic. History has seen few social disruptions on such a scale.

    The voyage itself took between 6 and 8 weeks. The enslaved Africans were chained together by the hand and the foot, and packed into the smallest places where there was barely enough room to lie on one’s side. It was here that they ate, slept, urinated, defecated, gave birth, went insane and died. They had no idea where they were going, or what was going to happen to them. Through all this misery and suffering, new African identities were created, forming a basis for a new transnational culture. Within these ships, Africans from different countries, regions, cultures and with different languages learned to communicate with each other; many conspired to overthrow their captors together.

    British eyewitness accounts were used to support the anti-slavery campaign. Alexander Falconbridge, a former slave ship’s surgeon wrote his Account of Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa in 1788 which described the loss of life, the state of the holds below deck, and how some severely depressed Africans willed themselves to die:
    “A woman was dejected from the moment she came on board, and refused both food and medicine; being asked by the interpreter what she wanted, she replied ‘nothing but to die’, and she did die”.

    http://www.recoveredhistories.org/storiesmiddle.php

    Reply
  14. vitaminlover says:
    February 1, 2015 at 11:06 am

    Goooooood morning!!!! Just returned from church. We have such a rich and diverse history as people of color unlike no other!

    Reply

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