Enslavement, Resistance, Creativity, and Resilience

Enslavement, Resistance, Creativity, and Resilience. Africans and African Americans in Georgia’s Low Country. , Enslavement , Three hundred and fifty-seven enslaved Africans, men, women, and children, spent much or all of their lives in forced labor on this land that once belonged to James McGilvery Troup. Upon his death in 1849, these enslaved individuals were divided amongst his heirs, including his daughter Ophelia (Troup) Dent, who inherited 57 enslaved persons. It is unknown how many enslaved persons her husband, George C. Dent, brought to their marriage in 1847., A decade later, an 1860 federal slave census listed 185 enslaved persons at Broadfield., Today the descendants of the enslaved Africans at Hofwyl-Broadfield number well over 5,000 people, many of whom still live nearby., Resistance , Receiving one’s name is the first form of identity we acquire when we come into the world. After enduring the brutal Middle Passage, the Africans who survived were stripped of their African identities given only a first name. Many were given the names of biblical and classical heroes and heroines or identified by the location, weekday, or month from and on which they were bought, traded, gifted, or inherited., Resistance amongst the enslaved included the continuation of using their “country names” amongst themselves. This practice retained the connection of kinship and African cultural traditions within their community. Names with cultural meaning like Mima (dove), Sena (gift from God), and naming their children the Anglo equivalent of days of the week like Cuffee (born on Friday) reflect a tradition carried from Africa., Surnames were infrequently bestowed on enslaved persons, but some were granted the privilege of adopting last names. This was practiced along the coastal plantations more than inland. When enslaved persons did choose surnames their choices often reflected independence from their owners, as countless individuals made up names or chose names other than their owners., Emancipation and the Aftermath , During the Civil War, the majority of the enslaved Africans at Hofwyl-Broadfield went with their owners to Tebeauville, GA, where owners and enslaved lived in rough log houses, "unplastered and unpainted. The land was so poor…it did not supply enough corn for man and beast. (1865) saw the end of the contest.…[M]y cousin told (the Negroes) they were free, and could leave.…[T]hey left in twos and threes carrying their belongings on their heads. When the rice planters returned to the coast, they found that the Negroes preceded them [and were] settled down in their old quarters again." Georgia B. Conrad, Dent/Troup family member., During Reconstruction, many African Americans became literate, purchased and worked their land, and engaged in free enterprise, resulting in an improvement in most of their lives., The Freedman’s Bureau, established to aid African Americans left destitute after the war, helped distribute confiscated lands, set up schools, provide legal services, etc. It operated from 1865-1872., Some of the newly freed African Americans from Hofwyl-Broadfield remained in (or returned to) their home communities and continued their ancestor’s work for wages. They built homes, created businesses and schools, and established the nearby African American communities of Needwood. Petersville, and Freedman’s Rest, still in existence today., However, Southern legislatures adopted oppressive laws during and after Reconstruction, limiting and blocking the freedoms gained with Emancipation. These “black codes” created impoverished conditions for Blacks, made new forms of enslavement through sharecropping, took away the newly-granted right to vote, limited movement, and criminalized behavior to capitalize on free labor through prison chain gangs. Jim Crow laws followed, legalizing racial segregation in the South. It would take almost 100 years after the war to see the end of legalized racial discrimination through the Civil Rights Movement., Creativity and Resilience , It took intelligence, creativity, and ingenuity, all of which Africans brought with them from Africa’s western coast through the Middle Passage to America, along with back-breaking labor extracted through the slavery system to construct a prosperous rice plantation., They also retained numerous foodways and cultural traditions, resisting the efforts to dehumanize and strip them of their identity. Traditions that live on in African American, and American as a whole, culture today include:, Oral Tradition of storytelling, call and response spoken-word poetry, rap and preaching . Music, rhythmic drums and banjos combined with the African American experience, jazz, blues, and R&B . Agricultural Practices and Technology, particularly rice, indigo and cotton cultivation . Basket Weaving for carrying goods and storing food . Gullah Language a unique language that blends African and English words, noted in the Gullah-Geechee Corridor in coastal Georgia and the Carolinas . Influence on Language And Literature, such as the common word “tote” and Brer Rabbit stories of West African origin . Foodways, fufu (pancake), “red rice,” boiled peanuts, barbacoa (BBQ), roasting meat on a spit, growing and cooking okra (gumbo), yams, black-eyed peas, millet, sorghum,and licorice., (Georgia Map Outline Insert) , Despite the numerous hardships faced by the Africans brought here from West Africa in chains, they survived. Many of their descendants went on to gain their freedom and thrive, building families, businesses, religious and educational institutions, and a culture that attests to their African roots. Throughout Georgia’s Low Country, the landscape reflects hundreds of years of African and African American skill, toil, traditions and resilience. The fortunes extracted from the rice field of Hofwyl-Broadfield that benefited its white owners could not have been possible without the knowledge and forced labor of enslaved Africans and that of free, yet still exploited, African Americans. , (captions) , Tyrah Wilson, a trained seamstress, was the mantuamaker/dressmaker for Ophelia (Troup) Dent. Tyrah was in charge of the sewing room and the women who worked under her direction, making clothes for the African American workers and the Dent family. This photo, circa 1890, shows Tyrah in a gingham dress with a typical white apron worn by a house servant., African American field hand, circa 1910, Morris Polite was the third generation of his family to work at Hofwyl, where his ancestors were enslaved Africans. He and his wife, Joan, raised thirteen children in the home he built in Petersville, an African American community on the outskirts of Hofwyl, circa 1930., Lizzie, churning butter, circa 1910, African American Hofwyl workers, circa 1930, Freed women laborers, circa 1910, Patty, a freed Hofwyl worker, and her grandchild Sue, circa 1900, Clarissa, freed house servant, circa 1910, (L-R) Hope Powell (cook), Robert Powell (butler) and Fanny Watch (maid), circa 1910, Jerry Rutledge, head dairyman, 1939, Jerry Harris was a community leader and business owner. He married Morris Polite’s daughter Leola, and together they raised their family in Petersville. His ancestors were enslaved Africans at Hofwyl. Photos circa 1930., Elder worker hauling goods; Freed female worker in sun brim hat and coat; Freed women workers plant rice; Hofwyl worker with a pipe; circa 1910, Dido, a field worker, freed after the Civil War, with lunch pail, water jug, and rice hook, circa 1910