LaVilla Antebellum Religion

Topic: Origins - Early Versions
The Works Progress Administration’s Federal Writers Project recorded memoirs from former slaves in the 1930s.  Most of the collectors, like Ruby Pickens Tartt in Alabama [1] and Genevieve Willcox Chandler in South Carolina, [2] were white.  In Jacksonville, Florida, all the WPA workers were African Americans. [3]

This mattered.  Criticisms of slave masters were removed by state administrators before documents were sent to the Library of Congress. [4]  In many cases, whites may not have asked or been told.  When George Rawick published the interviews in 1972, he included these comments.  If one wants to know about beatings, women kept as breeders, and slave sales the Florida transcriptions are the ones to read, especially those collected outside Jacksonville. [5]  As historian C. Vann Woodward noted, “the distinctiveness of the interviews where the interviewers and the interviewed were of the same race is readily apparent.” [6]

As mentioned in the post on the population in the Jacksonville suburb of LaVilla directly after the Civil War, few people were from the city or its county.  Slaves were removed during the war by owners, and new people moved in during reconstruction. [7]  Squires Jackson was the only one to speak to the WPA who grew up in antebellum Jacksonville.  Five were in the city when James Weldon Johnson was a child. [8]  Many moved there were they old to live with children or other relatives.

Nine of the twenty-one people in Jacksonville were born before 1850, which means they were at least ten years old when the Civil War began.  These are the ones who would have the clearest memories of antebellum conditions.

Their recollections about religion before the war are similar: they heard white preachers tell them to obey their masters. [9]  Clayborn Gantling added: “they never mentioned God” in Georgia. [10]  Charles Coates was a carriage driver in Georgia.  He remembered that “they learned more about God when they sat outside the church waiting to drive their masters and family back home” than in services designed for slaves. [11]

No one mentioned anything resembling a ring shout.  Only one Black, Eli Boyd of Miami, had grandparents who spoke Geechee, the form of Gullah used along the Georgia coast where rice and sea island cotton were grown. [12]  When the African Americans in Jacksonville mentioned a cash crop it was upland cotton.  As mentioned in the post for 25 August 2019, it was grown in different areas.

None mentioned the use of iron pots in services.  As noted in the post for 29 September 2019, most of the reports in the WPA narratives were from North Carolina and Tennessee, and the states that bordered them to the west and south.

Only Harriett Gresham mentioned private services.  She recalled a Black preacher held services on the plantation near Barnwell, South Carolina, owned by Edward Bellinger.  “But,” she added, “the slaves held secret meetings and had praying grounds where they met a few at a time to pray for better things.” [13]

Anna Scott recalled that, in South Carolina, slaves could attend white services, but any “who ‘felt the sperrit’ during a service must keep silence until after the service, when they could ‘tell it to the deacon’, a colored man who would listen to the confessions or professions of religion of the slaves until late into the night.  The Negro deacon would relay his converts to the white minister of the church, who would meet them in the vestry room at some specified time.” [14]

William Sherman bought his freedom from Jack Davis, a nephew of Jefferson Davis, and lived on adjacent land.  He remembered that at Black Swamp, near Robertsville, South Carolina, [15] a white man would preach to them.  Once the war began, “they held ‘meetings’ among themselves in their cabins.” [16]

The scarcity of comments on antebellum slave practices may be caused by several reasons.  First, they may have taken questions about religion to mean Christianity, and so only talked about their exposure to Protestantism.  Luke Towns said his mother in Tolberton County, Georgia “believed in prayer; one day as she traveled from her patch home, just as she was about to let the ‘gap’ (this was a fence built to keep the hogs and horses shut in) down, she knelt to pray and a light appeared before her and from that time on she did not believe in any fogyism, but in God.” [17]

The nature of the WPA sample also may be a factor.  Many mentioned that they or their parents had been house servants.  While this may imply individuals who had been raised closer to whites were more comfortable talking to outsiders, it also may have been a consequence of better food when they were children.

Before the Civil War, children, Black and white, were lucky to survive past the age of five.  As a result, Douglas Ewbank estimates the average life expectancy for a slave at birth was thirty years.  If they lived to be ten-years old, half would be dead by age thirty-five. [18]  If they were born in 1860, that would mean half were alive in 1895.

Frank A. Sloan’s team examined the records of Black Civil War veterans.  They found that more than half (54.1%)  of those who were alive in 1900 were dead by 1914.  Of those who died, the mean age was 70.4 years. [19]

Those who lived longest with their wits in tack were the ones who could be interviewed by the WPA.  By the 1930s, the ones in Jacksonville were urbanized or living with children who were.  Their current church membership was more important than their childhood experiences.

Some glimpse of those older views may be found in their comments on those who passed before them.  Squires Jackson, who began preaching  in 1868 and ordained in 1874, said he was “waiting now to hear the call of God to the promise land.” [20]

Acie Thomas, who was born just before the war in 1857, said his wife had died he several years before.  He reflected: “All done left me now.  Everything I got done gone—all ’cept Keziah.  She comes and visits me and we talk and walk over there where we uster and set on the porch.  She low she gwine steal ole Acie some of dese days in the near future, and I’ll be mighty glad to go ever yonder where all I got is at.” [21]

Shack Thomas’ father was from the west coast of Africa.  He and his first wife planted three oak trees when they moved to Jacksonville.  He told Martin Richardson that “‘Right after my first wife died, one of them trees withered,’ the old man tells you.  ‘I did all I could to save the other one, but pretty soon it was gone too.  I guess this other one is waiting for me,’ he laughs, and points to the remaining oak.” [22]

They may have become Protestants, but they retained an intimacy with the world of spirits and a universe suffused with sacred powers that came from their African ancestors.

End Notes
1.  Ruby Pickens Tartt is discussed in the post for 23 January 2019.
2.  Genevieve Willcox Chandler is discussed in the post for 25 December 2022.

3.  Pamela G. Bordelon.  The Federal Writers’ Project’s Mirror to America: The Florida Reflection.  PhD dissertation.  The Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, 1991.  146.  The collectors were: Rachel A. Austin (6), James M. Johnson (5), Samuel Johnson (1), Viola B. Muse (4), Martin Richardson (1), and Pearl Randolph (4).

4.  Boredelon.  160.

5.  George Rawick.  A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume 3, Florida Narratives.  Compiled by The Library of Congress from interviews by the Works Projects Administration, Federal Writers’ Project.  Washington: Library of Congress, 1941.  Reprinted by Greenwood Press of Westport, Connecticut in 1972.

6.  C. Vann Woodward. “History From Slave Sources.”  American Historical Review 79:480:1974.  Quoted by Bordelon.  146.

7.  The population of LaVilla is discussed in the post for 23 April 2023.

8.  Mark Mullen, Anna Scott, William Sherman, Willis Williams, and Claude Augusta Wilson.  Wilson returned to Lake City late in life.

9.  Samuel Simeon Andrews, Charles Coates, Douglas Doursey, Clayborn Gantling, Harriett Gresham, Margaret Nickerson, and William Sherman.

10.  Clayborn Gantling.  Interviewed in Jacksonville, Florida, by Rachel Austin, on 16 April 1937.  In Ranwick.

11.  “Father” Charles Coates.  Interviewed in Jacksonville, Florida, by Viola B. Muse on 3 December 1936.  In Rawick.

12.  Rev. Eli Boyd.  Interviewed in Dade County, Florida, by unnamed person.  In Rawick.  Dave Taylor’s speech was described as Geechee.  He was raised in Norfolk, Virginia, and lived in the Bahamas. [23]

13.  Harriett Gresham.  Interviewed in Jacksonville, Florida, by Pearl Randolph on 18 December 1936.  In Rawick.

14.  Anna Scott.  Interviewed in Jacksonville, Florida, by Viola B. Muse on 11 January 1937.  In Rawick.  Scott said she lived near Dove City, South Carolina, but no such town appears on the internet.  The closest is Dovesville in Darlington County.

15.  Black Swamp and Robertsville, South Carolina, are mentioned in the post for 5 March 2023 in connection with the deacon of the first Baptist church in LaVilla, Elias Jaudon.

16.  William Sherman.  Interviewed in Chaseville, Florida, by J. M. Johnson on 28 August 1936.  In Rawick.

17.  Luke Towns.  Interviewed in Jacksonville, Florida, by Rachel A. Austin on 30 November 1936.  In Rawick.

18.  Douglas C. Ewbank.  “History of Black Mortality and Health before 1940.”  The Milbank Quarterly 65:Supplement 1, Part 1:100-128:1987.  104.

19.  Frank A. Sloan, Padmaja Ayyagari, Martin Salm, and Daniel Grossman.  “The Longevity Gap Between Black and White Men in the United States at the Beginning and End of the 20th Century.”  American Journal of Public Health 100(2):357-363:February 2010.  359.

20.  Rev. Squires Jackson.  Interviewed in Jacksonville, Florida,  by Samuel Johnson on 11 September 1937.  In Rawick.

21.  Acie Thomas.  Interviewed in Jacksonville, Florida, by Pearl Randolph on 35 November 1936.  In Rawick.

22.  Shack Thomas.  Interviewed in South Jacksonville, Florida, by Martin Richardson on 8 December 1936.  In Rawick.

23.  Dave Taylor.  Interviewed in Tampa, Florida, by Jules A. Frost on 9 July 1937.  In Rawick.