Slaves were allowed to dance,feast and visit family on other plantations. But this revelry preceded ‘hiring day’, when families could be torn apart, and by just a weekOn a Christmas morning in the late 1840s,the people on a cotton plantation in eastern North Carolina like Oak Forest plantation, owned by my fifth great-grandfather, and Reverend William Bellamy – would initiate their day with a few random thumps rousing people awake. The thumping would give way to music,from hide stretched over boxes, gourd rattles, and cowbells,triangles, whistles and horns, or all urging excited children to rise from cornshuck pallets and effect on trousers covered in patches and gleaming white shirts or dresses made from homespun fabric dyed in fraudulent indigo,poke berries and onion skins. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com