Closer to Freedom

Chapter 3 examines illegal parties held by enslaved people and the complex preparation and truancy that these parties required.

Camp provides a brief history of the corporeal rhetoric and politics surrounding enslaved women. In contrast to “proper” European women, who were assumed to be incapable of manual labor, Europeans viewed African women as “natural” candidates for enslavement, with their bodies represented as primarily laboring by the English since the middle of the 17th century. Reproduction and the labor of giving birth, too, came “naturally” to African women. In addition, African women traditionally were agricultural workers, so they were presented as “fit” for enslavement.

As early as 1643, a Virginia law declared free African women’s labor taxable, alongside the labor of European men. This distinguished African women from European women, who performed domestic work and whose labor was untaxed. Two years later, African men’s labor became taxable. By the late 1600s, African servants who had arrived “by shipping” could be forced into lifelong servitude. This law, in concert with a 1667 law banning the former manumission of servants converting to Christianity, codified the racialization of American slavery. By the 19th century, enslaved people were often referred to only by their laboring body parts or tools integral to their labor; thus, they were reduced to “hands” or, for women who worked agriculturally with hoes, referred to only as “hoes.”

Not only did enslavers desire to restrict the geographical movements of enslaved people and exploit the body’s capacity for labor, they also desired to control the pleasures of the body. Many enslavers therefore provided parties for the enslaved people on their plantations as a “paternalistic mechanism of social control” (65). Enslavers surveilled these parties, serving “the dual purpose of simultaneously giving limited expression to and containing their bodily pleasure” (65).

Camp argues that enslaved people “possessed at least three bodies” (66). One body was a “site of domination” (66). This is the body that is read as “naturally” laboring and inherently resistant to pain, the “bio-text” on which enslavers “inscribed their authority” (67). The second body was the site of the experience of this domination. This second body subjectively experienced fear, terror, and pain. The third body was the one that resisted enslavement in its insistence on claiming and enjoying the very body that enslavers desired to dominate. The third body is both pleasurable and political.

Parties planned by enslaved people were not spontaneous events. They required intensive planning, monitoring, and preparation. Enslaved women would take ingredients from their enslavers’ kitchens and spend many nights cooking in secret in preparation for the event. The most important part of party planning— before, during, and after the party—was the avoidance of slave patrols. Because enslavement generally insisted on women’s immobility, women were more conspicuous when seen off the plantation, and it was generally riskier for them to attend illegal parties than men.

Camp emphasizes the specifically gendered nature of pleasure at illegal parties: For men, pleasure revolved around alcohol, and for women it revolved around clothing. Enslaved people’s clothing was usually made of a material called tow, which was either unprocessed flax or uncolored cotton. Women’s dresses were often cut directly on the body to avoid “wasting” fabric. Shoes were wooden-bottomed and often did not fit correctly. Some enslavers issued clothing once a year as a ritualistic event, while others were less paternalist and would go many years without issuing any clothing at all. Some enslaved women, however, were able to create one set of “fancy” clothes that could be worn for special occasions. Camp sets out not only to analyze the clothing itself but “clothing behavior,” underscoring that wearing fancy dress to an illegal party made women conspicuous and heightened the danger of attending these parties.

Occasionally exceptional labor was rewarded by enslavers with the “prize” of fancy cloth or a dress for women and alcohol for men. These supplies were also sometimes obtained through trading with white traders, shopkeepers, and sex workers, or with free Black traders. However, most women labored at night to create their clothing. This creation began from the ground up: with growing, picking, and processing cotton; growing and harvesting roots and berries to be used for dye; weaving the cloth; and designing and sewing their garments. Women both wove and dyed color and patterns into their clothing. Dyes of yellow, brown, red, and black could be created from tree bark, pokeberry, and poison ivy. In the coastal South of Georgia and South Carolina, women grew and used indigo. Dye was set with vinegar and water or urine. This was a complicated and time-consuming process, and all this was generally done in the context of the evening work of cooking, cleaning, making household goods like soap and candles, mending existing clothing, and taking care of families after being forced to labor all day. In addition, enslaved women often were required to create all the clothing for enslaved people on the plantation, and sometimes for white people.

Since their clothing was usually cut close to the body, women often created full skirts for themselves. Some enslaved women starched their skirts with hominy water to further accentuate their skirts’ sweeps. Others used vines or tree limbs to create hoops for their skirts, which were fashionable in the mid-1800s but generally disallowed by enslavers. Unique among enslaved women were headwraps, which could be either used as an accessory or removed to display intricate hairstyling. Buttons were made from horns or gourds covered with cloth. Earrings were made of straw or cranberries, and different flowers were used for perfume. Enslaved women reveled in the visual, aural, and olfactory experiences of fashion that they created for themselves and others.