The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South

The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South cover

Download The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South PDF EPUB


Author: John W. Blassingame

Pages: 262

Size: 1.620,76 Kb

Publication Date: February 1,1972

Category: African-American & Black



Download PDF  Download EPUB


Dust coat notes: “‘The plantation was a battlefield where slaves fought masters for physical and psychological survival. He contains the planter’s viewpoint and the traveler’s impression to make a dimensional portrait of plantation lifestyle that successfully separates mythology from historic reality.’ This amazing and original study sights the organization of slavery from a fresh perspective - the perspective of the slaves themselves. Professor Blassingame problems the timeworn stereotype of the slave as a passive and docile creature who lacked travel, purpose, and responsibility. Utilizing a variety of resources, like the memoirs of previous slaves, the writer examines the techniques blacks became enslaved, their procedure for acculturation in the American South, and their deep ties with their African heritage. Unlike the countless accounts that cope with slavery from the exterior, this book ventures in the slave quarters to re-capture the slave’s family members life, music, faith, and folklore. He traces the advancement of the slave’s character characteristics, analyzes the patterns of level of resistance within the slave community, and proves conclusively that the slave got a wealthy cultural and family lifestyle that was deliberately held hidden from the eye of his white masters.” Professor Blassingame draws upon emotional and sociological insights to reinterpret master-slave human relationships. Although unlettered, unarmed, and outnumbered, slaves fought in a variety of ways to protect their manhood…. He shows the way the slave could control elements of his own existence while often putting on the mask of submissiveness needed by the severe realities of the plantation regime.


See also