Black Yankees: The Development of an Afro-American Subculture in Eighteenth-Century New England

by William Dillon Piersen

This book examines the development of an Afro-American subculture in eighteenth-century New England. Piersen concerns himself not with the machinery of slave control or the political and social disabilities of bondage, but with the processes of cultural change and creation from the black bondsman's point of view. What was it like to be an African immigrant in colonial New England? What attitudes and assumptions underlay the Afro-American response to Yankee culture? What does the development within the confines of a predominantly white and ethnocentric New England of an Afro-American folk culture in religion, public rituals, folk arts and crafts, social mores, and daily behavior say about the creation of American culture?

On the face of it, the master class called the tunes and slaves danced the beat. Blacks who were taken into New England's bondage were clearly engulfed in a pervasive, narrow-minded Euro-American society that had no interest in fostering Afro-American autonomy. The New England experience was often cruel, and the numbers alone suggest it was among the most unequal of black/white cultural contacts in the New World. Nonetheless, despite the strictures of bondage, the black Yankees of eighteenth-century New England created a sustaining folk culture of their own.

Genres: History, African American, American History

256 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1988

Reviews

[Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for honors thesis

[eliza!]

for NHS research project

[Donald · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was excited by the subject of this book, but Piersen does not do a very good job with it. This is not entirely his fault. As he notes, there is very little surviving documentation of black culture from this period in New England.

The only compelling bit was the section about Negro Election Day festivals, which is an amazing piece of history I didn't know about. I think this book would have been better as a long essay just on those festivals.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

study of the growth of the Afro-American subculture in 18th century New England.