Africans in America; 101; The Terrible Transformation; Interview with Charles Joyner, Professor of Southern History and Culture, Coastal Carolina University

and so started of the column as a column of barbados became overcrowded the barbados said but come overpopulated with the younger son serving jewish merchants n word and i'm the gamble look around cast around for a new place is some assignment merchants are ten members are proprietors of south carolina and in the first decade after south carolina's initial settlement immigrants from barbados slaves from barbados but more important than just buying slaves among virginia liberal fully concede idea of slavery virginia had gone through a period of trying to decide what to do with these people and improvising growing

court is a system of slavery but the barbarians came to south carolina are fully developed audience system of slavery the economy itself the primary motives of the settlers for south carolina where we're economically wanted to like a profit they wanted to have an investment that's not the only motivation but primarily it was it was not certain religious freedom it was a certain economic advancement was there a way

when the barbarians can bring along with us an idea of the slavery system of course i have no idea how that would eventually play out they did not know that rice was go on to become the great staple crop and that has the assault to develop rice plantations and sought people who knew how to grow rice which meant africans from rice growing areas of africa that they would import so many africans that it would become a state more calmly with a black majority and that they would hal comments plantations larger than anything in their experience in barbados there is a third way well the landscape the

landscape of south carolina to the earliest settlers probably look lush and sub tropical probably looked as though it had the same possibilities that barbados had but there was more of it than the riff your mountains was a long way to the mound and they didn't encounter them immediately so tall with all the great opportunities they quickly found the indigo was a very profitable crop an end to go and fight dominated for about half a century by the mid more by the end of the seventeenth century rice had already been done by the men people mentioned oh yeah so we understand the order

by the mid eighteenth century rice certain overtake them and they go as the major crop of the law huckabee exactly how that came about the still disputed there's the legend of the seed from madagascar are which meyer might not be literally true but seen riots from africa perhaps from madagascar episodes that was that's an east african island bird so it was a great rice producer maryam but it was planted the state rice was planted in south carolina was developed those experimented with a handgun that proved to be a useful crop all public through trial and error though kind of tidal flow system that south carolina became famous for very very useful for rice to grow rice in the system there

are environmental requirements that south carolina middle abundance you need to have a low lying swaps alongside freshwater rivers that are close enough to the ocean to be raised and lowered by ocean tides but far enough for motion that the salt in brackish water doesn't get into the rice fields given that you can the dyke this waltz those shows carrots that can lead to war again or keep the water out as you order given time and clear those fields clear the trees and underbrush and mike rice fields album now that's not available everywhere but south carolina had that an abundant amount an economic determinist government that this word south carolina it was possible to have a lot of rice plantations and south carolina it was impossible to do that

and a lot of other states and other places and they look for rice growers where there were rice growers which meant west africa not every place in west africa portion of rice growing but it is extraordinary the number of slaves who were chosen from the rice growing areas to west africa the way i work is that right to see it through a barbed it ends

as doesn't like an awful lot of sense to me they didn't know what they were looking for for rice plantations africa and for south carolina and voluntarily who is bearing show up but actually a river of look around and same sites that were made obviously would've said a lot of things that were different but you're saying a lot of things that reminded them of home and african from the gambia sable major rice producing areas of africa with the same alliance waltz alongside freshwater rivers were the same places that had great possibilities of them or rice produce an area and no one knows precisely how about african and pull ups worked on the decision making process for golden rice plantations one thing is perfectly clear a large proportion of the

afrikaans imported into south carolina had experienced some growing rice and none of the europeans whether there were an englishman from barbados or scotch irish from northern ireland or french tuba much from france or in england or elsewhere in europe an experimental rice culture at all with the expertise of the african lute called motion of rice field of them no rice plantations in south carolina that uncertainty and so if you just think a latino speaking out many many whites in our own day

fund one white person looks like a mother or think but do but that was not the case among the rice platters of their papers the nineteenth centuries they were keenly attuned to africans from particular ethnic groups who came from rice growing areas they saw them out in the marketplace one africans escape from a rice plantation and platter advertised for the return of the people they claimed all the platter littlest described in terms of trouble martin's another martin's of ethnicity what those slaves were that it was worth and why the preferences in the marketplace these things work the escapees indicate that site i might do that

last letter no this competition rice field for coalition was a mammoth task and the first time i wanted to do was build a dyke around that even before you could clear it because it was under water bill in the dike was tough enough then you have to build a sluice gate so that it can be drained and the calm at least partially dry before the truce and stomps could be cleared and this was very heavy work because the ground was very soggy and body and you couldn't have the help of nasa animal draft animals very easily opt some were used in sort of boots were made for them to keep them from buying down horses and mules

that things were too tiny not a bog so so much more than labor and consider this was also interesting how will the humanitarian the pops on an animal still smokes and alligators well that would've been trapped in here and he realized this was a very very difficult and physically exhausting process rice is an interesting combination of sometimes that are just sheer physical work that resemble in about a strong enough can do but it's also a very exact kind of work that it wants to well i cycle cycle coalition gathers go along because it's very important that the level of the water they just at the right place at the right time that has a real sometimes has to be drained

completely after rice's germinated and sprouted but as to grow and stocks have to be supported by water just under the head of the stalk so as to stalks of rice can grow the water level has to rise at that rises too much the drones arise methods to level the rice wilson falls over it's very important that the salinity of the war be tested along along so this was a highly skilled operation for the slaves and golden rice cultivation congress drivers were absolutely crucial to rice culture both in supplying the water to grow the rice the end

and there were also the robbers were like the interstate highways of our day this was not the age of a land transportation the roads were always primitive at best the roads were primitive but with the rovers this was the principal way that people got from rice plantations that same isolated now far that actually are the coke or the plea beer the walk a mile where in fact the sort of mind stops on the interstate in their own day book called social solidarity an era of much more of water transportation places like south carolina actually about a lot more trade and partnership well look terribly young then it did with neighboring colonies to them or until just before the revolution and many ways it's probably more apt to describe south carolina the cop economically and culturally is learned northern most of the west and

is rather than one of the southernmost of the mime and colors no way this girl an eighteenth century and there are more and more africans coming and they become invaluable to the colony and not with their particular skills and rice cultivation but also skills and bobo end houseboat learn a lot of skills on the development of the great wrought iron work that way mostly in charleston to this

day and more and more africans were therefore been imported there were among trust the merchants in suburban south carolinians some worries about the importation that more and more african american that really an african majority and the column and build them into plantations overrode the desires to trust to merchants in the nature of a south carolina became a blinder understood the culture those slaves themselves as an everest on development of crow laws ocean the whole column is population woes could be worse europeans came from various

european ethnic groups englishman stops scotch irish were very antagonistic the one another french huguenot the number of germans use words a lot of others juice south carolina and the first century had more jews than any other column a book also fundamental constitution's the first constitution lord proprietors had developed a devoted jews left in that i think the first place on the planet where jews could go and so's an ethnically diverse multicultural society among europeans want assad has often recognize them is that it was an even more ethnically diverse among africans more different ethnic and linguistic groups of africans came here and the us than global very large

plantations meant that while africans more often had in common as love a place to breathe this is what his son often realize is that the diversity of the africans who came here was at least as great there were in fact more different african affleck and linguistic groups who came to south carolina seventh april eighteenth centuries and there were among europeans and that made for some they're interesting cultural development on a very large plantations africans met and married other africans of groups from so far away and the world's largest continent that they would like to have met them if they'd stayed in africa so both physically and culturally we see a great fusion of

african cultures and ways that didn't occur and africa so a new culture has been formed a big has been created that the ingredients of which are mostly african but yet a form that was before from anything that occurred in africa and this is a very exciting time to process it's going on in the great german culture we're doing africans who tamper south carolina spoke many many languages and there are more than three hundred languages and niger all it meant that africans had some difficulties in communicating with one another

but it also meant that africans were accustomed to burn around people who spoke other languages they've already learned ways of dealing with situations like there's a messenger they look for patterns bottom line which the most socially learned how to use non africans who came were bilingual some pollen will and that made it easier to understand and others that also made it possible to create a new language among the first generation it's what's called a pigeon language that as a second language among people whose native tongue or something else one would usually used for a fairly limited purposes usual the world's trade and a few cases for some reason that language mccombs the primary language of another generation ago september third generation in which case hasn't been almost word plantations of south carolina an expanded their

rapidly and a solid structure and then accuse because it became the primary language for thought young african americans may or may not have learned the language of their parents some did some didn't but the language that they operate it then was this new language and it had to serve all the needs of the line which sort of america became a great deal more complex mortgage form and then the variety of imminence that it could express the merger virginia or south carolina might have what like around africa and come in here i think one needs to have the context of the middle passage was like a few years ago who is a

current senator and i made a twenty minute ferry trip over to hold sway baritone on goree island my son an hour on the top deck of a little ferry boat about twenty people hold on one masked it was a rough cross on them away but we could see the waves coming in to brace ourselves there's plenty of fresh air for us nobody got sick and there was a very queasy feeling in the stomach that i can still feel and i thought then of the contrast and mike queasy feeling then and slaves who were herded into the the slave ships and to the dark while on and send the plank floors trained to their neighbor the right foot shackleton let float of the person to the riot there left foot shackled to write for the person that we're about eighteen inches or

less allow another layer of slaves on other than standard plant floor every time the waves came he couldn't sew them and prepared for you just slip across these and senate floors there was no fresh air no light where we were on top of that ship we could say our destination we knew how long it was going to be and we could say that we were an approach and that the slaves had no way of knowing where they were going when if ever they would get there and then ended it was a long trial that version of the weather was good social sense week's journey and then there were unloaded among those strange pale skinned people bright colored eisenhower things on them and if they didn't understand that the hard louder that must've been a very strange experience and yet

in most of them songs come out of the church hall and so the daylight and really the real air and sea green foliage whatever the misfortunes enslavement and the new world there must have been something reassuring about at least the physical environment of the new world that was brutal the climate more congenial than europeans and south carolina did the

climate was more like the climate of africa that it was like the climate of france europeans found the summers especially in very very high in some stow the air conditioning them and all of their products but europeans and their descendants on rice plantations vacated the plantations around the first of june and stayed away until the second frost usually going to the mountains or charleston or abroad york city island resort now what they were really trying to escape was what we know now was malaria mccullough country favor and i didn't understand exactly what caused it but they felt sorry for all mostly islands and indeed that were bombed when for reasons that didn't know this season is

here now the europeans and south carolina there were western europeans and europe great plagues came from time the time yellow flavor habitat the epidemic in charleston and eighteenth century that really cut the population of trust and in some of the nearby plantations great deal blacks as well as whites we're subject to the us and the death rate was atrocious around us malaria was so persistent moyer was a persistent concern also that have affected africans and europeans a different way

africans through the sickle cell trait had some of the military the malaria and were not struck and when i first heard this red list from platters records i thought it was just their cop out billions related to the sickle cell trait improve their words studies now it is verified that this was indeed the case but for europeans that was double it and many felt that the last play after sundown on a plantation baron the sickly season that is the plan the first of june in the second frost was local white person and they try and avoided at all costs occasionally a house someone wasn't able to avoid it in the occasion with little results so we were predominantly on the

bureau moves sutcliff says on one the masters masters family was absent and the un overseers were there just during the daylight hours you had plantations that were overwhelmingly african of the rice plantations south carolina and that the relationship between sleep the plantation in the world were in patients with it and settles right scott rice culture involve work year round rather different types of work at different times of the year in april was the platinum mine and women that most of the plant and men had done most of the plow and the ditch around but it was very skilled work in the rice leaves had

decoded with clay otherwise they floated to the problem of floated away with a rice birds pick them up and so the clay how cold and had to be dried and then made it have enough to stay down until it could charm and i this was very exact homework then there were some periods of a wider work the more poem and the period after the rice that germinated to get rid of all the weeds hardest time to call on every hand to participate and there were also a provision crops to be grown and at the end of the harvest sort of caretaker and jobs in preparation of the foothills for the next year's harvest so there was a cycle year round there is a weekly cycle on the rice plantations local we normally was a half a day on saturday and

other words of the shortage to do their work calling leisure time let the volatile rice plantations a system almost a task system so that rather than slaves were being in gangs would somebody pushing them learn that that didn't work is loosely that you could sign and micah did bill moyers and sentiment more progress than they might be but a particular area of work dependent on the job to be done was assigned a slave and the slave was free than to leave when that work was done to drivers satisfaction and gone there was sort of calculated there's one plan or put it in as overseers contract to bring them out of work though latest slowed by that i think mina leverage floyd work and industrial slipped that accomplishment than ours the normal again we're in the

area and all before the crowd of or the worst of the league so on the most industrious lawyers thought might be finished american and others later on in the afternoon after that the slaves had their home a worker the most as slaves that provision grounds though where they grew crops for their own food hour raise chickens or pigs are things like murder work around the cabin or things with a truer and lie and religious work on their religious services during that way and things of that nature that's right where's

the peace the in the early years of the column a with the french and the spanish to the south each trying to dislodge these english newcomers certainly must've subtle salt under siege mentality and mcallen has the pirates and the persistent an old increasingly bold activities of pirates were such a menace to the early part of that up to about seventeen point he certainly was a siege mentality from the presence of the pirates and great efforts made to dislodge their employees there stonewall rebellion must have transferred a great deal of that siege

mentality and there'd been some apprehension even earlier about the growing numbers of african import and the growing numbers of africans as a proportion of the column and after the stonewall rebellion this certainly became part of the mindset of manitoba carolina columnists i'm not sure how long it lasted but i'm not sure that the siege mentality characterizes all kids are periods in which the almost most the other way and i'm not certain by the nineteenth century or whether they're protesting too much as some scholars have climbed or whether they're big tectonic plates where you would sense in the nineteenth century that the market wizard ruble there's such a turnaround is clear message mentality in the wake of that i'm inclined to take the period before when i climb not to be worried about their slow john kerry waiting fifties before

john brown's raid when they claim not to be worried about slaves more to place value and the eighteenth century in the colonial period of the siege mentality same stability a very very important part of the political and social my cup of the state their faith in the institution beautiful moment must have shaken the flip of their least some carolinians than the institution those achievements of their livelihood but the evidence doesn't seem

clear and it certainly didn't undermine its continue on the violent mob or the continuing importation of slaves and south carolina has long as the importation of slaves was legal impact south carolina extended it to the maximum wind than the constitution allowed states by their own action to have a few more years of the slave trade south carolina rather he clearly avail itself of the opportunity his sense of what they're not slavery to get to colonel in south carolina became the world hence the visitation the whatsapp the waist was slave revolt in south carolina the cable model for slavery and georgia georgia was initially established a very column about slavery but now the georgians snowden or the parrot prosperity of south carolina

pressed though the proprietors to let them help slaves and good thing in fact the imported a lot of slow secondhand that is obtained through the port of trust an inward friendships in georgia george also bought rice plantations the georgia coast was ideal for there's not a long coast but it had a good many miles of rivers that were useful for that home away the sonoma column of the game or straight the fall of south carolina's model exactly the rest of the south mccain cotton country though a great deal of the rest of the south and populated well when slaves and platters who had moved there from south carolina and that's an interesting story in itself time

to come i just don't know the answer and georgia might have the most opportunity and then there were those who did not war with syria become a slave state but those who look with a certain nba to south carolina and its apparent prosperity overwhelmed them and employ it's an image i still think that there might have been an opportunity for online sawyer southern state to survive than in four ish but there's no way we can or even though many have a better steward of the interest rate on the wealthy or so many of the georgia platters were also south carolina platters were large holdings in both

states some or younger sons of the families that had been done a south carolina planners in and move to georgia say the new lands in the new fortunes the platters or porn bitcoin conflict and desires they had settled south carolina to make money and this was post independence or they had rice plantations that were making money but it brought with it human slavery perhaps they had some agonised over the morality of it but those have been so my and when the past and come from barbados with a sense of slavery than okay but they could never escape the fat could this was a dangerous institution and from

time to time the schools rob rowe to forcibly to their attention sometimes in public debates over this is becoming a majority african colony sometimes even more forcibly with things like the stonewall rebellion and so on was like people in a moment shows than they really could not do everything they wanted to do their desires conflict that they have afrikaans the new that they wanted to separate africans from these various different groups but with a bias toward acquiring african slaves who knew something about rice they had whole lot of africans from the relatively few places and on their very large plantations which was also part of the economies of scale that might rise profitable them and it was impossible to separate africans from the same ethnic groups from one another so they were

always clusters of ordinary africans who could communicate with one another and nobody else could understand them things like the stonewall rebellion which there's a good deal of evidence of the leadership at least was ethnically based how was i go on sleds that the us it was a kind of thing the planners knew they wanted to avoid but had no way to avoid as long as they remain slave holders committed darius was it's b the question of how our minority controls a majority is always a privilege one of them an artist to control the majority absolutely

as system of enslavement then this particular tune and lancers of that but didn't and couldn't control my absolutely but they tried process that about the system that was at its worst quite brutal it was based on force and violence and force and violence were used to enforce it on the other hand if i hadn't been only based on forcing violence probably the slaves and their numbers would've overridden the masters in their numbers and so i had to develop something else this has been called a lot of different names but essential it's a kind of negotiation an effort on the part of the masters to the mike the slaves believe that this is right and proper and the slaves dealing with that as they see opportunities that they promise slaves and the paternalism which is what

one scholars call this is probably a pretty apt description of what the masters do that the situation was one of those slave's ball the survivors of place i disagree with that scar but i say the soyuz bicycle a total latitude to put up with what they have to put out with and i'm not anymore and they're getting away with what they can get away with and trying to make judgments about which is which would sometimes are successful and sometimes not and the stonewall rebellion was crushed that denmark is a rebellion was crushed conditions for the vast majority of the slaves a lesson after those efforts and yet can we say they were thirty years ago if the flames of freedom hope and desire for free process

may have inherited a full scale ideal of slavery a system of slavery from barbados but the whistler rid of the local chapter on rice plantations was something that had been negotiated is that one alone there was always a negotiation between masters and slaves as to what was going to happen because there for slaves or been bitten all the time the workers have gotten done an essential oil and thus over simplifies it but it is something we can say in a relatively short time that also stone le pen filled with highly symbolic punishment but so slow it decides the matchup that i'm so and for these centers captured and has returned to the master master punishes them severely and publicly not merely a book also slowed the sky

in fact a polar punishes to slow so severely that he loses a few more days of the slaves labor code but the slaves to serve as an example to all the other slaves of what will happen to you if you try to like yourself for it the master plan coleman the slaves obviously felt that they don't themselves well to like the system work without violence a system of enslavement work about violence required with a constant threat of violence now from low instructions a master's gave overseers that those of the documents we have to go on and the practice might not have been the sign most laws them anymore than now but there was a widespread sort of flow a lot of positive incentives for slaves to work

more and be rewarded and a lot of negative incentives that if you commit infractions or you'll be punished certainly and broke and that was important to my people barry rosen could be broke and had to be cleared of the slaves for the system to work to the masters satisfaction slaves always pushed for more benefit or masters or even became touchy about given special dispensation for fear that they might become customary rights but the kind of african common law was coming into effect that will favor a special celebration would become accustomed and so evolved in various ways as with each side in the negotiations and it's not formal diplomatic negotiations but that's what was going well it's on the negotiation cried out with the other the slaves trying to win more space for themselves more

as opportunities within the system less constraints and the masters try to tighten up the motor system later and above all to keep the slaves were canned and stirring on plantations after after rebellions like stone or rebellion certain planners would respond very vigorously and very forcefully than without the pages members shut down a dam a program where we were with that and can you tell me more about this the conversations that slavery existed since i can't do that

sly really also called the peculiar institution that it wasn't really very peculiar sense that we use the word now i'm an unusual slavery has existed in most societies in human history slavery has been in fact so widespread in human history that is extremely unlikely that any of us on this planet are not simultaneously but the summit so both slaves holder's a distinction between the way in which slipped about here is a woman who were is the slave holders entered into this negotiation of how those a minority control majority was

well one might consider the positive incentive to support the development of a slave family resentment that a slave who has wife and children or husband and children is less likely to lead them by hand and this was from the platters pointed to a way to minimize the likelihood of rebellion and escape map from a slave supported knew this was the way that one created family continued traditions of family family life and the family was the basis of community so barrett allman the slaves were creating families that the slave family was development in south carolina and slave communities and groups of families relations among them recruiting communities with larger plantations and

others so that's the broader slave community than what was found on any particular plantation was tight and so what was taking place these were very different from the kind of communities waters there was a lot of cultural mix go on within the plantation community of all these various african cultures the various african ethnic groups was relatively less european imports development until much later and for the whites how will a good deal more african influence on the white families because they were surrounded by africans and had fewer opportunities on large plantations good of all with other points to me an awesome incentives for a little bit about that temptation aristocracy that was beginning to emerge write a little bit about its extreme well

this was class just can't picture and the south carolina lowcountry or move rice plantations sometimes very self conscious aristocracy that was developed and then it didn't always have aristocratic roots in england but now some of them better than others acquired the habits and tastes amount lifestyle of aristocrats and were very self conscious about the diplomatic them married off their daughters like diplomatic alliances and down live were very conscious of their position the notion of honor rather than honorable a crucial point in their development and ted satirist and genoa

jury that was matched by the growth of a free black class by the revolution but also had an intense interest in genoa jim was sometimes referred to as little brown aristocracy but in their chairs the genealogy was our lifeline the freedom to be able to prove that the ancestors had been freed and a society that regarded white people were furry like people were slaves the growth of a free black class was an anomaly that had to be defended always has been so slavery on the old south was called the peculiar institution but it was a peculiar in the sense in which we use the word nowadays to made something unusual in the history of the world most societies have been slave societies have helped people

in bondage when the old sock with subtle when europeans and africans came here each of them came from societies that had known slavery and fact slavery was so common in history that probably none of them and none of us or not simultaneously but the sundance about slaves and slave holders but there was something new and slavery in the new world something that had not been a part of slavery in the past here slavery was racially based the slave holders were most were a lot of work almost exclusively black and that fact help the time what country moved on to become fb it's

big when the american revolutionists comply and the british were trying to reduce them to slavery their use on the rhetoric the revolutionary idealism that a sign that slavery is a bad thing and they knew exactly what they were talking about they were not unfamiliar with slug in there from american

abolitionist complained that the british were trying to reduce them to slavery and into context it was clear that they meant by slavery and something that they knew exactly what they were talking about the rhetoric of slavery was something they understood very well the rhetoric of the revolution and denouncing slavery was something they took to heart they were not accustomed to but forbidden to tackle institutional which they live but some of them but then the question and then south carolina henry lions questioned the institution of slavery and his son john lahr hands but then the questionnaire and virginia george mason condemned it there were slavery was not end in there and either calmer state as result of the revolution though virginia made it easier to emancipate slaves and then five more slaves were actually pretty bulbous these of men emotion and

virginia of them mom by the abolition of slavery in massachusetts had some effect anyway but they understood that there was somber some ups but when the idea of freedom and which they have espoused american and the poem that's an idea of slavery through which the nation and the constitutional convention that became quite clear after your smugglers speech that one of the big issues was slavery that boehner complained that their people in this chamber an outsider who want to abolish our property and this was of course question with the ideals of

the declaration of independence when a slave holder had written that we all these truths to be self evident that all manner created equal endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights the monkeys is life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and i've been square is so it was slavery and it is very difficult for the revolutionary generation before so good the dam closer and it's the last opportunity of the constitution that shied away from using the word slavery anywhere in the air but also shied away from really dealing with that issue and so the continuing existence of human bondage and a society dedicated to freedom and liberty help to define what kind of nation we were going to become economic interests overrode ideals of liberty and justice and the crop that was a tragic for the

heart of the constitution and over the decades the cracks the fishers widened and this tragic fall until slightly over half a century later it tore the notion apart though there was a missed opportunity and the constitution it's been the point whosoever express the ideals freedom and liberty any more eloquently than thomas jefferson and the declaration of independence nearly when jefferson was not able to resolve this tragic paradox he did not believe in slavery he got he came not to believe in slavery an institution he'd inherited he fervently hope for a quarter mile or pass away and yet he could not would not free

has owned slaves in his own lifetime he said without a pretty lame excuse that he couldn't give the company didn't really make excuses for himself but he couldn't give it out and he was collared throughout his life by helen big data like a genuine and sincere about racism that's very clear in his notes on the state of virginia and the notes on the state of virginia he describes africans and their descendants is gentlemen for the why actually very little hope or expectation of an improvement over the status of slavery so it left home very very mixed and what he could do to try to resolve even within his own mind this tragic paradox brooklyn as a genuine belief and human equality and his genuine belief in human inequality