The Primary Community Center for the Black Population

All us had was church service meetin's in arbors out in de woods. De preachers 'ud exhort us digital audiotape us was de chillun o' Israel in de wilderness an' de Lawd done sent us to take dis lan' o' milk an' honey (Rawick, 1972, 8-9).

This community could be impoverished up by selling buckle downs from one plantation to a nonher, of course, provided in the larger sense the community was always nonplus and was connected--all plantations had their church as a totality for the black community, a center non provided by the unstable family or the equally unstable work situation.

Attitudes of superiority were used to control the striver population. Some historians paint a picture of a slave population made submissive by the conditions that existed as the slaves had their African heritage destroyed and were made into helpless dependents in the pertly World. Historians more recently have found a antithetic picture. Considering the harsh punishments meted out to slaves attempting to escape, the vast number that did try and level succeeded shows a rebelliousness at odds with the picture of a submissive population. Fear of slave revolts was a permanent class of plantation life, and there was an intricate and powerful system in place to control the slaves. The slaveowners used this system to maintain their elbow grease supply and their way of life. The system was some(prenominal) subtle and coarse and involved every device that social orders use to nurture power and wealth in their own hands. The system was both physical and psycho

There was in the slave community a widespread resistance to jettisoning African spiritual values. Some black leaders, such(prenominal) as Bishop Daniel black lovage Payne of the AME, believed that there could be no Christian conversion for blacks without their abandoning of the previous tradition. Elements of importance to blacks were derived from folktales and included the hollo and the products of inheritable genius (Stuckey, 1987, 93). The make fun was expressed in singing and dancing. The shout was an oral view of regard for the Lord in African form and feeling. The yelling spirit is expressed in recitative-like answers to the calls of preachers and in the spiritual that forms such an important part of the black church.

The young saw the shout as a practice essential to their lives, and its importance was vast in the years before the Civil War. Many did not know that the practice actually was related to devotion to the ancestral spirits and to a sense of reciprocity between brio and dead (Stuckey, 1987, 86-87).

Religion developed so it formed the center of the world the slaves made for themselves. Parish cites Eugene Genovese to the effect that Christianity was a ambiguous sword which could sanction either accommodation or justify resistance to slavery:

Parish, P.J. (1989). Slavery: History and historians. New York: harper & Row.

Black conversion to Christianity began in earnest around 1760. Luther P. capital of Mississippi divided the history of black Christianity in Virginia into three periods, the starting line beginning in 1750 and extending to 1790. It was during this era when colonial religion took a popular turn, with mass enthusiasm and an awakened consciousness. Much hatred to slavery was expressed in this era. The religious Awakening did not extend much below Virginia, however. The second period, from 1790 to 1830, saw antislavery feelings throw out under pressure from the slaveholders, and enthusiasm for including blacks also waned. In the ternary
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