What was slave culture like

Some plantations ran a kitchen for the slaves, but it was more common for food to be distributed weekly to individuals and families. Typically, rations consisted of cornmeal, salt pork or bacon, and molasses. The number of calories was adequate, but the diet had little variety and was heavy on starch and fats. It could be supplemented with fish, small game, chickens, and vegetables from a garden, if the master approved. On large plantations, slave quarters were located near the fields and main house.

More than one family usually lived in a cabin. The overall slave population was not generally healthy. The combination of hard physical labor, corporal punishment, a diet often lacking nutritional value, and poor living conditions contributed to a very high infant mortality rate—at least 20 percent of the slave children died before the age of five—and a much lower life expectancy than southern whites.

While it was in the economic interest of planters to keep their slaves healthy, most did not provide satisfactory medical care. A few large plantations had infirmaries, but conditions in them were often worse than in the slave quarters.

Religion By: Kimberly Sambol-Tosco. Frederick de Wit's Map of Africa, ca. Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division. Some slaves were treated differently according to their value or skill sets; for example, artisans, medical practitioners, skilled laborers, or technical experts were usually given preferential treatment and more liberties than field hands.

In most states, slaves were forbidden to read or write. Sexual abuse of female slaves was endemic in the colonies, where cultural patriarchy treated all women black and white as property or chattel. Sexual relations with enslaved women resulted in a high increase of mixed-raced children born into slavery. Abuses of slavery : Slaves commonly suffered horrid abuses from their masters, as depicted by the scars on the back of this former slave named Peter.

To regulate the relationship between slave and owner, including legal support for keeping slaves as property, state legislatures adopted various slave codes to reinforce white legal sanctions over the enslaved black population. While each state had its own slave code, they shared many similarities. Such laws commonly forbade slaves to learn to read or write or to associate with free Africans, and free blacks were forbidden from voting or holding public office.

Slaves strove to adapt to their new lives by forming new communities among themselves, often adhering to traditional African customs and healing techniques. Slave culture stressed the primacy of family and cooperation; indeed, the development of families and communities formed the most important response to the trauma of being enslaved. Because slaves were proscribed from reading or writing, American slaves adopted a strong oral tradition—passing down songs, prayers, laments, and stories through music and storytelling.

Oral tradition was a strong feature of many African tribal customs and allowed many African American slaves to feel a sense of cultural connection with the continent of their origins. African-based oral traditions became the primary means of preserving slave history, mores, and cultural information, and this was consistent with the practices of oral history in African cultures. Music, folktales, and storytelling provided an opportunity for the enslaved to educate each other in the absence of literacy, and songs and enthusiastic public worship were often used as a way of channeling and coping with hardships and voicing grievances to others in the slave community.

Slaves also drew on other aspects of tribal African culture, such as herbal medicine and prayer. Many slaves were renowned for their medical skills; often, whites would enlist the expertise of slave midwives or nurses over white doctors for remedies and cures for various ailments. Knowledge of herbal medicine could also be used as a form of resistance for poisoning slave masters and killing prized livestock. When slaves were brought to American plantations, they were slowly stripped of their African religions and converted to Christianity.

However, many African cultural elements were incorporated into slave prayer patterns, such as shouting, dancing, and enthusiastic singing using African rhythms. Many of these cultural styles and patterns still characterize worship in African American churches today.

Their clothing and bedding were minimal as well. Slaves who worked as domestics sometimes fared better, getting the castoff clothing of their masters or having easier access to food stores. The heat and humidity of the South created health problems for everyone living there. However, the health of plantation slaves was far worse than that of whites. Unsanitary conditions, inadequate nutrition and unrelenting hard labor made slaves highly susceptible to disease.

Illnesses were generally not treated adequately, and slaves were often forced to work even when sick. The rice plantations were the most deadly. Black people had to stand in water for hours at a time in the sweltering sun. Malaria was rampant. One of the worst conditions that enslaved people had to live under was the constant threat of sale. Even if their master was "benevolent," slaves knew that a financial loss or another personal crisis could lead them to the auction block.

Also, slaves were sometimes sold as a form of punishment. And although popular sentiment as well as the economic self-interest on the part of the owners encouraged keeping mothers and children and sometimes fathers together, these norms were not always followed.

Immediate families were often separated. If they were kept together, they were almost always sold away from their extended families. Grandparents, sisters, brothers, and cousins could all find themselves forcibly scattered, never to see each other again. Even if they or their loved ones were never sold, slaves had to live with the constant threat that they could be.

African American women had to endure the threat and the practice of sexual exploitation. There were no safeguards to protect them from being sexually stalked, harassed, or raped, or to be used as long-term concubines by masters and overseers.

The abuse was widespread, as the men with authority took advantage of their situation. Even if a woman seemed agreeable to the situation, in reality she had no choice. Slave men, for their part, were often powerless to protect the women they loved. The drivers, overseers, and masters were responsible for plantation discipline. Slaves were punished for not working fast enough, for being late getting to the fields, for defying authority, for running away, and for a number of other reasons.

The punishments took many forms, including whippings, torture, mutilation, imprisonment, and being sold away from the plantation. Slaves were even sometimes murdered. Some masters were more "benevolent" than others, and punished less often or severely. But with rare exceptions, the authoritarian relationship remained firm even in those circumstances.

In addition to the authority practiced on individual plantations, slaves throughout the South had to live under a set of laws called the Slave Codes. The codes varied slightly from state to state, but the basic idea was the same: the slaves were considered property, not people, and were treated as such.