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4. “ When day is done”: The Play and Leisure Activities of Enslaved Children and Youth
- Indiana University Press
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107 4 “When day is done” The Play and Leisure Activities of Enslaved Children and Youth Before the holidays, these are pleasures in prospect; after the holidays, they become pleasures of memory, and they serve to keep out thoughts and wishes of a more dangerous character. Frederick Douglass In 1848, Virginia-born Launcelot Minor Blackford built a small cart so he could entertain two visitors by giving them rides. He then “got all the little children who could well do it and hitched them to the carriage [and] made them run around the yard with Alice or Richard on it.” The youngster added, “They seemed to enjoy it very much.” As written, it is not clear if Blackford refers to the children who rode inside the cart or to those who towed it. In either case, this incident illustrates the power relations that existed between a white youth from a slaveholding family and “all the little children.” Blackford’s age, color, class, and degree of sophisticationareevidentinthefactsthatheconstructedthecart,chose who rode in it, and selected “all the little children.”1 When selecting the “little children,” Blackford’s primary concern was whether they were big enough and strong enough to move a cart carryingaboyandgirl.Theyweresignificantcomponentsoftheactivity, functioningasdraftanimalsorchattelproperty.Butaspersons,were“all the little children” as important as the children in the cart who “seemed to enjoy it very much?” This chapter examines many of the ways enslaved children and youth spent their leisure moments. Ordinarily, play is a voluntary, enjoyable , and liberating activity. The characteristic features of play make 108 Stolen Childhood it a stark contrast to work, the keystone of slavery. The play activities of black children were more like the activities of white children than any other activities in their lives. The historical record offers many opportunities to analyze the interactions of black and white children, including the one Launcelot Blackford described, to answer questions about competition, peer pressure, and social relations. Many relevant sources nevermentionenslavedandslaveholdingchildrenworkingonanequalor nearly equal basis, but it is not unusual for the data to show some white and black children playing together in relative equality. At early ages, the children played together, but after they reached ten or twelve years of age, enslaved girls and boys began working regularly and whites began systematic studies. Their paths diverged and never converged again to the same extent as in their play days. Once enslaved boys and girls began working they “couldn’t play ’round at chillun’s doing,” according to the South Carolinian George Briggs. Morris Sheppard, a former slave who had been owned by a Cherokee family, agreed when he said, “We was too tired when we come in to play any games.” Sheppard’s comment reveals that he and other family members, like many others, went home completely exhausted at the end of the workday. The leisure-time experiences of Sheppard and his contemporaries in Oklahoma and elsewhere depended upon their age, the day of the week, the season of the year, and whether or not the children had completed their assigned duties. Evenings, Sundays, and holidays offered respite from chores and a chance for amusement and recreation thatprovidedphysicalandmentalrestandrecuperation.“Atnightletthe negroes employ themselves as they please till the bell rings,” read the instructionsofWillisP .Bocock,aMarengoCounty,Alabama,slaveholder to his overseer in 1860. Bocock urged the overseer to refrain from any interferenceunlessthebondservantsbroke“someruleoftheplantation.” Plantation management records often mention free time for hands since owners and persons who hired them knew that bondservants were more productive if they were not driven too hard.2 Rarely did owners of small households maintain daily records comparabletothoseoflargeownerswhoemployedoverseers ,yettheabsence of such records does not mean that owners or employers did not recognize the need to balance labor with leisure for their own benefit and for [44.211.91.23] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 06:04 GMT) “When day is done” 109 the physical and psychological benefit of the men, women, and children they owned or hired. David K. Wiggins’s “The Play of Slave Children,” which is based largely upon WPA –narratives, maintains that play taught children the values and morals of the adult world. Another investigation of children’s recreation argues that “play bears a special relationship to the study of culture because it is so much a part of the reality of life.” Play, the antithesis of work, is often a reflection of real situations. Youngsters who observed values and ideals in one situation could transfer and imitate them in others. Play serves as a socializing agent, bringing children into cohesive units...