International Journal of Humanities and Management Sciences (IJHMS) Volume 3, Issue 6 (2015) ISSN 2320–4044 (Online)

Some Women Made the World African American woman, Creator of an African American Cultural Tradition Hamda Boussoualim. Malika, Déramchia. Yamina 

warm clothing and bedding; therefore, women used their free time in increasing those supplies. “Slave owner diaries and Federal Writers‟ Project interviews of former slaves in the 1930‟s frequently describe them carding wool and cotton, spinning and dyeing yarn, knitting, weaving, and sewing for the entire household” writes Martha B. Katz-Hyman and Kym S. Rice [16]. In First Days Amongst the Contrabands, Elizabeth Hyde Botume, a school teacher of the recently emancipated, recorded that women used to knit while doing other things: When the women found me so unsuspicious, they exhibited their handicraft with no small degree of pride. It was not an unusual thing to meet a woman coming from the fields, where she had been hoeing cotton with a small bucket or cup on her head, and a hoe over her shoulder, contentedly smoking a pipe and briskly knitting as she strode along. I have seen, added to all these, a baby strapped to her back. The patient devotion of these negro women was most admirable [8].

Abstract—This paper examines the role of women to produce much of the African American cultural tradition. We will show that women preserved the cultural heritage of their people in an American society which tried consciously and or unconsciously to dehumanize them. Through this paper, we try to peer into how women could preserve the humanity of their people which they defined through song, tale, and craft works creating the most freeing expression of a people who survived the harshest forms of dehumanization, slavery and racism.

Keywords—African American women, cultural tradition, manual arts, songs and tales. I. INTRODUCTION

B

in memory cultural structures that had permitted generations of women in Africa to express themselves eloquently and effectively, and relying on a rich cultural heritage that they sought to preserve—myths, means of expression, forms of performance…etc.—Black women helped extensively in producing the rich cultural heritage that now constitutes the African American tradition. Thus, women in the African American community were artists who celebrated their everyday activities in song, created useful craft works characterized by exceptional beauty, and showed a great skill as storytellers. Actually, these were their means to negate pain and to overcome hardship in a white society that tried consciously and / or unconsciously to strip them of their humanity. In song, craft works, or in tales, women created the most freeing expression of a people who survived the harshest forms of dehumanization, slavery and racism. EARIG

Quilting was an important handicraft practiced by women. However, much controversy surrounded this activity. While some scholars assumed that African American women had no significant contribution to the tradition of quilting in America, others refuted those assumptions claiming that slave women did most of the sewing and weaving in the largest plantations [5], and that their quilts display much creativity and skill [6], [1]. These scholars argued that during hard times, women made quilts for everyday use out of necessity; yet, even if quilts were made out of necessity, the artistic quality of those quilts was never lost since women quilters took pains to link between the agreeable and the useful in their handicrafts. A daughter of a slave woman proudly told how her mother, "used to quilt the prettiest quilts you ever see...." [11]. Mozell Benson, a postbellum quilt maker, who learnt quilting from her mother, says, “I got into quilting because we had to have covers. So quilting was a way of doing it, and it was inexpensive because people gave pieces of material that they weren‟t going to use, and I could always find use for it,” and commenting on the artistic quality of Benson‟s quilts, Maude Southwell Wahlman writes, “Her multi-colored patterns often look like modern art. In another generation, she might have gone to art school and become a painter, as her quilts often come across as paintings in cloth. Her quilts are the visual equivalent of jazz or blues,, for she often takes a basic pattern idea and then does variations on it just as a musician will do with a jazz piece” [21]. It has even been argued that during the struggle for freedom against slavery, quilts were used to warm

II. CULTURAL LIFE: MANUAL ARTS Craft art among African American women linked the useful and the agreeable; it took the form of quilts, hangings of various kinds, furniture coverings, decorative items, afghans, and clothing. During slavery, slave women were needed for spinning, weaving, sewing, and quilting in plantations or in wealthy households. After emancipation, women worked hard to provide clothing and quilts needed for warming. In the rigorous climate of the quarters, there was a great need for Hamda Boussoualim. Malika is with the Department of English, Faculty of Letters and Languages, University of Algiers 2, Algiers 1600, Algeria (corresponding author to provide phone: 00213542274580 e-mail: [email protected]). Déramchia. Yamina is with the Department of English, Faculty of Letters and Languages, University of Algiers 2, Algiers 1600, Algeria (e-mail: [email protected]). 404

International Journal of Humanities and Management Sciences (IJHMS) Volume 3, Issue 6 (2015) ISSN 2320–4044 (Online)

the runaway slaves as they were used as codes that could be read by fugitives as they traveled along the Underground Railroad [20]. Over the years, as the resources of the black community developed, more and more African American women have had the opportunity to enjoy quilting for pleasure rather than necessity. With fondness for patchwork, love for colors, longing for decoration, women varied colors, mixed patterns, exchanged designs to produce unknowingly the finest and most beautiful artistic creations. Color choice, pattern, asymmetry, and appliqué technique were used to produce quilts gathered from meaningful bits and pieces. Women therefore created functional beauty from the scraps of everyday life. About this functional beauty created by women quilt makers, Patricia Hill Collins writes: African-American women quilt makers do not seem interested in a uniform color scheme but use several methods of playing with colors to create unpredictability and movement […]. For example, a strong color may be juxtaposed with another strong color, or with a weak one. Contrast is used to structure or organize. Overall, the symmetry in African-American quilts does not come from uniformity as it does in Euro-American quilts. Rather, symmetry comes through diversity [3]. Similarly, the African American poet Nikki Giovanni stressed the economic value of quilts which she notes are formed from leftovers; she writes, “Quilters teach there is no such thing as waste …only that for which we currently see no purpose.” Giovanni adds that in addition to this economic value, quilts have a moral value, she observes "quilters teach patience to a hurried …impatient world" [9]. Some women, like Harriet Powers, made story quilts. During the 1800‟s, Harriet Powers made quilts which are now considered among the finest examples of nineteenth-century Southern quilting. The quilts made by Powers were made up of pictures based on stories from the Bible. After seeing Powers‟ Bible quilt, Jennie Smith, an art teacher, fell in love with the quilt, which despite the fading of its colors, still witnessed an indomitable beauty that made the art teacher write, "I regret exceedingly that it is impossible to describe the gorgeous coloring of the work" [19]. Two of Powers‟s quilts like many other quilts sometimes of unknown women artists reside now in museums. In In Our Mothers’ Gardens, Alice Walker praised the creativity of the anonymous quilt maker who pieced the quilt Walker saw in the Smithsonian Institution, in Washington D.C. The quilt, Walker writes:

American quilts, finds out that most African American quiltmaking derives its aesthetic from various African traditions. Wahlman distinguishes some traits that seemed to distinguish African American quilts from Anglo-American tradition as vertical strips, bright colors, large designs, improvisation, multiple patterning and symbolic forms. She then explains that her knowledge of African religious textiles and conversations with many African American women permitted her to perceive that the distinguished features link the African and the African American quilting traditions, “Many quilt-top designs were similar to designs found in African religious textiles, designs that can be decoded because contemporary Africans know what the symbolic designs mean.” She adds that since so many African American quilts seemed to incorporate symbolic patterns, possible continuities of meaning might be postulated [21]. However, other scholars undermine the importance of quiltmaking among African American women either in antebellum or postbellum America. They therefore challenge the arguments about the use of quilts in the struggle against slavery as they refute what some quilt historians consider as Africanisms in the African American quilt tradition. In “Quilts,” Leigh Fellner considers that “Similarities between modern African textiles and a select group of mostly 20 th century quilts led to hasty conclusions that black quilters had inherited a unique aesthetic from their African ancestors, […] The textiles American slaves‟ African ancestors did make and use were subtler and more complex than their modern counterparts suggest.” Fellner adds, “the compositional qualities assumed to be Africanisms were also the norm in the earliest British and American quilts; they remain so in regions with discernible African presence, such as among the Midwestern Amish and Canadian Mennonites and rural New Mexico, Australia, and Wales” [4]. Similarly, the author of “Quilts” considers that “the „Underground Railroad Quilt Code‟ is one of several late 20th century quilt-related myths” [4]. III. CULTURAL LIFE: SONGS In addition to craft works, songs were the other significant cultural heritage which constituted for the African American woman a means to celebrate life as well as a means to negate pains and to transcend limits. The slave women not without their men celebrated life through song to install the freest expression of a people who were defined as slaves but who, beyond the limits of this definition, indeed beyond the limits of slavery, realized themselves through sound. Within this freedom of expression, the slaves structured the warmest and intimate, truthful and honest cultural styles, work songs and spirituals, which were the foundation of what would eventually become the Blues and Jazz. Slave women always with their men sang their joys as they sang their pains and laughed at their sorrows, which were negated as soon as converted into rhythm and song. Work songs had mainly secular themes, and thus fell into the category of secular music. These songs were typically in a call-and-response format, where a lead would sing a verse or verses and the other workers would respond with a chorus. Some songs were part of a native heritage and sang to remind

in fanciful, inspired and yet simple and indefatigable figures […] portrays the story of the Crucifixion. It is considered rare beyond price though it follows no known pattern of quilt-making, and though it is made of bits and pieces of worthless rags, it is obviously the work of a person of powerful imagination and deep spiritual feeling. Below this quilt I saw a note that says it was made by „an anonymous black woman in Alabama, a hundred years ago [22]. It has also been argued that these artifacts have similarities with comparable crafts in Africa. In Signs and Symbols: African Images in African American Quilts, art historian Maude Southwell Wahlman, who has studied African 405

International Journal of Humanities and Management Sciences (IJHMS) Volume 3, Issue 6 (2015) ISSN 2320–4044 (Online)

the slaves of home. Zora Neale Hurston who collected folk songs wrote, “Since folk songs grow by incremental repetition the diversified subject matter that it accumulates as it ages is one of the evidences of its distribution and usage. This has everything in folk life in it. Several stories to say nothing of just lyric matter. It is something like the Odyssey, or the Iliad” [15].

Moreover, they sang to celebrate this achievement in the fields which they considered, as the following spiritual suggests, a sacred offering to the Lord, Breddren, don‟ git weary, … Fo‟ de work is most done. De ship is in de harbor, harbor, harbor, … To wait upon de lord…. ‟E got‟e ca‟go raidy, raidy, raidy, … Fo‟ to wait upon de lord” [14].

Among the most famous work songs, which were sung long after the emancipation of slavery, is “Mule on de Mount” Cap'n got a mule, mule on the Mount called Jerry Cap'n got a mule, mule on the Mount called Jerry I can ride, Lawd, Lawd, I can ride

When women field hands sung with their men what was known as work songs, women house servants celebrated their different tasks in song. They sang their capacity to extend their affectionate love to the children of the man who had separated them from their own children; the former showed their fondness of the songs or tales usually recounted by imaginative, sincere and virtuous “Mammy”. Actually, the sensible “Mammy” prayed every day before going to bed:

I don't want no cold corn bread and molasses, I don't want no cold bread and molasses, Gimme beans, Lawd, Lawd, gimme beans. I don't want no coal-black woman for my regular, I don't want no coal-black woman for my regular, She's too low-down, Lawd, Lawd, she's too low-down.

Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray de Lord my soul to keep, If I should die befo‟ I wake, I pray de Lord my soul to take. Bless pappy, bless mammy, Bless master, bless missie, And bless me, Amen! [8].

I got a woman she's got money 'ccumulated, I got a woman she's got money 'ccumulated, In de bank, Lawd, Lawd, in de bank. I got a woman she's pretty but she's too bulldozing, I got a woman she's pretty but she's too bulldozing, She won't live long, Lawd, Lawd, she won't live long.

Another important aspect of the African American songs comes in the form the spirituals. Spirituals were rooted deeply in Christianity, to which many slaves were fervent converts. These spirituals reflect African American culture through Christianity and tend to focus on religion as a means of saving blacks from the cruelty they experienced. After emancipation, spirituals developed into Gospel songs, which were the powerful expression, which helped the confused newly emancipated blacks to re-create their depressed environment in the storefront Baptist and Methodist churches [18].

Every pay day, pay day, I gets a letter, Every pay day, pay day, I gets a letter, Son come home, Lawd, Lawd, son come home. If I can just make june, july and august, If I can just make june, july and august, I'm going home, Lawd, Lawd, I'm going home. Don't you hear them, coo-coo birds keep a'hollering, Don't you hear them, coo-coo birds keep a'hollering, It's sign of rain, Lawd, Lawd, sigh of rain.

So women and men would sing and dance their sorrows to God, hoping and praying that one day, they would be relieved from their pains. An allusion from the bible is not uncommon in most of these spirituals. The slaves would refer to Moses freeing the Hebrew out of Egypt and use these stories to guide them towards freedom. For instance, in the spiritual: “O Mary don‟t you weep, don‟t you moan, / Oh Mary don‟t you weep, don‟t you moan, / Pharaohs army got drowned, / Oh Mary, don‟t you weep,” they emphasize through refrain the drowning of Pharaoh‟s army, revealing nature‟s rejection of those who transgress the harmony of life. Besides, the slaves recall the order of nature to strengthen certainty of change and thus resume their singing with, “One of those mornings, bright and fair, / Take my wings and cleave the air, / Pharaohs army got drowned, / Oh Mary, don‟t you weep.” The spiritual is then carried on with a warning to those who transgress the natural or social order. Thus, with a timing precision, they warn, “One of dese mornings, five o‟clock, / Dese world gonna reel and rock, / Pharaohs army got drowned, Oh Mary, don‟t you weep” [14]. They exhort that the old world led by “old

I got a rain-bow wrapped and tied around my shoulder, I got a rain-bow wrapped and tied around my shoulder, It ain't going to rain, Lawd, Lawd, it ain't going to rain [15]. In the field, together with their men, women celebrated their labor in song. Proud and dignified, and stressing in rhythm and rime the role of women in their achievement, they sang: Jump down, turn around to pick a bale of cotton. Jump down, turn around, pick a bale a day. Jump down, turn around to pick a bale of cotton. Jump down, turn around, pick a bale a day. Oh, Lordy, pick a bale of cotton! Oh, Lordy pick a bale a day! Me and my gal can pick a bale of cotton, Me and my gal can pick a bale a day…. 406

International Journal of Humanities and Management Sciences (IJHMS) Volume 3, Issue 6 (2015) ISSN 2320–4044 (Online)

master” will soon—at five o‟clock in the morning—collapse and swiftly “weeping Mary” will succeed in leadership.

Women would intrude the male world and engage in the rhetorical games contesting with men in telling “lies.” Masters of the spoken word among women and men would contest verbally while adapting stories that would reach and teach the hearts and minds of listeners in numerous ways. In Mules and Men, Hurston collected stories where women and men criticized and laughed at each other‟s follies through such tales as “Sue, Sal and that Pretty Johnson Gal” which is about one man courting three girls, and “the quickest trick” which is about three men courting one woman, or “how women got advantage of men” [15]. The stories were full of emotions, humor, rhythmic language, and wisdom. Women taletellers possessed the gift of making their male audiences admit their power in the talking game, as one of the men admitted “Don‟t you know you can‟t git de best of no woman in de talkin‟ game? Her tongue is all de weapon a woman got” [15].

IV. CULTURAL LIFE: TALES AND SAYINGS As singing, storytelling was part of everyday life in the African American tradition, and folktales accomplished many purposes. For the slaves and later on for the emancipated blacks, storytelling was a favorite evening pastime. They would tell stories which arose from the experiences which slaves had on their plantations mingled with the memories and customs that they brought with them from Africa. Each folktale is the common property of the community as well as the product of a joint and communal authorship. Folktales preserved and transmitted culture, as well as provided a means of escape, symbolically and for a short while, from the burden of slavery, and or from the hardships of life in post-Civil War America. The practice of storytelling acted somewhat as a means of empowerment for slaves; it was something that their white masters could not entirely control, and it encouraged slave solidarity. Folktales voiced the uncertainties and frustrations of the time, but at the same time, they offered a message of integration and stability. Culturally, women took a great care to use folktales to teach their children rudiments of survival and to install in them a strong sense of morality, culture, and tradition. Actually, a body of didactic stories, which put a great emphasis on taboos, supported this control of children‟s behavior. Folk stories, as those of the master overhearing the slaves‟ complaints or discovering their tricks, emphasized the omnipresence and omnipotence of the master, especially before children. Here, it must be noted that this control of children‟s behavior, merging fear with respect was, in addition to its educational purposes, black women‟s most adequate technique to protect their children and to instruct them in ways of survival. Usually, nearly every evening, men met outside, generally on the store porch to tell stories. “The porch was not a place for women, especially young, married black women. Porch conversations could be vulgar and filled with sexual and racial jokes [….] But for single adult black women, the store porch served as a meeting place; many unmarried black women went to the store to see who they could meet and to engage in conversations about possible relationships with men” [10]. Worth noticing here is that women were just intruders in those male meetings. According to Zora Neale Hurston, women were not passive intruders, but they actively participated in telling stories obliging the majority male audience to listen to what they could create out of old stories. While obliging a male audience to listen, women could use their gift in telling stories to entertain as well as to teach their audiences ideals, morals and cultural values [15]. In Mules and Men, Zora Neale Hurston, who collected African American folklore in the 1930's, recorded how women gathered with men on the store porch to tell stories which they called “lies.” She witnessed that “it was the habit of men folks particularly to gather on the store porch of evenings and swap stories. Even the women folks would stop and break a breath with them at times” [15].

V. CONCLUSION To sum up, African American women participated largely and effectively in producing a rich culture either while fulfilling their everyday duties or simply during moments of pleasure and entertainment. This culture witnesses that women had a large mastery over manual arts as well as a mastery of words, which were their means of survival over the hardships of toil and life in a society that tried to strip blacks of their humanity. Women knew how to make of the useful items of textiles and other crafts, which they produced for everyday use, beautiful works of art. They consequently gave art a social significance. They equally knew how to reduce the hardships of everyday life and toil when they celebrated all their activities in song. Additionally, they knew how to save and maintain the most significant values of their societies through tales or folk saying during moments of entertainment. REFERENCES [1]

Benberry, Cuesta. Always there: the African-American Presence in American Quilts. Louisville: Kentucky Quilt Project, 1992. [2] Botkin, B.A., ed. Lay my Burden Down: A Folk History of Slavery. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1945. [3] Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. NY and London: Routledge, 2000, pp. 170-171. [4] Fellner, Leigh. “Quilts,” in World of a Slave: Encyclopedia of the Material Life of Slaves in the United States, eds. Martha B. Katz-Hyman &Kym S. Rice. California: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2011, 387391, p. 388; p. 390. [5] Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth. Within the Plantation Household, Black and White Women of the Old South. Chapel Hill, 1988, p. 120. [6] Fry, Gladys-Marie. Stitched From The Soul: Slave Quilts From the AnteBellum South. New York, 1990. [7] Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., ed. Black Literature and Literary Theory. NY, London: Methuen, 1984. [8] Genovese, Eugene D. Roll Jordan Roll: The World the Slave‟s Made. NY: Vintage Books, 1976, pp. 494-5; p. 282. [9] Giovanni, Nikki. Sacred Cows and Other Edibles. W. Morrow,1988, p. 89. [10] Grim, Valerie. “African American Rural Culture, 1900-1950,” in African American Life in the Rural South, 1900-1950, ed. R. Douglass Hurt. Missouri: the Curators of the Univ. of Missouri, 2003, pp. 108128. [11] Hedges, Elaine, Pat Ferrero & Julie Silber. Hearts and Hands: the Influence of Women and Quilts on American Society. Tennessee: Rutledge Hill press, 1987, p. 48. [12] Herskovitz, Melville J. The Myth of the Negro Past. NY: Harper & Brothers, 1941. 407

International Journal of Humanities and Management Sciences (IJHMS) Volume 3, Issue 6 (2015) ISSN 2320–4044 (Online)

[13] Hurston, Zora Neale. [14] Hughes, Langston & Arna Bontemps, eds. The Book of Negro Folklore. NY: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1959, p. 409; pp. 299-3000. [15] Hurston, Zora Neale. Mules and Men. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1978, p. 275; pp. 275-276; p. 4; p. 33. [16] Katz-Hyman, Martha B. & Kym S. Rice. World of a Slave: Encyclopedia of the Material Life of Slaves in the United States. California: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2011, p. 387. [17] Levine, Lawrence W. Black Culture and Black Consciousness, AfroAmerican Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom. NY: Oxford Univ. Press, 1977. [18] Lincoln, C. Eric & Lawrence Mamiya. The Black Church in the AfricanAmerican Experience. Durham and London: Duke Univ. Press, 1990. [19] Lyons, Mary E., Stitching Stars: The Story Quilts of Harriet Powers. Aladdin Paperbacks, 1997, p. 18. [20] Tobin, Jacqueline L. Raymond G. Dobard, , Hidden in Plain View: The Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad. Anchor Books, 2000. [21] Wahlman, Maude Southwell. Signs and Symbols: African Images in African American Quilts. Burlington, Vermont: Tinwood Books, 2002, p. 10; p. 7. [22] Walker, Alice. In Search of our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose. NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983, p. 239.

408