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“ DEM CAA DRESS YAH! ” DRESS AS RESISTANCE AND ACCOMMODATION AMONG JAMAICAN WOMEN FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM, 1760 - 1890.

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

The Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate

School of The Ohio State University

Steeve O Buckridge, B.A., M.A.

*****

The Ohio State University 1998

Dissertation Committee:

Professor Claire Robertson, Adviser Approved by

Professor Leila Rupp

Professor Ahmad Sikainga Department of History Graduate Program Professor Gwendolyn O’ Neal UMI Number: 9900804

This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.

UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 Copyright by Steeve Oliver Buckridge 1998 ABSTRACT

This project is a study of how dress functioned as an instrument of both resistance to slavery and accommodation to white culture in pre- and post-emancipation Jamaican society. Further, the project will illuminate the complexities of accommodation and resistance, showing that these responses were not polar opposites, but melded into each other. This analysis will enhance our knowledge of the Black Atlantic, the role of British colonialism within the Caribbean, and the impact of the diaspora on African women.

Meanwhile, the focus on dress will stimulate further scholarly work on women’s material culture, the role of women in British West Indian history, and African women’s ability to maintain expressive cultural strategies as a means of survival.

The subjects of this study are slave and freed women who lived in British colonial

Jamaica and were African or of African descent. I argue that these women had some control over their clothing whether as resistors or accommodators and they were able to maintain and nurture African cultural characteristics in their dress.

I also discuss the aesthetic value of West African women’s dress and the African customs in dress that were brought to Jamaica by African slaves. I explore how these customs in dress were nurtured and maintained. I show that changes in dress occurred from slavery to emancipation, from more African modes to more European-influenced styles that accompanied greater possibilities for social mobility. This study also includes a discussion of carnival dress as an example of simultaneous resistance and

accommodation expressed in ambiguous meanings, and the role of dress in contemporary

Jamaican society.

The inter-disciplinary nature of this study is heightened by the use of primary and

secondary sources, deriving not only from history and women studies, but also from

anthropology, social psychology, historical linguistics and textiles and clothing. My

findings are not definitive, but rather suggestive as to how dress, as an artifact and a part

of material culture can be used to communicate aspects of women’s lives such as gender relations, identity, and class within the Jamaican plantocracy.

Ill Dedicated to my mother, Mildred, who taught me to serve God, to reach for the stars, and to love with all my heart!

IV ACKNOWLEDGMENT

My God My All... All things are possible with God.

There is an old Jamaican proverb, “one one coco full basket,” meaning that the contributions of each person, no matter how small, will contribute to success. An acknowledgment is a testament to this truth. I wish to thank my adviser, Claire

Robertson, for her guidance, mentoring and encouragement. I also wish to extend my sincere appreciation to the other members of my committee, Drs. Leila Rupp, Ahmad

Sikainga and Gwendolyn O’Neal for their intellectual support.

My deep appreciation to the staff and faculty of The Ohio State University History department, and the Graduate school for their help throughout the years. I am grateful to the C.I.C., G S A R A and the Elizabeth Gee Fellowship Foundations for supporting my doctoral studies. My gratitude to the staff of the West Indies Collection, The University of the West Indies Library, The National Archives of Jamaica, the Institute of Jamaica and

The National Library of Jamaica for their assistance during my field research. Many thanks to Professor Rex Nettleford, Pro-Vice Chancellor of The University of The West

Indies, Dr. Olive Lewin, director of the Jamaican Folk singers, and Mrs. Muriel Whynn of the Moore Town Maroon descendants for their time, and willingness to share their ideas and stories with me. My appreciation to Dr. Verene Shepherd for her guidance, and the staff of the History department at the University of the West Indies for all their help.

Many thanks also to Glory Robertson, Barry Higman, the Jamaica Historical

Society and the A.C.H. members who offered valuable advice on this project during the

1998 conference in Suriname. My sincere thanks to Donald Sgontz and Lynne Matthaes for all their help and patience throughout the research process.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge my friends, family members, particularly the women of my family who both inspired and molded me. I thank them for their prayers, unbounded support and most of all their unconditional love.

VI VITA

December 15, 1964 ...... Born - Kingston, Jamaica W.I.

1990...... B. A. History, Barry University

1993...... M. A. History, University of Miami

1993-1998...... Instructor Columbus State Community College Columbus, Ohio USA

1997-winter/spring ...... Instructor The Ohio State University

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field; History

Studies in African History, Caribbean History and Women’s History

VII TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Abstract...... ii Dedication ...... iv Acknowledgments ...... v Vita...... vii List of Figures...... ix

Chapters;

1. Introduction ...... 1

2. The Crossing...... 23

3. Dress As Resistance ...... 79

4. Dress As Accommodation ...... 124

5. Conclusion ...... 202

Bibliography...... 233

vin LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page

2.1 The Origin of Jamaican Slaves and map of West Africa...... 24

2.2 Map of contemporary Jamaica ...... 36

2.3 Freedwoman in veil made from back lace...... 58

2.4 Negro Mode of Nursing ...... 61

3.1 The slave and freedwoman’s head wrap ...... 102

3.2 Surinamese Head wrap: “Wacht me op de hock” ...... 104

3.3 Surinamese Head wrap; “Feda let them talk” ...... 105

3.4 St. Vincentian Villagers [slaves] merrymaking ...... 107

4.1 The classical dress of 1810-1820s...... 135

4.2 The corset - front view...... 137

4.3 Dress of the 1850s-1860s...... 139

4.4 Dress of the 1870s ...... 140

4.5 Dress of the 1880s...... 141

4.6 Dress of the 1890s ...... 142

4.7 Dress of Jamaican freed elite and mulatto women in the 1840s ...... 155

ix 4.8 Betty of Port Royal ...... 157

4.9 View of King Street...... 162

4.10 View of Kingston Church ...... 166

4.11 View of Kingston Theater ...... 167

4.12 Peasant woman - a trader in working dress ...... 171

4.13 Peasant woman in Sunday best ...... 173

4.14 Task workers breaking stone by a roadside ...... 175

4.15 Peasant women on the way to market ...... 177

4.16 Peasant women on the road to market ...... 178

4.17 Jamaican market woman [trader] with basket and wearing bandanna ...... 179

5.1 Red Set Girls ...... 208

5.2 Queen or Maam of the S e t ...... 210

5.3 Gothic dress of 183 Os...... 211 CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Dress As Jamaican History

This project is a study of how dress fiinctioned as both an instrument of resistance to slavery and accommodation to white culture in pre- and post-emancipation Jamaican society, 1760-1890. Further, this project illuminates the complexities of accommodation and resistance, showing that these responses were not polar opposites, but interwoven.

This analysis will enhance our knowledge of the Black Atlantic, the role of British colonialism within the Caribbean, and the impact of the Diaspora on African women.

Meanwhile, the focus on dress will stimulate further scholarly work on women’s material culture, and the role of women in West Indian history.

This study not only reveals the dynamics of race, class and gender in Jamaican society, but it also contributes to the relatively recent interest in the history of women and the history of resistance during slavery and post-emancipation eras in the Americas. The early historiography on slavery was Eurocentric and often depicted a complacent male slave. For example, Lowell Ragatz in 1928 remarked, “The West Indian Negro [slave] had all the characteristics of his race. He stole, he lied, he was simple, suspicious,

inefficient, irresponsible, lazy, superstitious, and loose in his sexual relations.”' Gender

was not an issue and women slaves rarely mentioned. Since 1975 there have been major

developments in the study of slave resistance and rebellion. Studies by Michael Craton

(1982), Barry Caspar (1985), and Hilary Heckles (1882, 1986), have filled crucial gaps in

our knowledge about organized slave revolts. Important new research on marronage and

slave runaways has also been carried out by Gad Heuman (1986). Most recent scholarly

work on women slaves has focused on the U.S. south, represented by studies by Elizabeth

Fox-Genovese ( 1956), Kate Wittenstein (1981), and Deborah Gray White (1985). Ariette

Gautier (1983) has produced a comprehensive study of women slaves in the Caribbean.

While pioneering works on women in Jamaica include those by Lucille Mathurin-Mair

(1975), Barbara Bush (1990), Marietta Morrissey (1990), and Janet Momsen (1993).

However, with the exception of Lucille Mathurin-Mair’s monograph. The Rebel Woman

in The British West Indies During Slavery. ( 1975), relatively little has been published that

focuses primarily on the contributions of Afro-Caribbean women to resistance. This study

emphasizes one form of women’s resistance—the usage of dress. Women’s roles as

resistors were part of a long saga of struggle against the process of dehumanization and

powerlessness.

Jamaican society was divided into three main castes during this period; whites,

coloreds and Africans. ^ Whites in this context referred to people from Europe or of patently unmixed European descent—in Jamaica mainly English, Scots and Irish. This group also included local born whites. The second caste, the colored, consisted of all 2 those persons of African and other ancestry. In the United States of America all persons o f African ancestry, of whatever degree are categorized as Negro or black. Within the

Jamaican context, there were gradations of coloreds such as a “sambo”, a child of mulatto and negro; a “mulatto”, a child of white man and negro woman; a “quadroon”, a child of mulatto woman and white man; and a “mustee”, a child of a quadroon by a white man.

Unlike in the United States, people of mixed ancestry were white by law after four generations of mating with whites. The more common term for this caste was mulatto.

Any slave of color or a free person of color could be termed mulatto or brown or yellow.

Some coloreds [mulattos] had special privileges granted by private acts. The third group were Africans and their descendants. Whites used two kinds of generalizations for this group, Negro and slave were synonymous until abolition."

A word on terminology regarding racial and cultural categories is advisable. Here

I have chosen to use the terms freed or slave (bonded) for those of African descent in

Jamaica rather than the term “black” which has an ahistorical twentieth century U.S. connotation. I also use the term Afro-Jamaican for those of African descent. Jamaican racial categories were more complex and fluid. Whites may have seen themselves as one group opposite to others but all those of African descent were not in the same category in their own view.

The subjects of this study are slave and freed women, who lived in British colonial

Jamaica and were African or of African descent. However, these women’s lives can only be understood within the context of their relationship with other racial groups. I argue that Jamaican African women and their descendants had some control over their clothing, 3 and that they were able to maintain and nurture expressive cultural strategies in their dress as a means of survival. I also will show that changes in dress occurred from slavery to emancipation, from more African modes to more European- influenced styles that accompanied greater possibilities for social mobility. My findings are not definitive, but rather suggestive as to how dress, as an artifact and a part of material culture can be used to communicate aspects of women’s lives such as gender relations, identity, and class within the Jamaican plantocracy.

Methodology: Material Culture and Dress

‘We miss the profound wordless experience of all people when we concentrate exclusively on texts made out of language! -Gerald L. Pacius'’

As scholars, rarely do we try to read objects as we read books—to comprehend the people and the times that created these objects. However, the study of material culture seeks to change this by exposing material evidence to historical analysis. Material culture is the study of physical objects or artifacts to understand the beliefs, values, ideas, attitudes and assumptions of a particular community or society at a given time.^

It is not my intent to establish the primary importance of objects as opposed to documents, but to reveal that objects are parallel to written materials. As Henry Glassie has appropriately stated, “For too long historians have left out vast realms of experience that do not fit into words at all, that can only be shaped into artifacts.”^ The study of material culture includes a spectrum of objects-from the utilization of space to something as simple as a tea pot or a chair within one’s home. Material culture is especially 4 important for studying those individuals who left no written records. As Gerald Pacius

states in the opening quotation, without material culture we would miss the profound

‘wordless experience’ of these people. Cultural historian W. David Kingery reveals that,

although historians traditionally use documents rather than artifacts or objects, documents

are a species of artifacts, and some historians, mostly paleographers, make use of the

document as artifact. Further, artifacts are remnants of the environment of earlier periods, a portion of the historical experience available for direct observation. Not only do artifacts present new evidence to support historical arguments, they also suggest new arguments and provide a level of rhetorical support to arguments that mere documents cannot begin to approach. Kingery further argues that artifacts, especially when used in conjunction with the sorts of history ‘gleaned’ from documentary sources, widen our view of history, as they increase the evidence for historical interpretations.’ In this study, the artifact of interest is that of dress.

Cultural historians Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins and Joanne Richer define dress as

“an assemblage of modifications of the body and/or supplements to the body.”* As a consequence, dress includes many forms of adornment, hair styles, colored or dyed skin, pierced ears, scented breath as well as garments, jewelry, accessories and other types of items added to the body.’ In this study, the term “dress” will be used instead of “fashion” or “apparel” because neither of these are technically correct nor are they as comprehensive as the term ‘dress’.

How does one analyze dress and what do material culturalists look for in such artifact? Cultural historian Jules David Prown reveals that the objective of a cultural 5 historian is to investigate the belief of individuals and the belief of groups of individuals.

He further argues that there are surface beliefs of which people are aware and which they

express in what they say, do and make, and these are beliefs that are hidden or submerged.

A cultural analyst wants to get at hidden beliefs, at what lies behind the surface

appearance, behind the “mask” of the “face”.'" The ability to get behind the ‘mask’,

allows the analyst to establish a ‘footing’ in the subject’s culture. Clifford Geertz

described this best, as an opportunity to do more than ‘talk’ rather, to ‘converse’ with

one’s subjects."

However, the methodology of “unmasking” the face can be quite problematic. The

cultural analyst tries to understand another culture whose patterns of beliefs, whose mind

is different from our own. Our own beliefs, our mindset, bias our view. Therefore, it

helps to try to approach that other culture in an unbiased manner, at least while we gather

data. This is the great promise of material culture. By pursuing cultural interpretations

through artifacts, we engage the other culture in the first instance not with our minds, the

‘seat’ of our cultural biases, but with our own senses. Metaphorically speaking, we put

ourselves into the bodies of the individuals who made or used these particular artifacts,

hence, we see with their eyes, and touch with their hands. Thus, to identify with people

from the past or from other places empathetically, through the senses, is clearly a different

way of engaging them than abstractly through the reading of written words. Prown also

adds that instead of our minds making intellectual contact with their minds, “our senses make effective contact with their sensory experience.”'^ I have tried to do this here—to capture the experiences of Jamaican slave women by making “contact” with their own 6 experiences. I focus not merely on the reality of these experiences, but as Joan W. Scott explains, more on “trying to understand the operations of the complex and changing discursive processes by which identities are ascribed, resisted, or embraced.”'^

The inter-disciplinary nature of this study is heightened by the use of primary and secondary sources, deriving not only from history and women studies, but also from anthropology, social psychology, historical linguistics and textiles and clothing. Particular attention has been paid to those journals and travel records that included sketches and descriptive accounts of slave and freed women’s dress. Illustrations, photographs and paintings of slave and freed women by artists of the period, such as the works of Adolphe

Duperly and I. M. Belisario are examined in detail. I have also created several illustrations based on my interpretation of the data collected.

Oral history obtained during two summers of field research in Kingston, Jamaica are employed where possible. These sources are the results of open-ended questionnaires conducted with Jamaican folklorists, folk musicians, maroon descendants and market women about Jamaican dress. Other oral sources used include slave songs which have survived. I have also incorporated some of my own experiences and observations from growing up in Jamaica. In addition. Jamaican proverbs regarding women’s dress, are utilized throughout the text as a means of evoking the folk sensibilities of my subjects.

These serve as a useful frame for my argument.

Although I have used various methods and sources to uncover some aspects of slave women’s usage of dress, by no means is this study exhaustive. At times I have had to generalize from specific examples due to the lapse of evidence, and the absence of slave 7 testimony. It is also important to note that dress played many roles in slave society, other than cultural resistance and as a means of accommodation. In fact, dress was closely linked to Afro-Jamaican religions and customary medicine. For instance, among the

Revival Zionists, their officers, such as the wheeling shepherd and shepherdesses''* wear distinctive long gowns with specific colors and kerchief tied turbans for different types of ceremonies. A blue gown is worn when invoking individual spirits, and a white gown for a secret working in purity.'^ In Obeah, the priests [Obeah Men] wear red flannel shirts or a crosspiece of red under their ordinary clothes and sometimes gold earrings. The gold is said to brighten their eyes so they can see dupies [ghosts].'^

Within customary medicinal practice, medicine was used for healing and protection or for harming and killing enemies.” These practices involved using herbs, and may include objects or things physically close to a person such as clothing and dress.

Therefore personal effects must be carefully disposed of or put away lest they fall into an enemy’s hands.'* In Jamaica for example, among some Obeah followers, it was believed that burning certain clothing will take off the skin of the owner."'

The religious usages and significance of clothing deserve in depth attention that is beyond the scope of this study. In this text I am concerned with the secular legacy of

African cultural characteristics, “Africanisms” expressed in Jamaican slave women’s dress, and the functions that dress played in slave society in terms of expressing class distinctions, feminine beauty and gender relations. Furthermore, I analyze how dress changed after emancipation and the significance of these changes. In other words, why did large numbers of Jamaican women adopt European dress? Moreover, I explore the 8 reciprocity of fashion trends between classes and races, and the fashion synthesis that

emerged in Jamaican society.

Background

The study of Jamaican women’s dress cannot be understood without some

geographical and historical context, or at least an outline of Jamaican history. The island

of Jamaica lies in the northern Caribbean and is the region’s third largest island after Cuba

and Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic). The island is 146 miles long from

east to west and 51 miles at its widest. A central mountain range, capped by 7,402 foot

Blue Mountain Peak, runs the length of the island, which accounts for the rich and varied

terrain that sets Jamaica apart from most other Caribbean or West Indian islands. The

country’s name is derived from the aboriginal inhabitants, the Arawak^“ word “Xaymaca”,

meaning land of wood and water because of the abundance of waterfalls, springs, streams

and rivers that flow from the forest-covered mountains to the fertile tropical plains.^'

In 1494, Christopher Columbus arrived in Jamaica and claimed it for the Spanish

Crown, whose property it remained for the next 161 years. During that time the original

Amerindian Arawak inhabitants were enslaved, killed or died from the outbreak of

diseases such as smallpox. Large numbers committed suicide, preferring death to the

humiliation and suffering of life under the newcomers. To meet labor needs small numbers

of Africans were imported. Some Africans ran away to the hills where they established

Maroon communities. In 1655 the British made a successful surprise attack on the local garrison one night. Thereafter, Jamaica became one of the finest jewels in the British

Crown.

The British lost no time in putting their conquest to work. British settlers soon

established a thriving sugar industry. African slaves supplied the labor, and for nearly 200

years the island played its part in providing the raw materials that became the basis for the

Industrial Revolution. This period was marked by successive slave rebellions. There was

the legendary woman Nanny, who defeated the British time and again throughout the

1730s with her successful guerrilla tactics, leading her followers to believe that she was

blessed with magical powers. There was also Cudjoe, whose name is of West African

Akan origin, who fought the British to a standstill and eventually won a formal treaty of

recognition.^’

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Jamaica became for a time the world’s largest producer of sugar and planters amassed immense fortunes. The island was

constantly involved in war. There were unsuccessful attempts at invasions by the

Spaniards, who were eager to recapture their former possession, and the French coveted the island for its great strategic value. There were also numerous slave rebellions.^'*

Under the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713, Britain took over from France the Asiento, the contract to distribute African slaves to Spanish colonies. Jamaica remained a distribution center for slaves until the slave trade became illegal in 1807. Over a million slaves were brought to Jamaican, 200,000 were re-exported and 800,000 remained to replenish the island’s own plantation labor force. Meanwhile, most planters were absentee landlords, who preferred to live off the wealth of their estates in London. The few whites 10 who lived on the island, or those who were local born [creoles] were outnumbered by

slaves. In 1775, for example, whites were outnumbered fifteen to one by their slaves. As

a consequence, Jamaican whites were in constant fear of rebellion. The early runaway

slaves, the Maroons, tried to recreate their African life in Jamaica’s hill-country and

harassed the British settlers for seventy-six years. They carried out nocturnal raids and

proved so elusive that the British army was unable to conquer them. Large numbers of

runaway slaves joined these Maroon communities in the mountains. Eventually the

Maroons were offered a treaty which gave them freedom and land in return for ceasing

hostilities and the harboring of runaway slaves.

Missionary activities also played a vital role in Jamaican history. The

Anglican Church or Church of England was the official or state church, and was

considered as the church that catered to the needs of planters. Moravian missionaries

arrived in 1754 and were followed by Wesleyans and Baptists. The arrival of these

missionaries was not greeted with “open arms” by the Anglican and planter establishments.

Instead, they were forbidden from teaching literacy to slaves, but did manage to provide

some religious instructions. They also did what they could to protect slaves from cruelty,

and later led the struggle for abolition.

By the 1830’s slavery had become an expensive proposition. The

depression after the Napoleonic wars hit Jamaica hard and, due to growing competition

from Cuba, Puerto Rico, British Guinea and European beet-sugar, Jamaica never regained

her former position in the world’s sugar market. The 1831 rebellion in Jamaica brought things to a climax. It was the biggest revolt of all, led by a slave, a Baptist deacon named Sam Sharpe. The whole northwest of the island was ablaze in a battle that shook the local settlers and slave owners to their core. Sharpe remained unrepentant, and immortalized the cause of all slaves with the simple pronouncement as they prepared the scaffold from which they would hang him, ‘i would rather die on yon gallows than live a slave To some people, slavery was an economic anachronism, an inefficient survival, that had no real place in the world that was being shaped by the Industrial Revolution. For others, slavery was morally repugnant. In 1834 the Abolition Act was passed which gave slaves partial freedom and introduced an Apprenticeship System—which provided planters with a limited labor force and simultaneously taught slaves a skill. The system’s aim was to provide a smooth road to freedom for slaves. The system failed; as a consequence full

Emancipation was declared on 1 August 1838.^*

The shortage of labor on the plantations after emancipation led to the periodic importation of Chinese and East Indian indentured laborers during the next half-century.

Britain’s new free trade policy and her Sugar Equalization Act in 1846, took away

Jamaica’s tariff advantages. Thus many planters went bankrupt and were forced to sell their land, which was divided up and sold to the new class of peasants—the former slaves.

The number of plantations dwindled from more than five hundred to no more than seventy at the beginning of the twentieth century .^^

The newly emancipated slaves had no land of their own, nor were other provisions made for them. During slavery, their cottages, the gardens where they grew their own food, as well as medical attention were provided by the planter. The end of slavery now meant the end of the planters’ responsibilities for their well being. Some 12 freedpersons were encouraged to return to the plantations to work for wages, with the intention that they would stay on the estate. Most refused; instead many ran off to the hills and squatted on Crown lands where they cultivated enough food for their needs.

Some were able to work for wages, and bought their old cottage and gardens from their former masters. Others were helped by the Baptist missionaries to build free villages on

Crown lands or on abandoned properties which could be subdivided; these formed the nucleus of a peasant class that doubled in size within sixty years, but remained rooted in poverty.^”

The decline of the sugar industry gave way to several attempts at cultivating other crops—such efforts failed until bananas were introduced in the 1870s and grown on a large scale. Eventually large foreign companies arrived and began to dominate in the place of private plantations. The United Fruit Company grew bananas in Jamaica from the turn of the century until the 1930s when the crop was destroyed by disease. The failure of bananas coincided with a revival in the sugar industry, but not to the extent that it absorbed the island’s large labor force. Thus, Jamaicans left the island in large numbers to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Thousands worked on the roadway in Panama, the Panama

Canal, banana plantations in Costa Rica and Honduras, and sugar plantations in Cuba.

Before 1924 over 100,000 West Indians, mostly Jamaicans, became American immigrants, and during the two World Wars many served in the armed forces or did farm contract work in the United States. After these opportunities were no longer available, many

Jamaicans began to turn to Britain. By the 1950s large numbers of Jamaicans had migrated there to seek a better way of life. Constitutional changes also played a major part in shaping the history of the island.

During the early stages of British colonial rule, a governor was appointed to represent the

Crown, and with him an appointed Legislative Council and an Assembly, elected by the

settlers, were to share the responsibilities of government. Those who owned property,

mainly members of the planter class, elected the representatives to the assembly which had

some powers, but were subject to the will of the British Crown. The Jamaican assembly

became a place where the local plantocracy could express their views and propose how

the colony might best be administered. The legislative body consisted of an elite class

created by colonialism who enjoyed and sought to maintain their extraordinary privileges

in return for ruling the island. The Emancipation Act ostensibly gave slaves full citizenship

rights, including the vote, but the assembly passed additional legislation that raised the

property qualifications on the franchise to a level which excluded the ex-slaves. As a

result, the assembly remained the voice of the gentry and the interests of the ex-slaves

were ignored or dismissed.

By the 1860s the disparity between those in power and the mass of ex-slaves was very great, compounded by a series of droughts and the effects of the American Civil War,

all of which resulted in the Morant Bay rebellion of 1865. This revolt forced the Assembly

to vote itself out of existence and Jamaica lost its limited local government and became a

direct Crown Colony. It was not until 1884 that Jamaica returned to a semi-representative government, but most administrative responsibilities remained in the hands of the governor. The new system was not seriously challenged until 1938 when the debate for independence became popular. Jamaica finally gained its independence from Britain on 6 14 August 1962/^ This background of socioeconomic and political strife is essential to

understanding the implications of changes in dress.

Organization

This study is divided into five chapters, including this introduction and the

conclusion, which reflect a diversity of theoretical, comparative, and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of colonized women’s dress. Chapter two, “The Crossing”, explores the role of dress within African societies, and its usage as a communicative tool.

I examine how African women dressed in their homelands, and the cultural characteristics, especially those regarding dress, that were brought across the Atlantic into the “new” world. This analysis of African women’s dress within the African context is crucial to understanding why dress played such an important role in Jamaican slave society. I describe how the new arrivals adapted to their new environment, the types of clothing they received, and what they were allowed to wear. I also analyze the laws that regulated their dress, and the effectiveness of these policies. I emphasize the cultural traits brought across, what was maintained, nurtured, and fashioned to suit the needs of African women in exile. I also include a discussion on the invention of Jamaican Creole culture.

Furthermore, I cover some of the symbolic aspects of dress and adornment within their limited cultural boundaries. Any analysis of dress in a particular society cannot be undertaken without examining the social and cultural context as well as its impact on the body. Roach-Higgins and Richer argue that we cannot treat dress as independent from the body because “dress is inextricably tied to the body,” because “the biological self is subject 15 to acts of dress, therefore the body has a certain primacy.”^'’ At times many societies set

limitations on what is socially acceptable in terms of dress and those who do not conform,

are often disallowed a positive self-identity, eventually leading to their developing negative

self-images. I use a symbolic interaction perspective throughout chapters two and four of

this study to show how dress can both reflect these negative and positive images, as well

as reveal the status differences and class identities within and between cultures. This is

significant because from the perspective of symbolic interaction theory, individuals acquire

identities through social interactions in various social and physical settings. Identities are

communicated by dress as it announces social positions of wearer to both wearer and

observers within the specific interaction situation.

Chapter three, “Dress as Resistance”, deals primarily with the aesthetic value of

Jamaican slave women’s dress, and its usage as an instrument of resistance to colonial

domination. I examine why dress became a “weapon of the weak”,'*'’ to use James C.

Scott’s term, and how this type of slave resistance contested the power of the colonial regime. The usage of dress in this manner was varied and could also challenge gender categories. For instance, some slaves cross-dressed; others disguised themselves as freed persons to resist a life of servitude. Others destroyed the garments received from their owners as an act of defiance. Meanwhile, a discussion on the African woman’s headwrap highlights its importance both as a functional tool within the resistance movement as well as a vital link to slave women’s heritage.

The fourth chapter, “Dress as Accommodation”, focuses on social change in post-

Emancipation Jamaican society, the rise of a consumer society and the commercialization 16 of clothing. I consider why many women abandoned the more African plantation ways of

dressing and accommodated to white culture by embracing Victorian ideals of feminine

beauty. Women began to wear European-style dresses consisting of long skirts, numerous

petticoats, bonnets and gloves. I detail the role of dress in communicating social and

moral customs, the reasons for accommodation, who accommodated, and the extremes

these women pursued to achieve their aims. Apart from how and why such transformation

took place, I also present the problems of accommodation and its failures. My work

would be incomplete without some focus on the role of seamstresses. Thus, this section

contains an analyses of their contributions to their society, and their changing roles within

the new social order.

These chapters are followed by a conclusion that provides an overview and a

consideration of the ambiguous meanings of carnival dress. Dress at carnival was part of

masking or masquerading and provided slaves with a sense of power—at least temporarily.

The recent developments of specific forms of expression in women’s dress in Jamaican

popular culture deserve some attention. This section provides the opportunity to bridge the past to the present to relate my discussion on dress to present day cultural activities.

As Barbara Bush says, “[History] is also to establish a continuity between the past and the present. The legacy of early slave women and their African past is evident in the various roles of dress in Dance Hall as well as the influence of Rastafarian modes of dress on Jamaican society, its uniqueness, and its contributions to the construction of a Jamaican identity.

17 *****

The inspiration for this study comes from my own experiences growing up in

Jamaica. As a child, my world was populated by strong women who shared stories of their own struggles and the resilience of our ancestors to create a better life for their family and simultaneously a space for themselves within the male dominated society. For instance, there were stories of Theresa Green, who was huge in stature, owned her own business, and was a boxer in her village. Theresa won every match, and was happy to beat

[literally] any man who dared to challenge her to a fight. Another subject was Gong-

Gong, who raised cattle, and became infamous for climbing tall trees—a habit she maintained until late in her senior years. The subjects of these stories showed that women were capable of mastering any job, as well as any man. These were some of the stories that shaped, sustained, and nourished me, and eventually led me down this path. More important, women like my mother and grandmother, like so many others, refused to be marginalized. Instead, they relied on their inner strength, and their own history to get them through life’s daily challenges.

In many cultures it is customary for individuals to save or keep a particular garment that is symbolic of an event. For example, some women save their wedding dresses. Others may save a religious garment such as a baptismal dress or gown. These garments are usually passed down from one generation to the next to guarantee that it remains in the family. My mother saved her children’s baby clothes, a habit which my siblings and 1 found very strange and at times embarrassing. On my visits home, my mother would retrieve the garments from a plastic bag which was carefully hidden in her 18 closet. Each garment would be meticulously laid out, then she would point as she went along which garment 1 wore at ages one, two and so on. The clothes were discolored with age, but had remained surprisingly intact. On one occasion, when I inquired why she did this, my mother replied, “because it is your history!” My mother had long learned the importance of material culture and the function of dress as a historical artifact. Her words stuck with me, and it was not until years later, when I embarked upon this study that I came to understand the meaning of her words.

On one level, this study is a return to my roots and to see how the past has shaped the present. Moreover, this study is also a celebration of Jamaican women’s contribution to the struggle for freedom. I share this work of history as a testament of my love and gratitude to all Jamaican women who struggled to survive, and in the process left a rich legacy of hope and solidarity.

19 ENDNOTES

' Barbara Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society 1650-1838. (Kingston; Heineman, 1990), p. 4.

"Ibid., pp. 3-5.

^ Philip D. Curtin, Two Jamaicas: The Role of Ideas in a Tropical Colony. 1830-1865. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955), pp. 22-25, 42-43. See also Edward Brathwaite, The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica. 1770-1820 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), pp. 105-106, 167-168 and Barry Higman, Slave Population and Economy in Jamaica 1807-1834 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), pp. 139- 141. All three authors describe the racial composition of Jamaican society in depth and the privileges of each group.

Gerald L. Pacius ed.. Living in a Material World. (St. John’s: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1991), pp. 253-54.

^ Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins, Joanne Eicher, and Kim Johnson eds.. Dress and Identity. (New York: Fairchild, 1995), pp. 5-6.

^ Steven Lubar and W. David Kingery eds.. History from Things. (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), pp. 1-17.

" Ibid., The Introduction, pp. viii-ix.

* Roach-Higgins ed.. Dress and Identity, pp. 6-10.

Ibid., p. 11. According to Roach-Higgins and Eicher the term apparel has serious limitations in that it does not include body modifications. The term costume meanwhile implies “out of everyday” social role or activity. Therefore this term is also avoided. In addition, the term fashion is used occasionally and in this context it refers to the actual style of a garment. However, fashion and dress should not be confused because the term fashion lacks the precision of the word dress. Furthermore, not all types of dress qualify as fashion. Religious dress for example, in some societies resist fashion changes. Other terms used throughout this text for example are appearance, adornment and clothing. Although these terms are also not as comprehensive as dress, they are perhaps the most suitable alternatives.

20 Jules Dav'id Prown, “The Truth of Material Culture; history or fiction?” in History from Things, pp. 3, 4, and 17.

" Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures. (New York: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, 1973),p. 13.

Prown, “The Truth of Material Culture,”, p. 4.

’’ Joan W. Scott, ‘Experience’, in Feminists Theorize The Political. (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 33.

A Revival Shepherd or Shepherdess is the spiritual leader of the faith community.

Joseph Graessle Moore, Religion of Jamaican Negroes. A study of Affo-Jamaican Acculturation. (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Dept, of Anthropology, Northwestern University, June, 1953). Moore provides a comprehensive account of Affo-Jamaican religions, and the significance of dress as well as specific colors within the religion.

Martha Beckwith, Black Roadways: A Study of Jamaican Folk Life. (New York: Negro University Press. 1969). p. 108.

Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South. (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1980). pp. 13-15.

" Ibid , pp. 13-15.

Beckwith, Black Road wavs, p. 118.

Verene Shepherd. Ed.. “Indigenous Caribbean Women” in Women in Caribbean History. (Kingston. Ian Randle Publishers, forthcoming), pp. 5-7. Shepherd reveals that the original inhabitants were, in fact, the Tainos and that many spoke Arawakan.

Paul Zach, ed.. Insight Guides Jamaica. (Boston: APA Publications. 1993). pp. 23-24

■■ Michael Manley. Jamaica Struggle in The Periphery. (London: Third World Media Limited. 1982), p. 16.

- Ibid.. pp. 16-17.

Katrin Norris. Jamaica. The Search for an Identity. (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1969). p. 2.

21 "'Ibid., pp. 2-3.

Ibid., pp. 4-5.

Manley, Jamaica Struggle in the Periphery, p. 17.

Ibid., 17. See also Clinton Black, History of Jamaica. (London; Collins Clear-Type Press, 1965), pp. 159-167. Black gives a detail analysis of how the Apprenticeship System worked.

Norris, Jamaica. The Search for an Identity, p. 6.

Ibid., p. 7.

Ibid., pp. 6-7.

Ibid., pp. 7-8.

Ibid., p. 8. See also Black’s text. History of Jamaica, pp. 224-250.

34 Roach-Higgins ed.. Dress and Identity, p. 2.

35 Ibid., pp. 12, 19, 134-135.

James C. Scott, Weapons of The Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985). Term taken from title.

Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society, p. 9.

Dance Hall is the “new” popular culture in Jamaica. Like Reggae, it emerged in the poor areas of Kingston. It has its own music, dress and even linguistic terms. This is discussed further in the Epilogue. For more information, see Carolyn Cooper’s Noises in The Blood. (London: Macmillan, 1993).

22 CHAPTER 2

THE CROSSING

“[T]he Caribbean is the story of arrivants from across the Atlantic and beyond, each group bringing a cultural equipage...”* - Rex M. Nettleford

Africa as Source and Origin

The history of Jamaica is one of migration, consisting of diverse groups of people, each arriving with aspects of their own culture. This type of cultural contact eventually gave rise to cultural conflict and integration particularly between Europeans and Africans due to the terms set by the ruling white class. Africans were among the earliest to arrive in Jamaica. First under Spanish rule between 1498 to 1655, and then during the period of

1670 to 1808 under the British. They were forcibly extracted from their homelands and brought to Jamaica as slaves by means of the Atlantic Slave trade. Enslaved Africans came from diverse backgrounds and cultures, predominantly from the region of West

Africa. They included the Igbo, Coromantee, Congo, Papaws, the Chamba and Mandingo people^ (See Fig. 2.1).

The conditions of transit for these Africans were not conducive to the coordinated transfer of any entire African culture. Rather, the Atlantic Slave trade was based on the

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Figure 2.1. Map of West Africa showing the origin of Jamaican slaves economic necessity of cheap labor and profitable commerce, and was not designed for the aid, comfort or community of the involuntary migrants? Nevertheless, Africans brought folklore, music, language, religion and dress with them. These African customs and beliefs that were retained in the African diaspora enabled Africans to maintain a vital link with their ancestral homeland. As slaves in an alien environment, Africans shaped and modified these cultural elements based on their experiences, needs and circumstances.

They also nurtured these Afncan characteristics and transmitted them to their descendants.

In Jamaica most African slaves worked on sugar plantations that dominated the colonial economy. Others worked on pimento, ginger and coffee estates while some worked in pens that produced livestock. Africans also worked as slaves in urban centers where they participated in diverse economic activities and industries such as construction work, as domestics and servants in homes or as sailors on vessels, longshoremen, carters, firemen and even hospital attendants. Slave owners believed in slave control through déculturation by means of dehumanization and psychological conditioning so as to create a passive and powerless class suitable for European exploitation.^

The planter class argued that eradication of all forms of African cultural practices was essential because of their power to unify the slaves and thus enable them to resist or rebel against their masters. Nevertheless, “Africanisms” persisted not as archaic retentions, but as vibrant cultural features that continued to grow and develop, in a sense, establishing new roots in a new environment. Robert Farris Thompson has argued that this contributed to the enrichment of the Americas with sophisticated and profound knowledge of herbalism, mental healing and funeral customs to name a few.*^

25 African cultural features were retained and nurtured in Jamaica because they guaranteed the survival of Africans and their descendants against European attempts at cultural annihilation. Melville J. Herskovits pointed out that cultural retention was useful because it fulfilled functions that were indispensable to the survival of African people.’

Furthermore, keeping African customs alive fostered a “soul-force” as Leonard E. Barrett stated, that fashioned a quality of life for Africans and enabled them to cope with the horrors of enslavement that made European migrants the prescribed superordinate power.*

Cultural expression as survival strategies played an integral role in the daily lives of

African slaves. As a consequence, one cannot study Africans in Jamaica or the diaspora without some appreciation and understanding for the cultural significance of Africa as source and origin. In this chapter I examine dress as a feature of cultural retention and expression among African slave women and their descendants in Jamaica. What aspects of African dress were transplanted across the Atlantic? How was African dress maintained, nurtured and adapted within Jamaican slave culture? I have also included some analyses of European customs in dress brought to Jamaica and how these influenced slaves in the eighteenth century.

The term culture has diverse meanings and connotations. In this study culture refers to a group of people who share common properties and participate in the same institutions and organizations. Culture is also a continuum of variations, and it may include different groups of people who possess commonly shared features, but in different ways, to different degrees and in different conglomerations.^ Further, it is imperative to remember that there is no one “African culture”. Africa is a continent with vast and

26 diverse numbers of people or ethnic groups. Each ethnic group possesses their own culture with a unique language, set of customs and belief systems. Nevertheless, in those instances where the term “African culture” is used it does not mean that all Africans share a common set of beliefs. Here I shall identify a common set of cultural characteristics expressed in dress and shared by most Africans taken by the slave trade to Jamaica.'”

Jamaican slave society was very diverse and complex. As Elsa Goveia explained,

“Jamaican slave society was not a monoculture, but consisted of the ordering of separate groups all held together within a single social structure.”" Slave society was divided according to class, ethnicity and even occupation. Mulatto slaves considered themselves a separate group and of a higher social standing than African slaves. As a consequence, mulattos often chose not to associate with African slaves. Creole (local born) slaves viewed themselves as a distinct group from the newly arrived enslaved Africans. African slaves meanwhile, consisted of diverse ethnic groups such as the Yoruba, the Igbo and the

Asante people. There were also urban slaves separate from field or plantation slaves. On estates, slaves were also divided into groups based on skill and occupation. For example, some slaves were categorized as domestics, who were separate from field slaves. These groups of slaves were held together within the colonial plantocracy and were often differentiated by dress, as will be discussed in later sections.

Furthermore, Jamaican slave society was not static. It was one of continuous change. Edward Brathwaite has pointed out that what was acceptable in 1770 did not necessarily hold for 1820, 1834 or 1880. Laws were constantly changing, new reforms amended, regulations varied from parish to parish, vestry to vestry and even plantation to

27 plantation. Therefore, to get beyond the complex nature of Jamaican slave society and

to access African women’s cultural expression in dress, we must engage in cultural

analysis. Clifford Geertz argued that, “In the study of culture, analysis penetrates into the

very body of the object!”'^ Geertz further revealed that cultural analysis includes;

Guessing at meanings, assessing the guesses, and drawing explanatory conclusions from the better guesses, not discovering the continent of meaning and mapping out its bodiless landscape.

Cultural analysis allows us to “peel away the layers” and illuminate the richness of African

women’s dress.

African slaves had characteristics which were recognizable to whites and

influenced the market price of individual slaves.'^ The Coromantee, for example, were

considered to be stronger and thus better workers but prone to rebellion and therefore

dangerous. The Igbo were supposed to be deceitful, “crafty, artful, disputative in driving

a bargain,” while the Mandingo attracted attention because they were “a sort of

Mahomedan [Muslim].”'^’ Mandingos’ knowledge of Islam was imperfect except for a few Arabic prayers they remembered. Several could read and write while others, according to J. Stewart, could “scrawl a few “rude” Arabic characters but without understanding or being able to explain much of their meaning.” He Anther described their writing as “scraps from the Alcoran [Koran] which they have been taught by their imams, or priests.”'^ Some Mandingos were also strict in their observance of Fridays, as is customary in Islam.'*

J. Stewart’s account of Mandingo slaves clearly reflects his own religious bias against Islam. He refers to their writing in derogatory terms such as “rude” and “scraps.”

28 Many European Christians considered Islam both as a rival religion to Christianity and a

“heathenistic” faith. The absence of Muslim slave labor on Fridays would have hampered the planters’ capability to maximize production for that day. Muslim slaves were few in number, however, and under the same jurisdiction as non-Muslim slaves. Those who observed Fridays most likely received permission from their respective owners. As a group they were viewed as non-threatening, and to the planters as, “too ignorant to understand anything of the Alcoran [Koran], or of the nature of their religion.”’’ Muslim slaves as a minority failed to have a lasting impact on the broader slave society; many of their beliefs disappeared within a few generations.

Most slaves lacked literary skills and the slave community did not have the educational infrastructure essential for Islam’s survival. Other religious concepts brought from West Africa such as Myalism and Obeah thrived because their retention and transmission was not based on a literate society but more on oral tradition. Most

Jamaican planters were opposed to any form of religious and educational instruction on the grounds that it would incite slaves to rebel.

One cultural feature brought across the Atlantic that flourished was African customs in dress. Roach-Higgins and Eicher argue that human beings in every society develop ways for designing and fabricating supplements [dress] for the body out of materials available in their environment. These supplements are often used to modify individuals’ bodies in ways that identify them with or distinguish them from others.^"

Modifications to the human body are often limited by the aesthetic standards of the culture. Therefore what may be acceptable in one culture may not be so in another. Yet

29 artistic expression in dress is not always defined by the particular culture, rather it can also

be individualistic/'

Although cultural patterns for dress may be similar or different from society to

society, dress in any culture is a means of communication. Human ecologist Betty Wass

stated that:

It [dress] conveys messages when members of a society who share a given culture have learned to associate types of dress with given, customary usage. Through this customary association certain types of dress become symbols for either specific or class or social roles, with this symbolism changing over time in different social and ethnic contexts.^^

Within African cultures dress also functioned as a communicative tool. It expressed not

only individuality based on unique physical features and aesthetics, but also group

affiliations, status, occupation and religious concepts. The importance of dress in this manner has been maintained in many contemporary West African societies. To explore what aspects of African’s women’s dress were brought to Jamaica during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, some knowledge of their dress during the same period in their homeland is essential. The vast and diverse cultures of West Africa, each with its unique form of dress make it impossible to speak of every group and all aspects of their clothing.

Therefore only some of those common characteristics associated with dress are highlighted.

The distinctive role or status, age, sex and occupation of any one group or individual within a society was often indicated by a number of things that made up their dress: ornaments worn (for example, Asante slaves and commoners were not supposed to wear gold jewelry), facial and bodily scarring; fabric or textile worn; regalia carried;

30 ceremonial masks; and the way the hair has been styled or the head covered.Since cultural “markers” reflected West Africans’ relationships with each other and their environment, many African cultures emphasized appropriate dress. Among the Yoruba people for instance, fashionable dress was honored, but one who dons inappropriate dress was said to, aro ' gi / 'aso [wear cloth like wood].^'*

Textile manufacturing was an important industry in many West African societies.

Throughout the centuries cloth was consistently a principal trade item and a stimulus for economic production. It served as currency in the market place and as barter for slaves; it was exchanged for oil, ivory and gold. Clothing production became a source of commercial wealth that involved both African men and women buying, selling, tailoring, embroidering, and creating new and fashionable designs. In addition to making indigenous textiles, people imported fabrics even in the early West African empires such as Mali.

Mali encouraged trade with foreign markets long before the Europeans arrived on the coast. With the establishment of the Dutch and British East India companies during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, trade was further promoted with West Africa;

Indian cottons and silks were introduced in large quantities. Later on “Holland” cloth,

Indonesian batiks and their imitations, were imported and became popular. Their design elements were modified and new ones introduced in contemporary West Africa.

By the nineteenth century Manchester cloth from Britain “captured” the textile trade on the coast and replaced the more expensive Indian cottons. European textile printers made special trips to the West African coast to bring back examples of indigenous cloth, which they copied and later traded with Africans.Europeans acquired

31 manufactured fabric and certain textile skills from West Africans that enriched European textile technology and enabled European cloth manufacturers to increase their commercial wealth. The introduction of “fake” inexpensive European African textiles and other fabrics led to a decline in the indigenous textile industry in several areas of West Africa.^*^

Indigenous African textiles often consisted of complex patterns and designs. In many cultures men did the weaving and women the spinning. Pattern techniques included painting, stamping, resist dyeing, embroidery, and appliqué as well as weaving. Fabrics were dyed with juices extracted from tree barks, roots and plank. Indigo and kola nut dye solutions were very popular in many areas. Colors were used to symbolize life activities such as birth, death, mourning, anger, war, rejoicing and innocence. Some West African textiles became famous such as the kente cloth manufactured by the Asante people. Kente

(a term apparently of Fante origin) was made from locally woven narrow strips sewed together to produce dazzling complex patterns.The visitor John Beecham recalled in

1841 that;

They [the Asante] purchased the richest silks in order to unravel and interweave them with their own thread; and their best clothes are extolled for their fineness, variety, brilliance and size.^^

Other types of textile manufactured in West Africa included bark cloth and fabrics made from plant fiber, or grass woven with locally grown cotton. The Asante also made bark cloth from the bark of the kyenkyen tree. The bark was beaten flat, widened and the fibers felted together.

32 Another common feature of West African dress was the usage of beads. Captain

John Adams, a ship’s captain and explorer, noticed in 1794 while visiting the kingdom of

Benin, that:

Coral is a very favorite ornament in the royal seraglio, which is always well filled; and the women like those of the Heebo [Igbo] nation, wear a profusion of beads, if they can by any means obtain them.^^

The pervasivness of beads in African cultures among men and women include a wide

range of forms made from natural media such as animal teeth, vertebrae, cowrie shells,

ostrich shells, nuts, and ivory as well as drilled and shaped stone. There were also

indigenous copper, brass, silver and gold beads. Archaeological sites at Ife in present day

Nigeria have revealed that glass beads were produced there locally before European

contact yet it was the “trade beads” of glass from European and Eastern sources that

Africans used most in both art form and in dress.

Beads served many functions and varied from one culture to the next. In some

communities both men and women wore beads for their aesthetic value established by

cultural guidelines. The symbolism of beads: their color, material, size and shape, even the

area where they are worn on the body, helped the individual to communicate nonverbally

their religions beliefs, sex, age, wealth and status. Strings of beads were worn for

protection against evil spirits as in the case of Asante women’s waist beads. '' Among the

Yoruba beads played a significant role once a young woman was old enough to marry.

Beads formed a substantial part of her dowry and remained an important part of her

property. On the wedding day the bride would be dressed in costly clothes with “beautiful beads around her neck and waist.Beads were also used to ornament slippers, gowns,

33 caps and special ceremonial outfits for priests and Kings. The Yoruba made handsewn

ornate beaded crowns, masks and embroidered beaded cloth for their priests and leaders

of the community.

Headdresses for both men and women in West Africa were also visual

communicators and were highly imaginative. The appropriate headdress was required for

all occasions and were based on an individual's social standing, age and artistic expression.

John Barbot, traveling in Senegal in 1732 recalled the, “fantastic hair treatment, plaited

and twisted and adorned with some few trinkets of gold, coral and glass... and a coif

standing up five or six inches above their heads..Women’s headdress varied from one

region and community to the next. Women in some cultures lengthened their hair, dressed

it with palm oil or melted butter and shaped it with cloth or fiber padding. In some cases

hair was wrapped over pieces of arched bamboo for supports. Fulani women displayed

their wealth in hair ornaments, and announced the birth of their first child by wearing hair

plaited at the side and joined under the chin. The most elaborate hairstyles were usually

worn by wealthy and married women.

Headdress (including hairstyles) had specific names that were imaginative and

reflective of events, objects and situations in life. Among the Songhai women, numerous names were given to their coiffures such as “boat of the sky”, “bellow of the forge”, and

“spend the night with the one you iove”.'^*’ Meanwhile, Yoruba women’s hairstyles included parting the hair and having each section twisted and then tightly wrapped with heavy black cotton thread.

34 Headscarves [headwraps] were also popular among many women throughout West

Africa. Headscarves were worn casually as well as for special occasions. This form of headdress also varied in style and patterns depending on the circumstances and occasions.

Headscarves were also functional and enabled women to balance loads on their heads. It also protected newly styled hair and made one “presentable” when in haste. Yoruba women’s headwraps, known d&gek or oja, often matched their dresses and were dyed with indigo dye with customary bold patterns picked out in white.^*

West African cultures had achieved high levels of refinement, complexity and creativity in their civilizations as reflected in their dress. Many Europeans had long believed in the racist propaganda of the period that African people were all naked savages, and thus incapable of any great accomplishment. For some whites, non-European dress was a sign of backwardness. Such racist ideas contributed to the drive to civilize Africans which insisted on African people adopting European dress as a sign of civility. The nineteenth century missionary R. H. Stone, finally had a change in heart when he visited

West Africa. He said;

What I saw disabused my mind of many errors in regard to.Africa.instead of being lazy, naked savages, living in spontaneous production of the earth, they were dressed and were industrious...The men are builders, blacksmiths, weavers,...hat makers,...tanners, tailors...women...most diligently follow the pursuits which custom has allotted to them. They spin, weave, trade, cook and dye cotton fabrics.''^

Africans manufactured textiles that rivaled European and Eastern fabrics in patterns and quality. From the “rhythmnized” and checkerboard textiles of Mande and

Asante people to the intricate handsewn beadwork of the Yoruba, dress was a form of

35 . \ ST JAMtS /

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...

O n ST THOMAS

Figure 2.2: Map of contemporary Jamaica artistic expression. Moreover, the usage of natural elements such as fiber, nuts, shells and

beads, combined with multiple usage of color signaled Africans’ harmonious relationship with nature and their environment. However, dress styles and patterns throughout West

Africa, as in other cultures were not static. Styles and patterns changed over time based

on the dictates of fashion, competition and new technology, and social changes as well as availability of resources. Furthermore, Africans’ ability to incorporate imported European and Eastern materials into their own manufacture of cloth, reflected both flexibility and adaptability within the ever changing world order.

Enslaved West African men and women brought their customs in dress across the

Atlantic. Those slaves who possessed the knowledge and expertise in skills such as textile manufacturing, beading, dyeing and tailoring, passed these skills to their descendants. The transition of West Africans’ achievements in dress to Jamaica visually enriched the society and enabled African slaves to resist déculturation.

"Me Know No law. Me Know No Sin”

Slave owners in Jamaica were required by law to provide African slaves and their descendants with sufficient clothing. Europeans were unaccustomed to the dress requirements of a tropical climate and interpreted semi-nudity to connote backwardness and lewdness. They sought to guarantee that their slaves wore clothes. The procedure of clothing slaves was regulated by the vestries of each parish throughout the island and consisted of the custos, two or more local magistrates, sometimes ten vestry men, and a

37 parish [church] rector/" Slave owners who did not provide sufficient clothing for their

slaves could be fined by the vestry.

Early laws regarding slave clothing allowances were specific and stated what

articles of dress slaves should receive, as were the 1696 laws. They prescribed;

All slaves shall have clothes, men jackets and drawers; women, jackets and petticoats or frocks once every year, on or before the twenty-fiAh day of December, on penalty of five shillings for every slave wanting...

By 1826, the slave laws regulating slave dress had become less specific and no longer

mentioned certain garments such as jackets or petticoats. They stated:

That every possessor of slaves shall furnish to each, once a year proper and sufficient clothing, to be approved of by the justices and vestries of the parish under penalty of five pounds for each slave omitted... every possessor of slaves must specify the quantity and quality of the clothes he [or she] has furnished to their slaves...

And in 1831 the law had remained veiy much the same:

Every master, owner or possessor of slaves shall, once in every year provide and give to each slave...proper and sufficient clothing...under the penalty of five pounds...to be recovered in a summary manner before three justices of the peace...

There are several suggestions as to why the law became increasingly less specific and more ambiguous. The steady growth in the number of slaves imported prior to the abolition of the slave trade in 1808, and the natural increase of the servile population would have made it too expensive for slave owners to provide ready-made apparel for all their slaves. Therefore, by the later half of the eighteenth century, many planters resorted to the importation of inexpensive coarse European fabrics and some Indian cottons for

38 slave clothing. Fabric distributions were complemented with fewer ready-made garments,

and rations included the tools necessary for slaves to sew their clothes such as needles and

thread. The eighteenth century planter, historian and local politician, Edward Long,

explained.

[Slaves] annually consume a large abundance of chequed linen, striped hollands, sustain blanketing, long ells, and baize, Kendal cottons, Oznaburgs [sic], canvas, coarse hats, woolen caps, cotton and silk handkerchiefs, knives, scissors, razors, buckles, buttons...thread, needles, [and] pins...'*'*

Oznaburgh was the most common fabric distributed to slaves. On the Jamaica Windsor

Lodge and Paisley estates between 1833 and 1837, for instance, 2,676 yards of flax

Oznaburgh were purchased for slaves.'’^ Mrs. Carmichael also re-emphasized that most

planters preferred to distribute fabrics. She added, “The estates in some colonies give out

the clothing ready made to put on, but others, the more common plan is to distribute cloth

with needles, threads, tapes. ..Most slaves therefore were expected to sew their own

clothes.

Another factor that may have led to the vagueness of the law was that of

plantation accessibility. Large numbers of agricultural units were scattered throughout the

island with large slave populations. This made it necessary for the local assembly to rely

more on the vestries of each parish who had greater access to plantations, and greater

ability to regulate slave clothing allowances. For example, in 1832 there were 670 sugar

estates with no more than 155,000 slaves, about fifty percent of the entire slave population. In addition, in the same year there were 350 coffee plantations and 30

39 pimento estates with about 20,000 slaves. This does not include those slaves in urban areas and involved in non-agricultural economic activities.'*^

The vagueness of the slave laws regarding dress were left to the parish vestries to interpret and to administer as they saw fit. The vestry members of some parishes wielded vast amounts of power and did order specifically what slaves within their parish should receive from their masters. On 6 February 1818 for example, the Vestry Office for the parish of St. Elizabeth issued an order from the Clerk of the Vestry, Matthew

Farquharson, who stated in his decree:

Ordered, that the following be the quantity of clothing to be given by every owner to each negro [slave] for the coming year: Every negro above fifteen years old, eight yards of Oznaburgh, four yards of Baize or Pennistone, and one hat or cap and one handkerchief. Ditto, [ordered] from seven to fifteen years old, six yards of Oznaburgh, three yards of Baize or Pennistone and one hat for boys. Ditto, ditto, six yards of Oznaburgh, three yards of Baize or Pennistone and one handkerchief for girls. Under seven years five yards of Oznaburgh and one handkerchief.'**

Unlike many other islands, Jamaica had no sumptuary laws that stated exactly what slaves could and could not wear. The laws sought only to guarantee the minimum clothing necessary for each slave. However, there were attempts at implementing some type of sumptuary laws in 1745. A member of the Jamaican Assembly, Mr. Peyton presented to the house, “according to order, a bill to prohibit the use of silk in burials, and to compel all persons to use cotton, instead there of.”'***

No explanation was given for his proposal, and it was never passed, but kept being deferred until it was thrown out. Perhaps there was a shortage of silk on the island. Or, individuals considered as inferior such as slaves were using silk in their burial customs.

40 Silk was long considered as the fabric of elites and rulers and was a marker of status and

wealth. Cultural historians, J. Phillips and H. Staley have noted that sumptuary laws

increased in many areas as fashion changes increased in frequency, but sumptuary laws

were short-lived in many British colonies o f the Americas.^”

Clothing rations varied from parish to parish since the “minimum” amount was

determined by the parish vestries. Vestry members were also aligned with the planters and

cared very little about the conditions of the clothing slaves received. Moreover, the law

did not prevent some planters from withholding the clothing allowance. Some plantation

owners freed their elderly slaves so they no longer had to provide them with clothing and

thus cut down on their estate expenses. Such was the case in 1823 when a plantation

mistress [owner] in the parish of Portland refused to provide clothing for her elderly

slaves. After she learned that “she must allow them the same clothing and provisions and

comforts which they had always enjoyed,” she ordered the “old and good-for-nothing

negroes free as it would save the expense of maintaining them.”^‘ According to Cynric

Williams, the slaves decided to plead their case:

When the time arrived for giving out the clothing, the four free men made their appearance with the others, and hoped they were to have their pennistone and Oznaburgh, for they had worked all their lives for mistress and brought up several children who were now working for her, and they were old and could not work to buy clothes themselves.^^

The elderly men were eventually retained as slaves. Other elderly slaves in the same predicament perhaps suffered an even worse fate.

41 Nor did the slave laws prohibit planters from destroying additional clothes slaves

received by their own means. In a letter to her brother on 27 March 1836 the missionary

Mary Ann Hutchins wrote:

About thirty of our people [Baptist Christian slaves] were thus met, when all was peace, the table spread, and the candles lighted...and in walked their busha [master/owner]. He began to beat them with a stick, declared there should be no Baptists there, tore their clothes, took their clean linen out of a trunk and trampled on it—stripped the clothes off one woman, struck two of them...^^

Planters cared little about their slaves’ goods including their clothing. Slaves were property and legally could not own anything that was not their owner’s. The brutality of this act was not just to humiliate the slaves, but by ripping the clothes off one woman’s back the planter implicitly reasserted his power over his slaves and signaled that he had complete ownership and control over them, including their bodies.

Slave women’s clothing was oAen the target of the planters’ anger and frustrations. However, some slave men did the same towards their women folk. The planter Matthew Gregory Lewis revealed that one night on his estate after a female slave was discovered by her husband to be having an affair with a younger man, a quarrel developed between the couple and Lewis was forced to intervene. Her husband had

“demanded the clothes to be restored [to him] which he had formerly given her. On her refusal, he drew a knife and threatened to cut them off her back!”^"* The dress on the woman’s body was the focus of attention to the extent that she was intimidated with violence. Her husband, whose masculinity had been threatened, sought his revenge by wanting to expose her naked body, hence illuminating her vulnerability and powerlessness,

42 and simultaneously empowering himself. The dress on her back was not a mere garment, but its position on the body was symbolic. Although the clothes [dress] were worn by her, and were given to her by her husband, they were a commodity that was re-possessable and to be manipulated. However, like in the scenario with the planter, the slave woman was commodified and became an object for manipulation. Human ecologist Joanne Finkelstein argued that an “Effective means of weakening an individual’s morality and identity [is] to strip him or her of clothes. Thus the individual becomes vulnerable and accessible to exploitation. The slave husband had appropriated the power relation between the white planter and the servile population; as a consequence, the woman had become a target for his oppression.

The planters did not encourage African customs in dress nor did they provide clothing or cloth that was up to their own standards of dress. Rather, they distributed minimal European-style clothing of cheap cloth in an attempt to get slaves to conform to

European dress. Planters sought to civilize their African slaves but only to the point where they could still be exploited and their clothing was not to be above their status.

This was a reflection of a subconscious fear on the planter’s part; that of the “naked savage” who, if not clothed with the garments of European civility, could not be controlled. On some plantations white mistresses assisted and supervised the distribution of slave garments. Mistresses also occasionally gave away worn out old clothes to slaves.

White women also made European-style clothing for their slaves. Mrs. Carmichael for instance, speaking of the conditions of slaves in the West Indies, remarked that:

Their [slaves] dresses are made up very often by their mistress and her family: for two months before Christmas,

43 and also before Easter, I used to be so busy as possible, cutting out dresses, superintending the trimmings and inventing different fashions for them. . /'^

Mrs. Carmichael further added that, “It is easy to trace the progress of civilization in different negroes [slaves] according to their style of everyday dress.”” Like so many of her contemporaries, Mrs. Carmichael considered European dress as a mark of civilization and progress. By this means Europeans like her dismissed the rich heritage of West

African customs in dress.

Not all slaves heeded European influences in dress. Even slave children sometimes rejected the clothing they received. Mrs. Carmichael spoke of one such child under her charge. She stated:

The child used to tug at her frock which was all I asked her to wear, and when by no strength she could undo it, she would go to the boy’s pantry, and taking a knife, cut it off making her appearance at the door of my room, laughing with delight at her adroitness in getting rid of such an annoyance, and throwing the frock in at the door.^*

The slave laws provided the planters with the opportunity to encourage slaves to conform, but it also impacted the lives of enslaved Africans in many ways.

The inconsistencies in the provision of clothing for slaves across the island, and the absence of sumptuary laws provided enslaved Africans and their descendants with some control over their dress. Slaves who did not like the clothing they received sold it to other slaves and purchased refined fabrics if they could afford it. The planter William

Beckford remarked in 1796 that slave women in Jamaica, “Array themselves in the finest linen, in the purchase of which they betray a determined extravagance.” He further added that:

44 The women take a pride in the number of their coats, and are not contented with any but what are made from the best materials of which likewise their hats and handkerchiefs are commonly composed/^

Most slaves used their clothing rations of Oznaburgh and other inexpensive linens as work

overalls, preferring to wear the more refined fabrics such as muslin for special occasions.

Many slaves were also aware of their legal rights regarding their allowance and when their

rations were late some slaves protested and “demanded” what was due to them.*’”

Since slaves received the minimum amount of clothing it meant that they had to

supplement their yearly rations. The local resident J. Stewart reported that the annual

rations for most slaves was, “as much Oznaburgh as will make two frocks, and as much

woolen stuff as will make a great coat.”®' Planters expected slaves to obtain any

additional clothing on their own. Some slaves were able to purchase extra clothes with

money they had saved and earned from selling their produce. Cynric Williams in 1823 was

surprised to see slaves purchasing “finery” and remarked, “[They were] laying down

pieces of money that I had never thought to see in the hands of slaves...gold pieces worth

here [in Jamaica] five pounds, six shillings and eight pence...Theodore Foulks also

reported in 1833 that, “A slave in the parish of Clarendon admitted that he made by this

means, forty pounds annually.”®’ The opportunity for slaves to make their own clothes

and to buy dress material to suit their own tastes meant that fashion styles and patterns varied among the slave population. Even more important, it meant that both slave men

and women could be culturally expressive in their dress.

Laws regarding provision of slave clothing did not insist on equal distribution of clothing between slave men and women. Most vestries did not seem to care about this

45 matter either. Slave women generally received less clothing rations than their male

counterparts. Slave men with skills or those who held supervisory positions over work

gangs*''’ such as slave drivers often received more clothing. Mrs. Carmichael stated that,

“Head negroes [usually men] on estates generally received some present in the way of

clothing upon the conclusion of crop.”*^^ In this manner, planters encouraged and

supported the separation of slave classes because it helped them to maintain control over the slave population. The pro-slaveiy writer Henry De la Beche observed that slaves were divided into four groups when it came time to receive their clothes. The first group were the slave drivers [headmen] who received twenty yards of Oznaburgh and eight yards of blue baize each. The second group of slaves were apparently men but were the heads of various work groups of slaves and separate from the slave drivers. They received sixteen yards of Oznaburgh and eight yards of blue baize for each. Women comprised the third class, who each received eleven yards of Oznaburgh, four yards o f blue baize and five long ells. The last group of slaves were the children who received six yards of Oznaburgh and three yards of blue baize for each child.On some well “regulated estates the annual allowance was ten to twenty yards to every man; seven to fifteen to every woman and in proportion to the younger people.”®’

De la Beche does not refer to non-skilled slave men and therefore one is forced to question his observation. Nor does he make any distinction between skilled and non- skilled female slaves. Instead, enslaved women were “lumped” together as a group.

However, slave women were not a cohesive group. There were skilled women who worked as washerwomen, nannies, seamstresses, cooks, mid-wives and domestic servants.

46 Despite the diverse talents and skills of slave women, the planters embraced the notion

that women were not as good workers as men. Therefore men’s skills and labor were

more valued. Although slave women worked side by side with their male counterparts in

the field doing the same kinds of work, they were denied the same clothing rations as slave

men. By rewarding male slaves for their skills with more clothing, the planters reaffirmed

the patriarchal norms of the colonial society and simultaneously re-emphasized women’s

subordination, not only within the colonial order but also to their menfolk.

Because slave women received smaller clothing rations, they had a greater need than slave men for sufficient dress. As a consequence, slave women were compelled to find alternative methods or means of obtaining additional clothing. Some enslaved women were able to purchase extra garments and fabrics with money saved up. Those women with a skill such as seamstressing were also able to earn money by sewing. The planter

Thistlewood for example, revealed in 1786 that his slave woman and mistress, Phibbah, made him a present of £10 185 1 1/2 d, all in silver; money she had earned by sewing, baking cassava, selling musk melons and watermelons out of her ground.”®* Seamstresses were often viewed as elite slaves who sewed both for the mistress in the great house as well as for the members of the slave community. Recent archaeological digs at Drax Hall plantation’s slave village in the parish of St. Ann unearthed large quantities of buckles, brass thimbles, scissors, thread spools and buttons made of bone, shell, metal, glass and porcelain. The slight increase in the number of clothing items recovered from each successively later time period implies an increased usage of manufactured clothing items as well as local tailoring. Archaeologist Douglas Armstrong has also argued that these

47 artifacts reflect “a greater degree of personal freedom and perhaps the development of local cottage industries associated with sewing.”®’

Some enslaved women obtained additional clothing as a reward for bearing children and also to commemorate special events. Matthew Gregory Lewis gave “each

[slave] mother a present of a scarlet girdle with a silver medal in the center... [it] entitled her to marks of peculiar respect...and receiving a larger portion [of dress] than the rest.”™

During the festivities to commemorate the opening of the new hospital on Lewis’ estate, every woman received “a flaming red stuff petticoat...”’’ For planters like Lewis, the slave woman’s body had become a matter of economic interest. The more slave women reproduced, the greater the labor to increase production and profitability. The exploitation of women’s labor was not enough; instead slave women were expected to be

“breeding machines” to reproduce in exchange for the basic necessities of life such as clothing. Hilary Beckles has stated that the slave woman’s “inner world”—her fertility, sexuality and maternity were no longer her own, but were placed on the market as capital assets to be manipulated for the benefit of the planter class.™

Some slave women received extra clothing from white men in exchange for sexual favors. The eighteenth century historian Thomas Atwood declared that slave women [all servile women] were prostitutes who submitted to white men for money or clothes.™

However, as Deborah Gray White has pointed out, this argument was based on the planters’ view that slave women were “governed almost entirely by their libido, a Jezebel character.”™ The heading for this section. Me know No Law, Me Know No Sin, was a title of an eighteenth century popular Jamaican slave song in patois recorded by the

48 European bookkeeper J. B, Moreton. In it slave women described how some of them received “fine muslin coats” from their masters [planters] in exchange for “sweet embraces.” An extract of this song according to Moreton's written documents stated;

Altho a slave me is born and Bred my skin is black, not yellow I often sold my maiden head to many a handsome fellow

My massa keep me once for true, and give me clothes wid busses Fine muslin coats, wid bitty too To gain my sweet embraces...

Him, Obisha, him de come one Night, and give me gown and Busses; Him get one pickinny, white! almost as white as missess.

Then missess ftim me wid long switch. And say him da for massa; My massa curse her, “lying bitch!” And tell her, “buss my rassa!”

Me film'd when me no condescend Me film'd too if me do it; Me no have no one for t'and My friend. So me am for'cd to Do it.

Me know no law, me know no sin. Me is just what ebba them make me; This is the way dem bring me in; So God nor devil take me!^^

The song gives poignant insight into the painfiil realities of slave women's lives.

Some of them were “for'cd to do it” [forced to do it] - to submit to the planter’s desires.

Worst of all they had “no one for t'and my friend,” [no one as a friend to turn to for help].

Some slave women submitted to the planter's lust out of fear of being sold by the planter

49 as punishment for rejecting him. This would have been very painful for women because it

could result in the slave woman being separated from her children and family. The fear

and threat of being sold and disrupting the slave family as a unit was so great that the slave

woman had no alternative but to yield to the lustful desires of the planter and to accept his

clothes. The mere fact that Jamaican slave women created this song suggests that this was

a common reality that many slave women faced and perhaps the song united and consoled

women who shared similar experiences.

Furthermore, as Deborah Gray White has argued, there was no reason for some

slave women to believe that even freedom could not be bought for the price of their

bodies. As a consequence, some women took the risk and offered themselves. When they

did so, “they breathed life into the image of Jezebel.”’® However, whether slave women

desired these relationships or not is irrelevant, “the conventional wisdom was that black

[slave] women were naturally promiscuous and they desired such connections.””

It is also important to acknowledge that not all slave women who accepted

clothing in exchange for “sexual favors” were forced. Some slave women used their

sexuality to gain various favors including European dress as a means of “civilizing” themselves and embracing the dominant white culture. Others were undoubtedly lured by the thought of refined dress made of muslins and other expensive fabrics. For some slave women such a dress would increase their social standing within the slave community. An example of European dress as a marker of social standing was the case of the slave woman, Venus.

50 In 1845, Matthew Gregory Lewis revealed his encounter with the slave woman,

Venus. She had been the mistress of the previous estate owner and was “famous” for her large breasts, hence her nickname, “Big Joan.” Her status as mistress to the plantation owner [now Lewis] was officially usurped by a younger slave woman. Venus confronted

Lewis and demanded that the petticoat given to her rival be given to her. Venus considered the petticoat essential as a means of maintaining her status on the estate against her rival. Lewis said that she argued that she had “always worked for him [Lewis] well, and therefore ought to have quite as much [a] petticoat.” Lewis however, revealed his distaste for her wearing this particular petticoat. He stated, “I tried to convince her that for Venus to wear a petticoat of blue durant, or indeed any petticoat at all, would be quite unclassical: but the goddess of beauty stuck to her point, and finally carried off the petticoat.”’* Venus’ ability to argue for and demand the petticoat was admirable, but the scenario is also filled with complex meanings.

Venus in both name and symbolism was a mirror that reflected colonial society’s obsession with the slave woman’s body and its nexus with sex and race mythology.’’

Hence the petticoat alluded to an identity that has been constructed and shaped by the colonial discourse-that of the “wench.” the case of Venus and the petticoat is important because it shows the ability of slave women, despite racial and sexual inferiority to manipulate white men to their own advantage. For instance, Venus was able to argue for, debate and finally command the petticoat from her master. She convinced him that the petticoat was important to her and she finally succeeded in getting what she wanted.

Women like Venus who bartered for clothes or types of dress in exchange for sexual

51 favors exercised some type of power. As French historian Michel Foucault stated,

“Sexuality constitutes a particularly dense transfer point for relations of power, and power is diffuse and comes from below in manifold relationships of force..,”*” Foucault's analysis of power provides some understanding of resistance. However, it does not deal with women’s oppression such as rape and sexual harassment. In addition, the planter’s argument that the petticoat was not suitable for Venus because it would make her unclassical reflected his own imposition of an idea of beauty.

As slaves, women had very few choices and were forced to do what was best to preserve their family and to survive. For a slave woman her suffering was twofold; by day she was at the mercy of the planter’s whip in the fields and at night her body was both public and considered to be available to the planter. The constant exposure of slave women’s bodies during whippings and intense labor in the fields reduced their function to mere sex objects. The objectification of slave women both disempowered servile women within the colonial structure and simultaneously shielded white women from the carnal lust of the planter. The title of the slave song-Me know No Law, Me Know No Sin, captured the essence of many slave women’s lives. Enslaved women knew no laws because the laws did not benefit them. Instead, the law only regulated their exploitation. They could know no sin either because they were already labeled as promiscuous and sinful by their masters. In the planter’s view, slave women were Jezebels by nature and knew no better.

But despite all this, an area of slave women’s lives that was not sinful, where they could turn for some sense of freedom and cultural expression, was their dress.

52 The Color and Fabric of Plantation Dress

Enslaved women displayed African cultural characteristics in their dress. These

African customs that were brought across the Atlantic to Jamaica reflected both the resourcefulness and the ingenuity of Afncan people. In Jamaica African slave women utilized the skills they had acquired in West Africa to obtain suitable raw materials for dress from their environment. They looked for plants that could be used to make bark cloth and dyes to color the fabrics they received from their masters. This required a process of trial and error, of experimentation until they learned to “make fashion” with what was available and accessible to them.

Edward Long revealed that Jamaicans dyed fabrics with juices extracted from various roots and plants just as their African ancestors did.*' Long listed the various dyes and pigments used, some of which were later adopted by Europeans and even used in local manufacturing. There were some Europeans who also experimented and produced dye solutions. Some of the dyes and pigments used by slaves included the indigo-berry which stained paper or linen with a fine blue color. There was also the scarlet-seed, a shrubby tree found in the Red Hills and Spanish Town areas. The seeds were used to produce a scarlet color which served for both dyer’s and painter’s use. Other dye solutions were obtained from the annette tree, logged, prickly pear [cactus], prickly yellow wood and the shrubby goat rue. Juices from the marinade root or yaw-weed were also used to make dye solutions. Meanwhile, lignum vitae leaves were used to refresh faded colors. Long does not provide detailed information on all the dyes or the process of obtaining the actual dye solutions. Nevertheless, the list of dye sources gives an impression of extensive dye

53 production. Slave men and women also used Jamaican indigenous plants like the smaller

mahoe for other purposes such as making ropes.

Although the process of dye making continued among African slaves and their

descendants, there is no evidence to date to confirm that textile weaving, as in Africa, was

practiced in Jamaica. At the recent archaeological dig at Drax Hall plantation for example,

no evidence of this activity was found either. In addition, spinning seems not to have been

widely practiced in colonial Jamaica. In the United States slave women were very

involved in sewing, weaving and spinning, since in most cases, slaves in the United States

were expected to provide their own clothing. Weaving and spinning were often done by

older slave women who were too weak to work in the fields, but could also be add-ons to

women’s workload done on a quota basis after fieldwork for the day.*^

The absence of textile weaving in Jamaica could be due to several factors. The

British West Indian economies including Jamaica specialized in growing sugar cane.

Growing cotton in Jamaica for the purpose of weaving textiles would compete with

British cotton. Therefore a local cotton industry which required weaving and spinning skills was not encouraged. The Jamaican economy was so dependent on sugar production that attempts in 1841 to diversify and revitalize the declining economy with cotton and silk manufacturing failed.*** A second factor was that the British West Indies were closely tied into the Atlantic trading network. This trade provided an abundance of resources such as manufactured cloth and some ready-made apparel. The availability and distribution of manufactured textiles and clothing to slaves did not create the need for these skills.

54 One of the most interesting African customs in dress that was maintained and nurtured in Jamaica by African slaves was the production of bark cloth. As in West

Africa, Jamaican slaves learned to make clothing from various plants and trees. According to Long, clothing was made from coratoe leaf, mahoe bark, date tree, mountain cabbage and the down-tree-down. However, the most popular form of bark cloth made by slaves came from the laghetto tree and its relative, the bon-ace.*^ The laghetto, also known as the lace-bark tree had laurel-like leaves and was found in the woods of Vere in the parish of Clarendon, and also the parish of St. Elizabeth. The inner bark was of a fine texture, very tough, but could be divided into a number of thin filaments, which after being soaked in water could be drawn out by the fingers. The end product resembled fine lace.***

Edward Long recalled;

The ladies [slaves and freed women] of the island are extremely dexterous in making caps, ruffles, and complete suits of lace with it; in order to bleach it, after being drawn out as much as it will bear, they expose it stretched to the sunshine, and sprinkle it frequently with water...It bears washing extremely well...with common soap... and [is] equal to the best artificial lace...the wild Negroes [Maroons] have [also] made apparel with it of a very durable nature.*’

The bon-ace tree was found near Montego Bay, and it too did spread like the laghetto bark. However, it was not as durable and therefore not used as much in clothing.

Edward Long’s detailed account of this type of clothing manufacture and its popularity implies that a cottage industry developed during the eighteenth century by

Maroons in Jamaica based on laghetto lace. The fact that Maroons did it is logical; those involved in sugar cane production would have had less time to do it. Sugar cane

55 production did not have the seasonality of other crops and was very labor intensive with a

higher mortality rate than most crops. Craft production would therefore have suffered.

Long does not mention men’s participation in this cloth production, which

suggests that women not only made the lace products but also traded and controlled this

industry. Their involvement in this industry enabled women to provide clothing for

themselves, their family and members of the slave community. Most likely Jamaican

women both slave and freed found lace making more profitable and worthwhile than

textile weaving, and therefore concentrated their efforts in this industry when they could.

Since slave men received more clothing than women, some saw no need to participate in

this type of creative process. Others perhaps chose not to be involved because of the

stigma associated with bark cloth. Among some West African societies such as the

Asante, bark cloth was made and worn by the poorest slaves.**

Slavery impacted slave men and women in different ways. Enslaved women were expected to be creative and flexible. They worked in the fields during the day, and continued to work in the slave household at night. Yet they kept the customary practices of African dress alive such as bark cloth manufacturing. Slave women’s essential roles as mothers, healers, teachers and even spiritual leaders within the slave community made them ideal conduits for the transmission of African customs in dress.

As slaves, African women and their descendants had contributed to the success of the colonial economy, yet they were not allowed to enjoy the fruits of their labor. Their innovation and experimentation in dress was a response to their oppressed state, and a desire to create their own economic sphere. This enabled some to trade and be financially

56 independent of their menfolk. Slave women’s labor determined the standard of living

within the slave household. They were expected to take care of the house, raise the

children, and make the clothes so everyone could be presentable. They were also

expected to market their skills to enhance their family financially. Despite all this, slave

women were still able to meet the economic demands placed upon them by the planter.

Clothes made from bark such as the laghetto in eighteenth century Jamaican slave

society continued to be worn in the early nineteenth century. In 1823, the visitor Cynric

Williams described an encounter as follows;

I overtook a girl on the road with a veil over her face, which I thought at first to be lace, but found to be made of the bark of a tree; it is drawn out by the hand while the bark is green, and has a very pretty effect. I slackened my pace for the pleasure of conversing with her. She was mounted on an ambling pony, and was attended by a negro boy on foot... she was herself free, and the negro boy was her slave.""

Williams’ experience with this veiled girl is very important and leads to several discussions about dress and class within Jamaican colonial society.

The girl’s veil was most likely made from the laghetto tree (See Fig. 2.3).

However, what is most interesting is the fact that the girl was veiled. The evidence of slave women or freed women veiled in the British Caribbean is very rare and therefore deserves in depth analysis. Williams apparently seemed surprised to see a veiled woman to the extent that he “slackened” his pace for the pleasure of conversing with her.

57 #/% f ^ .Æ : ^ / i . \. \ - u >■ , L -'i

Illustration by author and based on author’s interpretation of Williams’ account.

Figure 2.3: Freedwoman in veil made from bark lace. c. 1823

58 Williams’ curiosity was perhaps awakened because he had not seen a veiled woman before during his tour of the island. This suggests that veiling was not a popular form of dress in

Jamaican society.

Nevertheless, the girl’s dress especially her veil sets her apart and signals her social standing as an elite woman. Her veil reflects Islamic influence in dress brought over by early Muslim slaves from West Africa and adopted by some Jamaican women over the years. Among some Islamic communities in West Africa such as the Fulani, elite women veil themselves. Although this form of dress was not popular, the evidence does suggest that some Jamaican slave and freed women may have veiled themselves as a marker of their elite status and wealth.^" In this context the girl’s veil, plus her possession of a slave boy and a pony were signs of some wealth and affluence. We know veiy little about this veiled girl traveling to Black River, only Williams’ reference. He does not mention her name but does state that she was free. He did not refer to her in his usual manner of addressing mulatto women as “brown girls” which suggests that she was of African descent. If Cynric Williams had requested more information from her maybe he would have appeared too “familiar” and his behavior considered inappropriate. Despite this, he managed to learn that her journey was to “lodge a complaint against a white man for having threatened and even offered violence to her person,” and that she “thought it very wicked and very unlike a gentleman, for the King George to take away people’s negroes

[slaves] without paying them.”^' The veiled girl’s opportunity to travel to report her problems to the authorities again suggests some sign of a privileged status, while her argument for compensation to slave owners for the freedom of their slaves reflected her

59 own interest as a slave owner. What is important here is that the servile community was

not a united group based on solidarity, but rather divided according to status and

economic interests. Freedpersons who had some money and possessed slaves considered

themselves “above” slaves and sought to maintain their own social privileges.

As in Africa, beads were also popular among Jamaican slave women. The planter

Matthew Gregory Lewis stated that slave women were “Decked out with a profusion of

beads and corals, and gold ornaments of all descriptions.”’^ And another planter, William

Beckford also stated that, “They [slave women] are particularly fond of beads, coral, glass

and chains with which they adorn their necks and wrists.”’^ The illustration, Negro Mode

of Nursing (See Fig. 2.4), provides some insight into slave women’s dress. A slave

woman is depicted holding her young child in her arm. She seems to be leaving the

plantation and in the other hand she carries what appears to be a calabash water holder,

perhaps to quench their thirst on the journey. In the background another woman can be

seen carrying a bundle of what appears to be either grass or cane on her head in African

fashion. Meanwhile, a man is seated by the slave cottage smoking. The scene evokes an

image of the “tireless” woman, working hard. The relaxed posture of the man and the

quiet background suggests that work in the fields is over, but the woman’s work continues within the slave household. The woman’s dress is simple, consisting of a blouse and a piece of striped fabric wrapped around her waist. She dons a headwrap and is barefoot.

Shoes were not distributed by planters to their slaves therefore they were uncommon except for long journeys and special occasions if one could afford it. Those slaves who traveled over rocky roads prepared for themselves sandals cut from ox-hide which they

60 J ? f '- Y

*i:':k:;f; :cc::'3: ;r- 2'--r?.i;,,iywn'^ " . - . . -

A':, . - r

Illustration by [R. Bridgens?]. Courtesy of the National Library of Jamaica.

Figure 2.4: Negro Mode of Nursing, c. 1830

61 bound with thongs *^ The child in the picture is dressed in a floral print fabric wrapped around the waist and tied at the back. It is interesting to note that the artist depicted the child with monkey-like facial features. This racialized disfigurement of the African persona was common during slavery and was an attempt to dehumanize the African race.

The most outstanding features of the slave woman’s dress are her beads.

Slave women in Jamaica gained beads for their dress by various means. Some were obtained by purchase or trading in the local markets. Some were smuggled over on slave ships. While some planters also provided their slave women with manufactured

European beads. Long mentioned that slave’s clothing rations also included “small glass, ribbons, beads, thread...all or most of them of British growth or manufacture.”^^ Planters realized that slave women were fond of beads and sought to facilitate this aspect of slave women’s dress. Planters hoped that this would “pacify” slave women, thus making them better workers and less likely to rebel. During the archaeological dig at the slave village on Drax Hall plantation glass beads were the second most common clothing group of artifacts found [buttons were the first]. Of all the beads found forty-two percent were located in house areas and seven percent were found in shed areas. These glass beads were also of diverse colors. It is believed that beads were also placed in slave burial as was done in Barbados. The large number of beads found during the dig at Drax Hall suggests that they were highly valued as items of personal adornment.

Slave women also wore beads for reasons other than personal adornment. Beads were used as part of slaves’ religious practices. Among some slaves beads were worn as a form of protection or to ward off evil spirits. In contemporary Suriname for example, this

6 2 custom has been maintained within several communities of Maroon descendants. In

Jamaica red beads were worn as protection against duppies [ghosts], and amber beads

were a common talisman in the Afro-Jamaican cult, Myalism. Beads were usually strung

with strings, cords, thread and even wire. Other types of beads found at Drax Hall

plantation included turquoise gem and deep blue “ultramarine” beads.^^

The African woman’s headwrap was another feature of West African dress that

was common among slave women in colonial Jamaica (See Fig. 2.4). Edward Long

offered his own explanation for this practice:

They dread rain upon their bare heads almost as much as the native Africans; perhaps their woolly fleece would absorb it in large quantities and give them cold...They are fond of covering this part of their bodies [the head] at all times, twisting one or two handkerchiefs round it, in the turban form which they say keeps them cool in the hottest sunshine.^*

The headwrap was so popular that, “even the mulatto women think themselves not

completely dressed without this tiara [headdress] and buy the finest cambric or muslin for the purpose...Headwraps were of diverse styles, various colors and could be very ornate, thus reflecting the creativity of the wearer. Headwraps also served functions beyond protection from the rain or the hot sun, to be elaborated on in chapter three.

Some white women were inspired by the African woman’s headwrap and created a similar headdress for themselves. According to Edward Long:

The Creole white ladies till lately adopted the practice so far, as never to venture a journey without securing their complexions with a brace of handkerchiefs; one of which being tied over the forehead, the other under the nose, and covering the lower part of the face, formed a complete helmet.

63 This helmet-like headdress, though similar to slave women's headwrap, reflected some innovation on the part of white women. These creole white women sought to protect their complexion and skin from the heat of the sun. It is important to realize that this visual display was short-lived and seems to have been a fashion trend among a small number of white creole ladies. Most white women believed that European dress was superior to African customs in dress and most continued to disassociate themselves from servile women.

However, the imitation of slave women’s dress revealed that the “trickle down theory” in fashion does not fit all cultural contexts. Fashion trends are not always set by elites or the ruling class, but can emerge from below and influence the upper classes as with a few contemporary U.S. styles of dress, “jailed” pants, grunge, and so on. The adoption of a similar headdress among these white women could be due to several factors

The emergence over time of a local Creole culture that saw the syncretization of some

Afiican and European customs in dress was appealing to some of these white women

Others sought only to shield themselves from the sun and felt that this headdress was the best protective gear to wear

European Customs in Dress in Jamaica

Just as Africans brought their customs in dress to Jamaica so did the Europeans transplant their dress styles from Britain and France. However. Europeans' ability to adapt their dress customs to their new environment was very slow European dress in

Jamaica for the most part was elaborate and often too hot for the climatic conditions As

64 Edward Long revealed, “The cool easy dress of the eastern nations. . .is much easier and

better fitted for use in a hot climate than the English dress which is close and tight.'" He

further added:

But such is the influence of fashion and custom, that one may see men loaded, and half melting under a ponderous coat and waistcoat, richly bedaubed with gold lace or embroidery on a hot day. . ."^'

Long gives a detailed analysis of European dress during the eighteenth century and how

Europeans in Jamaica refused to modify their dress for the sake of comfort. Long even

proposed that Europeans in Jamaica follow the examples of their Spanish neighbors. “All their clothes are light,” he argued, and the Spanish women dress appropriately for the weather. “Spanish women wear a type of petticoat called a pollera made of thin silk without any lining, and over their body a very thin white jacket.”

However, colonial settlers, especially European women, were determined to maintain their customs in dress. According to Edward Long:

Our English belles in Jamaica differ very widely from their [sic] madonas [Spanish ladies]. They [British women] do not scruple to wear the thickest winter silks and satins; and are sometimes ready to sink under the weight of rich gold or silver brocades. Their headdress varies with the ton [many styles] at home: the winter fashions of London arrive here at the setting of hot weather '

Unlike African slaves and their descendants, who had to rely on local resources and rations for dress. Europeans were able to order their dress directly from their homeland

This process of obtaining clothes from Europe was not always reliable. The long distance of travel often led to delays. Such dress was so inappropriate that Edward Long

65 remarked, “Nothing can be more preposterous and absurd than for persons residing in the

West Indies to adhere rigidly to all European customs and manners." Hairstyles among

European ladies reflected those in Britain during the period. For instance, hairstyles included;

half a yard perpendicular height, fastened with some score of heavy iron pins, on a bundle of wood large enough to stuff a chair bottom, together with pounds of powder and pomatum...grew into vogue with great rapidity...[and it was] impossible to avoid stooping and tottering under so enormous a mass.’*’^

Such elaborate and ornate dress was not only uncomfortable and cumbersome in the tropical heat, but was also unhealthy for many European women.

Although Edward Long was not a medical doctor, he seemed to have recognized the health risks in wearing such inappropriate dress in hot weather. As a consequence he suggested several changes in European dress. He stated that:

The waistcoat and breeches should be of cotton (corded or India dimity for example), in preference to linen, as it prevents catching cold...[and] wear linen drawers in preference to linings, for the sake of cleanliness. . . Ladies’ hats or bonnets should be lined with black as not reverberating on their faces those rays of the sun which are reflected upwards from the earth and water and cause occasion freckles...

The excessive heat and inappropriate dress would have made many Europeans susceptible to poor health and all kinds of diseases that contributed to the staggering high mortality rate among them.'*’’

European dress throughout the colonial period did change over time, but only to reflect the fashion styles in Europe. Although such dress may have seemed preposterous

66 to some like Edward Long, the elaborate dress of colonial settlers (including planters) did

serve a purpose. The British colonial rulers had long believed that “proper” dress

regardless of location or climate was required for the task of governing subject people.

The incongruous image of Europeans strolling around in heavy ornate dress was a visual

marker that re-emphasized white dominance and British colonial rule.

Europeans believed that their customs in dress were superior to slave dress.

Nevertheless, many Europeans believed that African slaves and their descendants were

“well dressed” and therefore very content. Some planters justified the institution of

slavery by stating that since slaves were well clothed, slavery was not so bad after all.

Stipendiary magistrate, R. Madden revealed that:

The negroes [slaves] we are told [by planters] were so happy...they were so comfortably provided for, so much better fed, clothed, and housed and so much less severely worked than the English laborers, that they could not change conditions with them.'”^

Lewis also commented on the dress of his slaves, he remarked:

They [slaves] were all plainly clean instead of being shabbily fashionable, and affected to be nothing except that which they really were, they looked twenty times more like gentlemen [and ladies] than nine tenths of the banker’s clerks who swagger up and down Bond Street.”" ”

Similar views were expressed by Long, who argued that slaves in their “habitation, clothing, subsistence and possessions...[were] far happier and better provided for than most poor laborers ..in Britain.”'" Planters often constructed these arguments to secure and protect their own economic interests and status within the colonial state. However,

67 the frequency of slave resistance such as rebellions in Jamaica, was a clear signal that slave

women and men did not consider themselves comfortable or content.”^

Slave dress was deceptive. To the European observer, a decently dressed slave

was perceived as happy or content. But to many slaves, “dressing up” was their way of

escaping the reality of their suffering, to feel good about themselves, and to make themselves look good despite all adversity. Decent dress among slaves led to misconceptions among some European observers who thought that slave labor and conditions were not as awful as the abolitionists in Britain had stated. However, in reality slave labor, especially on sugar plantations, was intense and brutal. On many plantations slaves worked from sunrise to sunset under the constant threat of the master’s whip.

Some planters who possessed decently dressed slaves most likely assumed that these slaves were too well cared for and sought to exploit them even more.

Furthermore, it should not be assumed that all slaves in Jamaica were decently dressed. The Reverend R. Bickell and local resident pointed out in 1825 that:

Some of the slaves in the country parishes...dress decently...at their own expense...but the greater part of the field negroes have no better clothing than the humble garb allowed them by their masters."’

Moreover, slaves’ own efforts to control what they wore and to obtain additional clothing enabled many to be decently clad, despite their owner’s meager provisions. The issue of slave dress became an argument that both pro-slavery advocates and abolitionists of slavery used to suit their political agenda. Reverend Brickell explained:

I think the clothing of slaves have been much over-rated by the colonists; and on the other hand, somewhat depreciated by the advocates of the Africans or abolitionists; for what

68 can be more absurd than to hear it constantly reiterated that the negroes in our colonies are...better clothed than the British peasantry."'*

The absurdity in this context was that, unlike the peasants or the lower classes in Britain, slaves in Jamaica were not free. They were the objects of European exploitation and were often abused at the mere whimsical wishes of the white master. Despite this, African women were able to maintain and nurture their African customs in dress. They were also resourceful and creative in obtaining additional clothing such as bark lace from their environment. However, slave women’s dress served more purposes than Just cultural retention. Dress was essential as a means of both resistance and accommodation within colonial slave society.

69 ENDNOTES

‘Rex M. Nettleford, Caribbean Cultural Identity: The Case of Jamaica. (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1979), p. 1.

^ There were three waves of African migration to Jamaica. The third wave occurred during the period of 1841 to 1865. Some 10,000 Africans arrived after emancipation as indentured laborers. I did not include them in this analysis because the focus in this chapter is cultural retention during slavery—the period prior to 1838. The groups of Africans who came were diverse and known by different names: Coromantee was the same as Kramanti or Coromantyn and were Asante-Fanti people of the Gold Coast. Igbo were Ibo, also known as Eboc or Ebo and from the Niger Delta. Papaw were the same as Popo now known as Ewe. Mandingos were the same as Malinke from the region between the Niger and Gambia. Congo, also spelled Kongo, were Bantu from the Congo River basin. Anago or Nago, now known as Yoruba, were from the Oyo or Benin empires in western Nigeria. See for further details, Mervyn Alleyne, Roots of Jamaican Culture. (London: Pluto Press, 1988), pp. 28, 52.

^ Franklin Knight and Margaret Crahan, “The African Migration and the Origins of An Afro-american Society and Culture” in Africa and The Caribbean The Legacies of A Link eds. Margaret E. Crahan and Franklin W. Knight (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), p. 11.

Barry Higman, Slave Population and Economv in Jamaica 1807-1834 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), pp. 18,36-41.

^ Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean, pp. 1-3.

Robert Farris Thompson, Flash of The Spirit (New York: Random House, 1983), p. xiv.

’ Melville J. Herskovits, The Mvth of The Negro past (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958), pp. 292-299.

“ Leonard E. Barrett, Soul Force: African Heritage in Afro-American Religion (New York: Anchor Press, 1974), p. 1.

Alleyne, Roots of Jamaican Culture, p. 7.

Ibid., p. 7.

70 " Quoted in Edward Brathwaite, “Jamaican Slave Society, A Review,” Race IX,3 (1968).

Ibid.

Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, p. 15.

Ibid., p. 20.

Phillip D. Curtin, Two Jamaicas: The Role of Ideas in a Tropical Colony 1830-1865. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950), p. 24.

J. Stewart, A View of The Past and Present State of The Island of Jamaica: With Remarks on the Moral and Phvsical Condition of The Slaves, and on the Abolition of Slavery in the Colonies. (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1823), p. 250.

” Ibid., p. 250.

W. J. Gardner, A History of Jamaica: From its Discovery by Christopher Columbus to The Year 1872. (London: E. Stock, 1873), p. 175.

Stewart, A View of The past and Present State, p. 250.

Roach-Higgins and Eicher, “Dress and Identity”, p. 15.

Mary Ellen Roach and Joanne Bubolz Eicher, eds. Dress. Adornment, and the Social Order (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1965), p. 13.

^ Betty M. Wass, “Yoruba Dress in Five Generations of a Lagos Family” in The Fabrics of Culture eds. Justine M. Cordwell and Ronald A. Schwarz (New York: Mouton Publishers, 1979), p. 331.

M. D. McLeod, The Asante (London: British Museum Publications Ltd., 1981), p. 143.

Henry John Drewal, “Pageantry and Power in Yoruba Costuming” in Fabrics of Culture, p. 190.

Ruth Nielsen, The History and Development of Wax-Printed Textiles Intended for West Africa and Zaire” in Fabrics of Culture, pp. 468-469.

26 See A. G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa. (London: 1973) for some details on manufacturing industries such as textiles.

71 See McLeod, The Asante. p. 153 and also Maude Wahlman and Enyinna Chuta, ierra Leone Resist-Dyed Textiles,” in Fabrics of Culture, p. 458.

^ John Beecham, Asantee and The Gold Coast (1841; reprint. New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1970), p. 147.

^ John Adams, Remarks on the Country extending from Cape Palmas to the River Congo: including observations on the manners and customs of the inhabitants. (London: Whittaker, 1823), p. 115.

30 Ila Pokornowski, “Beads and Personal Adornment,” in Fabrics of Culture, p. 104.

31 McLeod, The Asante. p. 145.

Ila Pokornowski, “Beads and Personal Adornment” in Fabrics of Culture, p. 111.

Ibid., pp. 106-113. Henry John Drewal and John Mason, Beads. Body and Soul. Art and Light in the Yoruba Universe. (Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1997).

Angela Fisher, Africa Adorned (London: Collins Harvill, 1987), pp. 148-149.

■’'Ibid., pp. 148-149.

Ibid., pp. 148-149.

Marilyn Hammersley Houlberg, “Social Hair: Tradition and Change in Yoruba Hairstyles in Southwestern Nigeria,” in Fabrics of Culture, pp. 349-373.

■’’* R. Galletti, K. D. S. Baldwin and I. O. Dina, “Clothing of Nigerian Cocoa Farmer’s Families,” in Dress. Adornment, and the Social Order, p. 92.

39 Thompson, Flash of The Spirit, p. 3.

Biyan Edwards, The History. Civil and Commercial of The British Colonies in The West Indies. 3 vols. (London: J. Stockdale 1794), vol. II, p. 5. The vestrymen were elected annually by the freeholders; the funds necessary for all purposes were raised by taxes on the property of the inhabitants, and by colonial duties on the articles imported.

Laws of Jamaica. Act 37 (1696), p. 57.

Bernard Martin Senior, Jamaica As it Was. As It Is and As it May Be. Bv a Retired Military Officer. (London. T. Hurst, 1835), p. 162.

72 The Laws of Jamaica. “An Act for the Government of Slaves.” CAP XXV, (19 February, 1831), p. 45.

‘‘‘‘ Edward Long, The Historv of Jamaica or General Survev of the Ancient and Modern State of the Island; with reflections on its situation settlements, inhabitants, climate, products, commerce, laws and government. 5 vols. (London: T. Lownudes, 1774), 2:493. Long lists several types of fabrics that were distributed. A description of some of these fabrics are: perpetuana—a durable wool fabric manufactured in England beginning from the sixteenth century; ells-another type of British cloth manufactured in Somersetshire; Osnaburgh-coarse linen originally made in Osnabruck, Germany. Sometimes calico is woven into it; baize-coarse woolen fabric that has a fine and light texture, used chiefly in lining, coverings and for curtains. In warm climates used for clothes; holland cloth—linen fabric directly from Holland (the province called Holland), when bleached it is called brown holland and is to be distinguished from the later “holland cloth” or “real wax” Dutch manufactured imitations of Indonesian batiks popular on the West African coast. See Oxford English Dictionary, second edition for further details.

Invoices. Accounts. Sale of Sugar etc. Jamaica Windsor Lodge and Paislev Estates (1833-1837) Manuscript Collection, 32. Institute of Jamaica/National Library of Jamaica (hereafter cited as MSS and NLJ).

Mrs. Carmichael, Domestic Manners and Social Conditions of The White. Colored, and Negro Population of The West Indies. 2 vols. (London: Whittaker, Treacher, and Co., 1833), vol. 1, p. 155.

47 Higman, Slave Population and Economv. pp. 14-15.

Dickenson Papers, MSS 2952, West Indies Collection, Mona, University of The West Indies (hereafter cited as U.W.I.).

49 Journal of The Assemblv of Jamaica, vol. 4, (1745-6): 45.

J. W. Phillips and H. K. Staley, “Sumptuary Legislation in Four Centuries,” Journal of Home Economics. Vol. 53 (October, 1961), pp. 673-677.

Cynric Williams, A Tour through the Island of Jamaica From The Western to the Eastern End in the Year 1823. (London: Hunt and Clark, 1826), pp. 174-175.

" Ibid., p. 176.

Mary Ann Hutchins, The Youthful Female Missionarv: A Memoir of Marv Ann Hutchins. (London: Wightman and H. Adams 1840), p. 126.

73 Matthew Gregory Lewis, Esq. MP., Journal of A West India Proprietor. Kept During Residence in the Island of Jamaica (London: John Murray, 1834), p. 106.

J. Finkelstein, The Fashioned Self (Cambridge. Polity Press, 1991), p. iii.

Carmichael, Domestic Manners, p. 148.

57 Ibid., p. 150.

Ibid., p. 153.

William Beckford, Esq. A Descriptive Account of The Island of Jamaica 2 vols (London: 1790) vol 2, p. 386.

Stewart, A View of The Past and Present State, p. 269, also Douglas Hall, In Miserable Slavery: Thomas Thistlewood in Jamaica. 1750-86 (London: Macmillan, 1989), p. 285.

Stewart, A View of The Past and Present State, p. 269

Cynric Williams, A Tour through the Island of Jamaica. P. 3.

Theodore Foulks, Eighteen Months in Jamaica with Recollections of the Late Rebellion. (London: Whittaker, Treacher and Arnott, 1833) p. 107.

On the plantations, slaves were divided into three gangs or groups in the fields. The first gang consisted of the stronger men and women; their duty was to clear, dig and plant cane. In crop time they also cut, transplanted the cane and attended in the millhouse. The second gang consisted of bigger boys and girls, pregnant women and others who could not do heavy work. They weeded the canes and did lighter activities. The third gang of slaves consisted of young children. They weeded the gardens, collected food for the animals and did trivial duties. The first two gangs were supervised by male drivers with a whip. The third was under the care of an old slave woman who also used a long switch. See Gardner, Historv of Jamaica, pp. 176-177.

65 Carmichael, Domestic Manners, p. 155.

Henry T. De la Beche, Notes on the Present Condition of the Negroes in Jamaica (London: 1825), p. ii. See also Orlando Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery (Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickenson University Press, 1967), p. 223.

67 Edward Brathwaite, The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica 1770-1820 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), p. 232.

74 68Hall, In Miserable Slavery, p. 23 ]

Douglas V. Armstrong, The Old Village and The Great House: An Archaeological and Historical Examination of Drax Hall Plantation. St. Ann’s Bay. Jamaica. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990), p. 178.

™ Lewis, Journal of A West India, p. 125.

Ibid., p. 343.

Hilary Beckles, “Sex and Gender in the Historiography of Caribbean Slavery, in Engendering Historv: Caribbean Women in Historical Perspective eds. Verene Shepherd, Bridget Brereton, Barbara Bailey (Kingston; Ian Randle Publishers, 1995), p. 137.

Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Societv. p. 17.

Deborah Gray White, Ar’n’t I A Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1985), pp. 27-46.

J. B. Moreton, West India Customs and Manners. 2"‘' eds. (London: J. Parson, 1793), p. 153. See also carolyn Cooper, Noises in The Blood (London: Macmillan, 1993), pp. 19- 22. Cooper analyzes the song and places it within the context of orality, gender and the vulgar body of Jamaican popular culture. She also explores how the lexicon, grammar and syntax of the song may have changed over time. A brief translation of the extracted verses is: first verse— Although I was born and raised a slave, my skin is black not yellow, I often sold my virginity to many handsome men. Second verse-My master keeps me as his mistress, and he gives me clothes with bustles, and fine muslin coats to gain my sweet embraces. Third verse-The master came one night and he gave me a gown with bustles. I got pregnant and bore him a child who was almost as fair skinned as the master’s wife (my mistress). Fourth verse-My mistress cam with a long whip and asked if the child is for the master. My master denied it, called her a “lying bitch” and told the mistress to beat me. Fifth verse-I don’t know if I should not condescend, and I don’t know what hapens if I do. I have no friend to turn to, so I was forced to do it. Sixth verse-I do not know any laws, I do not know any sin. I am just whatever they want me to be. This is the way they have made me. So god or the devil can take me!

White, Ar’n’t I a Woman?, p. 34.

Ibid., p. 38.

Lewis, Journal of A West India, pp. 130-131.

75 White, Ar’n’t I a Woman?, p. 28.

Michel Foucault, the Historv of Sexuality. 2 vols. (London: 1978-9; first publication, Paris, 1976), vol. 1. See the introduction.

Long, The Historv of Jamaica. 3:736-858.

^ Ibid., pp. 731 and 857. In the study I have used the “common” or popular names of the Jamaican plants. However, Edward Long included both the Botanical names as well as the popular terms.

White, Ar’n’t I a Woman?, p. 115. C. C. Robertson, personal communication, 7 July, 1998. See also Claire Robertson, “Africa into the Americas? Slavery and Women, the Family, and the Gender Division of Labor” In More Than Chattel: Black women and slavery in the Americas, eds. David Barry Caspar and Darlene Clark-Hine (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), pp. 21, 23.

^ Gardner, A Historv of Jamaica, p. 412.

Long, The History of Jamaica. 3 :858.

Ibid., 3:747-748.

Ibid., 3:747-748. This unfortunately is no longer done in Jamaica.

McLeod, The Asante. pp. 148-149.

^ Williams, A Tour Through the Island, p. 83.

Roach-Higgins and Eicher, “Dress and Identity,” in Dress and Identitv. p. 13.

Williams, A Tour Through the Island, p. 83.

Lewis, Journal of A West India, p. 74.

Beckford, A Descriptive Account of the Island, p. 386.

Long, The History of Jamaica. 2:413.

"'Ibid., vol. 2:493.

Armstrong, The Old Village and the Great House, pp. 176-181.

76 Beckwith, Black Roadways, p. 144. In the spring of 1998 the author visited a Maroon community in Suriname. Many children were observed wearing waist beads, as a form of protection against evil spirits. In Jamaica the custom of wearing protective beads has survived in some Afro-Jamaican religions such as Obeah. However guard beads are not popular. In contemporary Jamaica beads are worn as personal adornment, and indigenous beads are also produced for the tourist trade.

Long, The Historv of Jamaica. 3:413. Contemporaiy wisdom supports the idea of covering one’s head in the hot sun to prevent sunstroke.

Ibid., 3:413

Ibid., 3:413.

Ibid., 3:520.

Ibid., 3:521.

'"-’ Ibid., 3:522.

Ibid., 3:522.

Ibid., 3:523.

Higman, Slave Population and Economv. p. 129, discusses the environmental factors that contributed to the high mortality rate among Europeans.

108 Helen Callaway, “Dressing for Dinner in the Bush,” in Dress and Identitv. pp. 195-207

R. R. Madden, M.D., A Twelve Month’s Residence in the West Indies during the transition from slavery to apprenticeship. 2 vols. (1835; reprint. Westport: Negro Universities Press. 1970). vol. 2:168.

"" Lewis. Journal of A West India, p. 94,

Long. The History^ of Jamaica. 2:402.

Cynric Williams, A Tour Through the Island, p. 4.

77 "3 R Bickell, Rev., The West Indies As Thev Are: or A Real Picture of Slavery: cut more particularly as it exists in the island of Jamaica. (London; J. Hatchard and Son, 1825), pp. 54-58.

114 Ibid., pp. 54-58.

78 CHAPTER 3

DRESS AS RESISTANCE

“The essence of all resistance on the part of slaves was a fundamental tenacity for life, an appreciation of life itself...” -Barbara Bush'

African Origins of Slave Resistance in Jamaica

West Indian slavery was not only based on inherent racism, but also on the

complete isolation of Africans from their social and cultural heritage. Europeans in

slave-owning societies sought to maintain their dominance within the plantocracy

by instilling concepts of inferiority into bondwomen and men, and by denying them

rights and privileges so as to subordinate them within the broader society. Despite

this, Africans who were brought to the New World as slaves, and their

descendants did not accept their conditions of servitude humbly. Rather, they

employed various means to express their anger and resentment towards the

institution of slavery which robbed them of their status as persons. Slave resistance reflected the slaves’ “fundamental tenacity for life,” a deep yearning for their right to survive and to be free.

79 Rosalyn Terborg-Penn argues that to comprehend the role of slave women

as resistors there must be a cross-cultural perspective. Slave women’s

contributions in this manner cannot be examined in isolation or separate and

distinct from the women’s ancestral home of Africa.^ Terborg-Penn explains that

there are certain unifying methodological concepts that one needs to apply when

studying African women’s resistance in the diaspora. For instance, the study of

African descendants abroad is, and should be treated as an extension of African history. Therefore slave women must be examined within the larger African cultural context. Moreover, it is imperative to recognize and acknowledge the existence of a tradition for Africans in the diaspora to identify themselves with

Africa. Such an approach, according to Terborg-Penn, negates the conventional

Eurocentric interpretation of Africa as a recipient, and not a donor of cultural heritage.’

This cross-cultural method of analysis is important because resistance activities found among African women, as well as those in the New World and their descendants, reflect similar patterns. Some of these patterns or values, for instance, were the notion of self-reliance among women who depended on each other for support, and the creation of survival strategies designed by slave women to oppose social, economic and political oppression. Such values were strategies that were used in the diaspora, and were the same needed to fight oppression on the African continent. In the Americas as in Africa, self-reliance encouraged networking or bonding among those of African descent, while others relied on

8 0 their inner strengths, organizational capabilities, cultural expressions as well as spiritual powers to resist the destruction of their communities/

Fox-Genovese goes further by adding that any attempt to understand slave women’s resistance must also acknowledge the dreadful paucity of sources and the complex relation between individual and collective resistance/ Therefore, in this chapter I examine Afro-Jamaican women’s role as resisters from three perspectives; their African background, their experiences as slaves and the dynamics of their resistance. 1 argue that these women’s resistance was part of a legacy stretching back to Africa, and that as the principal exponents of African culture, slave women were able to use expressive cultural strategies in their dress, as a means of survival.

Slave women’s tenacious spirit to resist slavery was part of a continuum that linked Africa to the Caribbean. In many African societies, women, whether as slaves or not, were both able and willing to engage in peaceful and militant tactics against their oppressors. Scholars such as Edna G. Bay have revealed that some African women were great fighters and warriors such as the Amazons of

Dahomey who were the personal guards of the King, and were greatly feared. Sir

Richard Burton, in the mid nineteenth century for instance, detailed the “Illustrious

Viragoes” of the Amazon guards, and he recalled the fierce, warlike nature of the women of other West African ethnic groups such as the Yoruba,^’ The freed Igbo slave, Olaudah Equiano, for example, wrote that the women of his home village were warriors who fought side by side with the men.’

81 Perhaps the most famous African woman to resist colonial oppression was

Nzinga Mbunde (1582-1663), the leader of four decades of warfare against the

Portuguese in Angola. Nzinga formed her own army and allied her people with the

Dutch, thus creating the first African-European alliance against a European oppressor.* Nzinga became famous for her political diplomacy and military ingenuity. African women also resisted oppression on an individual level.

Historians Claire Robertson and Martin Klein in their pioneering work on women and slavery in Africa, have shown that some women resisted servitude by iTjnning away.^

Such resistance by African women displayed great strength which was often rooted in African religious concepts. Female deities were powerful and highly respected in many African religions. It was felt that women enabled the spiritual forces to communicate with the people. Among the Yoruba, “Gelede dances are performed to pay homage to all women, who are believed to have innate power to benefit the community.”'” These dances also honor spiritually powerful women who were elders, ancestors, and deities. It is believed by the

Yorubas that women possess the secret of life itself the knowledge and special power to bring human beings into the world and to remove them. This knowledge applies not only to gestation and childbirth, but also to longevity. Women's knowledge of life and death demands that Yoruba herbalists in preparing medicines seek their support. ' ' A Yoruba priestess explained:

If the mothers are annoyed, they can turn the world upside down. When an herbalist goes to collect a 82 root at the foot of a tree, the mothers put it up. And when he climbs up for a leaf the mothers put it down.'"

This idea of women’s spiritual strength is not limited to the Yoruba people but is

among various peoples throughout Africa, many of whom were captured and eventually

enslaved in the New World. In the diaspora, effective resistance to colonial oppression

was often energized by the spiritual power of religious African women, supporting the

unity of politics and religion that was characteristic of precolonial Africa and many other

preindustrial societies.' ’

As discussed earlier, African slaves brought to Jamaica were of diverse ethnic backgrounds and were obtained mainly from the region of West Africa. The colonial

planters often characterized each ethnic group based on popular opinions and their capacity to work. In 1823, J. Stewart revealed that slaves in Jamaica were like, “The different nations of Europe, of various characters and dispositions. Some are mild, docile and timid-while others are fierce, irascible, and early roused to revenge.”'''

Stewart goes further to describe those slaves who were so fierce. He stated:

The Coromantee is. on the contrary', fierce, violent and revengeful under injury and provocation, but hardy, laborious and manageable under mild and just treatment. The Congo. Papaw, Chamba. Mandingo are of a more mild and peaceable disposition than the Coromantee. but less industrious and provident than the Eboes...'^

Stewart's account clearly shows that slaves were not all alike and that some slaves were aggressive and prone to defend themselves against any baital treatment they received. It is also important to realize that within the slave population there were also conflicts and

83 hostilities among slaves. Lewis, for instance, wrote in his journal that, “Africans and

Creoles [those local bom] hated each other.”'*’ Lewis also recalled a situation within which a young slave woman had been punished for biting another slave woman. Upon asking the young woman’s mother, “how she came to have so bad a daughter, when all her sons were so mild and good?” - “Oh, massa,” she answered, “the girl’s father was a

Guinea-man.”’’ Creole slaves considered themselves superior to their African counterparts, and did not hesitate to speak of Africans generally as “Guinea birds” and

“salt water nagurs”.'* The slave population was not a cohesive group nor was it passive.

In fact, slaves did express their frustrations and anger.

Forms of Resistance to Sla\’eiy in Jamaica

The early historiography on slavery in the Caribbean depicted a docile and passive slave who was in constant need of guidance. Richard Ligion for instance, declared that slaves were a “happy people whom so little contents.”'^ Such paternalism not only highlighted a degree of stereotyping, but it also ascribed an inferior status, and led to names such as “Sambo”, the male slave of the American South, and “Quashee”, his West

Indian counterpart. The name Quashee is derived from Kwasi, a popular Akan day name for males born on Sunday, used for slaves of Ghanaian origin. Some slaves received demeaning names like Hercules and Phibia, which stripped them of their African identity.^”

However, in colonial Jamaica resistance to slavery in many forms was an integral part of life. The record of slave rebellions in the British West Indies confirms that slaves were not passive, instead they resisted the process of dehumanization and powerlessness.

84 Long, for example described West Indian-bom slaves as “irascible, conceited, proud,

indolent.. .and very artful,” and said that they [slaves] were always trying to ‘overreach’

their overseers by “thwarting their plans ’’^' W. J. Gardner described the Coromantyn

[Coromantee] slaves as not only ferocious but also the instigators of every rebellion in

Jamaica.^^ Rebellions often led to great loss of life among both planters and slaves and

created a financial burden for the colonial regime. For example, the rebellion of 1760 in

Jamaica under Tacky’s leadership, resulted in the death o f 60 whites and 400 slaves. The

expense of putting down this rebellion was estimated at £100,000. During the last slave

rebellion of 1831-1832 in Jamaica, the expenses accrued and the value of property

destroyed exceeded five times the amount spent in 1760. In addition. Parliament granted

£300,000 as a loan to assist those planters whose plantations had been destroyed by the

slaves.^

Excluding the island of St. Domingue (Haiti), the greatest slave rebellions in the

Western hemisphere were in Jamaica and Demerara Essequibo (the Guianas). These areas

averaged one major revolt every two years between the period of 1731 to 1832. This high

incidence of revolts was due to absenteeism of plantation owners, which led to greater

depersonalization of slaves and more estrangement between whites and slaves than in the

U.S. South. Slave revolts were piore common where African slaves outnumbered

Creoles.^'* Thus, planters in these areas lived in a state of perpetual insecurity and under constant threat of slave insurrection. The high African to white ratio, combined with extremely harsh conditions for slaves on the sugar plantations fostered an atmosphere especially conducive to slave revolts.

85 Slave resistance, whether conscious and organized or not, contested the colonial regimes of power. However, resistance in itself was both complex and diverse. Orlando

Patterson has examined the psycho-cultural processes in slave societies that inspired slaves to resist, arguing that slaves employed various mechanisms to deceive their masters and to subvert the system of slaveiy. Patterson argued that there were two basic forms of resistance to slavery, one passive and the other violent. Passive resistance may be further sub-divided into four types: refusal to work, general inefficiency and deliberate laziness or evasion; satire; running away; suicide. Violent resistance he also argues may be divided into two sub-categories: individual violence and collective violence such as rebellions or revolts. Lucille Mathurin-Mair pointed out, that resistance can be overt and violent like rebellions or covert or subtly done.^® James C. Scott argued that most slaves realized that open insubordination in almost any context would provoke a more rapid and ferocious response than a resistance that could be as pervasive, but never ventured to contest openly the formal definition of hierarchy and power.

Patterson, like many historians referred primarily to male slaves with the exception of a discussion relating to slave women’s sexual roles. For instance, Patterson states:

The slave women, of course, did not remain virtuous. Under such temptations, with their bodies in such great demand and the economic rewards no doubt bountiful, it is impossible to conceive how they could have done so... It must be inquired whether the nature of work on the estates impaired child-bearing...the heavy labor of the women was no doubt responsible for the frequency of gynecological complaints among them. One of the most common of these complaints was the described as “menstrual obstruction.”^*

8 6 Such discussion of women’s sexual roles does indeed deserve attention. However,

Patterson totally ignored women’s participation in slave rebellions. Furthermore, he failed

to state clearly that gynecological complaints were sometimes used by slave women to

avoid work and therefore were a form of resistance against slavery.

As Barbara Bush points out:

“While Quashee has been examined and his role in the struggle for freedom acknowledged and praised, Quasheeba has been ignored or dismissed.” For a long time “popular stereotypes... have portrayed female slaves as passive and downtrodden work horses who did little to advance the struggle for freedom. The peculiar burdens of their sex allegedly precluded any positive contributions to slave resistance.”^®

Jamaican Women’s Resistance to Slavery Slave women in the Caribbean participated with their men folks in various forms of resistance such as revolts and running away. For example, the planter

Thistlewood revealed that during Tacky’s rebellion in 1760 many of the prisoners

[rebellious slaves] brought in by the militia were, in fact, women. And Lewis often mentioned his slave woman, Marcia, who became infamous for always running away.^® Some slave women also committed suicide to resist slavery. Bryan

Edwards remarked that Ebo [Igbo] slaves in particular had the reputation of killing themselves to avoid servitude.^'

Some slave women chose to kill their children to prevent them from becoming slaves, as in the case of Sabina Park who was tried in the Half-Way Tree

87 slave court for the murder of her three-month old child. Infanticide was atypical among slave women but it did happen and could have been a form of resistance.

The psychological trauma experienced by slave women prior to and after such an act is unimaginable. But some slave women sought a “final” way out of their suffering, if not for themselves then at least for their children. In Toni Morrison’s moving novel Beloved, the author brilliantly captured the agony of one such slave mother who not only killed her child but was also labeled mad and therefore not re-enslaved. Slave women who committed infanticide were often labeled as insane. Some of these women may have been driven insane because o f their brutal treatment. In Morrison’s novel the protagonist, Sethe, is haunted by her memories of slavery and the ghost o f her murdered child, a past which she is unable to relinquish. It is also possible that many slave women were falsely accused of killing an infant when in fact the child might have died from some undiagnosed or unrecognized malady such as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).

Besides this, some slave women felt that they had virtually no chances of securing a safe future for their children. Although the data on deliberate abortions, contraceptive and forced sterilization is scarce, it is safe to assume that some women resorted to these means as forms of resistance. Nevertheless, some chose infanticide rather than bringing up their child in a world of bondage. The children of slave women were also the property of the master and were subject to physical labor. Meanwhile a child borne by a slave woman for her master was sometimes abused by the white mistress of the plantation. In other situations the planter might also have sold the child either for profit or as punishment. For

8 8 some slave women infanticide seemed their only option. Sabina for example had stated, according to the Crown witness, that “She had worked enough for buckra [master] already and that she would not be plagued to raise her child...to work for white people.”^^

Other slave women feigned illness to avoid work. In 1815, Lewis was forced to

“bounce” and “storm” because his slave women pretended to be ill. He wrote in his diary:

Another morning, with the mill stopped, no liquor in the boiling-house, and no work done. The driver brought the most obstinate and insolent of women to be lectured by me; and I bounced and stormed for half an hour with all my might and main, especially at Whaunica...They at last appeared to be very penitent...and engaged never to behave ill again...

The mere fact that these slave women confessed and stated that they would “never behave ill again,” suggests that this work stoppage was organized by the women. Such obstinacy reflected a collective form of passive resistance. However it was often difficult for some planters to tell whether their slave women were in fact ill or pretending. Within this scenario, Lewis recognized that this was an orchestrated effort because it involved so many individuals. Slave women realized how essential their labor was for the smooth operation of the estate and therefore sought to sabotage this process whenever possible.

Those women who feigned illness were more likely to succeed than slave men because their health experiences were different from those of men. Slave women's health was affected by illnesses associated with childbirth and menstrual cycle which some used to their advantage. Many planters nevertheless refused to accept even the most \nsible sign of illness to excuse a slave from labor.

89 Many planters were forced to deal with slave women’s insubordination and at times these confrontations were violent. Lewis further reported that on the neighboring estate a female slave attacked the overseer. He explained;

The overseer upon a neighboring property had occasion to find fault in the field with a woman belonging to a gang hired to perform some particular work; upon which she flew upon him with the greatest fury, grasped him by the throat, cried to her fellows-’Come here!” come here! Let us Dunbar [kill] him!” and through her strength and the suddenness of her attack had nearly accomplished her purpose.^*

It is very clear that slave women, when pushed to the limit did not hesitate to express their anger regardless of the consequences, even if it meant execution. One example of such determination to be free occurred in 1815. A servant girl of fifteen, named Minetta, was accused of poisoning her master. She was later sentenced and executed for her crime.

Most striking about this case were the young woman’s refusal to say she was sorry and her steadfastness until her death, as described by Lewis:

Nothing could be more hardened than her conduct through the whole transaction. She stood by the bed to see her master drink the poison; witnessed his agonies without one expression of surprise or pity; and when she was ordered to leave the room, she pretended to be fast asleep, and not to hear what was said to her. Even since her imprisonment, she could never be prevailed upon to say that she was sorry for her master having been poisoned.^^

Minetta’s actions could have been the reflection of a deeper reality rather than an unreasoning “hardened” attitude. Minetta's lack of remorse and her merciless

90 determination to kill him suggest that she had suffered some awful injustice or abuse,

perhaps sexual exploitation.

Slave women like Minetta who labored in the great house as cooks, servants and

nannies came in regular and direct contact with their master. Their presence within the

master’s domain made them more susceptible to sexual exploitation by an owner.

Moreover, the remote location of the planter’s house on some estates also made it more

difficult for these women to flee to safety. The colonial laws did not protect slave women from such violence against their person. Instead they were objectified and treated as property to be manipulated as the planter may deem necessary. However, some slave women fought off an attacker as best as they could and undoubtedly many women failed.

Others like Minetta resorted to more indirect means of resistance—that of poisoning their master. Slave women who worked as cooks in the great house had access to the planter’s food and the opportunity to poison him. But some planters did not trust their cooks and some were aware of the potential risks of poisoning so they had their slaves serve as tasters for the food prepared for them.

Some women went so far as to mutilate themselves in order to fiustrate their masters. In one case, a slave woman named Jenny was ordered by the estate doctor to return to work in the fields. She had recovered from her wounds, but her master later found that:

As her wounds were almost completely well, she had tied packthread around them so as to cut deep into the flesh, had rubbed dirt into them, and, in short had played such tricks as nearly to produce a mortification in one of her fingers.^’

91 Perhaps it was such determination on the part of female slaves to be free that led Mrs.

Carmichael to remark in 1833 that:

I regret to have to say, that female negroes are far more unmanageable than males. The little girls are far more wicked than the boys; and I am convinced, were every proprietor to produce the list of his good negroes, there would be in every instance, an amazing majority in favor of males.^*

It should be noted that those women who ran away from the estates were few in number. Most runaways were men because most women chose to remain on the estate since running away with their children was more difficult and less likely to succeed. Barry

Higman’s analysis of the Returns of Registration of Slaves in 1832, and various plantation records show that women accounted for only 20 percent of the runaways. The majority of those women who did run away worked in the field gangs. Nevertheless, many of these slaves failed to merge successfully and permanently into a free society or to isolate themselves. Many women feared the punishment for such actions which could result in the breaking up of their family, separation from children, and even transportation to either

Cuba, hulks [prisons] in England, or to the workhouses.^® Some women received the severest of punishments for running away. Such was the case of the slave Priscilla who made an effort to escape in 1783 and 1784. As a consequence, both her ears were cut off.

She was placed in chains and sentenced to receive thirty-nine lashes on the first Monday of each month for a whole year.'*® Most women who ran away did so to visit kin rather than remain away permanently.

92 The specific contributions of women slaves to organized resistance is still unclear.

The history of slave revolts often focuses on male slaves, and the mass of slaves were depicted as a faceless and genderless mob. In his comprehensive study on the Jamaican slave population and economy, Higman reveals that during the greatest slave revolt of

1831 some 20,000 slaves participated. During the revolt 200 slaves were killed and another 312 were later executed. Fourteen whites were killed and property valued at

£1,132,440 was destroyed. But the most interesting feature of the records was that the active participants in the rebellion were almost exclusively male. Only 6 women were shot during the rebellion and one caught and executed for her role in the event.'*’ The invisibility of women in such a major rebellion could be due to the cultural conditioning of the recorders. Eighteenth century middle-class European women were culturally barred from politics or military activities as they were perceived as passive and weak. Hence, slave women in this case may have faced the same predicament and were considered not worthy of recognition, when they were present.

Although source material dealing with the role of women in revolts is very rare, the story of the legendary Jamaican Windward Maroon Nanny, gives us some idea of the role some women may have played. Nanny was an Obeah woman after whom two

Maroon settlements were named. In the 1730s Nanny organized and led her warriors in successful battles against the British, taking English soldiers as captives with impunity.

Her supernatural powers such as her ability to catch the enemies’ bullets are still a major topic of discussion among Maroons and Jamaicans today. The attitude of the British towards Nanny at the end of the first Maroon treaty in 1739 perhaps explains, to some

93 extent, why so little documentation exists which refers to the active participation of

women in slave revolts. The British refused to accept spiritual leaders such as Nanny, and

instead insisted on recognizing only the authority of her headmen. “The fact that the

British did not recognize a religious leader may be the reason that none ever again rose to

Nanny’s prominence and power.

The fact that women were not mentioned in connection with revolts was perhaps

due to the stereotypes and the misrepresentations that existed about slave women. As

Hilary Beckles explains:

Black [slave] women were seen as superordinate amazons who could be called upon to labor all day, perform sex all night and be quite satisfied morally and culturally to exist outside the formal structures of marriage and family.

However, slave women never fitted this mold and, in fact, as Beckles further argues, they

forged an anti-slavery ideology based upon their own experience, consciousness and

identity. It was this anti-slavery ideology that gave rise to the term “natural rebel” so aptly

conceived by Beckles, that states that women were not complacent but resisted the

institution of slavery In addition, not all slave women resisted in the same way as seen

earlier, and not all resorted to overt or violent methods. A few women did run away, as

discussed before, but most chose to pursue alternative methods of resistance that were not blatant or easily recognizable, but rather subtle. Subtle or passive resistance included a

variety of activities such as foot dragging, false complaints, sabotage, and expressive

cultural strategies in their dress.'*^ Therefore, many women ran away; some destroyed

clothing. Mrs. Carmichael constantly complained that her washer women “never carried

94 out their work properly, and that they had a tendency to “lose” articles of clothing ”'"' The

destruction of clothes or property impacted the planters financially who often times had no

alternatives except to replace the “lost” goods.

Slaves’ responses to enslavement were greatly influenced by African cultural

patterns. Historian Walter Rodney has argued that the culture of Africans was the “shield

which fhistrated the efforts of the Europeans to dehumanize Afi-icans through servitude,

and was an indicator of the tenacity and ability of the subordinate to survive and resist the

cultural imposition of their white masters by maintaining their unique identity.”'*^ The preservation of this cultural identity was essential to their survival, and dress was a principal exponent of this process.

Dress as Resistance

Women of Afiican descent had the opportunity and the expertise to use expressive cultural characteristics in their form of dress to resist the institution of slavery. Such techniques were acquired in Africa and were maintained and nurtured in the diaspora.

Dress served as a functional and communicative tool within and between cultures. Among the Yoruba of Nigeria and Benin, for example, dress and cloth were important means of expressing one’s station in life such as occupation, training, status, wealth, act of war and well-being. The Yoruba proverb omo I’aso eda [children are the clothes of men] reflects the importance of dress by equating it with the Yorubas’ most valuable possession - their children.'*® This knowledge of the diverse usage of dress provided Jamaican women with the opportunity to resist oppression subtly. Athough dress was a popular medium of

95 choice by women, this type of resistance was not exclusive to women. Men also participated in these activities.

Throughout Jamaica there were numerous incidents where clothes and fabrics distributed or owned by the planters were destroyed or stolen by slaves. During Tacky’s rebellion of 1760 in Jamaica, for instance, great houses were attacked and European clothes were taken and destroyed. The planter, Thistlewood, recorded that a “plunder [of] ruffled shirts, laced hats, shoes, stockings, cravats, and fine mahogany chests full of clothes.. was recovered. A visitor to the island, Bernard Senior, stated that during the

1831 rebellion, rebels broke into a house “and each equipped himself with a portion of the wearing apparel.”^” Such actions were not restricted to periods of revolts, but also occurred during times of calm. In 1813 a slave named Peter was found guilty for having in his possession some ‘negro’ clothing stolen from the ‘negro’ houses of Mr. David

Nicoll, and for rescuing another slave who was concerned in the theft. He was sentenced to receive fifty lashes in public.^' Some slaves resorted to more amusing methods of getting rid of clothes received from their master. For example, a letter dated 4 October

1838 from James Swaby of London to Messers Sweet, and Sutton at Lincoln’s Inn

Solicitors concerning the affairs of Smithfield Estate in Jamaica, revealed that when negotiations broke down over their apprentice wages, the apprentices immediately disposed of the clothes they received from the planter “at the Huckster’s shops and the money spent in idle drunkenness.”^^

House slaves often tried on their owners’ clothes secretly, and during rebellions, the planter’s clothes were used to ridicule him. Such was the case in 1831 when the head

96 driver of one estate allowed a party of rebels to bum the great house. He celebrated his

newfound freedom by imitating his master and galloping around the property on his

master’s horse wearing his owner’s hat.” This ‘attack’ on clothes provided slaves with an

opportunity to vent their anger and frustrations at their master and the institution of

slavery. Roach-Higgins and Eicher argue that dress confirms “identities and communicates

positions within societies particularly when the division of labor is complex,” as in

plantation labor.^'* Therefore, the distinct European dress of the planter in the great house

reflected his status of colonizer, controller, and oppressor within the plantocracy. Thus to

‘attack’ the dress of the planter was to ‘attack’ the oppressor - metaphorically speaking.

Some slaves disguised themselves by cross-dressing to escape servitude. This

activity was popular in the U.S. south and the Caribbean. Historian Joan Cashin points

out that male and female runaways cross-dressing to ‘camouflage’ themselves was one of the most effective ways to elude capture. She further adds that “like the Harrises in Uncle

Tom’s Cabin, adults, teenagers, and children practiced it...women dressed as men and men as women; girls dressed as boys and vice versa, sometimes changing gender identities

several times to evade slave-catchers.”” According to Cashin, some slaves put outfits together as they made plans to escape, while others decided to change genders on the run.

On one occasion, a black man cross-dressed and powdered his face to pass successfully as a white woman.”

Perhaps the most fascinating case of cross-dressing in Jamaica, within this context, was that of the slave Hurlock as described by the traveler and retired military officer,

Bernard Senior. According to Senior, Hurlock was,“[a] wretch..[who] actually prowled

97 about the streets in female attire; but so quick was [sic] his movements and his eye, that he

was no sooner seen than lost...”^’ Senior further reported that Hurlock had “many

skulking accomplices; but none of equal note with himself.”^* During the 1831 rebellion,

Hurlock used his disguise for the benefit of the slave rebels. Dressed as a woman, he

successfully deceived every guard in Montego Bay and thus learned strategic information

that benefited the resistance movement. Senior explained;

In disguise, as a water-carrier, seller of segars, and [by] amusing each guard with some marvelous tale of what was proceeding in the country; [he] learnt not only the strength of the different detachments, but in many cases, which were to be their probable routes the following day. Thus he was able to report to [rebel] headquarters; and the leaders took care that some of their best marksmen should be lying in ambush at convenient spots...^®

The result of Hurlock’s efforts was that the rebels were able to defeat some of the militia

before they could fire on the slaves. Hurlock’s usage of dress in this manner reflected not just creativity and ingenuity, but also a strong desire to secure freedom and resist re

enslavement.

Slave women in Jamaica, like their male counterparts, were also creative in their

form of dress. They had the resources that enabled them to be culturally expressive in their

appearance. On estates planters gave out rations of clothes and fabrics, usually

Oznaburgh, a coarse kind of German linen, to slaves to make their own garments. The

accounts of Jamaica Windsor Lodge and Paisley Estates, for instance, show that between

1833 and 1837, the estates purchased 2,676 yards of flax Oznaburgh, 20 yards of white

98 flannel, 20 pounds of Oznaburgh thread, 12 pounds of blue thread and 24 dozen handkerchiefs for their slaves including women/"

However, women took advantage of the fact that Jamaica had no sumptuary laws to retain and nurture their Afncan customs in dress. Lewis revealed that women of

Afncan descent, often appeared during their holidays “decked out with a profusion of beads, corals and gold ornaments of all descriptions.”"' It is not certain where the gold came from, but it is believed to have been smuggled over on slave ships and accumulated over the years on the island. Mrs. Carmichael added that the jewelry of the slave women in the Caribbean was “considerable and consisted of many gold earrings, and rings upon their fingers.”"^ William Beckford in 1796 also reported that slave women, “Equip themselves with a certain degree of elegance. They are particularly fond of beads, coral, glass and chains, and with which they adorn their necks and wrists...”"^

Others, according to Bryan Edwards: Proudly displayed their tribal marks [scarring] with a mixture of ostentation and pleasure, either considering them highly ornamental or appealing to them as testimonies o f distinction [from] Africa; where in some cases, they are said to indicate free birth and honorable parentage.""*

On other occasions the “women used as beads the seeds of lilac, the vertebrae of the shark... and they sportively affixed to the lip of the ear, a pirdal or ground nut,”"" thus creating their own African-influenced decorations.

Meanwhile, hairstyles consisted of plaits, braids or having their hair combed into

‘lanes’ or “walks” as the “parterre of a garden,” as is still done in West Afnca."" This

99 display of such African aesthetics in dress served as a marker for these women, to keep them, the members of the slave community, separate from the world, and to identify those who did not belong. The creation of a separate sphere for slave women, became a site as bell hooks describes it, that:

One stays in, clings to even, because it nourishes one’s capacity to resist. It offers to one the possibility of radical perspective from which to see and create, to imagine alternative new worlds.®’

The most popular garment that represented the continuity of Afncan customs or heritage in dress was the Afncan woman’s headwrap. During slavery, many planters considered the headwrap as a badge of enslavement. This later evolved into the stereotype that whites held, that of the “Black Mammy” and “Aunt Jemima” of the U.S.

South and “Black Nana” or “Quasheba” of Jamaica. Enslaved women and their descendants, however, have regarded the headwrap as a “helmet of courage that evoked an image of true homeland—be that Africa or the new homeland, the Americas.”®* As

Helen Bradley-Griebel has remarked, “That tying a piece of cloth around the head is not specific to anyone cultural group. Men and women have worn and continue to wear some type of fabric head covering in many societies. What does appear to be culturally specific, however, is the way the fabric is worn.”®®

This distinct head covering, according to Bradley-Griebel, usually covers the hair being held in place by tying the ends into knots close to the skull. Although women of

African descent sometimes tie the fabric at the nape of the neck, their form of styling always leaves the forehead and neck exposed; and by leaving the face open, the headwrap

1 0 0 usually enhances the facial features. The woman’s headwrap works more like a regal

coronet, drawing on the looker’s gaze up rather than down. Thus, women wore the

headwrap as a queen might wear a crown. (See Fig. 3.1). This manner of style

corresponds to African women’s way of hair styling, wherein the hair is pulled back so as

to expose the forehead and is often drawn to a heightened mass on top of the head.

Helen Bradley-Griebel, however, has failed to acknowledge that the headwrap was

not a monolithic feature. Within contemporary society the media has often depicted the

slave woman’s headwrap as one basic or similar style. However, there were various styles

that were both creative and elaborate, and in some cases had a specific meaning, as in

Africa. In West Africa head wraps were diverse. Among the Yoruba for instance, during

Gelede performances, women wore elaborate headwraps tied in various ways in diverse

colors.™ African women who arrived in the Americas as slaves came from different ethnic groups. Many of these women were able to maintain and nurture particular styles of headwraps that were perhaps distinctive or unique to their particular African culture.

In some situations, the style of a headwrap was the product of the woman’s own creative and ingenious capabilities. Such distinctiveness in headwraps, combined with the ability to dye fabrics, would have contributed to a spectrum of ornamental styles and a myriad of colors within the Caribbean colonial setting. In Suriname [Dutch Guyana], for example, slave women’s headwraps were very diverse. These headwraps often consisted o f several different fabrics of bright colors tied together. Each style had a specific name and meaning. Some of these meanings were also quite humorous. For example, the

1 0 1 y '

Illustration by author based on Bradely - Griebel’s description. This type of headwrap was often worn when a small amount of fabric was available.

Figure 3.1; The Slave and Freedwoman’s headwrap. 18 - 19th centuries

1 0 2 headwrap [also known as angisa in Suriname] called 'W atch me op de hoe!^' (See Fig.

3.2) would be worn on special occasions such as the woman’s birthday. This headwrap

was tied in such a way that after the head was wrapped closely with a scarf, the loose folds

of the scarf were then gathered and twisted together to stand out from the head. The

result of this creative process was a phallic symbol which was meant to evoke a sense of

the erotic. When a woman wore this type of headwrap it meant that she was going to

meet her lover at the comer! While the style called "Feda let them taW (See Fig. 3.3)

consisted of wrapping the head closely with a scarf in a manner so as to leave three

comers of the scarf loose and sticking out. Each comer apparently represented the human tongue and all three tongues implied a lot of chatter, idle talk or gossiping. When this was wom, the woman sent a message to her admirers and observers—including her rivals or those who enjoy gossiping about others that meant—you can talk about her as much as you wish, she does not care!’* Such headwraps which were popular throughout slavery in

Suriname and can still be seen today at festivals and national festivities.

An examination of several early illustrations of slave women’s dress reveal diverse styles in headwraps. In the illustration “Negro Mode of Nursing” (See Fig. 2.4) the

Jamaican slave woman is depicted wearing a distinctive style of headdress. Unlike the headwrap portrayed in Fig. 3.1 this headwrap totally covers the woman’s hair and much of the forehead while the scarf is knotted or tied in the back of the head instead of on the forehead. An illustration from the British Caribbean island of St. Vincent during slavery provides tantalizing evidence as to what may have also existed in Jamaica (See Fig. 3.4).”

103 %

Illustration by author. Illustration based on author’s observations, conversations with Surinamese women and pictures in Surinaamse Koto’s en Angisa’s.

Figure 3.2: “Wacht me op de hoek.” c. 18 - 19th centuries

104 I

rlV , r

Illustration by author. Illustration based on author’s observations, conversations with Surinamese women and pictures in Surinaamse Koto’s en Angisa’s.

Figure 3.3 “Feda let them talk.” c. 18 - 19th centuries

105 In the illustration, “Slaves Merrymaking”, there are several types of headwraps, some of which are very ornate and extend from the base of the head high up into the air.

In a slave village the slaves are celebrating the holidays with music and dancing. The most impressive features of this occasion are the slave women’s dress and the headwraps displayed. The contrast in fabrics and bright patterns in their dress foster a sense of lightheartedness and exuberance. The three major social classes based on race are represented in the gathering. Those of Afncan descent can be seen to the left while in the background several Europeans observe the merrymaking. On the right, a group of mulatto women can be seen wearing the most ornate headdress in the group. The dress of the mulatto women and elaborate headwraps set them apart from the rest of the merrymakers and convey their elite status. Mulattos often considered themselves better than African slaves and often chose not to associate with them. For slave women and particularly mulatto women, acquiring the most expensive and elaborate dress was often a way of achieving differentiation. The rarity of the outfit usually commanded social admiration within the community.

The illustration also portrays two types of dress styles. One that reflects the emergence of a “Creole dress” represented by the merger or the syncretization of

European influences and African characteristics in dress. The mulatto women for example, are wearing long skirts and shawls as was popular among working class women in Britain, but they have accessorized this outfit with Afncan stylized headwraps. The second dress style represented reveals the continuation of Afiican aesthetics in dress. The seminudity displayed combined with headwraps and draped fabrics around the waist are

1 0 6 Illustrator unknown. Courtesy of the National Library of Jamaica.

Figure 3.4: St. Vincentian villagers merrymaking, c.1830 African customs which have been maintained and nurtured. It is also interesting to note that each headwrap wom at this festive occasion was very unique and creative in terms of style and patterns used. Nor were headwraps exclusive to women in the Caribbean. Some slave men wrapped their heads with a scarf or handkerchief, as can be seen with the male slave dressed in knee breeches and dancing Avith the slave woman. Some women imitate the high European style of some years before with a straw hat perched on top of a headwrap, an interesting syncretization. Such a headdress could have been a popular trend or a fashion statement among some slave women or even a symbol of the woman’s wealth, status and prestige within the community.

For West African women, the headwrap served many functions. It absorbed perspiration in the same way a bandanna tied around the neck serves this purpose for farmers and ranchers. It was an expedient capacity as an article of clothing which could be used to cover the hair quickly when there was not enough time to make it presentable.

In addition, the headwrap was a major necessity, because it offered protection when carrying loads on the head. To serve this purpose, the wrap would be complemented by a piece of cloth or dried banana leaves rolled into a coil and shaped into a donut called a

“cotta” and placed on top of the headwrap to assist with balancing loads. This was a West

Afncan custom imported wholesale. Long was so impressed with the ability of Jamaican slave women to carry loads in this manner that he remarked:

This custom enlarges and strengthens the muscles of their necks, in an amazing degree; and it is really wonderful to observe, what prodigious loads they are able to carry in this manner, with the greatest apparent ease; in so much, that they will even run

108 with them, and affirm, at the same time, with a laugh, that they feel no weight../^

According to Long, the cotta also served another purpose. For a voluntary divorce of a

man and wife, the cotta would be cut into two and each party took half as a means of

expressing the “eternal severance of their affection.”^'* Within some Caribbean slave

communities such as St. Lucia, as in West Africa, the style of the headwrap also reflected the marital status of a woman.’* The headwrap was also one of special head coverings wom by women at slave religious events such as a Kumina or Revival service. It was also wom to Christian services and was used to protect newly styled hair.’®

The headwrap wom by millions of enslaved African women and their descendants in the diaspora, served as a uniform of communal identity, but its most elaborate, was its function as a “uniform of rebellion,” signifying absolute resistance to the loss of self definition.” The headwrap in Jamaica was not merely symbolic, but it also served as functional tool of resistance. Among the Moore Town Maroons women wrapped their heads in a specific way. Their leader, Nanny, was said to have tied her headwrap in such a way not only to reflect her status as spiritual and political leader but also to use as a safe place to store her bullets during the Maroon wars. According to oral tradition, during a battle Nanny would use her magical powers to catch the bullets fired by the British at her and her warriors; she then cooled them in a large bowl of water, after which she stored the bullets in her headwrap. Legend has it that she stored as many as one thousand bullets in her headwrap.’* Nanny was able to use these bullets against her enemies and was successful in defeating the British. The British could not figure out where Nanny got her

109 bullets or where they were stored! The usage of the headwrap in this way and the aesthetics of the slave woman’s dress was, as Gwen O’Neal argues, “shaped by the particularities of the unique cultural experiences of being African or of African descent and surviving as a disenfranchised people in a Eurocentric culture...”’® The continuity of

African styles of dressing, whether it be the headwrap or beads and coral necklaces, created and maintained a vital link to slave women’s roots, and simultaneously helped them to resist the system o f slavery which sought to rob them of their pride, dignity, and most of all, their African identity.

Besides the headwrap, there were other examples where dress was used as a form of communal or collective resistance. Senior, for instance, reported that the ring leaders of the 1831 slave rebellion in Jamaica “wore scarlet jackets.”*” Roach-Higgins and Eicher explained that, “the fervor of a political campaign or a popular uprising or protest of some political act or policy may result in an individual’s flaunting o f political affiliation by use of pins, badges, armbands, and other forms of identifying dress.”** However, the rebel leaders’ dress not only reflected group ties and status, but it also served as a uniform statement of resistance. In many societies, colors are very important because of their cosmetic, artistic and symbolic functions. Red ocher, and other ferrous oxide colors, such as orange and yellow probably are the most widely used of all pigments in the history of humankind.*’ In many African societies red was not only symbolic of strength and courage but was closely associated with resistance and religious dress. The Yoruba priests who serve Orunmila, the God of divination, for example, wear red beads to reflect their religious status within the society.*’ Among the Asante red was associated with heat,

1 1 0 anger, grief, mourning, witchcraft and warfare.*"* Slaves in Jamaica partook of these symbolic meanings, and used these colors in their dress as part of the resistance movement. Martha Beckwith reveals that in Jamaican slave religions such as Obeah, red was wom by the Obeah Man [priest] for protection against all odds whether it be physical bodily harm or from duppies.** Thus for the Jamaican slave to wear red in battle was not just an act of war, but it was also an appeal to religion for protection against white aggression.

Some Jamaican bondwomen camouflaged themselves to resist slavery. Among the

Moore Town Maroons, women joined their men folk in tying the carcoon bush*® and leaves over their bodies so they could easily ambush their enemies or move their camp through the mountains without being detected by the British. The carcoon plant was used in this manner because its leaves and branches remain green after cutting for several days before it begins to wither and the leaves turn dry and crumble. Today, the Moore Town

Maroon descendants consider the carcoon bush a symbol of their people and it is tied to or wrapped around parts of the body by both men and women on special occasions to commemorate the Maroon victories over the British. Such special occasions include feasts in honor o f their ancestral founder and leader, Nanny.*’

Slave women who ran away sometimes disguised themselves by dressing as freedwomen, and as a consequence, were able to resist being caught. Although there were no codes that regulated freedwomen’s or slave women’s dress, there were certain norms of dress that were associated with specific groups of people. For instance, slave women tended not to wear shoes since this was not part of their clothing or rations from the

111 planters. Furthermore, their clothing often consisted of inexpensive fabric such as

Oznaburgh. Slaves were also branded on the shoulder with the logo of their master or sometimes their master’s name. These characteristics in a woman’s appearance would serve as a marker and thus identify her as a slave. However, if a slave was fortunate enough to obtain a pair o f shoes, a dress o f refined fabric such as silk, and stockings, she would be perceived by observers as a ffeedwoman once outside of her familiar circles.

Slave women could obtain money to buy shoes and a nice dress for special occasions or a possible escape by selling their produce in the local market in their own fi’ee time. So successful were female runaways at disguising themselves as fteedwomen, that several newspaper advertisements, such as the Jamaica Mercury, often described them as “artful and very skilled in deception,” and whites were warned to be on their guard against them.®*

One such success story was that of the slave woman, Mary Sadler, who in 1779 ran away with her two young sons. The Jamaica Mercury advertisement stated that;

She was a Creole sambo woman, has been marked MS on top, [branded] but is now defaced, on both shoulders, she is 34 and dresses as a free woman, with long earrings, wears shoes and stockings, and a high-crown hat.*®

Her master, Isaac Furtado later discovered that dressed as a free person, Mary hired herself out to one Jackson who later died and she then lived with a freedman as his wife.®®

Women who ran away, dressed well, and spoke good English were rarely caught. These women could move to the city and if skilled get a job. Although every slave was branded with the logo o f their estate or owner, in the city they could meld into free society unless

112 identified. Moreover, constables were less likely to question them, assuming they were

mistresses of white men or free women.^‘ For women like Mary, dress allowed them to

transcend the class boundaries of Jamaican society and simultaneously resist the institution

of slavery.

One of the most unique examples of dress as resistance was that of the slave

woman, Cubah. In 1760, a major rebellion was planned for the eastern part of Jamaica.

The rebellion was to have involved nearly all of the island’s Coromante slaves. Prominent

among the plotters was the female slave, Cubah, who belonged to a Jewish woman in

Kingston. Cubah had a large following of slaves, and was crowned Queen of Kingston by

her followers.

In Long’s account of this serious rebellion of 1760, Cubah was described as “of a

peculiar nature” who was “dubbed” “Queen of Kingston”; at the [slave] meetings. She sat

in state under a canopy, with a short robe on her shoulders, and a crown on her head.”^^

Although Cubah was warned to stop the “charade” by the authorities, she refused. At the

time of the plot, queen Cubah carried a wooden sword with a red feather stuck to the

handle—probably as a symbol of liberation. It was also believed that she performed the

functions similar to those of a West Afiican Queen mother.^"* She was later captured and

shipped off the island, transported for life.^^ However, she managed to prevail on the

captain of the transport to put her ashore again on the leeward part of the island. Cubah remained there for a while, but eventually was re-arrested and executed.®^ Long’s dismissal of Cubah as “peculiar” reflected not just his own attitudes, but also colonial society’s refusal to accept and acknowledge women’s role as resistors. Cubah may have

113 been a mere symbolic figurehead and an object of ridicule by whites, but to her people she represented hope and unity. Her active participation in the rebellion and her deep commitment to the liberation process clearly reaffirms women’s contributions to the resistance movement. Cubah’s regal dress not only established her identity as an authoritative figure among her people, but also the act of dressing as queen signified defiance that signaled her rejection of the colonial order and European hegemony.

Personal adornment and dress were regular features in slave society as in all other communities. For many people dress may be considered as an aesthetic act; however, for some slave women the act of dressing was a way of communicating a message. These messages were based on their relationships with each other and their experiences within their environment. Dress provided slave women like Cubah with the opportunity to express themselves in such a manner to reinforce their commitment to their African heritage and their fellow enslaved Africans. Cubah’s personal adornment enabled her to deal with slave life aesthetically and simultaneously convey her own customs, values and beliefs. Her regalia were symbols o f state adopted from her African roots and used to support the legitimacy of her authority and to unite African slaves. Moreover, dressing as queen was a symbolic demand for freedom from the colonial policies that placed women in a subordinate role and position of dependency within the colonial structure.

Conclusion

Resistance was an ongoing process in the everyday lives of slaves; all slaves, including women, resisted servitude. Despite the contributions of women of Afiican and

114 African descent to resistance on the continent of Africa, their role as resistors in the

Caribbean was denied. Vincent Harding argues that this was partly due to the fact that from early in their enslavement, slave women were seen as no threat. On the middle passage for instance, “the men, except for prescribed times, were kept chained in the communal hole between the decks and the women were allowed to move around the upper decks by day...why? Partly because they were judged less dangerous than the men...[also] white men from captain to the cook’s helper could unleash their lust against them.”^’ But these women were never passive beings who lacked feelings, rather they expressed their anger and frustrations at slavery in various ways. In fact, they were

“natural rebels.” As Heckles claimed:

The slave mode of production by virtue of placing the black [slave] woman’s inner world-her fertility, sexuality and matemity-on the market as capital assets, produced in them a “natural” propensity to resist and to refuse was part of a basic self protective and survival response.®*

Women played central roles in the slave community. They were wives, mothers, healers and spiritual leaders. Thus it was the threat to their community that forced women to the front of cultural resistance. Slave women realized that resistance to European efforts at déculturation, and dehumanization meant retaining African cultural heritage, and adapting it under slavery. As Bush states, “If the cultural base of any community is threatened, then resistance becomes essential to survival.”®® Therefore, by using expressive cultural strategies in their form of dress, slave women were able to hold onto their African roots, and simultaneously resist cultural alienation. The maintenance of

115 Afiican identity was crucial to slave women’s existence; to be culturally alienated most certainly meant psychic annihilation"^" or even death.

In order to justify slavery, the planters dismissed the vitality of Afro-Caribbean culture, and instead perpetuated stereotypes about those of Afiican descent particularly the behavior of female slaves as passive and promiscuous, which provided a convenient rationale for the miscegenous and adulterous activities of white men."” However, slave women refused to accept these stereotypical concepts. The aesthetics of the Jamaican woman’s dress woven with rich Afiican symbols represented not only her pride and dignity, but also her rejection of the colonial order and its moral judgments. Slave women’s usage of dress as an instrument of resistance guaranteed their survival by allowing them to echo their resentment of slavery without disrupting the social hierarchy.

James C. Scott explains it best, “The goal, after all, of the great bulk of resistance is not directly to overthrow or transform a system of domination but rather to survive-today, this week, this season...”*"^

1 1 6 ENDNOTES

' Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society, p. 163.

^ Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, “Black Women in Resistance: A Cross-Cultural Perspective” in In Resistance: Studies in African. Caribbean and Afro-American History. Ed. Gary Y. Okihiro, (Amherst: The University of Massahusetts Press, 1986), pp. 188-209.

^ Ibid, p. 189.

^ Ibid., p. 189-190.

^ See Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, “Strategies and Forms of Resistance” in In Resistance: Studies in African. Caribbean and Afro-American History, ed. Gary Y. Okihiro (Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1986), pp. 147-151.

® Edna G. Bay, ‘Servitude and Worldly Success of the Palace of Dahomey.’ Ph.D. dissertation, Boston University, 1977. See also A Mission o f Gelele. King of Dahomey. ed. Isabel Burton, 2 vols. Memorial Edition, 3, 4. (London: 1892).

’ Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ed. The Classic Slave Narratives. (New York: Mentor, 1987), pp. 17-19.

* Taken from the 20*^ Anniversary Budweiser’s Great Kings and Queens of Africa, 1995. See also Terborg-Penn, “Black Women in Resistance,” pp. 188-209.

® Claire Robertson and Martin A. Klein, “Women’s Importance in African Slave Systems” in Women and Slavery in Africa, eds. Claire C. Robertson and Martin A. Klein, (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), pp. 11-12.

10 Terborg-Penn, ‘Black Women in Resistance: A Cross Cultural Prospective,’ p. 191.

" Henry John Drewal and Margaret Thompson Drewal, Gelede: Art and Female Power Among the Yoruba (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), p. 8.

Ibid., p. 8.

'^Terborg-Penn, “Black Women in Resistance,” p. 191.

Stewart, A View of The Past and Present State, p. 249.

Ibid., pp. 251. Also note Ebos-Igbo, Papaw-Popo

117 Lewis, Journal o f A West India. p. 348.

Ibid., p. 348.

** Gardner, A History of Jamaica, pp. 175-176.

Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean, p. 51.

Ibid., p. 52. Similarly, during World War I Fritz was used as a generic pejorative name for German soldiers. In Kenya during the 1950s Emergency locals called British police and soldiers Johnnies.

Ibid., pp. 51-52.

^ Gardner, A Historv of Jamaica, p. 175.

^ Madden, A Twelve Month’s Residence in The West Indies. Vol. 2:169.

See Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean, p. 69. Also Higman, Slave Population and Economv. pp. 176-183 and 212-232.

Orlando Patterson, The Sociology of Slaverv (Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1969), p. 260.

^ Lucille Mathurin-Mair, The Rebel Woman in the British West Indies During Slaverv. Kingston: Institute of Jamaica, 1975), see the introduction.

Scott, Weapons of The Weak, pp. 32-34.

^ Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery, pp. 108-109.

^^ush. Slave Women in Caribbean, p. 51.

Lewis, Journal of A West India, p. 110. see also Douglas Hall, In Miserable Slaverv. p. 105.

Edwards, The Historv. Civil and Commercial, vol. 2:89.

Toni Morrison, Beloved (New York: Penguin Group, 1987).

See the Jamaica Journal. Vol. 1, No. 42.

^'’Lewis, Journal of A West India, p. 140. 118 Ibid., p. 183.

Ibid., p. 179.

Ibid., p. 204.

Carmichael, Domestic Manners, vol. 2,11.

Higman, Slave Population and Economv. pp. 180-183.

Gardner, A Historv of Jamaica, p. 178.

Higman, Slave Population and Economv. pp. 227-232.

Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean, pp. 69-70. Also Terborg-Penn, Women in Resistance, pp. 199-200.

Heckles, “Sex and Gender in The Historiography of Caribbean Slavery,” p. 134.

^ Ibid., p. 137.

Scott, Weapons of the Weak, pp. 32-34.

‘*®Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean, p. 61.

Walter Rodney, ‘Upper Guinea and the Significance of the Origins of Africans Enslaved in the New World.’ Journal of Negro Historv. (LIV: 4 October 1969), p. 327.

Justine M. Cordwell and Ronald A. Schwarz, eds. The Fabrics of Culture: The Anthropology of Clothing and Adornment. (Bristol: Mouton, 1979), p. 189.

Hall, In Miserable Slaverv. p. 101.

Senior, Jamaica as it was, p. 271.

See Royal Gazzette. Manuscript (MS), Institute of Jamaica (NLJ), (Saturday, 31 July 1813), 748.

Smithfield Estate or business, MS 806, Institute of Jamaica (NLJ), (Manchester, 4 October 1838).

119 Mary Rockford, “The Slave Rebellion of 1831,” Jamaica Journal. (June 1969). Vol. Ill #2, 30.

Roach-Higgins and Eicher, eds. ‘Dress and Identity’, pp. 11-13.

Joan E. Cashin, ‘Black Families in the Old Northwest,’ Journal of the Early Republic. 15 (Fall 1995)456.

Ibid., p. 456.

” Senior, Jamaica As It Was, p. 182.

Ibid, p. 182.

” lbid, p. 182.

Invoices. Accounts. Sale of Sugar etc.. Jamaica Windsor Lodge and Paisley Estates. MS 32, Institute of Jamaica (NLJ), (Montego Bay: 1833-1837).

Lewis, Journal of A West India, pp. 35-36.

Carmichael, Domestic Manners, vol. 1:146-147.

63 Beckford, A Descriptive Account of The Island, pp. 385-386.

Edwards, The Historv. Civil, and Commercial. Vol. 2:152.

Edward Brathwaite, The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica. 1770-1820. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), pp. 232-234.

Ibid., p. 234.

bell hooks. Yearning: Rau. Gender and Cultural Politics. (Boston: South End Press, 1990), p. 150.

^ Helen Bradley-Griebel, “The African American Woman’s Head wrap: Unwinding the Symbols” in Dress and Identity, p. 445.

69 Ibid., p. 446.

70 Drewal, Gelede. p. 120.

71 In a series of discussions with various Surinamese women, I learned about some of their 120 African headwraps. Although these headwraps are no longer popular with young Surinamese women, they are still worn by some older women, and occasionally they may be seen in the Paramaribo market. In Suriname, the women always wear a matching dress [dress=koto] with their headwraps, and the color of the outfits are based on the woman’s age. Each year there is also a “Miss Alida” contest, where women will compete against each other for the best koto and angisa. For further details see also Use Henar-Hewitt, Surinamese Koto’s en Aneisa’s (Paramaribo: Offsetdrukkerij Westfort, 1997), English version included.

“Slaves Merry Making in St. Vincent, c. 1830s. Artist-unknown. Courtesy of the National Library of Jamaica.

Long, The History of Jamaica, vol. 3:413.

’^Ibid., p. 413.

Based on a series of discussions with Antonia McDonald-Smythe and other women of her family who are from St. Lucia (Fall, 1996).

Joseph Graessle Moore, Religion of Jamaican Negroes: A Studv of Afro-Jamaican Acculturation. Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University, 1953. Moore an analysis of dress and headwraps in some of the Afro-Jamaican religions in Jamaica. He includes descriptive accounts as well as the color symbolism within some of the religions.

77 Bradley-Griebel, “The African American Woman’s Headwrap, p. 446.

Interview-Mrs. Muriel Whynn, 16 August, 1997 (Kingston). Maroon descendant, and direct descendant of Nanny of Moore Town Maroons. Mrs. Whynn is the only person who knows how Nanny tied her headwrap, and this is a well guarded secret.

Gwendolyn S. O’Neal, “African-American Aesthetic of Dress: Symmetry through Diversity.” In Aesthetics of Textiles and Clothing: Advancing Multidisciplinarv perspectives. Eds. M. R. Delong and A. M. Fiore (ITAA Special Publication) #7 (212- 223) Monument Co., Forthcoming, p. 186.

Senior, Jamaica As It Was, p. 186.

Roach-Higgins, Dress and Identitv. p. 14.

^ Justine M. Cordwell, “The Very Human Arts of Transformation” in. The Fabrics of Culture, p. 64.

^ Ha Pokomowski, “Beads and Personal Adornment” in. The Fabrics of Culture, p. 107. 121 McLeod, The Asante. p. 173.

Beckwith, Black Roadways, pp. 92-108. See text also for details about duppies and the practices of Obeah and other slave religions in Jamaica.

Taped interview-Mrs. Whynn, Maroon descendant; 14 August 1997. Caroon bush is a tree/plant indigenous to the island, and grows up in the mountains of eastern Jamaica.

"''Ibid.

** Lucille Mathurin-Mair, Rebel Woman, pp. 23-27. See also Jamaica Mercury MS. Institute of Jamaica, November to December, 1779.

*®Ibid., p. 25.

Ibid., p. 25.

Hilary Beckles, Natural Rebels: A Social Historv of Enslaved Black women in Barbados (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989), p. 168.

^ Lucille Mathurin-Mair, Rebel Woman, pp. 20-21.

Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean, p. 72.

94 Mathurin Mair, Rebel Woman, p. 21.

Transported for life was used for the most intransigent troublemakers. They were transported to Nova Scotia and even Australia, which became a convict settlement. See Bush, asterisk note reference, p. 72.

^ Lucille Mathurin-Mair, Rebel Woman, p. 21.

^’Vincent Harding, There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1981), p. 12.

^"Beckles, “Sex and Gender in Historiography,” p. 137.

^ Barbara Bush, The Family Tree is Not Cut: Women and Cultural Resistance in Slave Family Life in the British Caribbean.” In Resistance, ed., p. 117.

"’“Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean, pp. 51-52.

122 '“‘Ibid., pp. 2-32.

'“^Scott, Weapons of The Weak, p. 301.

123 CHAPTER 4

DRESS AS ACCOMMODATION

Brownman wife nyam cockroach a comer, fe save money fe buy silk dress. ‘ -Jamaican Proverb

Theory, Context and Background

Emancipation in 1838 gave rise to a new social order in Jamaica that impacted the lives o f all ex-slaves, both men and women. This social structure created new challenges for ffeedpersons and established its priorities based on white supremacy. The hegemonic dominance of British culture derogated the African heritage of Jamaican people, their appearance and attributes. European entitlement spawned racial images that contributed to the subordination of an entire population. As a consequence, large numbers of the colonized in Jamaica realized that the only way to escape their subordinate status was to embrace or accommodate to European culture and standards.

Franz Fanon’s infamous title, “Black Skin, White Masks,”^ alludes to this phenomenon of accommodation. Although Fanon universalizes his arguments and treats colonized societies as a monolithic group, his work nevertheless, provides a useful frame for my discussion on dress as accommodation. He argued that colonized people of

African descent had to wear a “white mask” to survive or to be somebody within the white dominated society. Accommodation occurs once the colonized has been culturally 124 alienated and is forced to confront “face to face” the culture of the colonial power. Fanon

stated;

Every colonized people-in other words, every people in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local cultural originality finds itself face to face with the language of the civilizing nation; that is, with the culture of the mother country.^

Susan Gubar elaborates further on Fanon’s argument and suggests that accommodation was in fact, “Racial impersonation and masquerading in a destiny imposed on colonized black people who must wear the white mask—of customs and values, of norms and languages, of aesthetic standards and religious ideological—created and enforced by an alien civilization.”"* Thus for colonized people, the reality of their lives was a complex one in that, “Not only must the black man [or woman] be black,” Fanon claimed, but “he [or she] must be black in relation to the white man.”^ Furthermore, for many colonized, wearing a European mask was a way of “whitening” the Afiican race, making it more Europeanized and simultaneously preventing Africans and their descendants from “falling back into the pit of niggerhood.”®

Therefore, to fully comprehend the complexities of racial subjectivity and interactive categories within colonial Jamaica there must be some analysis of this white mask and its cultural ramifications. However, Susan Gubar emphasizes that masking was more than an attempt to elevate those of Afiican descent. In fact, embracing European culture was also a way to experience or to “taste” a bit of the “other” and to pursue the promise of recognition and reconciliation.^ In post-emancipation Jamaica, dress was

125 symbolic of this “mask” that reflected ffeedpersons’ ability to accommodate or to embrace

European culture.

In every society there are aesthetic patterns that reflect that society’s ideal of beauty. This is based on cultural standards that members of society use to evaluate each other. But as Harry Bredemeier and Jackson Toby explain, the existence of standards also mean that some people are found desirable, while others are rejected by the community for not conforming or not being beautiful enough.* Dress as a reflection of cultural standards is important because it signals or communicates identity and differentiation.^ However,

Roach-Higgins and Eicher state that dress does not always make this distinction. In other words, dress can transcend class boundaries and can be deceptive. They state, “Just as verbal language can be deceptive, so can the language of dress. Individuals can assume disguise to deceive the observer.”’”

In this chapter I am concerned with dress as representation, how it tested the boundaries between racially defined identities and reinforced as well as challenged the social norms of Jamaican society. I analyze ffeedwomen’s usage of dress as accommodation to British culture, and how their dress changed over time. I argue that not all Affo-Jamaican women accommodated or chose to wear a white mask for the same reasons. I also emphasize that dress as resistance and as accommodation were not polar opposites, but melded into each other and transformed European styles. Moreover, the usage of dress in this manner cannot be examined based solely on the social changes in

Jamaica, but must also be looked at within the context of Jamaica’s relationship with

1 2 6 Britain, and the influences of British cultural and social forces on the lives of Jamaican

people.

The new social order in Jamaica consisted of three groups. At the top of Jamaican

society was the white minority class that owned most of the land, and were accustomed to

controlling the Jamaican economy. They were also the ones who set all social and

cultural standards. This group consisted of locally bom whites, colonial officers, and a

few white immigrants. The members o f this group considered themselves to be British,

and they supported the representatives of the crown in ruling Jamaica. Whenever

possible, the members of this class sent their children to school in Britain, and every effort was made to maintain cordial relations with the colonial power.”

A large “brown skinned” group called mulattos or coloreds had appeared in

Jamaica. They were the products of sexual relations between slave women and their white masters. By 1820 this group outnumbered the white population in Jamaica. Mulattos were bom into the legal status of slaves but their white fathers sometimes granted or purchased their freedom and provided for their education and upkeep. Some who received financial backing from their white fathers got involved in some type of economic activity. Several colored or mulatto women offered health care services to sick travelers and strangers,'^ while some were engaged in the hospitality industry where they worked as managers and housekeepers of lodges, inns and tavems.

A few mulatto women owned their own inns and became quite wealthy. For instance, in the Census of 1844, the total number of boarding houses was 157. Of these

88 were owned by females, 26 were owned by males and the rest were not defined in

127 terms of their owner’s gender.'^ Meanwhile, the references to female lodging

housekeepers were many. The planter, Lewis for example, was cared for by several of

these “brown girls”, women like Miss Cole, Judy James and Miss Edwards. Lady

Nugent, the American-born wife of the Governor of Jamaica from 1801-1806, often sent

her guests to a lodging house owned by Charlotte Beckford, a mulatto woman.

Meanwhile, according to James M. Phillippo, the men of this class were, “of talent and

accomplishment who would do honor to any community.” He further added, “they fill the

public offices, practice as solicitors and barristers in the courts of law; they are found

among our tradesmen, merchants, and estate proprietors; are directors of our civil

institutions; and are enrolled among our magistrates.”*® During slavery the mulattos or the

coloreds kept themselves apart or separate from the mass of enslaved people. In 1823 the

traveler Williams reported that in public or on festivals the “mulattos kept aloof, as if they

disdained to mingle with the Negroes.”’’ Throughout the post-emancipation period they

continued to see themselves as a separate and distinct group. Thus they disassociated

themselves from the lower classes of Jamaicans. Moreover, the mulattos themselves

owned 50,000 slaves on the eve of Emancipation.’*

The majority of Jamaicans lived in another world rooted in slavery, deprivation

and African heritage. Emancipation freed 320,000 slaves who were then forced to provide for themselves without the advantages of property, skills and education. Nevertheless, many managed to acquire land or obtained wages from seasonal work. The newly

emancipated became members of the laboring and peasant class.This group was not a cohesive class, however; many were not involved in agricultural labor. Rather,

128 freedpersons consisted of various groups of people participating in different types of economic activities. For instance, after emancipation on plantations and in urban areas women continued to serve as cooks, domestic servants, seamstresses, washer women, mid-wives, nurses or healers and milk maids.^”

During slavery, cottages, gardens or provision grounds, medical care, and rations of clothing and cloth were provided for slaves by the planter. The end of slavery now meant the end o f the planter’s responsibilities for their well being. Many former slaves stayed on the plantations working for wages either as regular or seasonal laborers.^'

Women, who constituted the main work force in field labor at the end of slavery, were often ejected fi"om regular estate work with the establishment of wage labor. They were evicted from their cottages and provision grounds and became the first to be taken out of regular employment and used instead as casual labor. At Worthy Park Estate for example, of the 145 female ex-slaves retained on the estate through the apprenticeship period of

1834-1838, only 77 women were kept on; well over half were no longer on the estate list by 1842.“ However, not all women who left the estates were evicted. Some women chose to leave because they preferred to work for their families rather than an employer but often still doing some type of agricultural labor. The Reverend Bean Underhill observed that several women in rural areas worked as traders in markets and as street vendors selling fish and produce for their families. Those fi’eedwomen who were evicted and could find no work migrated to urban centers where many entered domestic service or trade. Some became prostitutes. In Kingston freedwomen also worked as washer

129 women, bakers, while others broke stones for road construction and loaded and unloaded vessels on the wharves.^

Urban freedwomen, according to Douglas Hall, often “looked for husbands to save them from dire economic straits and languished in towns when they could find none.” Hall further added that lower middle-class women were those, “whose husbands had left them with little financial provisions for the future and were incapable of work and too ashamed to beg.”^'* Urban centers became a showcase for the middle and lower classes to reveal their social standing, and more specifically their accommodation to British culture.

As these urban centers took on a more British character, a wedge developed that divided the classes giving rise to two distinct sets of social features—what Philip Curtin has described as the two Jamaicas.^^ On one side there existed the elites and the middle class who were considered as “civilized”, and on the other side, the mass of laboring class, the

“uncivilized”, whose universe included a Christian God that coexisted with Afiican beliefs and practices. The process of adaptation and melding of various African ethnicities went on for hundreds of years and was key to producing a vibrant Jamaican Creole culture which was passed down to each new generation just as it had been passed on to new arrivals from Africa.^® Many Jamaicans for instance, continued to nurture and maintain

African religious concepts such as Obeah or Myalism.^’ For many, Afro-Jamaican religions not only provided and maintained a link with the ancestral homeland of Africa, but it also provided some hope while living in a colonized world.

Emancipation did not end class conflicts, instead white supremacy was maintained.

The ruling oligarchy considered white hegemony to be an integral part of the social order,

130 hence to maintain social stability, whites felt that the freed population needed guidance.

Many also believed that progress was linked to race; thus African descendants could not

achieve success without the assistance of whites. The large exodus of planters from

Jamaica after emancipation and the decline of many estates forced the few remaining white

elites to concern themselves with the “instruction” of the newly emancipated ex-slaves. In

a letter to Prime Minister Gladstone in 1850, the Hon. E. Stanley stated;

Where the white proprietor has failed, the negro will not succeed, more especially if deprived of the instruction and example of Europeans by their gradual abandonment of the island, he is left to retrograde, as there is but little doubt that he will do, into his pristine condition of African barbarism.^*

Similar sentiments were also echoed by Herbert George de Lisser, who wrote that, “the

negro, if left altogether to himself will make no progress.”^® Emancipated Afro-Jamaicans

were now seen as “subject” people to be assisted and civilized, and as Patrick Bryan

reveals, “their environment [that of ffeedpersons’] had become the mission frontier.”^®

Britain’s desire to “civilize” the newly emancipated ex-slaves was imbedded in the

social and intellectual climate of the period, more specifically in the notions o f Social

Darwinism and Positivism. Social Darwinism was an appropriate companion of Positivism

since the former explained white hegemony as a product of physical or biological fitness to survive and to dominate the weak, while the latter justified the given social structure necessary for one to dominate.^' These ideological tools not only justified empire and the civilization of subject people, but they also reaffirmed and endorsed European hegemony.

131 The ruling planter class in Jamaica felt that to successfully civilize the freed

population, specific policies had to be implemented to maintain their customary levels of

obedience and subservience that slavery had made possible. Therefore, they maintained

firm control over land resources and added to the labor force East Indian immigrants. In

addition, they sought to control ffeedpersons by encouraging values that legitimized the

system of colonial rule.^^ Such values affected all aspects of people’s lives, particularly

their appearance and how one dressed. Those who maintained the old plantation styles and

African cultural characteristics in their dress were relegated to the realm of the

“uncivilized”, while those who dressed according to European standards of beauty were

seen in some cases as “civilized”. How did one become “civilized,” and what were the

social and cultural forces that made this possible?

Consumer Society and Commercialization of Fashion

The birth of a consumer society and the commercialization of fashion in Britain triggered similar activities in Jamaica. In Britain there was a consumer revolution that accompanied the Industrial Revolution that began in the third quarter of the eighteenth century. Wealth from the colonies poured in to help fund a rising standard of living for much of the population. More men and women than ever before in human history enjoyed the experience of acquiring material possessions. Particular styles of dress, which for centuries had been the privileged possessions of the rich, could now be emulated by the larger part of society. What men and women had once hoped to inherit from parents they could now buy for themselves. Moreover, what was once bought at the dictate of need

132 was now bought at the dictate of fashion. Goods that had been available only on specific days through the agencies of market, county fairs or street peddlers could now increasingly be bought from shops. However, it is important to realize that this does not mean that the desire to consume was an eighteenth centuiy concept, rather it was the greater opportunity and the much needed accessibility to consume that was new.^^

The consumer revolution in Britain included the commercialization of fashion.

Many in Britain believed that no other nation in Europe could match the British in the luxury of dress and apparel. This great fondness for dress was described as the

“characteristic folly” of the age. But this folly was so epidemic that many spent all they had earned on ribbons, ruffles, necklaces, fans and hoop petticoats. The democratization of fashion or dress allowed many of the lower classes in Britain, in both town and country to “imitate” the new styles developed among upper classes in their leisure wear, but work clothes still reflected class differences. One contemporary reported that “a hat, a coat, or a shoe, once deemed suitable to be worn only by a great grand sire, is now soon put on by a dictator of fashion.”^'* Meanwhile, the popularity of the British fashion doll, and the mass production of the fashion magazine, combined with the numerous dress shops, all contributed to new levels of consumption in an ever growing market.^^

The dress styles that emerged throughout the period of this study were indeed diverse, elaborate and still displayed class differences. The disparity in comfort and ornamentation between men’s and women’s clothes is perhaps a reflection of the vast separation in male and female roles of the period. The Industrial Revolution had created the need for a large labor force of men whose clothing was standardized, tailored, and

133 reasonably comfortable as in the case of the business suit or work overalls. On the contrary, the new class of women who were nonworking housewives could wear nonfunctional clothing unsuitable for the servants who performed the household chores.

Women’s clothes among the upper and middle classes became display pieces, like fiimiture, intended to reflect wealth and social standing. Dress became ensembles, increasingly and overwhelmingly ornamental, accessorized, stuffed-looking and very uncomfortable.^®

The Napoleonic era popularized the “relatively simple classical” look symbolizing traditional order within the context of democracy (see Fig. 4.1). During the early 1830s in London gothic dress, with its daggered sleeve trim and broad shouldered silhouette, became popular. This outfit was accessorized with a hat and elaborate plumage (See Fig.

5.3). The subsequent Victorian era of respectability, prosperity, and middle class strength saw increasingly elaborate dress styles over time. By the 1840s the broad-shouldered silhouette was replaced by puffed sleeves, then the distended skirts and crinolines of the

1860s were accompanied by the bell shaped pagoda sleeves, which were inspired by a renewed interest in English Tudor period of Elizabeth I. Dress styles of the period reflected the mingling of various styles of one century with those of a previous time.

Victorian women’s dress eventually evolved leg of mutton sleeves, complemented by fuller skirts and a cinched waist.

Meanwhile, the introduction of the corset enhanced a series of complex and confining fashions. Several women lost their lives in house fires due to immobility and skirts too full or too tight to run in, and certainly unfit for performing any work.^’ The

134 P ' V

Illustration by author and based on Weibel’s description.

Figure 4.1 : The Classical dress o f 1810 - 1820s

135 corsets of the nineteenth century presented an erotic image of curves flowing out in both directions from a tiny waist. The small waist had a special erotic significance due to the potent suggestions of idleness, fragility, dependence and more perversely bondage.^* The corset combined with fabric inserts called gussets, helped to create a roundness to the bust and hips of the body. A broad piece of whalebone, or (later) steel called a busk, was inserted as a shaping device up the center fi’ont of the corset. Up the center back and sometimes in various positions along the sides, narrow pieces of whalebone were inserted.

The corset was usually laced tightly up the back to avoid disturbing the dress line in the front (see Fig. 4.2).^® Ladies of fashion required the help of servants to don their elaborate corsetted, many buttoned, and laced ensembles.

By the 1850s skirts in Britain got wider and wider. The additional fullness was created by increasing the flouncy underlayers of heavy stiffened petticoats called crinolines. In 1856 the collapsible steel-cage hoop was invented which enhanced the wideness of the skirts. Lavish amounts of material were gathered into the plainest of skirts and elaborate ones were often layered to create a tiered effect. This layered motif was often repeated in bell sleeves which hung loosely over lace or intricate lingerie. Such extensive use of material for both under and outer garments reflected the affluence of the wearer who could afford not only the fabrics but also the long hours of dressmaking labor and fittings required to construct each garment.'”’

In the mid 1850s British fashion was overrun with the French invention of the hoop skirt. The skirt was popularized by the Empress Eugenie of France and designed by herself and the French designer, Charles Frederick Worth. Gowns inspired by the

136 J il X

Illustration by author and taken from Weibel.

Figure 4.2; The Corset - front view

137 empress were now noted for their variety of ornamentation including lace, tulle, velvet

ribbons, feathers and jewels (see Fig. 4.3).'*’

The dresses of the 1870s and 1880s were perhaps the most garish and least

comfortable. The garish effect was produced by the use of multicolors and textures, often

inexpertly. For example, it was not unusual for garments to be constructed in three or

four different colors out of five or six different materials including one with a shiny or

glittery surface, several types of lace, tulle, and various vertical and horizontal trimmings.

This was often complemented with a long and heavy train. Occasionally, the result was a

work of art (see Fig. 4.4).'*^

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, “separates” became popular, consisting

o f interchangeable skirts, blouses, sweaters and jackets. Simultaneously, the dress lines

became less complicated and the visual image was more free-looking. The dresses of this

period consisted of bustles and drapings which allowed the skirts to fall gracefully over the

hips and slanted out to the hemline. Bodices were now trimmed with a self-conscious

simplicity and the emphasis on the puffed sleeves created a leg of mutton or a light but butterfly image. Skirts were excessively long and tight around the hips and full sleeves immobilized the arms (see Figs. 4.5 and 4.6).'*^

The dresses of British women reflected the social views about their place in society and the ways in which they were expected to be perceived. More than almost any other material item, dress acted as “material manifestation of an amalgam of expectations and assumptions.”'*'* Women, for instance, were expected to follow the dictates of fashion, and yet those same styles because of their restrictiveness, presumed them to be fragile

138 Illustration by author, based on Weibel’s description and dress styles observed at Fashioning the Future: Our Future from Our Past, The Ohio State University, Snowden Gallery exhibition, April 1997.

Figure 4.3: Dress of the 1850s - 1860s

139 «

Illustration by author, based on Weibel’s description and dress styles observed at Fashioning the Future: Our Future from Our past, The Ohio State University, Snowden Gallery exhibition, April 1997.

Figure 4.4: Dress of the 1870s

140 I

I \}\

Illustration by author, based on Weibel’s description and dress styles observed at Fashioning the Future: Our Future from Our Past, The Ohio State University, Snowden Gallery exhibition, April Î997.

Figure 4.5: Dress of the 1880s

141 m,\ it ■ ■m\j

# #. i . i . vM w .'- *'

: \

Figure 4.6: Dress of the 1890s

142 creatures subordinate to men. Similar dress styles that were adopted by white women in

the Americas forced women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton to be concerned with the

restriction of movements placed on women due to their dress and its contribution to

women’s dependency on men. Stanton’s comments of 1859 explained this issue;

Woman’s dress...how perfectly it describes her condition! Everything she wears has some object external to herself. The comfort and convenience of the woman is never considered; from the bonnet string to the paper shoe, she is the hopeless martyr to the inventions of some Parisian imp o f fashion. Her tight waist and long, trailing skirts deprive her o f all freedom of breath and motion. No wonder man prescribes her sphere. She needs his aid at every turn. He must help her up stairs and down, in the carriage and out, on the horse, up the hill, over the ditch and fence, and thus teach her the poetry of dependence.

Other women of the period saw their dress to be more than just a social problem. Some saw it as a health risk. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps remarked in 1870 that:

[Physicians] assure me of the amount of calculable injury wrought upon our sex by the weight of skirting brought upon the hips, and by thus making the seat of all the vital energies the pivot of motion and center of endurance...! see women’s skirts, the shortest o f them, [when seated] lying inches deep along the foul floors, which man, in delicate appreciation of our concessions to his fancy in such respects, has inundated with tobacco juice, and from which she sweeps up and carries to her home the germs of stealthy pestilences.'*'^

Tight corsetting, along with norms that prescribed seclusion for obviously pregnant

“respectable” women, could injure the fetus and the mother. Sometimes a rib could also be broken."*’

143 The need to dress according to fashion demonstrated an allegiance to social order and the desire to fulfill the European concept of feminine beauty. For the Victorian woman in the age of respectability, ideal beauty was oAen based on the “appropriate” dress regardless of its discomfort or health risks. No other garment reflected or embodied the British notions of beauty, civility and femininity more than the long skirt, held out by numerous petticoats. British ideals of feminine beauty embodied and articulated by the consumption and commercialization of fashion were taken up by colonial elites abroad and eventually had an impact on vast numbers of colonized people.

In the Atlantic trading network, clothing and cloth were common commodities.

For example, in 1790 Jamaica imported from the British Isles 3,563 yards o f cambric,

590,990 yards of plain cloth, 24 pairs of cotton stockings and 1,062 pounds of shoes. In

1792 some 2,592 pairs of gloves, 519 hats, 3,178 pounds of shoes and 4,740,170 items of linen, cotton and silk manufactured goods were imported.'** Sailors, travelers and colonists routinely arranged for shipments of garments from English suppliers; when goods sent were more than adequate for their needs they were then sold locally. Their clothes could well have been provided on site or from the few local contractors; however, there was no equivalent distribution center for ready-made wearing apparel equal to that of London. In Jamaica, for instance, a ready-made apparel industry did not develop until after slavery. Cities such as Bristol were major shipping ports for garments which included the latest styles from Britain. Large quantities of shoes, hosiery and hats were exported from the seventeenth century onwards.'*^ The Atlantic trade between Britain and her colonial possessions thus did not just include the exchange of manufactured goods for

144 raw materials, but rather, these trade routes were also “conveyors” of British cultural

characteristics including those associated with dress and feminine beauty.

Dress As Accommodation During Slavery

During slavery, slave women in Jamaica received clothes and yards of fabric,

usually Oznaburgh to make their own clothes. On the Radner coffee plantation of 950

acres, for instance, 223 slaves received on 2 July 1822; 189 hats, 158 handkerchiefs, 192

Kilmamack caps(?), needles, Oznaburgh and blue thread of equal proportions; on 16 May

1823, they received, 216 hats, 228 caps, needles, Oznaburgh and blue thread of equal proportions.’” Slaves were able to make their own clothes, and some slaves became accomplished at sewing. Long, for example, complimented the slaves he met by remarking that they were “expert at their needles,”’* while Bernard Senior reported in 1835 that slaves, in particular house slaves were “generally good seamstresses.”’^

The most popular slave dress consisted of Oznaburgh or check frock, and a pair of

Oznaburgh or sheeting trousers with a coarse hat for men, and an Oznaburgh or coarse linen shift, a petticoat and according to their taste and circumstances, a handkerchief to use as a headwrap for women. On a few occasions slaves were provided with a coat.

Shoes were not very common except for those who could afford it, otherwise they were reserved for special occasions such as dances and carnivals.”

An analysis of several illustrations revealed that on many plantations the women wore their skirts in such a manner that the skirt would be pulled over a cord tied around the hips thus exposing their legs as high as the knee. This provided greater freedom of

145 movement and enabled women to fulfill their daily labor tasks. This outfit, the “pullskirt” was often complemented by a headwrap or sometimes a broad brimmed straw hat placed over the actual headwrap.^'*

It is important to realize that, although slaves received Oznaburgh fabric by law from their masters, all slaves did not dress alike. In fact, slave dress reflected the diversity of Jamaican slave society. Dress among some slaves, especially elite slaves varied from plantation to plantation. Great House to Great House, as well as between urban and rural areas. To clarify further, on special occasions urban slaves dressed more elaborately in long brightly colored skirts made from refined cloth such as muslin or cotton instead of

Oznaburgh, accessorized with beads and even gold jewelry.”

Early on some slave women sought to accommodate to European standards of beauty in their dress. Those who did so had access to European dresses including the latest styles from Britain. Some were able to buy European dresses with money they had saved up from selling their produce in the local markets. Williams stated in 1823 that, “I was surprised to see so many Negroes purchasing finery [cloth and clothes] for the approaching holidays...”” While in 1833, Foulks remarked, “A slave in the parish of St.

Dorothy asked permission to go to a ball, adding that she hoped to be allowed to attend, as she had bought a gown for the occasion for the sum of three pounds.”” Others received” hand-me downs” from their owners as gifts. In 1801, for instance. Lady Nugent wrote in her journal that she “distributed to the women gowns; petticoats and various presents,”” so they could attend her wedding celebration. Some whites took necessary steps to make sure that their slaves were dressed “appropriately.” Dressing their slaves 146 well was a reflection of their own wealth and prestige. Further, there were some slave women who received European-style dresses from their white masters in exchange for sexual favors. Such was the case of Phibbah, who received numerous gifts of clothes from planter Thomas Thistlewood, including, “six pairs of shoes and much cloth for herself.”^®

But perhaps one of the best places to see Jamaicans in their finest British style of clothing was at the local horse races. Lady Nugent was obviously intrigued by the display at the races:

The excitement amongst the mulatto and negro population who were present was most graphic and entertaining; dressed in the extreme caricature of English fashions, the females in muslins and ribbons of the gayest colors with caps and turbans of the smartest silks and stuffs, silk stockings and always red shoes, to which the shortness of their dresses gave ample display, and above all, the gay parasols of green or pink, which the sable beauties displayed with infinite pride.®”

However, Lady Nugent further implies that this type of dress based on British standards was not socially acceptable or even appropriate for slaves since such outfits became a focus of ridicule, a sort of “entertainment”, and in the eyes of whites, considered as

“extreme.”

Slaves were very much aware of the various styles of dresses worn in Europe.

They observed what their mistresses wore and were able to study these dresses and then adapt them to their tastes and particular circumstances. Slave women were also creative and innovative with the styles they adapted by wearing their dresses shorter to expose their red shoes as Lady Nugent noted. House slaves who were seamstresses and washerwomen perhaps had the best opportunity to study and observe the clothes received

147 by their mistresses from London and could easily examine them in their owners’ absence.

Some seamstresses were also able to make European-style dresses for their mistresses.

The dresses of local white women were based on the British trends except during the summer months when the weather was so hot there were a few minor alterations.

Senior in 1835 advised European ladies visiting Jamaica for the first time during the summer months to wear;

The lightest summer dresses, but principally white, and the colored ones ought to be such as require washing but seldom, as the exposure to the tropical sun by negro washer-women, will ruin the prettiest patterns in a single operation; bonnets o f leghorn, chip , .to shelter the face...boots and shoes of jean.®‘

He stated that the hot sun damages clothing, but he also blamed the women for their

“ignorance” in dealing with European clothes. Exposure of the clothes to the sun destroyed the clothing’s patterns by fading, an inevitable process blamed here on the washerwomen. Tropical mildew could also ruin clothing easily when it was not dried and stored properly.

Those slave women who were fortunate enough to know how to read were able to gain information about European dresses from the local newspapers. Some women also observed dress styles in pictures and magazines. Various papers such as the Falmouth

Post were full of advertisements of goods for sale including clothes that just arrived from

London/^ Meanwhile, the latest dress styles in London for each month were published regularly, and the local papers continued to do so even after emancipation. In September of 1831 The Royal Gazette for example, printed the London fashions for August as:

148 Morning dress included a white jaconet muslin dress; the corsage square and gathered round the top into a band which is lightly embroidered at each edge...while evening dress consisted of a dress of mousseline de soie [silk], white figured in gold colour, the corsage cut plain and square behind, and in crossed drapery and very low in front. For carriage, dress was of white muslin dress, the corsage made low but not extremely... A walking dress was a printed muslin dress; a white ground with perpendicular wreaths of foliage interspersed with bouquets of violets... And for the Opera-A dress of citron colour gros de Naples, printed in detached sprigs of foliage.®^

For female slaves, the wearing of European-style clothes was not just an act of

imitation or mimicking their European colonizers. It was also a way for them to increase

social standing within the slave community. Nevertheless, the number of slave women

who had access to European style dresses were very few. The visitor and later resident,

J. Stewart pointed out that:

All who can afford it appear in very gay apparel...the women in white or fancy muslin gowns, beaver or silk hats and a variety of expensive jewelry. But only a small portion can afford to dress this finely...but all of them who can afford to buy a finer dress, seldom appear, excepting when at work, in the coarse habiliments given them by their masters.®”*

Many white women in Jamaica during this period ordered most of their dresses directly from British manufacturers in London, especially evening dresses and elaborate gowns for special occasions such as the Governor’s dinner and ball held at the governor’s residence. King’s House, in Spanish Town. Lady Nugent received several cargoes of

European clothes including French designs directly fi-om London.®® Only a few women such as coloreds or mulattos who had financial support from white men were able to order

149 goods in this manner. Others relied on their innovative skills by copying the British

dresses of their white mistresses. However, this was not always easy. Only a limited

number of ready-made European clothes and refined fabrics were available for retail

purchase locally and such items were often too expensive or unsuitable for the hot

weather. The majority of slave women managed on what was provided for them by their

owners. However, after 1838 this all changed.

Women’s Education for Accommodation

In post-Emancipation nineteenth century Jamaican society beauty was worshipped

and defined by the colonial state, which stressed idealized images of European

attractiveness and urged common citizens to conform to them. The London dresses worn

by white women in Jamaica established the acceptable trends in beauty and attractiveness,

while colonial newspapers with their European fashion advertisements enticed the literate

members of the servile population to conform. In addition, missionaries developed

schools that promoted European concepts of feminine beauty as part of their policy of

Europeanization.

Missionaries considered these schools to be the final triumph of civilization,

instruments necessary to spread morality and Christianity. Education of slaves and freed

persons in Jamaica was neglected by the ruling planter class. Before emancipation

education of slaves was opposed and discouraged by the planters on the grounds that it would make slaves unfit for labor and more likely to revolt. They followed the policy of keeping slaves servile through illiteracy. Moreover, any attempts at establishing a public

150 educational system suffered from the fact that anyone with some means sent their children to Britain for all but the most elementary education. Therefore, the staggering task of prowding basic education for the freed population was left to the Baptists, Methodists,

Wesleyans, Moravians, and others who were most active as missionaries among the slaves.

A few schools were established through the assistance of the London Missionary

Societies, trust funds left by wealthy Europeans and some British government grants that were given directly to the missionaries. In 1841 there were 186 day schools for children,

100 sabbath schools, and 20 or 30 evening schools primarily for adults. Of the day schools, 25 were established by the Wesleyans and 61 by the Baptists. Curricula as left to the missionary organizations emphasized not only religious instruction but also deportment and dress according to European customs. These schools did little to meet the educational needs of the entire population.^®

Meanwhile, middle class Afro-Jamaicans who could afford it sent their children to

England for education. Some of those who sent their children off to Europe later found themselves unable to continue the payments for this type of educational service. Girls, however, were more often educated at home than boys. In a few families governesses were kept; in others, reading, writing and deportment were taught by some domestic arrangement. European music and dancing were also encouraged as part of a young lady’s education.®’

Children of working class Afro-Jamaicans who were fortunate enough to get into one of the few missionary schools such as the Saint Catherine’s Ragged Schools, received used European clothing, while girls were often taught British techniques in sewing and

151 needle work.®* Some young ladies of this class were encouraged to join self-help projects to learn sewing skills. In 1879, Lady Musgrave, wife o f the Governor of Jamaica, established the Women’s Self-Help Society, a leisure activity for elite white women to teach freed women needle work, appropriate dress and decorum, as well as Victorian dressmaking skills. The Self-Help Society both influenced freed women’s dress and encouraged them to conform to British cultural standards. The society provided basic skills that enabled some women to gain employment as seamstresses, a skill that was becoming increasingly redundant. The main aim of the society was to foster virtuous and moral young women who would in turn uplift the freed population as Fanon states, out of the “pit of niggerhood.” Such patronage and matemalistic attitudes of white women were based on their own racist conditioning and a firm belief in British cultural, racial and religious superiority, enforced upon their “inferiors” by appropriate educational efforts.®^

Women of all classes sought education because no one wanted to be stigmatized for ignorance. In schools they were taught European dress norms.

Dress As Accommodation After Post-Emancipation

Economic changes after emancipation were rapidly transforming the social fabric of Jamaican society. Large numbers of women evicted from estates migrated to urban centers. The disappearance of many sugar estates and the introduction of wage labor, plus increased urbanization, all contributed to the emergence of a consumer society and a vibrant middle class who demanded more material possessions. This group also wanted

152 greater access to British goods such as clothing. The visitor W. P. Livingstone revealed that as a consequence of this demand:

There was [sic] now springing up everywhere stores stocked with the common necessaries of life. Many provincial merchants began to import their own goods and to open up small branches wherever the opportunity occurred. This process went on until the entire country was dotted over with sources of supply.™

As in Britain earlier, Jamaica began to experience its own commercialization of fashion, and many freed persons, both men and women, regardless of their class, became more fascinated with European dress. For these consumers dress became a major pastime in

Jamaican society. Livingstone explained further:

These facilities [shops] were leading them [freedpersons]; unconsciously into higher habits. Their supreme desire was to appear well in the eyes of their superior classes, and they were thus tempted to spend a large part of their money on dress.’’

Livingstone recalled that the emancipated persons were so consumed with buying clothes that, “dress is at present their chief social passion.”™ The commercialization of fashion provided freedpersons with more access to European clothes, especially ready-made garments as well as more diverse styles.

One of the most interesting phenomena of the early post-emancipation era was that many urban and middle-class women began to embrace European styles o f dressing and the Victorian concept of feminine beauty. Accommodation to European cultural characteristics in dress was not new, rather as seen earlier, this also occurred during slavery. But what was different after emancipation was the large number of women, far

153 more than before, who chose to accommodate. Livingstone described a spending spree by

freedpersons aimed at fulfilling their supreme desire to appear well in the eyes of whites.

The ultimate definition of beauty was based on European values, thus those who

accommodated attempted to become “presentable” within colonial society. If land was

inaccessible to many, at least clothing served as a tangible that could improve status

(spending on education, which also became popular had the same effect).

By the 1840s many freedpersons had abandoned the old plantation ways of

dressing. An analysis of James M. Phillippo’s illustrations of 1843 depicting women of the

period reveals that the Oznaburgh or check linen “pull-skirt” and other garments were

replaced. The freedwoman’s dress now featured a full skirt long enough to hide their feet

and held out by numerous petticoats. As in Britain, bonnets were now popular which hid

the face except from a frontal view while the neck was covered by a veil attached to the

bonnet, large shawls covered the shoulders when outdoors, and gloves covered the hands

to keep off the sun (see Fig. 4.7).’^

Emancipation had increased Eurocentricism and the new social order incorporated

white hegemonic values. The more European one looked, the more “civilized” one

became. As Rex Nettleford points out, “Eurocentricism placed everything European in a

place of eminence, and things indigenous or of Afiican origin in a lesser place.”’'* As a

result, many of these African characteristics in dress such as the African woman’s

headwrap, dyed fabrics, and beads or necklaces made from shells and corals were now

abandoned. Freedwomen who wanted to be socially acceptable and “civilized” adopted

European- style clothes. A few women even took further measures so they could look as

154 TA"./

Illustration by author, based on Phillippo’s descriptions and drawings.

Figure 4.7: Dress of Jamaican freed elite and mulatto women, c. 1840s

155 white as possible or “pass” as white by straightening their hair and even bleaching their

skin.’^

A detailed example of dress as accommodation to British cultural standards is the

illustration of Betty from Port Royal by an unknown artist (see Fig. 4.8).’® The picture’s

setting appears to be the garrison at Port Royal since soldiers carrying rifles are in the

background. Betty is beautifully and elaborately dressed in an ensemble consisting of a

shawl, gloves, jeweliy and handkerchief, with ribbons in her hair, which has been neatly

pulled back (possibly straightened). Her dress captivates interest; it mirrors the British

fashion of the late 1850s. The neckline is cut low in front, while her small “v” shaped

waist implies a tight corset beneath. Despite her uncomfortably constricted waist, Betty

appears quite poised. Her almost perfect bell shaped skirt with its very wide width

suggests that she is wearing the collapsible steel-cage hoop which was invented in 1856.

Such a skirt, as was customary in Britain, required several underlayers of heavily starched

petticoats called crinoline for extra flounce. Betty’s dress is important because it reflects

her social standing within the community. The grandeur of her dress compared with those

of the washerwoman in the background implies that Betty was a woman of wealth and leisure and reflects her accommodation to the Victorian concept of feminine beauty. The absence of Betty’s last name is also interesting. Slaves and servants were referred to only by their first names so this may be a putdown by the (European) artist; ‘she may be grand but she’s only colored Betty.’ By contrast, white women at this time were referred to by their title and last names (Mrs. William T. Armbruster, for example) or by madam; to do otherwise would have been unforgivable.

156 Illustrator unknown. Courtesy of the National Library of Jamaica.

Figure 4.8: Betty of Port Royal

157 Women like Betty of Port Royal who accommodated to European style clothing

were sometimes wewed by whites as “improved” and “civilized”. James Phillippo, for

example, echoed these sentiments when he described these women as a group during the

early emancipation era. He stated;

Relieved from those proscriptions by which they had been enthralled and bowed down, they as a body immediately began to advance in the scale of civilization... In their houses, dress, personal appearance (complexion excepted), general deportment...[they] are on an equality with the most respectable of whites.’’

Phillippo not only believed that these women came one step closer to being civilized

because of their dress, but he also compared them to his white contemporaries. He

suggested that this change was good, and went further to add;

As an evidence of the improvement which has taken place, the decencies of society are no longer outraged by insufficient and filthy apparel...in every respect [they are] as good as that worn by persons of the same class during the summer in England.’*

The above statements by Phillippo were perhaps meant to be a compliment to those

freedwomen who accommodated. However, Phillippo’s views only reflected his own biases. For instance, by using white values or standards to equate and to measure the level

of civilization among freedpersons he basically discredited and dismissed the rich legacy of

African culture in Jamaican society. His views illuminate a sad truth for those persons who chose to be part of the new “civilized” Jamaica, that they must reject their past and adopt an alien white culture.

158 However, not all women accommodated for the same reasons. Some wanted to be

seen as “civilized” and thus equal to their white colonizers. Others saw accommodation as

a means of “uplifting” themselves within the colonial structure, and in the process creating

their own privileged space in a society that had long exploited and denied them basic

rights. Whether as slaves or as freed people, Affo-Jamaican women and men were both

marginalized in that their ideas, beliefs and culture were dismissed and the values of the

privileged white planter class were celebrated. The constant attack on African heritage,

beauty and intelligence gave rise to negative self-images. Stereotypes of Affo-Jamaicari

people included characteristics such as lazy, worthless, unreliable and backward.’® As a

consequence, many women sought methods to elevate their position in society and in the

process receive some type of validation for themselves and their race. The “negation” of

“Africanness” encouraged large numbers of ex-slaves, especially the middle class to

accommodate to British standards and attributes. However, accommodation was not

merely an attempt to elevate the freed race out of the pit of “niggerhood”, it also

provided the opportunity for freedpersons to experience the “Other”, a bit of “whiteness”,

and to show that they too could be beautiful. Furthermore, it could be argued that since

expressions of wealth and status like elaborate houses or land were denied to most

fi-eedpersons, the more accessible mode of dress became that much more important.

For the middle class, skin color, class, money and dress were status symbols.

Since skin color, dress and even hair texture were of social importance, some women took the extra steps of “correcting” their African features into a more European mode by

creaming or straightening their hair and bleaching their skin. In this way a woman could

159 not only increase her social standing but also make herself more attractive for a potential

suitor. A ffeedman, meanwhile, often tried to marry a woman of more European

appearance than himself in order to “raise” the status of his family and in the process

advance socially.*® This middle-class obsession with social standing was their way of making themselves part of “society”. As E. Franklin Frazier explains, “Society [status] is a phase of the world of make-believe which represents in an acute form the Negro’s long preoccupation with social life as an escape for his [or her]subordinate status.”*' The world of make-believe was a place where one pretended to be the “other”—in this case

European or white. Freedpersons who accommodated hoped for affirmation in the dominant culture and the possibilities o f material and mainstream success.

Dress as resistance and accommodation were not separate entities or polar opposites. Rather, they melded into each other in that some women saw accommodation or adaptation of European cultural standards not as a desire to be like whites, but as resistance in itself, because to accommodate was a political act which marked them as not slaves. Many did not want to be seen as still slaves-a downtrodden, subordinate class. As a consequence, some freedpersons sought to rid themselves of all the negative representations associated with them during slavery. They were now free people no longer in chains and wanted to share in the same rights and privileges of their white colonizers. Cornel West summarizes this point nicely;

Europeanization was their way to resist misrepresentation and caricature of the terms set by uncontested, non-black norms and models, and [to] fight for self-representation and recognition.*^

1 6 0 Freedwomen were not the only ones who sought self-representation and recognition. Freedmen also used dress to accommodate to European standards, according to Livingstone. He said, “The men wear ordinary English attire, even sometimes the top hat and frock coat.”*^ In addition, an examination of several of Adolph Duperly’s prints and lithographs done in 1844 of urban life styles such as, “View of King Street” depicts freedmen dressed in the finest of British attire (see Fig. 4.9).*'*

By the 1850s through the 1880s accommodation was so widespread that it changed the physical appearance of many urban centers in Jamaica. While the middle- class mulatto and elite women’s dresses reflected a lifestyle of leisure and social standing, laboring women such as higglers, traders and domestic servants made a clear distinction between working clothes and Sunday best. Phillippo remarked that the very best clothes among this group of women are worn on “The Sabbath [Sunday], at funerals, as at meetings of friendship and during public holidays.”*^ Meanwhile, during the day or work these women:

Tie a handkerchief round their hips, and draw their skirts through it thus forming a furbelow round their waists...and they step out in a style which would gladden the heart of the most exacting drill sergeant.*®

There were also specific uniforms prescribed for servants of particular categories, which were usually supplied by employers. Coachmen for instance who worked for elites wore tall boots, white tight breeches, a long black coat, a top hat and gloves. Day laborers however, wore a Jippi-Jappa hat and coarse blue dungarees with large patch pockets called “Shall I’ or “Old Iron”. Whiskers and beards were also an important feature of

161 Illustration by Adolphe Duperly. Note the European - influenced dress styles, especially those worn by the three individuals to the right of the picture. Courtesy of the National Library of Jamaica.

Figure 4.9: View of King Street, c. 1844 men’s appearance; they were heavily groomed and mustaches waxed. Solicitors and

tradesmen wore morning coats, waistcoats and derby hats. Even in sports dress played a

major role. The game of cricket for instance, required white shirt and white pants. Such

appropriate dress enhanced the image of the perfect gentleman in Jamaican colonized

society.*^

Many aspects of urban society in Jamaica had taken on a strong British flare; to

complement the physical appearance many also acquired an exaggerated Oxford accent,

pompous speech and mannerisms.*® The emphasis on dress, especially among the middle

class and elites was taken so seriously that some men wore jackets and tails, while the

women wore evening gowns for all formal occasions, dining situations, and society balls.

But no other event reflected this rapid transformation in Jamaican society more than the

Royal Jubilee celebrations to commemorate the coronation of the British monarch. Queen

Victoria.

At such events, especially balls held at the governor’s residence, King’s House,

Affo-Jamaican women and men wore their finest European outfits. The center of

attention at these functions was the Governor, the Queen’s representative, who was

dressed in his imperial uniform. These events were attended by whites, mulattos and

privileged Affo-Jamaicans and were centers of imperial display, where men had to wear

full evening dress with starched shirts and standing collars, white waistcoats and tails.

Women wore the latest British fashions direct from London. Women were able to exercise more choice in colors, textiles and design as long as they kept to models appropriate for the occasion. Such settings were in fact characterized by pomp and

163 plumage where women were ultra-feminine and the men ultra-masculine in their form of

dress.

Imperial domination with its policy of divide and rule was full of spectacles, rituals

and mass ceremonies that both displayed the authority of the British and yet subtly

incorporated those subordinates who were Europeanized enough to be part of such

cultural display. Imperial rule developed a culture that not only included these special

ceremonies, but also patterns of discipline and order, best displayed by appropriate dress.

Elaborate dress became a significant way of displaying authority in colonies. In 1887, for

instance, at the opening of Jubilee Market in Kingston, the governor appeared in his

Windsor uniform which distinguished him from all others present. Many of the gentlemen wore their navy and army uniforms while others wore sashes, and aprons trimmed with gold lace to reflect their affiliation with specific social orders and clubs.®” The symbolism of dress served to maintain social exclusiveness by visibly reflecting distinctions of rank and positions. Moreover, the uniforms and appropriate dress at these gatherings served as a reminder of British rule and emphasized British supremacy.

Some Afro-Jamaican women syncretized African cultural characteristics in their dress with European, continuing the creative process as during slavery. The African woman’s headwrap remained an integral part o f many lower middle-class and urban working class women’s dress. Phillippo made note of this synthesis of European and

African elements in dress:

164 The dress of the women generally consists of a printed or white handkerchief tied in a turban-like manner round their heads and a neat straw hat trimmed with white ribbon; while some especially the young women wear straw bonnets and white muslin dresses/'

A close look at Adolph Duperty’s lithographs of various street scenes done in 1844

reflects this. In the print titled, “A View of King Street” (Fig. 4.9) some of the women are

depicted wearing ankle length skirts without numerous petticoats, a shawl over their

shoulders somewhat in the manner of European working class women, and the headwrap.

Others complemented this outfit with a straw hat over their headwrap as was done

sometimes during the days of plantation slavery. In two other prints, “A View of The

Kingston Church,” (Fig. 4.10)^^ and “A View of The Kingston Theatre,” women wearing

headwraps can be seen mingling side by side with other women dressed in the latest

British styles (see Fig. 4.11).®^

This synthesis of cultures was a carryover Ifom slavery days and was a product of

the process of creolization, the creation of a local or Creole culture reflected in dress. It

had class-coded content; in general, the higher the social aspirations the fewer the African

elements in dress. Edward Brathwaite argued that the combination of European and

African qualities to create a new culture was a way of seeing the society not in terms of

white and African, master and slave, or as separate nuclear units, but as contributing parts

of a whole. According to Brathwaite the estrangement between the white elites, middle

class and the mass of Jamaican people during slavery made it difficult for Creole culture to be absorbed by the higher classes and therefore never gained dominance.^"' Edouard

Glissant agrees and further states that creolization does not mean mere suspension or lack

165 Illustration by Adolphe Duperly. Courtesy of the National Library of Jamaica.

Figure 4.10: View of Kingston Church, c. 1844 Illustration by Adolphe Duperly. Courtesy of the National Library of Jamaica.

Figure 4.11 : View of Kingston Theatre, c. 1844 of belonging; in fact it is a process that has unpredictable results. However, what is more

important, according to Glissant, is that this process was a way for the subordinate to

survive and try and maintain their identity in the face of cultural alienation imposed by the

oppressor.®^ Such was the case of those women who wore this “Creole dress”. Their

dress was symbolic of their bridging or hybridizing the various cultures; they refused to let

go of their African heritage. This syncretic or selective appropriation of African and

European styles in dress by Affo-Jamaican women was a reflection of their devotion to an

African heritage and simultaneously a desire to be part of the new “civilized” Jamaica.

Emancipation encouraged ffeedpersons to choose or to “position” themselves within the society dominated by white values. Such positioning both shaped and determined the survival and success o f individuals. Positioning may include holding onto those cultural characteristics that are rooted in slavery, poverty or Africa, or it may consist of adapting, embracing or accommodating European cultural beliefs and norms.

However, as Cornel West suggests, for some there was a middle road, or point along this line of positioning that included; “Selective appropriation, incorporation and re articulation of European ideologies, cultures and institutions alongside an African heritage.”®^

The desire of many ffeedwomen to accommodate to European standards in dress at first led to a surge in the number of seamstresses in urban areas. Seamstresses during slavery were elite slaves who were highly valued for their skills both in the great house and within the slave community. The status and prestige of seamstresses within post-

Emancipation society changed drastically. Seamstresses and needle workers who flocked

168 to urban centers after Emancipation sought opportunities other than agricultural wage labor. Some used their skills to establish independent businesses, while others became domestic workers. These women became members of the respectable lower middle class, but their status was greatly undermined by their growing poverty.®* The Reverend

Edmondson of Kingston in a letter to Mr. Austin at the Colonial office dated 20 April,

1865, expressed concern over the plight of seamstresses. He wrote;

There is another class whose circumstances should be represented...and have not a friend who can afford them help...Hundreds of females in this city avoid other parishes are obliged to eke out a miserable existence by sewing, and of this very little can be obtained even at low rates of remuneration. This is well known to those [who] occasionally visit them in their homes, habitually miss them in places of public worship and witness the eagerness to obtain employment when offered by public institutions.®®

Douglas Hall further added that their wages were extremely unstable and sporadic and substantial only during the holidays.'®® The oversupply of labor due to the large number of women who swelled this profession, combined with an erosion of competition and a limited clientele all contributed to small wages. The number of seamstresses, for example, had increased from 14,565 in 1871 to 18,966 by 1891.'®'

But there was yet another factor that impacted the lives of seamstresses. The

Reverend Edmondson further explained:

The importation on a larger scale of ready made clothing, the introduction of the sewing machine, and the contracted income of better circumstanced families militate seriously against the comforts of this class.'®^

169 Despite the hardships the introduction of the sewing machine and ready-made clothes, seamstresses continued to produce excellent work and were praised for their sewing skills.

Miss B Pullen-Burry, a resident of Jamaica remarked that the dressmakers [seamstresses] were very smart and “excellent copyists and clever machinists.”**’^ She further stated;

Provided they have a good pattern they will turn out a well made skirt for about six shillings and a blouse for a little less. Many people coming out from England employ them and there is this to be said in their favour, they do not keep you waiting long for your dresses, but generally send them back to you in two or three days.

Many seamstresses kept track of the latest styles in London and produced similar styles for their local clientele. It was also this sector of highly skilled women who first developed home-based businesses and then later worked in the textile manufacturing industry.

Working Class Women and Dress

While most upper and middle class women were busy imitating British culture, the mass of Jamaicans who were peasants (including laborers, domestic servants and road builders) lived in a world of poverty. It was primarily among this class that Affo-Jamaican religions were kept alive and African characteristics in dress were maintained. In the fields and on the few surviving estates, unlike the urban areas, Oznaburgh continued in some places as the popular dress. In other situations it was replaced with cotton, but the “pull skirt” and the headwrap continued as the main dress of the peasant and laboring class women (see Fig. 4.12).**’® Livingstone recognized this distinction between urban and rural

170 Illustration by author, based on Phillippo’s descriptions and drawings.

Figure 4.12: Peasant woman - a trader in working dress, c. 1840s

171 dress. He said, “In the field their dress was of ordinary material, Osnaburgh or white drill

and caps in the case of the men, printed cottons and bandannas in the case of women.”'*”

Like some of their urban sisters these women also reserved their best dress, usually a white frock, for Sunday church services and special events. Missionaries often encouraged the members of their congregation, especially women to avoid bright colors and to wear white clothing to church and religious events as a symbol of their devotion and piety. For instance, on the eve of emancipation at the religious service in Fairfield, the superintendent recalled, “About 1,800 negroes, clad in white, stood in the ranks, in the greatest order and silence imaginable, such a sight I had never before witnessed in the open air.” Livingstone remarked that, “On Sundays the majority appear in white, relieved by colored ribbons or sash, or a spray of flowers.” Many slaves and freed persons found white appealing because of its close association with Afiican religions. Among the

Asante for example, white represented innocence and rejoicing. White clothing was also a main feature of Affo-Jamaican religions. For some women, wearing white dress allowed them to move freely between the established church and the Affo-Jamaican religions without detection. In contemporary Jamaica, white dress continues to be a common feature within religious circles. In addition, shoes were rarely worn by the members of the lower classes except on special occasions such as funerals, weddings and religious services. Shoes were also worn to complement their “Sunday best” outfit or dress. (See

Fig. 4.13).'*”

The emphasis on “Sunday best” for religious services and special events has its roots in Affica. For instance, among the Yoruba and Asante ritual dress, whether for

172 Illustration by author, based on Phillippo’s description and drawings.

Figure 4.13: Peasant woman in Sunday best. c. 1840s

173 religious or initiation rites was considered the most important dress. This required the

individual to look their best by wearing the finest woven cloth available with the right

colors and accessories appropriate for the occasion. The importance of ritual dress was

maintained by those Afiicans brought to the “new world” and their descendants, who

eventually integrated it into the Afro-American religious experience."® Since Anglican

Church dress was also formal in the British tradition, these customs were easily

syncretized.

The disparity between the peasant and laboring class dress from that of the middle

and upper classes was very great. In the photograph, “Task Workers Breaking Stone”,

(see Fig. 4.14)'" a group of laborers, mostly women, are depicted breaking stones by the

roadside to be used in road construction, observed by a white woman. The dress of the

white woman contrasts sharply with the dress of the women laborers. They are wearing

the “pull skirt” and headwrap, while she is dressed in a popular Victorian style dress o f the

1880s with cross-wise draperies extending from the waist to the knee. The stylized dress

along with the white woman’s juxtaposition within the scene both differentiates her from the workers and signals her status as a member of the elite.

Peasant women who were market traders also wore the “pull skirt” and headwrap.

Once crops were harvested, women traveled for miles either by foot or by donkey to the

nearest market to sell their produces. Goods for sale were often carried as a headload balanced with the aid of a headwrap and a cotta. The headwrap of the period among lower class women was usually made from red check cotton commonly called a bandanna. This cotton was Madras cloth, an Indian fabric popularized by Indian

174 LA

The group of laborers consist primarily of women. Two of the women (standing and seated in the forefront) are wearing the ‘pull skirt’. The laborers are without shoes as was customary during slavery while at work. (Photographer and white subject unknown). Courtesy of the National Library of Jamaica.

Figure 4.14: Task Workers breaking stone by a roadside, c. 1880s indentured laborers in Jamaica, and later adopted by many freedwomen. In contemporary

Jamaica the bandanna is the national fabric and is used in national costumes and even some

people’s dress. Unlike during slavery where headwraps varied in styles, in post-

Emancipation Jamaica bandaimas were both common and similar in style among peasant

or laboring class women. A close examination of several early photographs of peasant

women reveals this (see Figs. 4.15, 4.16, and 4.17)."^

This feature was a fashion trend that peasant women found most appealing and

adopted it. The bandanna became a uniform marker that identified these women as traders

and laborers. The bandanna headwrap involved folding a squared shape piece of cloth into

a triangular shape and then placing the cloth over the head in such a manner that the knots

were now tied to the back, sometimes with a bow and left in place at the back of the head.

Women also continued to wear elaborate headwraps for special occasions, especially at

Afro-Jamaican religious services. In Kumina and Pocamania, for example, headwraps

were worn by both men and women and reflected the individual’s status and role within

the cult."^

In the market place, peasant women who were traders wore in addition to their

“pull skirt” and bandanna, a “bib”. This was a long apron consisting of two pockets for

holding coins during trading, similar to the “cover cloths” worn by East and West Afiican

women over their skirts. One pocket was reserved for silver coins and the other for

copper coins. Paper money was either placed in the woman’s headwrap or in a small

money bag called a “tred bag” and then tucked into the trader’s bosom.**"* Contemporary

West African market traders often keep their money secured in a piece of cloth tucked

176 Peasant women on the way to market. Note the loads on the women’s heads and how relaxed they seem as they walk to market. These women are also wearing the popular bandanna while two of them are dressed in the ‘pull skirt’. The women are also without shoes, (photographer unknown). Courtesy of the National Library of Jamaica.

Figure 4.15: Peasant women on the way to market, c. 1880 OP

Peasant women on the way to market. Note that most are wearing a bandanna and two are wearing the ‘pull skirt’. The women are also without shoes as was customary during slavery. (Photographer unknown). Courtesy of the National Library of Jamaica.

Figure 4.16: Peasant women on the road to market, c. 1880s Peasant woman with basket on her head. Note the headwrap’s unique style. This type of headdress was popular among traders and was also called a bandanna. The scarf used to wrap the head is that of madras cloth. (Subject and photographer unknown). Courtesy of the National Library of Jamaica.

Figure 4.17: Jamaican Market Woman with basket, c. 1880s

179 into their bosom. For many of these women the market place was their world and, like

women in West Africa, they dominated the market as traders."^

While mulatto women and elite white women in towns pursued a lifestyle of

leisure, peasant women led a life of strenuous activities. In March of 1872, Rob Morris of

Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, said that:

The little work which is accomplished is done mostly by the women. Barefooted and bare-armed, with their frocks wrapped in a roll round their bodies [pull skirt], and their heads tied in the handkerchief usually worn by both sexes, they toil from morning till night at the severest labor, and never seem to repine at their lot. They may oAen be seen carrying head loads of fruits or vegetables to market, while the men ride after them on otherwise unburdened mules. I saw a dozen black and brown women mending the carriage road...and, besides their ability as road-makers, they are excellent hands at coaling ship."®

The author indirectly chastised the men for not doing more but this type of women’s

activity as laborers was not unique to post-Emancipation Jamaica. During slavery women

made up a large segment of the plantation work force and they toiled side by side with

slave men doing the same types of work."’ Jamaican women’s success as hard working

laborers is also part of a long history that reached beyond Jamaica to the shores of Afnca.

In various African societies women did most of the agricultural labor and were highly valued for their productive capabilities."*

Although peasants’ style of dressing had not changed much since slavery, their

physical appearance was considered good. Commenting on the conditions of this class six years after Emancipation, Sir Charles Metcalfe, Governor of Jamaica, stated in 1842 that,

“Their behavior was peaceable and in some respects cheerful. They were found to attend

180 divine services in good clothes...”"'’ This construction of the ffeedwoman unthreatening to whites included her accommodation to British standards of beauty. Some women who were of “humble sphere” sought to imitate their white “superiors”, because they wanted to increase their social standing. Livingstone stated that several “Imitated the ladies of the upper classes” and that, “During the Christmas season gay costumes are common,” while

“More money is spent on the adornment of the person than in the gratification of the appetite.” Meanwhile the Honorable S. Mais of Port Royal went further to add;

Upon a Sunday it is a matter of great astonishment to see those in a very humble sphere of life closely imitating their superiors. Domestic servants in particular stint themselves of necessary food and clothing for the gratification of a flimsy fashionable extension.'^'

These women realized that to progress within the new social order meant assimilating some European cultural characteristics. As Fanon aptly explained:

The colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country’s cultural standards. He [or she] becomes whiter as he renounces his blackness.

To be elevated above their “jungle status” they had to be fashionable, even if it meant wearing some “flimsy fashionable extension” as Mais stated. For these women, accommodation provided the opportunity to escape their poverty and subordinate position temporarily. Roach-Higgins and Richer argue that dress confers identities on individuals as it communicates positions within social structures. However, these identities are not always easily recognizable. For instance, if a laboring or peasant class woman should

181 wear a “nice” dress outside her familiar circles, then among strangers she may be

perceived as upper class. In this manner, dress functioned as a mask that shields the

identity of the wearer and at the same time deceived the observer.

Working class women regularly stinted themselves of necessary food and basic

clothing to purchase expensive fashionable dress, a reflection of how important

appearance was for them to enhance their social status. The old Jamaican proverb,

“Brown man wife nyam cockroach a comer, fe save money fe buy silk dress” illustrates

how far some freedwomen went to accommodate. Several women chose not to eat or

they resorted to “nyam cockroach” (eat roach) and thus saved their food money to buy

clothes (silk dress). The proverb also implies that there were some women who starved

from lack of food because what little money they received was needed to clothe

themselves, an experience shared by many contemporary women in poor communities.

Nice clothes were also necessary to secure decent employment.'^**

But for many people accommodation to British style clothing was restricted by

affordability. By the 1860s the social conditions of lower class women were worse and their ability to accommodate became increasingly difficult. Jamaica was thrust into a deep

economic depression culminating in a major rebellion in 1865. The already struggling

sugar industry was further weakened by the Sugar Duties Act of 1846 and major price falls in Britain. Prices of sugar excluding duty fell from 26/10 per hundred weight in I860 to 23/5 in 1861 and continued to fall for the next two years.Further, the U. S. Civil

War affected the textile trade and hampered the flow of supplies from Cuba. Wages fell while the increased inflow of indentured laborers led to a reduction in estate jobs offered

182 to local people. The situation worsened when in May and June of 1864 the annual spring rains were heavier than usual, resulting in floods that damaged crops, roads and bridges.

This calamity was followed by a severe drought; prices of provisions rose in almost every parish o f the island.

No other group of Jamaicans suffered as much from these catastrophic events as the peasant class did. Their inability to earn good wages or to afford the high prices of goods such as cloth and ready-made clothes greatly affected their physical appearance.

The situation among the lower class was so bad that several local ministers and magistrates expressed their concern over the plight of these people. In a letter dated 3

March, 1865, the Reverend M. Davidson informed his bishop that;

Laborers very commonly find great difficulty in providing themselves and their families with clothing...Their work-day rainment is often ragged and dirty...! am credibly informed that young persons are sometimes kept within doors for the want of clothes fit to appear in. Attendance at church and school has been unfavorably affected by this circumstance...’^’

The Honorable Rich Hall also echoed similar sentiment in his letter to the Colonial Office in 1865:

The cost of clothing is enhanced to more than double it was before the American War.. .Five years ago the Bale now imported at £97 was invoiced at £33. Common cotton prints are nearly trebled in cost by the yard... and Osnaburgh’s, a hempen fabric used [by] the old and the young has been increased in price from 4^ to 9’ ” *

183 So bad had things become for the Jamaican peasants that some people were unable to buy

clothes to cover themselves to the point where they went naked. This horrifying situation

was expressed by Mr. Justice Kremble who informed the Governor that;

[With] The present high prices of cotton goods, it is as far as my observation enables me to judge an exaggeration to say that vast numbers of the people have been reduced to such abject poverty as to have become ragged and even naked.

Despite economic hardships, not all Affo-Jamaican women suffered extremes.

Some women were still able to preserve their best clothes or “Sunday best”, for church,

while in urban areas the conditions of the poor may have been masked by the affluence of

the elite. The Honorable S. Mais of Port Royal explains this:

The peasantry attend [church] neatly, but not so gaily clad in the city of Kingston the large and well stocked drapery establishment, all apparently flourishing, certainly give an undeniable contradiction to the existence of poverty in the town, and in several districts of neighboring parishes...

Mais’ account highlights the vast difference between the urban and rural areas during the

depression. While the poorer classes struggled to clothe themselves, the city with its

urban elites apparently continued to flourish. Moreover, the “well stocked” drapery firms

during this period of economic crisis suggest that the demand for fabric and clothing items

remained high among the upper classes.

More typically, some women who could no longer afford fashionable dresses due to the economic hardships and high prices turned to their churches and the local missionaries for support in obtaining clothes. The Reverend Edward Bean Underhill, a missionary visitor to Jamaica pointed out: 184 Some [women] doubtless join the Church of England for avaricious motives. No contributions are required of them, and there is a frequent distribution of gifts and clothing ...Many of the youth especially young brown women will not attend church unless they are well dressed. When their clothes are faded or worn out, they absent themselves till again supplied.'^'

The distribution of clothing to poor freed persons was a charitable and humanitarian

activity undertaken by missionaries, as noted by Livingstone:

During the years of depression the missionaries instead of receiving offerings are compelled in sheer humanity to distribute money, food and clothing to many of their people.

However, Livingstone failed to recognize that the distribution of clothing by

missionaries was more than an act of charity. It provided the missionaries with the

opportunity to influence the Aflican aesthetics of the peasant woman’s dress and

simultaneously pursue Europeanization of the large peasant class. European missionaries

had long considered themselves the bearers of civilization and sought to spread it by

whatever means possible. The period of the 1860s in Jamaica experienced a major surge

in Revivalism which some people had hoped would crush the last remnants of African

heritage in Jamaica. The Church of England in Jamaica, especially under the leadership of

Bishop Enos Nuttal, revitalized the emphasis on Anglo-Saxon civilization and imperial rule

as positive elements.The distribution of European-style clothes became a vehicle to

promote European notions of feminine beauty and British standards in dress.

The “avaricious motives” mentioned by Underhill suggest indifference and perhaps unbelief among the recipients of missionary aid. Some may in fact have been greedy and

185 sought to “make the best” of a system that provided those less fortunate with the

opportunity to have nice clothes. However, among some ffeedpersons there was still a

mistrust of those churches with a history of alliance with the planter class during slavery,

such as the Church of England. The Reverend Underhill also remarked that many

ffeedpersons still remembered the cruel treatment under slavery; they also did not forget

that “a minister of one of the leading denominations, now holding an important position in the city, preached at the insurrection [in 1831] a vigorous sermon in defense of the Divine institution of slavery.” '^"* As bell hooks reminds us, “Memory sustains a spirit o f resistance;”"^ thus many Jamaicans continued to support Affo-Jamaican religions.

Missionary activity reflected militancy that failed to conquer the frontiers of Obeah,

Kumina and Bedwardism which remained popular among several sectors of Jamaican society.

However, many also felt that to embrace Christianity meant social progress, thus church-going was more an act of social respectability rather than a religious necessity."*'

Furthermore, the service and the church yard on a Sunday became a stage or a platform to display their “Sunday best”, while the latest European style dress allowed one to compete or even aspire to be the “fairest of them all .” “Sunday best” clothes made poverty invisible. One could lack decent housing, food or even healthcare and still be decently dressed. Even those Jamaicans with very low wages appeared or looked prosperous and thus able to transcend class. Fair skinned Jamaican women who considered themselves racially superior also desired the latest British fashions so that they too could “outdo”

Afro-Jamaican women in their dress. For many poor Jamaican women dressing up,

186 especially for church services/^® was more than a way to escape their poverty. It also made them feel good, provided some fun and stimulated a sense of self-worth and pride.

As one woman remarked when asked why she dressed up for church, “It mek me feel so good.”''"

The Failure of Accommodation as a Strategy for Social Mobility

Jamaican women who accommodated because it made them feel good or desired to uplift themselves in the colonial society soon realized that accommodation was problematic in that accommodation to British cultural traits in dress did not eradicate racial stereotyping of Afro-Jamaican women. This can be seen in Livingstone’s description of women’s dresses in the 1880s. He said:

In the matter of dress considerable progress soon became visible... their sense of harmony, however, was in its rudimentary stage, and the result was sometimes sufficiently bizarre. This was particularly the case on Sundays and holidays when they arrayed themselves in costumes which excited the ridicule of the whites, and earned for the fashion, the contemptuous designation of “monkey style.”''**’

Livingstone also stigmatized rural Affo-Jamaicans who aped European dress as having an

“inclination...towards monkey style.”"'*' But in the towns things were a bit different according to Livingstone, because, “the examples of the whites, many of whom had in self-defense assumed the quietest of costumes, was making an impression on the more intelligent negroes.”''*' Those who set the styles purposefully differentiated themselves from those they saw as their inferiors. Afro-Jamaican women, by virtue of their race, could never catch up. Their attempts to resist the images connected with slaveiy, and to

187 uplift themselves by means of dress and education beyond their “jungle status” could not succeed in overcoming the racist and stereotypical ideas long associated with them, and were used against them. It is the “rudimentary stage” and the “sufficiently bizarre” nature of their dress that racializes them as stupid, childish, or even monkey people, who lack grace and refined taste. Afiican use of color was foreign to European eyes and only the closest conformity to European dress was acceptable.

Livingstone acknowledged that women’s dress had changed and apparently for the better, irrespective of its “harmony.” However, he credited this development among freed persons to white influences, especially among the “intelligent negroes” in urban areas.

Livingstone, like so many of his contemporaries, reiterated the belief that Afro-Jamaicans cannot advance socially without some white assistance or help from outside their community. Women’s capabilities of adaptation, innovation and creativity in their dress were neither valued nor encouraged.

Nevertheless, perhaps the most striking observation Livingstone made was that some whites, including white women in “self-defense” [against Afro-Jamaicans] assumed the “quietest costume.” Freedwomen who accommodated became a threat to white women because they dressed “beyond” their boundaries. Within the colonial realm an individual’s security was based on conforming and knowing where he or she belonged as well as their distinction from among others in the society. Dress was both a marker of one’s status and reflected one’s social roles and the need for isolation from others. As

Kurt and Gladys Lang point out, “Where custom rules, and the society is clearly stratified, people learn how to dress, express themselves, behave, and think as befits their station.”''*'

188 Therefore, those freedwomen who broke the customary rules in dress disrupted the social

balance of society and threatened white privilege. This is important because the

preservation of white elitism and cultural dominance was based on the production of racist

ideology that freedwomen can never be “somebody.” On the other hand, for freedwomen

this was not only confusing, but it was a reflection of a schizoid colonial mentality. They

lived in a world that promoted Europeanization and yet they could never fully

Europeanize due to the color of their skin.

At the turn of the century, E. A. Hastings, a visitor to Jamaica, described those

women who accommodated in the following manner;

Next morning everyone turned out in their Sunday best. Big hulking negresses were attired in gorgeous silks and satins, and truly wonderful hats with broad brims and feathers, and ribbon...The wooly locks under all this fashionable headgear were pathetically ludicrous."*^

Afro-Jamaican women looked silly to him, “pathetically ludicrous”, because they were not dressed appropriately for their race. Despite the fashionable headgear, it was their “wooly locks” that made their outfits socially unacceptable. Accommodation to European culture and standards in dress did not always improve race relations. Nor did it guarantee acceptance by the dominant white culture. Instead, the races remained very much divided throughout Jamaican colonized society.

Conclusion

Early post-Emancipation Jamaica was a period of transition and Europeanization.

The romanticization of whiteness and the negation of Afncanness led large numbers of

189 Afro-Jamaican women to accommodate to British standards in dress. The diverse usage

of dress, whether for the purpose of resistance or accommodation, mirrored their

ingenuity, creativity and determination to survive in the diaspora. For some Afro-

Jamaicans survival meant accommodation to European culture and the ambition to

improve their status, as symbolized by their dress.

As slaves, many women had sought to subvert the colonial regime; then as freed

women they sought to carve a space for themselves in the new social order. Middle-class

Afro-Jamaican women used dress to reflect their degree or level of accommodation, while

others used dress to resist misrepresentation and to show that they too could be beautiful

as white women. Meanwhile, the peasants despite their limited resources, paraded in their

Sunday best, and through their appearance at times, were able to transcend the boundaries

of class. For instance, on one occasion a street vendor was overheard saying to a fiiend in

1891 that, “When a lick on me silk frock and fling me parasol over me shoulders and drop into Exhibition Ground, you will know wedder I is a lady or not.”*'*^

Accommodation to European custom in dress did not lead to social acceptance.

Nor did European dress, as a white mask, end racial stereotyping of freedwomen. In fact, those who accommodated became a type of “racial hybrid”, part African, part white, who were brought to the brink o f “civilization” but never fully inducted.Adopting European dress was a way for Afro-Jamaican women to “whiten” the race, to look white or

European and in the process avoid what Fanon called the “pit of niggerhood.” However, accommodation also revealed a harsh reality—that freedwomen and men could never be

European or white no matter how hard they tried to accommodate. As Langston Hughes

190 once stated, “This imitation of whites leads to an imitation life for blacks [African

descent], that can only be understood as limitation.”*'” This limitation was due to racism.

No matter how respectable in circumstances, character or even in dress, if a freedperson

entered the church pew of the lowest whites, he or she could be instantly ordered out.*'**

While in the hospitals, prisons and in the “grave-yards where it sleeps the last sleep,” racial

prejudice haunted its victims.*"® Racism had survived Emancipation and it continued to

impact the lives of all those of African descent. As the abolitionist missionary James

Phillippo exclaimed:

In whomsoever the least trace of an African origin could be discovered the curse of slavery pursued him [or her], and no advantages either of wealth, talent, virtue, education, or accomplishment, were sufficient to relieve him [or her] from the infamous proscriptions.*^®

Regardless of their European style dresses or any other British cultural characteristics that freedwomen chose to adopt, they could never transcend the racial boundaries. Instead, they were bound by racial prejudice, which haunted Afro-Jamaican women and men like a curse that continued throughout the colonial period and beyond in Jamaican society.

Freedpersons were not the equivalent of free persons, no matter how much they adopted the symbols of equality like dress.

191 ENDNOTES

* * This Jamaican proverb serves as a useful frame for my argument. It refers to women who chose to “stint” themselves of necessary food so they could save money to buy a nice dress.

^ See Frantz Fanon, Black Skin. White Masks. Trans. Charles Lam Markmann. (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1967).

' Ibid., p. 18.

‘‘ Susan Gubar, Race changes: White Skin. Black Face in American Culture. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 38.

^ Fanon, Black Skin. White Masks, p. 110.

' Ibid., p. 47.

’ Gubar, Race Changes, p. xxi.

* Harry C. Bredemeier and Jackson Toby, “Ideals of Beauty,’ in Dress, Adornment, and The Social Order, eds. Mary Ellen Roach and Joanne B. Eicher. (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1965), p. 34.

® Kurt Lang and Gladys Lang, “Fashion: Identification and Differentiation in the Mass Society,” in Dress Adornment and The Social Order, pp. 338-339.

Mary Ellen Roach and Joanne B. Eicher, “The Language of Personal Adornment,” in The Fabrics of Culture, p. 10.

Norris, Jamaica: The Search for an Identitv. pp. 9-13.

James M. Phillippo, Jamaica: Its Past and Present State (London: J. Snow, 1843), p. 150.

Paulette Kerr, “Jamaica Female lodging housekeepers in the Nineteenth Century,” The Jamaica Historical Review. Vol. XVIII, (1993). 7.

" Lewis, Journal of A West India, pp. 53-54.

192 Maria Nugent, Ladv Nugent’s Journal. Jamaica One Hundred and Thirty-Eight Years Ago, ed. Frank Cundall (3rd ed.) (London: West India Committee, 1939), p. 219.

Phillippo, Jamaica: Its Past and Present State, p. 150.

Williams, A Tour through the Island, p. 27.

** Norris, Jamaica: The Search for an Identitv. pp. 9-13.

Ibid., pp. 9-13.

Sheena Boa, “Urban Free Black and Coloured Women: Jamaica 1760-1834. The Jamaica Historical Review. Vol. XVIII, (1993):4.

Douglas Hall, Free Jamaica. 1838-1865. An Economic History. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), pp. 17-23.

Joan French and Honor Ford-Smith, Women. Work and Organization in Jamaica. 1900- 1944. (Sistren Research, Kingston: 1986), pp. 31-132.

“ Edward Bean Underhill, The West Indies: Their Social and Religious Condition (London: Jackson, Walford, and Hodder, 1862) pp. 188 and 230. See also Edgar M. Bacon and Eugene M. Aaron, The New Jamaica. (Kingston: Aston W. Gardner, 1890), p. 94.

Hall, Free Jamaica, pp. 232-234.

Philip D. Curtin, Two Jamaicas. In this text Curtin gives a detailed analysis of the social groups in Jamaican society.

“ Ibid., p. 24.

Joseph Williams (SJ), Whisperings of the Caribbean: Reflections of a Missionarv. (New York: Benziger, 1925), p. 282.

John Bigelow, Jamaica in 1850. (New York: George P. Putman, 1851), p. 144.

H.G. Delisser, “White Man in the Tropics”, Centurv Review. February 1900, NLJ, Jamaica Pamphlets.

Patrick Bryan, The Jamaica People 1880-1902. The Introduction, p. x.

193 Ibid., p. X.

Norris, Jamaica: The Search for an Identitv. pp. 9-15.

Neil McKendrick, John Brewer and J.H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society. (London: Europa Publications, 1982), pp. 11-3.

Ibid., pp. 94-95.

Ibid., p. 98.

^ Kathryn Weibel, Mirror Mirror: Images of Women Reflected in Popular Culture. (New York: Anchor, 1977), pp. 176-177. See also Fashioning the Future: Our Future from Our Past, pp. 12-24. Published in conjunction with the exhibition o f the same name held in the Snowden Gallery, April 1997, College o f Human Ecology, The Ohio State University. Both publication and exhibition provided great insight into the dress styles of the period of this study.

Weibel, Mirror Mirror, p. 178. I present various dress styles from the period of study. Illustrations done by myself based on Weibel’s descriptive account Art books from the period, and also the Ohio State University exhibition.

Ibid., p. 180.

Ibid., pp. 180-181.

^ Ibid., pp. 182-183. Weibel also discusses the impact of the steel-cage hoop on women's fashion.

Ibid., pp. 183-184.

Ibid.. p. 186.

Ibid.. p. 192

^ Beverly Lemire, Dress. Culture and Commerce. (New Yoiic: St. Martins Press, 1997), pp. 6-7.

Mary Ellen Roach, “The Social symbolism of Women's Dress", in Fabrics of Culture, p. 418.

^ Ibid, p. 418.

194 '*’ Helene E. Roberts, “Exquisite slave; The role of clothes in the making of the Victorian woman.” Signs vol. 2, no. 3 (Spring 1997), pp. 554-569.

Bryan Edwards, The History. Civil and Commercial, pp. 02-616. So much shoes were imported that they were calculated according to pounds instead of by number of pairs.

Beverly Lemire, Dress. Culture and Commerce, pp. 31-37.

Radner Coffee Plantation Journal. January 1822-February 1826. Manuscript Collection, 180. Institute of Jamaica/National Library of Jamaica (hereafter cited as MSS and NLJ).

Long, The Historv of Jamaica, vol. 2:280.

Senior, Jamaica As It Was, p. 29.

” Stewart, A View of the Past and Present State, p. 268.

A series of early illustrations of slave women’s dress depict this style. The “pull skirt” was also popular throughout the British colonies. See for example the following illustration and photograph; “St. Vincentian Villagers Merrymaldng” N/11578 (Fig. 3.4) (NLJ), also On The Way to Market N/11904, NLJ (Fig. 4.15). Working class women in Europe also wore shorter skirts for ease of movement.

Williams. A Tour Through the Island of Jamaica, p. 22.

Ibid., pp. 3-4.

” Theodore Foulks. Eighteen Months in Jamaica, p. 109.

Nugent. Ladv Nugent’s Journal. 21 October 1801, p. 48.

59 Quoted in Hall, In Miserable Siaverv. p. 285.

60 Nugent. Ladv Nugents Journal, see the introduction, p. xciii.

Senior, Jamaica As It Was. As It Is. p. 8.

See for example the Falmouth Post. March 8, 1836, Vol. II, No. 2. Advertisement of various European goods and clothing for sale.

195 Roval Gazette. (Kingston) November 1830-December 1831. See Saturday, 24 September 1831, 940.

^ Stewart, A View of the Past and Present State, p. 269.

See Lady Nugent’s Journal pp. 17-20, 34, 149, 174 and 239. Throughout the text there are several references of Lady Nugent receiving the ladies of the island for dinner and receptions. These functions were major gatherings of the island’s elites and socialites. Printed invitations informed guests of the appropriate dress for these functions.

Underhill, The West Indies: Their Social, pp. 295-297.

Gardner, A Historv of Jamaica, pp. 204-210.

Samuel J. Hurwitz and Edith F. Hurwitz, Jamaica: A Historical Portrait (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1971), pp. 121-133. See also Curtin, Two Jamaicas. pp. 56-57, and Underhill, The West Indies: Their Social, p. 296 and p. 440 (footnotes) about type of instruction and girls taught sewing. C.O. 137/390 December 1864, West Indies Colleciton, Mona U.W.I. for the Annual Report of The Saint Catherine’s Ragged Schools

Bryan, The Jamaican People, pp. 165, 205. See also Black, Historv of Jamaica, p. 225. Dailv Gleaner. 13 Janaury 1886, Women’s Self Help Society.”

™ W. P. Livingstone, Black Jamaica. A Studv in Evolution. (London: William Clowes and Sons, 1899), p. 106.

” Ibid., p. 106.

Ibid., p. 190.

Phillippo, Jamaica: Its Past and Present State, p. 151. See also Glory Robertson, “Pictorial Sources for Nineteenth Century Women’s History: Dress as a Mirror of Attitudes to Women.” in Engendering Historv. pp. 111-122. Phillippo gives a comprehensive analysis of women’s dress of the period based on his own observations. His work also includes sketches of black women’s dress based on his own travels throughout the island, figure 4.7 is my own interpretation of Phillippo’s accounts and illustrations.

Nettleford, Caribbean Cultural Identitv. p. 3.

Norris, Jamaica: The Search for An Identitv. p. 10.

196 Betty of Port Royal, N/15656, NLJ.

Phillippo, Jamaica: Its Past and Present State, p. 150.

78 Ibid., p. 230.

See Bush, Slave Women in Caribbbean Society, pp. 5, 9, 11-22 & 52-53. Bush discusses the stereotypes and negative images long associated with black women in the Caribbean and how it has impacted their lives.

Norris, Jamaica: The Search for An Identify, pp. 9-13.

E. Franklin Frazier, Black Bourgeoise. (Glencoe: The Falcon’s Wing, 1957), p. 25. See also bell hooks. Black Looks: Race and Representation. (Boston: South End, 1992), p. 17 for further discussion on quest for social upliAment and the negation of blackness Africanness.

^ Gomel West, “The New Cultural Politics of Difference”, in Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures, eds. Russell Ferguson, Martha Giver, Trinh T. Minh-ha and Cornel West, (Cambridge: MIT, 1990), p. 27.

^ Livingstone, Black Jamaica, p. 190.

^ Adolphe Duperly, Daeuerrian Excursions in Jamaica. Kingston, 1866, (NLJ) N/16796. Duperty’s collection focuses on urban scenes. His shots were taken on the spot with the daguerreotype and then lithographed under his direction by the most eminent artists in Paris. His collection was then published in Kingston, Jamaica in 1844.

Phillippo, Jamaica: Its Past and Present State, p. 231.

^ Quoted in Bryan, The Jamaican People. 1880-1902. p. 85.

*■' Ibid., pp. 85-86.

88Norris, Jamaica: The Search for an Identity, p. 10.

^ Helen Callaway, “Dressing for Dinner in the Bush”, in Dress and Identitv. pp. 195-207. Callaway gives an interesting account of the roles Imperial dress played in colonized societies.

Bryan, The Jamaican People. 1880-1902. pp. 85-86.

197 91 Phillippo, Jamaica: Its Past and present State, p. 230.

Adolphe Duperly, Daeuerian Excursion in Jamaica. (TvlLJ. “A View of King Street”. N/16796.

93 Ibid., “A View of Kingston Theatre”, N/16799.

Edward Brathwaite, The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica 1770-1820. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), pp. 306-311.

Edouard Glissant, “Creolization in the making of the Americas”, in Race. Discourse, and the Origin of the Americas: A New World View, eds. Vera Lawrence Hyatt and Rex Nettleford, (Washington: Smithsonian, 1995), pp. 269-275.

Gomel West, “The New Cultural Politics of Difference”, p. 27.

See Hall, In Miserable Siaverv. p. 170. For an example of how some slave women contributed to the earnings of their masters by sewing.

Hall, Free Jamaica, pp. 232-232.

^ Colonial Office. 137/391, 20 April 1865. West Indies Collection, Mona, University of The West Indies, (hereafter cited as CO. and U.W.I.)

Hall, Free Jamaica, p. 233.

Quoted in French and Ford-Smith, Women. Work and Organization, p. 145.

CO. 137/391 20 April 1865. West Indies Collection, Mona U.W.I.

B. Pullen-Burry, Jamaica As it is. 1903. (London: T. Fisher, 1903), p. 48. Pullen- Burry who was a famous writer of the period talks about Jamaica in 1903. Although this is beyond the period of this research, in her discussions on seamstresses she implies that the women of this profession have maintained a long tradition of excellence.

Ibid., p. 48

French and Ford-Smith, Women. Work and Organization, pp. 141-145. French and Ford-Smith discuss the development of seamstresses into a viable labor for textiles manufacturing.

198 This early photograph, “On the Way to Market”, (Fig. 4.15) was taken by an unknown photographer. However, it clearly shows the freed women dressed in the “pull skirt”. NLJ Collection, N /11904.

Livingstone, Black Jamaica, p. 53.

Ibid., p. 190. See also S.U. Hastings and B.L. Macleavy, Seed Time and Harvest: A brief Historv of The Moravian Church in Jamaica. 1754-1979 (Barbados: Cedar Pres, 1979), p. 55.

Phillippo, Jamaica: Its Past and Present State, p. 217. Illustration based on Livingstone’s and Phillippo’s descriptive accounts.

Drewal, “Pageantry and Power in Yoruba costuming”, pp. 190-192. See also McLeod, The Asante. pp. 143-154.

“Task Workers Breaking Stone” NLJ, N/3481. In the photograph the laborers consisting of mostly women are breaking stones to be used in road construction.

Figures 4.15, 4.16 and 4.17 NLJ Collection N/11904, N/6793, and N/16804. A close examination of the women’s headwraps reveal that the styles are all similar.

Joseph Graessle Moore. 1953 Religion of Jamaican Negroes: A Studv of Afro- Jamaican Acculturation. Phd. Dissertation, Northwestern University. Moore provides a descriptive account of ritual dress in Afro-Jamaican religions. He focuses on colors, elaborate headwraps and their significance within the cults.

Interview-Dr. Olive Lewin, 12 August, 1997 (Kingston). Dr. Lewin provided major insight into the role of market women as traders and the folk songs associated with these women. In addition, I observed that these methods of securing money have been maintained and are popular among contemporary market traders.

See for example, Claire Robertson, “Ga Women and Socioeconomic Change in Accra, Ghana’ in Women in Afnca. eds. Nancy Hafkin and Edna Bay (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), pp. 111-133, See Also Margaret Katzin, “The Business of Higglering in Jamaica”, in Social and Economic Studies (1960 9(3), pp. 197-331.

Rob Morris, “Negro Life in Jamaica”, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine. No. CCLXIL-March, 1872, Vol. XLIV, pp. 554.

Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society, pp. 33-40. Bush discusses plantation labor regimes and the economic role of slave women.

199 Claire C. Robertson and Martin A. Klein, “Women’s Importance in African Slave Systems” in Women and Siaverv in Afnca. eds. Claire C Robertson and Martin A. Klein (Madison; The University of Wisconsin Press, 1983) pp. 3-25.

Phillippo, Jamaica Its Past and Present State, p. 236.

Livingstone, Black Jamaica, pp. 190-191.

C.O. 137/391 June, 1865. West Indies Collection, Mona, U.W.I.

Fanon, Black Skin. White Masks, p. 19.

Roach-Higgins and Eicher, “Dress and Identity”, p. 13.

This type of activity was not restricted to one class, although it had severer implications for the poor. Many elite women often gave up “fattening” food so they could “control” their figures and thus fit into their corsets and the latest style dresses. Nor is this activity different from many contemporary societies where so many young girls of all classes such as in the U.S. who stop eating to the point of becoming anorexic so they can wear the “latest” fashion trends.

Quoted in Douglas Hall, Free Jamaica, p. 240.

Ibid., pp. 239-243.

C.O. 137/391 March, 1865. West Indies Collection, Mona, U.W.I.

C.O. 137/390 March, 1865. West Indies Collection, Mona, U.W.I.

C.O 137/391 June, 1865. West Indies Collection, Mona, U.W.I.

'^"C.O. 137/391 April, 1865. West Indies Collection, Mona, U.W.I.

Underhill, The West Indies: Their Social, p. 253.

Livingstone, Black Jamaica, p. 275.

200 Bryan, The Jamaican People, p. 60. Bryan examines Bishop Enos Nuttal’s Imperial policies and his notions of Anglo-Saxon civilization.

Underhill, The West Indies: Their Social, p. 193.

bell hooks, Black Looks, p. 136.

Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean, p. 156.

Michael Harrington, “The Best Dressed Poverty in Dress. Adornment, and the social Order, pp. 163-165.

Dressing up for Church, especially putting on one’s Sunday best is still very much a part of contemporary Jamaican society.

Conversation-Masie Walker, 4 August 1994 (Kingston).

Livingstone, Black Jamaica, p. 53.

'^‘ Ibid., p. 106.

'"^Ibid., p. 106.

Kurt Lang and Gladys Lang, “Fashion; Identification and Differentiation in the Mass Society” in Dress. Adornment and the Social Order, p. 339.

'‘‘‘’E. a . Hastings, A Glimpse of The Tropics. (London: 1900), pp. 241-242.

Quoted in Bryan, The Jamaican People, p. 85.

Quoted in Gubar, Race Changes, p. 21.

Ibid., p. 24.

Phillippo, Jamaica. Its Past and Present State, p. 148.

Ibid., p. 148.

201 CHAPTER 5

CONCLUSION

Resistance and Accommodation: Carnival Dress

In this study I first separated resistance and accommodation for the purpose of analysis. However, this separation should not be exaggerated. Dress had ambivalent layers of meaning as in the case of carnival attire. Slaves held carnivals or masquerades on holidays at which they poked fim at whites and the colonial society, or at least so it seemed. Many plantations and urban centers held these festivities by law on three days of

“free time” for slaves: Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day. These days were very festive and provided slaves with the opportunity to show off their very best clothes. Lewis stated that these carnivals were so important for the slaves “that they

[slaves] reserve their finest dresses and lay their schemes for displaying their show and expense to the greatest advantage.”' Lewis further remarked on their festive nature.

I never saw so many people who appeared to be so unaffectedly happy. In England, at fairs and races, half the visitors at least seem to have been only brought there for the sake of traffic, and to be too busy to be amused, but here [in Jamaica] nothing was thought of but real pleasure...At eight o’clock, as we passed throughout the market-place, there

202 was the greatest illumination [fire works] and which of course was most thronged.^

He was very surprised to see such gaiety and celebration among the slave population.

However, slaves who were otherwise forced to labor intensely for most of the year most certainly wanted to make the best of the holidays. On these holidays many of the plantation great houses were opened and slaves were invited to attend a banquet which often included a dance or a theatrical event and masquerades.^ However, these events were far more than just mere entertainment. In fact masquerades and carnivals provided controlled outlets for slave aggression and the opportunity to resist subtly the institution of slavery. They also illustrated forms of accommodation and therefore had ambiguous meanings.

These holiday celebrations included masquerades called Jonkonnu or John Canoe that consisted of masked troupes, dancers, actors and processions of women called “Set

Girls” in their finest dresses. They were accompanied by slave bands that provided music for the spectators and the performers. The entertainer as well as the masked participants were usually slaves or freed persons of non-European descent.'* These carnivals were packed with the “sound of negro drums and horns, the barbarous music and yelling of different African tribes, and the more mellow singing of the Set Girls.”^ Aesthetically these slave carnivals emphasized dress and the parade consisted of a contrast of costumed segments each with its own colors, style and floats. Such an image suggest communal harmony but class differentiation was maintained based on race and dress. For some

African slaves carnival was an opportunity to return to their roots, to reminisce the useage

203 of masks in mediating between the supernatural beings and the society within which they

dwell. Michael Scott described a distinctly African aspect of the Jonkonnu masquerade.

The masks and outfits worn in carnival were similar to those in West African rituals and

festivals. He stated;

Two gigantic men dressed in calf-skins entire, head, four legs and tails. The skin of the head was made to fit like a hood, the two fore-feet hung dangling down in front.®

Long also remarked that some of the masqueraders wore, “Grotesque habits, and a pair of

ox-homs on their head,” Long further added that, “In 1769, several new masks appeared

with the Ebos, the Pawpaws, having their respective cannus [masks] male and female, who

were dressed in a very laughable style.”’ The dress of the leading male street masquerader

of the troupe, also known as Jonkonnu, was comprised mainly of an elaborate headdress

such as a horsehead, cowhead with horns, model house, or tall hat and a mask with a tinseled or jingling multi-colored outfit. During the dancing the leader often rushed at or frightened onlookers.*

Jonkonnu has its roots in West Africa. Among the Mende, Igbo and the Yoruba masks are used as part of religious ceremonies, festivals and initiation rites. Yoruba ritual masks are more elaborate in design consisting of human features frequently combined with animals, snakes or geometrical forms.^ In colonial Gold Coast [Ghana] Fante masquerading also had satirical content which critiqued the regime. Moreover, slave carnivals were not unique to Jamaica but existed throughout much of the Caribbean in forms like the Bahamian Jungkanos, from Belize in the southwest to Bermuda and North

204 Carolina in the north. These masquerades had a long and complicated history. However,

the origins of the name Jonkonnu are still unclear. Long has attributed this celebration

among slaves as, “An honorable memorial of John Conney, a celebrated cabocero at 1res

Puntas in Axim, on the Guinea coast.”*® Conney, a successful Gold Coast merchant, ruled

over three Brandenburg trading forts on the West Afiican coasts, Pokoso, Takrama, and

Akoda on the coast of Ghana. By 1724, the Dutch took control of his official residence,

the Great Fredricksburg Castle. Conney moved inland and took up residence at the court

of Opoku Ware, the Asantehene of Asante. Thus, Afiicans who arrived from the Gold

Coast as slaves and sold throughout the Caribbean retained stories of this celebrated

African merchant. Nevertheless, the phonetic transformation of the name John Conny to

variations such as John Connu or Jonkonnu is still a topic of debate." Richard Allsopp

suggests that Jonkonnu is more related to the Yoruba word-Jonkoliko [one elevated as a figure for fun or disgrace]. This seems more likely, especially since many of the Jonkonnu masks were similar to the Yoruba annual Egungun masquerade festival.'^

One o f the interesting features of the slave carnivals in Jamaica were the “Set

Girls.” In urban areas female slaves were divided into parties distinguishing themselves by the title of colors such as the “Red Set” and the “Blue Set” girls. The respective colors were worn in the form of tie heads or headwraps, hats, handkerchiefs along with white aprons. Those women who attended but did not participate in the parade often wore calamanco or woolen coats which they called daccasses, and some wore white shirts, bedgowns of various kinds on which were sewed provocative representations of the

205 human figure. The Blues and the Reds, whose origins Lewis described as based on old rivalry between British Admirals who wore red and Scottish admirals who wore blue.

This eventually developed into a fashion competition. Parties fought over the best outfits and respective floats while each side sought to outdo the other with the most dazzling costumes. Lewis explained that, “All of Kingston was divided into parties... the rival factions of blues and the reds who contend for setting forth their processions with the greatest taste and magnificence.”

Despite the festive occasions, the social classes remained very much divided.

Cynric Williams in 1823 argued that:

On all these occasions of festivity the mulattos kept aloof, as they disdained to mingle with the negroes...Yet they seem to cast many a wistful look at the dancers...’^

There was a set for housekeepers who disdained to dance in the parade through the streets. Moreover, Set Girls in urban centers considered themselves superior in taste, manners and fashion to those on plantations.'® This re-emphasizes the fact that the slave community was not a cohesive group. Rather, some slaves considered themselves set apart or better than other slaves due to their skills, occupation and even dress.

Some mulattos, even though they had allied themselves with a particular Set Girl and wore those colors, chose instead to send their own slave women to help out if necessary. Such was the case of Miss Edwards, who according to Lewis, “Was rank Blue to the very tips of her fingers, and had, indeed, contributed one of her female slaves to sustain a very important character in the show.”’’ During the carnival the Set Girls

2 0 6 processed through the town with their bands and flags, halting only when invited into a

house to dance and sing. At nightfall the festivities would end with a ball and splendid

entertainment.^®

An analysis of I. M. Belisario’s lithographs drawn at Christmas, 1836, provides

some insight regarding the magnitude and splendor of these slave events and the nature of

the dress worn, which shows definite signs of accommodation in its dominantly European

character. In the lithograph. Set Girls and Jack in the Green (see Fig. 5.1),*® slave women

can be seen parading in their costumes. The Set Girls are dressed in similar style dresses,

with broad-brimmed hats, feathers, shoes and parasols. In the parade they proceeded two

by two, the tallest first, and the end tapering down to the smallest child, all dressed in the

same color. Each set was dressed alike, and carried parasols or umbrellas of the same

color and size.^° This is reminiscent of women’s solidarity rituals in many West African

societies. Captain John Adams described a similar parade in 1823 among the Fante women, who were dressed in their best garments and paraded through the town.^' Set girls are still observed at festivals along the West African coast. During the Igbos’ Njenji

[masked parade] in Afikpo, age set members compete among themselves for the first position in line for “girls.” They are elaborately dressed and they carry western style handbags. Unlike most Igbo performers who go barefoot, these girls wear shoes. The

Igbo women in their masquerade also form a line made up of a large number of players of decreasing size and height. Due to the intense competition among the Igbo sets, the costumes of each set are usually made in secret.^^ In Belisario’s print, the same features

207 oo

Illustration by I.M. Belissarlo. Courtesy of the National Library of Jamaica.

Figure 5.1: Red Set Girls, c. 1837 exist. The slave women performing as Set Girls for instance, are depicted in shoes unlike

Jack in the Green who has none. In the middle of the group of dancing Set Girls, the

masquerader called Jack in the Green can be seen wearing a costume composed of

coconut leaves. This costume has distinct African resonances.

However, the women’s dresses in the lithograph [print] reflect dominantly

European influences. For example the women’s puffed sleeves and their tapered shoes are

fashion styles that were popular in Britain during the 1830s. Further, European influences

can be seen in the illustration, queen or Ma’am of the Set Œrls (see Fig. 5.2) done also by

Belisario in 1837. Each Set of Girls was led by an elected queen for the occasion. In the

illustration, the queen is more elaborately dressed than the Set Girls. Instead of a scepter,

she carries a whip decorated with ribbons and her hat is imposing with a huge plumage.

The intricate prints of rose flowers and decorated rose buds sewn on her dress make her

costume even more fascinating. Furthermore, unlike the other women, she is wearing

stockings and she carries a western-style handbag. However, her hat and dress with its

broad shouldered silhouette, dagging in the heavily puffed sleeves and low front neckline

are all imitations of the popular British gothic dress of the 1830s. (See Fig. 5.3).“ The

wide width of the queen’s skirt suggests that she is wearing numerous petticoats

underneath to maintain the flounce of her dress. In both illustrations, the women’s dresses are way above their ankles, perhaps innovatively shortened to allow freedom of movement while dancing. The queen’s dress with its elaborate design clearly sets her apart from the

other women and signals her status as one of prestige and wealth.

209 Illustration by I.M. Belissarlo. Courtesy of the National Library of Jamaica.

Figure 5.2: Queen or Maam of Set. c. 1837

210 , /k,'

Illustration by author, based on dress styles observed at Fashioning the Future: Our Future from Our Past, The Ohio State University, Snowden Gallery exhibition, April 1997. Figure 5.3: Gothic dress of the 1830s

211 Many of these costumes and even the parade themselves were sponsored by planters and wealthy European residents, Lewis pointed out that:

Several gentlemen [white men] in the neighborhood at Black River had subscribed very largely towards the expenses of the show; and certainly it produced the gayest and most amusing scene that I ever witnessed, to which the mutual jealousy and pique of the two parties against each other contributed in no slight degree?'^

The funding provided by white sponsors enabled slaves to go “all out” with their dress and to create elaborate outfits and masks for the occasion. It also heightened the fashion competition between the various groups of slave women and fostered intense loyalty to their respective colors. The competition between the Set Girls was so fierce that a Red

Girl remarked that, “Though the Reds were beaten, she would not be a Blue girl for the whole universeEuropeans sponsoring these slave carnivals had the opportunity to influence the dress of the masqueraders. Some women received their costumes directly from their owners or masters. Belisario, commenting on the queen, remarked:

The Queen was invested with absolute authority, which be it...she exercises with unsparing severity...the ornaments displayed are probably the loan of her mistress, the remainder of the dress invariably purchased by herself.^®

And Cynric Williams explained that the queens were “Decorated with ornaments, necklaces, earrings, and bracelets of their mistresses, so that they carry much wealth on their persons for the time.”^’ It is also quite possible that slave women could have

2 1 2 purchased their entire outfits with the money they saved up from selling their produces and ground provisions in the market.

The strong European influences on Jonkonnu is another factor contributing to its ambivalent nature in terms of representation of resistance and accommodation. Judith

Bettelheim has argued that due to European sponsorship Jamaican Jonkonnu and the activities associated with the festivities were increasingly transformed to embrace characteristics of British folklore.^* The point that Bettelheim failed to make though, is that some slaves embraced these European influences as a survival strategy that allowed them to appropriate the symbols of their colonizers while appearing to assimilate, and then using it against them. Slaves appropriated British symbols in their costumes and floats.

On one occasion for instance, there was a “Nelson’s Car” and “Trafalgar” even a slave dressed in a;

Strange uncouth kind of glittering tawdry figure, all feathers, and a pitchfork and painted pasteboard...turned out to be no less a personage than Britannia herself, with a pasteboard shield covered with the arms of Great Britain, a trident in her hand, and a helmet made o f pale-blue silk and silver...

Europeans’ sponsorship of slaves’ “fancy dress” suggest that planters got something out of these events and simultaneously added to the rivalry between slaves.

Some whites may have put up the funds for carnival because they found it funny and entertaining. European subsidies led to further objectification of slaves and provided whites with their own dancing clowns. Some whites most likely got into the rivalry to

213 outdo other white sponsors. Different individuals may have had different motivations for doing this but we really don’t know. We also don’t know to what extent the subsidies controlled the content of the dress, and whether or not aspects of the dress that expressed resistance, such as satirical imitations of whites were discouraged as a result of the subsidies. Nor is it certain to what extent these subsidies acted as censorship or control by whites.

Furthermore, carnival dress among slaves was ambiguous in its meanings; it is difficult to determine exactly what slaves’ intentions were. Satire is in itself ambivalent. A slave dressed as a master, who caricatures his master’s dress and actions, could both be critiquing the system and also reflecting a desire to assume the role and power of the master. Some slaves may have assimilated during carnival to experience power and control. Others, however, may have seen this as an opportunity to have fiin and enjoy the festivities. What is important here is that dress as resistance and accommodation was not that simple but rather complex. As discussed, accommodation and resistance were not polar opposites. Carnival dress, for example, had multiple layers of meaning, functioning both as resistance and as accommodation to European culture.

The actual dress of these slaves is important, because the dress [costume] functioned as a “mask” which transformed the persona, permitting individuals to do wild and uninhibited things such as mock their masters with antics, taunts and pelvic gyrations.^” Michael Scott described one occasion during a slave carnival when a masquerader:

214 Skipped up to us with a white wand in one hand and a dirty handkerchief in the other, and with sundry moppings and mowings, first wiping my shoes with his mouchoir [handkerchief], then my face, (murder, what a flavor of saltfish and onions it had!) he made a smart enough pirouette, and then sprung on the back of a non-descript animal [masquerader].^*

In 1823 Williams recalled, “Slaves sang satirical philippics against their master, communicating a little free advice now and then; but they never lost sight of decorum.”^^

Such carnivals were in itself a satire that allowed slaves, including women, to resist the norms of the colonial society. Behind this mask of fancy dress, slave women could act freely, and at times even mimic whites. They could be outrageous, thus going beyond the normal structures of buckra’s “morality.” In this manner, slave women experienced some control, if only temporarily. Being queen for a day was a way of having a taste of power, even if it was “mock” power and fleeting.

As in West Afnca, the colors of the masqueraders’ outfits such as red and white were both symbolic and closely associated with slave religion. Among the Yoruba Gelede masqueraders the color red is used principally to represent heat, aggressiveness and to reinforce the notions of fighters or warriors. The usage of colors like red was an integral part of the rituals in honor of powerful spiritual mothers.The knowledge of symbolic colors among Afiican slaves and the importance of red as a resistance color may have contributed to the term “liberation colors” that was popular with some slaves during carnival festivities.^'* A second factor that may have led to this notion of “liberation

215 colors” was the influence of refugee servants from Haiti whose masters fled that country

during the French and Haitian Revolutions. These Haitians also established their own Set

Girls called the French Set Girls.

It is surprising that the ruling class allowed the license associated with carnival

activity. Slave carnivals became boisterous as masqueraders, “spanked their long whips”

and “whistled loud and long.” The writer Scott called it “an insurrection of the slave

population mayhap...especially since eveiy man and officer in the regiment had a tumbler

[beer]...at his head.”^^ However, as folklorists Joan Radner and Susan Lanser state,

“Interpretation is a contextual activity.”^® What in one environment may seem unremarkably clear or unambiguous, in another is not so. For example, slave women’s use

of “fancy dress” as a form of resistance may have gone unnoticed or dismissed because it was read in contradictory ways. Hence, many planters, like Lewis who described these carnivals as “very gay”^’ may not have recognized any threat to their established social order. But as James C. Scott argues, “Resistance is greatly influenced by the existing forms of labor control and by beliefs about the probability and severity of retaliation.”^®

As a consequence, masking allowed slave women the chance to ridicule the political establishment, and simultaneously not threaten the essential equation of the colonial society, thus risking the wrath of the masters. James C. Scott says it best, “Their safety lies in their anonymity.It is also quite possible that planters saw slave carnivals as a way of controlling dissent—what Victor Turner has called the “Theory of Liminality.”'*®

By allowing slaves to have some fim and vent their grievances in harmless satire they

2 1 6 might siphon off their anger and be ready for work at the end of the holiday. As the

Reverend H. M. Waddell stated in 1829, “It was hoped that the result of this free time and

license would prepare slaves for another year of toil.”'*'

Nevertheless, masks as dress contained texts which were less transparent to

whites, but were expressive of the politics of subalternity. For some slaves, this was a

message of resistance discreetly hidden so that when slaves were face to face with their

masters, their real motives and thoughts were concealed.'*^ For many slave women, dress

as resistance was not a frontal or destructive attack on the colonial system, but rather an

opportunity for specific advantages-the celebration and maintenance of their African heritage and the possibilities of transgressing boundaries. Carnival dress, with all its ambiguity, allowed accommodation to be used for resistance and vice-versa.

The Continuum

In this study I have tried to show how Afro-Jamaican dress as part of their material culture served ends of both resistance and accommodation in the lives of enslaved and colonized women. Throughout history dress has been used in many societies to denote age, sex, rank, status and group affiliation. However, as much as dress discloses, it can also conceal. Within Jamaican slave society for instance, class identity could be concealed if a slave acquired and donned garments that were not typical of their rank and social circle. The concealment of a slave woman’s identity in this manner enabled some women to transform or to reconstruct themselves by appearing to be an elite or freedperson. This

217 process allowed several slave women to achieve some power and advantage within

colonial society.

As slaves, women of African descent sought to subvert the colonial regime and as

freed women they tried to carve a space for themselves in the new social order.

Emancipation in 1838 did not eradicate the oppression of women, but rather created new

challenges and new opportunities for them. Nor did their use of dress as an expressive

cultural strategy end. As part of a continuum going back to the shores of Africa, Afro-

Jamaican women’s creativity, adaptations of and fascination with dress have continued

into the present.

In emphasizing resistance and accommodation here, I have skimped on discussing the sexual implications of dress. Sexuality embodies whole vocabularies of resistance and accommodation. I am aware that the sexual implications of dress are important, but the nature of the sources made it difficult to analyze this concept. Different societies have different sexual connotations associated with dress and exposing parts of the body. We can assume that in the West these notions were different from those held in West Africa, as they are in contemporary societies. However, the sources both for Africa and Jamaica do not give sufficient information on this.

Afro-Jamaican women as slaves were not passive beings but were resilient and assertive contrary to popular white beliefs. Enslaved women participated with their menfolk in various forms of resistance. Some women ran away from the plantations; others took part in slave rebellions. Many used the medium of dress to resist colonial

2 1 8 oppression. Slave women who ran away often disguised themselves as fi-eedwomen to

escape servitude. Some slave women participated in masquerades that allowed them to

transgress boundaries and to experience power, while simultaneously mocking their

masters with taunts and pelvic gyrations. Afi-o-Jamaican women appropriated the symbols

of their colonizers, using them against them.

Appropriation in this respect involved some aspects of what Barbara Babcock has called “symbolic inversion.” According to Babcock symbolic inversion is an expressive behavior which inverts, contradicts, abrogates or in some manner presents an alternative to commonly held cultural codes, values and norm s.Slaves’ appropriation of white symbols enabled them to transgress cultural norms and destabilize the colonial discourse.

As a result, slave women demonstrated the inadequacy of the colonial policies by demonstrating their exclusion.**^ Moreover, slave women like Cubah, who refused to assimilate, used their dress to signal their rejection of European hegemony and to reaffirm their commitment to their cultural survival.

Europeans’ attempts at complete déculturation of African slaves as a means of maintaining control failed. Afncan slaves brought their customs in dress to Jamaica and were able to maintain and nurture them. The absence of sumptuary laws gave Afiican slave women and their descendants more flexibility in dress, facilitating cultural expression. The techniques of textile dyeing, bark cloth manufacture and the headwrap were transmitted to the descendants of Afncan slaves.

2 1 9 The survival of African customs in dress required creativity and ingenuity. Slave

women not only learned to use plants such as the laghetto to make lace, but they also

established codes in their dress that reflected a unique interpretive community among slave

women.‘‘^ For example, the ornate headwraps worn by some women with their distinct

names and meanings provided a code for women to communicate with each other.The

headwrap could signal to other women whether or not a woman was planning to meet her

lover. The continuation and nurturing of these African customs in dress enabled women to maintain a vital link with their ancestral homeland, and in the process resist the institution of slavery which sought to rob them of their Afncan identity.

The colonial laws regarding dress did not provide slave women with sufficient clothing rations. Neither were enslaved women rewarded for their skills as much as slave men were. Instead, slave women received less clothing than men. So they found alternative means of obtaining additional dress. Some were able to buy extra clothes with money they had saved up from selling their produce in the local market. Others received clothes in exchange for sexual favors with white men. Women got involved in clothing manufacture, working as seamstresses or manufacturing garments from bark lace. Such economic activity led to a cottage industry in manufacturing and seamstressing. This industry created a separate sphere for women from the harsh realities of slavery and it provided them with individual income. Despite their sexual exploitation enslaved women were still able to meet the economic demands placed upon them and simultaneously support and take care of their families.

220 The principal transmitters of Afiican customs in dress were women of Afiican descent. Melville Hersko\its pointed out that a distinctive characteristic of Afiican societies in the New World was the role women played as the principal exponents and protectors of Afiican culture.The customary roles that women filled in slave and West

Afiican societies such as agricultural workers, mothers, teachers, healers and spiritual leaders equipped them with the knowledge and the expertise necessary to be not only mainstays of the family but also the conduits for Afiican knowledge. Slave women were more resistant to European influences in dress than men because more women than men worked in the fields on plantations. The Afiican elements among cultivators were very strong. Planters were not concerned when slaves retained certain aspects of their Afiican culture such as dress, which emphasized the differences between Afiicans and whites; they also did not wish to provide more expensive clothing. Women field slaves returned to their cottages at the end of their day and had some autonomy to pursue their tasks as they wished and teach their children culturally appropriate content. Therefore women as field workers were less prone to assimilation than skilled male slaves.”**

After emancipation many Affo-Jamaican women accommodated to European standards in dress. Some women did this as a means of “civilizing” themselves and to increase their social standing: Lower class ffeedwomen used accommodation when possible as a temporary escape from their poverty. For some ffeedwomen accommodation was a political act which marked them no longer as slaves. Nevertheless, accommodation

221 did not eradicate Afro-Jamaican women’s oppression, instead it reinforced some of the old stereotypical ideas associated with them.

Those women who refused to abandon their Afncanisms in dress combined aspects of African and European customs in dress. This syncretization gave rise to a “creole dress” which usually included the long full European skirt complemented by the Afncan woman’s headwrap. Colonial Jamaican culture was not merely a syncretization of these two elements but is best described as having a distinction between “deep” and “surface” structure. Deep structure was Afncan while surface structure was influenced by other cultures with which Africans have been in contact.This analogy, according to Mervyn

Alleyne, provides the opportunity to go beyond the mere mixing of African and European elements to an understanding of the “process” or the “movement” in all aspects of

Jamaican culture including dress. These Afncan characteristics in dress were not archaic nor were they static. They were constantly being reshaped and adapted to new situations.

Although this study has focused on the two dominant influences on dress—Afncan and European, it is important to realize that other influences also existed in post-

Emancipation Jamaica, which were not always viewed favorably by Jamaican society.

East Indians wearing their dhotis and pungarees were contemptuously viewed as half nude and a bad moral influence; the long haired Chinese were hostilely described as wearing oilskin pajamas, while the colorfiil dresses of the Syrian women met with great approval from the Afro-Jamaican elite.^' East Indian women eventually gave up their customary dress for the long European skirt of the period; many Indian women also adapted the

222 Afncan woman’s headwrap.Afncan customs in dress greatly influenced Indians because they received generous contributions of clothing from Affo-Jamaicans. Furthermore, the harsh conditions and experiences of Indian indentured laborers on the estates forged a bond with ffeedpersons who had not forgotten their own experiences as slaves.”

Africanisms in dress were popular and appealing to many. Despite European attempts at déculturation and Europeanization of African slaves and their descendants, African customs in dress survive and continue to be a vibrant feature in contemporary Jamaican dress.

Rastas and Dance Hall; African Elements

Dress as resistance and accommodation remains a cultural phenomenon in Jamaica.

No other segment of Jamaican society reflects this more than Rastafarianism and Dance

Hall in popular culture. Rastafarianism as a resistance and religious movement emerged in the early twentieth century and sought to liberate Jamaica from the clutches of colonial elitism and the intolerance of the established Christian church.” By accommodating the symbols and colors of Ethiopia in their dress, Rastas echoed their resentment at the established social order. Rex Nettleford explained;

[They] cultivate a ferocious theatricality complete with dreadlocks of matted braids and knitted woolen headgear .bearing revolutionary colors of the brightest red, green, gold and black, as if to amplify their anguish.. through the device of programmed high visibility...and defiant exterior masks [was] an organic protest against the Caribbean’s “sufferation” committed against our people... ”

223 Like Afncan slaves and their descendants, Rastas used dress to challenge the colonial order by rejecting the social norms in dress set by the ruling elites. Rastas’ visibility, like slave women’s dress, was a constant reminder of their discontent and a determination to resist all forms of oppression. It was this determination that fueled the process of decolonization.

Afncanisims are also alive and well in Dance Hall dress. Just like its related counterpart-camival. Dance Hall embodies the masquerading tradition that has survived in

Jamaica. The fancy dress of Dance Hall with its bright shiny colors of “acetate and mock- satins [fake or inexpensive] materials” that have been fashioned into “fancy brassieres over body stockings or plain skins,”^® is indicative of the process of liberation from neo imperialism and resistance against elitism and political corruption. This type of masquerading, like slave carnivals, continues to provide some sense of fleeting power to the participants and the opportunity to get beyond the norms of society to let loose and to have some fun.^^ Whether it be at the uptown soca carnival or the downtown “jam session”, the sequins, bright and robust jewelry and beads galore that make up fancy dress are all reminiscent of Jonkonnu and African masking.

Dem Caa Dress Yah!

One of my childhood rituals occurred every Sunday morning. My mother and grandmother took great care to get my siblings and me all dressed up in our “Sunday best” outfits for church; a habit I must confess that I have maintained to this day. My

224 grandmother particularly nagged us to keep our seams straight and shoes nice and clean for Sunday service. Before we left the house we had a quick inspection to make sure all buttons were buttoned and the shirt tucked in nicely. I was always amazed at the difficulty my grandmother seemed to have as she tried to decide on a hat for church. Her concern usually was whether or not her hat had “harmonized” with her immaculate dress.

I had often wondered why so much fuss occurred over clothes, especially after I learned that many of my Sunday school peers also had similar experiences. As a child there seemed to have been so many tasks associated with dress. There was everything from the long and tedious process of washing clothes, which often involved scalding white garments^* in a kerosene tin on an outdoor wooden fire, to the laborious chore of ironing and starching collars. These tasks were carried out predominantly by women in many households, who often designated specific days for washing and ironing (or pressing as we say in Jamaica).

Jamaicans’ fascination, even obsession, with dress went beyond the mere tasks of doing laundry to be incorporated into songs, folklore and even habits of daily life. For instance, some people believed that sewing dirty clothes would make someone ill, and that if you mended your clothes while wearing them that people would lie about you and trample on you [walk all over you or oppress you].^^ My childhood rituals and Jamaicans’ fixation with dress were all part of a rich legacy rooted in slavery and West Africa, which has been passed down to the present. This rich legacy is a testament to the survival of

Africanisms in dress and is important because it bridges the past with the present.

225 The act of dressing up as during pre- and post-Emancipation periods was not

unique to Jamaica but prevalent within African communities throughout the diaspora.

Dressing up is not unique to any one culture, but what is culturally specific among Afro-

Jamaicans is their “power of style.”®** This “power of style” is a rhythmic pattern of colors

and complex messages interwoven with African aesthetics. Dressing up, which goes back

to West Africa, continues to provide poor Jamaicans with episodic opportunities to escape

their poverty and tribulations. It fosters moods which may be associated with particular

occasions or events and makes people feel good about themselves.

No other single garment is as symbolic of the survival in African customs in dress

as the Afncan woman’s headwrap. Like their forebearers during slaveiy and in West

Africa Jamaican women continue to don the headwrap for various reasons. It is used as

protection for newly styled hair and even to make one’s hair look “presentable.” It has

also remained a common feature among traders and other women to assist with carrying

and balancing heavy loads on the head. Headwraps are also worn by both men and

women in Affo-Jamaican religions. However, for secular activities, headwraps are rare

among men in contemporary Jamaican society. Some young men have adopted a less

elaborate but comparable style of tying a handkerchief around their head as a fashion

statement and for the purpose of absorbing perspiration. The African woman’s headwrap

has remained a symbol of the ancestral homeland, one that evokes a sense of pride and dignity as well as solidarity with other women of African descent and those in the ancestral homeland. These features were brought to light during the 1997 state visit of the

2 2 6 Ghanaian president Jerry Rawlings. Afro-Jamaican women donned their elaborate

headwraps of diverse styles, colors and patterns. So spectacular was this African parade

of dress that a newspaper commentator remarked in patois:

Yuh waan see African dress. Man! Me never know say is so much Jamaican-African deh bout. Headwrap fe days. But yuh know how we love excitement.®’

Jamaicans love excitement and dressing up for any occasion that provides an opportunity to display one’s fashionable outfits.

*****

Afro-Jamaican women as slaves were innovators who creatively used dress to express themselves. This innovative and creative process has continued in Jamaican contemporary society. Jamaican dress today is not simply Afro-European, it is uniquely

Jamaican. Everyone, from the sister in her prayer wrap going to the revival meeting and the Rasta woman in her knitted multi-colored cap to the “uptown” ladies called the “linen brigade” in their cutwork embroidered linen suits and the Dance Hall possies in their short, short lame skirts exposing lots of flesh, can dress, yah! Jamaican dress with its rhythm, color and diversity mirrors a people struggling to survive and create a space for themselves within the changing world order. This dress is also symbolic of a people restructuring and reshaping their own identity to find meaning for their own existence.

The nurturing and retention of African elements in dress within Jamaican culture is

227 important. It is the ultimate testament to the survival of those who traveled a long journey which began on board the slave ships. They crossed the oceans in chains and yet Africans and their descendants dared to survive. As I now think of my own childhood and those rituals each Sunday morning, I have come to realize that these acts were all part of a continuum, a rich legacy of love and hope that molds us as a people and in the process strengthens us for the next part of our journey—from the present into the unknowable future.

228 ENDNOTES

* * Lewis, Journal of A West India.p. 24.

" Ibid., p. 58.

^ Judith Bettelheim, The Afro-Jamaican Jonkonnu Festival: Playing The Forces and Operating the Cloth. Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1979 (University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor, Michigan), pp. 2-10.

" Ibid., pp. 2-10.

^ Michael Scott, Tom Cringle’s Log. (New York: William Blackwood, 1895), pp. 346- 347.

" Ibid., p. 347.

^ Long, The Historv of Jamaica, vol. 2:425.

* Richard Allsopp, ed., Dictionarv of Caribbean English Usage. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

® Drewal, Gelede. pp. 206-214.

Long, The History of Jamaica, vol. 2:424-425.

" Bettelheim, The Afro-Jamaican Jonkonnu. p. 80.

Allsopp, Dictionarv of Caribbean English.

Lewis, Journal of A West India, pp. 24-26.

Ibid., pp. 52-54.

Cynric William, A Tour Through the Island, p. 27.

’^Richardson Wright, Revels in Jamaica. 1682-1838. (New York: Dodd Mead, 1937), p. 246.

2 2 9 Lewis, Journal of A West India, p. 54.

'* Williams, A Tour Through The Island, p. 63.

I. M. Belissario, Sketches of Character in Illustration of The Habits of the Negro Population of Jamaica. (Kingston: 1837). Courtesy o f The National Library of Jamaica.

^ Scott, Tom Cringle’s Log, p. 363.

'.^aptain John Adams, Remarks on the country extending from Cape Palmas, pp. 39-40.

^ Simon Ottenberg, “Analysis of an African Masked Parade”, in Fabrics of Culture, eds., p. 180.

^ See also Fashioning The Future: Our Future from Our Past, pp. 12-25.

^ Lewis, Journal of A West India, p. 53.

Ibid., p. 53.

^ I. M. Belisario, Sketches of Character.

Williams, A Tour Through The Island, p. 62.

^*Bettelheim, The Afro-Jamaican Jonkonnu. pp. 25-30.

^ Lewis, Journal of A West India, p. 25.

Pelvic gyrations - a way of moving the hips in a provocative manner, but not necessarily sexual. Such movements were also popular in some West African societies as a way of teasing, ridiculing, mocking, and for fun.

Scott, Tom Cringle’s Log, p. 347.

^^Williams, A Tour Through The Island, p. 23.

^^Drewal, Gelede. p. 101.

Concept of liberation colors based on a discussion with Professor Rex Nettleford at The University of The West Indies, and his paper titled “Fancy Dress.”

35cScott, Tom Cringle’s Log, p. 354. 230 Joan Radner, ed.. Feminist Messages: Coding in Women’s Folk Culture. (Urbana: University ofDlinois Press, 1993), p. 13.

^^Lewis, Journal of A West India, p. 24.

"’*Scott, Weapons of The Weak, p. 34.

^’Ibid., p. 36.

^Victor Turner, Dramas. Field and Metaphors. (Ithaca: 1974). See this text for further details on this theory.

Bettelheim, The Afro-Jamaican Jonkonnu. p. 2.

'’^Francisco A. Scarano, “The Jiboro Masquerade and Subaltern Politics in Puerto Rico.” The American Historical Review, vol. 101 #5 (December, 1996), pp. 1430-1431.

Barbara Babcock, ed.. The Reversible World: Svmbolic Inversion in Art and Societv (Ithaca: NY Cornell University Press, 1978), p. 14.

Joan N. Radner and Susan S. Lanser, “Strategies of Coding in Women’s Cultures,” in Feminist Messages, p. 11.

Ibid., p. 2. For more on coding, and female interpretive culture among women.

Ibid., p. 2.

Quoted in Barbara Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Societv. 153.

Ibid., p. 158.

Alleyne, Roots of Jamaican Culture, p. 149.

Ibid., p. 149.

Bryan, The Jamaican People, pp. 86-87.

Jamaica Journal vol. 10 Nos. 2., p. 12.

East Indians Received Generous Donations of clothes from Jamaican freed blacks. See Hall, Free Jamaica, p. 56.

231 See Leonard Barnett, The Rastafarians (Boston; Beacon Company Publishers, 1977) for more information on Rastafarians.

55 Nettleford, Caribbean Cultural Identity, p. 187.

56 Rex Nettleford, “Fancy Dress from Jonikonnu to Dance Hall,” Private Paper, Kingston, Jamaica.

Cooper, Noises in The Blood, p. 193. See text for more information on Dance Hall.

Scalding White clothes refers to a process of boiling the garments in water and soap. It was believed that this helped to get stains out and also helped to get clothes white along with bleach and blue water.

Beckwith, Black Roadways, pp. 66-67.

Gwendolyn S. O’Neal, “The Power of Style: on Rejection of the accepted.” In Dress and Power, eds. K. P. Johnson and S. Lennon (New York: Berg). Forthcoming.

Barbara Gloudon, “Nuff Jamaican-African deh boul,” The Weekend Observer (8 August, 1997) p. 7.

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233 Daily Gleaner (21 March), 1889. Diary and Kingston Daily Advertiser (January-August), 1796. Falmouth Post (8 March), 1836. Jamaica Mercury (November-December), 1799. Outlook (April), 1997. Royal Gazzette (July) 1813-1816, 1830-1831. The Sunday Gleaner (5 January), 1997. The Weekend Observer (8 August), 1997.

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Nettleford, Hon. Rex M., Deputy Chancelor, U.W.I., Interview. Kingston. 11 Aug. 1997.

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Whynn, Muriel, Maroon descendant. Interview. Kingston. 14 Aug. 1997.

Illustrations, Prints and Photographs

(Author) Illustrations inspired by and based on Travelers’ accounts.

Belisaario, I. M. Sketches of Character in Illustration of the Habits. Occupation and Costume of The Negro Population in the island of Jamaica. 3 parts (Kingston, 1837-38), NLJ.

Duperly, Adolphe. Daeuerian Excursions in Jamaica (Kingston, 1844), NLJ.

[Photographers] (Photographers unknown) Photograph Collection, NLJ.

245 General

Budweiser’s Great Kings and Queens of Africa. Twentieth Anniversary special publication, (1995).

Fashioning the Future: Our Future from Our Past. Published in conjunction with the exhibition o f the same name held in the Snowden Gallery, April 1997, College of Human Ecology, The Ohio State University.

246