{TEXTBOOK} from Slavery to Freedom a History of African

FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM A HISTORY OF AFRICAN AMERICANS, VOLUME 1 9TH EDITION PDF, EPUB, EBOOK John Hope Franklin | --- | --- | --- | 9780077407513 | --- | --- From Slavery to Freedom | Senator John Heinz History Center Its leaves are used to make hats, nets, baskets, etc. The wood is used for logs, in structures such as forts, wharves, and under water structures. The leaves or palm of the tree is used in roof thatches. The cabbage or vegetable of the tree is edible when ripe. It is also used to make fertilizer. The American chestnut tree produces an edible nut and grown throughout the territory from Florida to Pennsylvania. Eaten raw, roasted or boiled the chestnut was a source of protein. The roots contain an astringent agent and are boiled with milk to treat children diarrhea and teething. The nuts are also used in breads and as animal feed. The bark of the tree used as a product for tanning leather. The wood was used in various carpentry applications such as fence posts. Hickory tree wood and bark was used to make dye, tools, soaps, baskets, food, oil, furniture, axe handles, wagons, and rope. Tree bark was a common source for dyes. In addition to the dye the toxic plant was also cultivated for its medicinal properties as well. The Sugar maple is primarily a northern tree but had been found sparingly in South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, and at the head waters of Cooper River. The sugar extracted from it is an article of trade and used medicinally also. The wood is esteemed in the manufacture of saddle-trees. The grain of the wood is fine and close, and when polished it has a silky luster. The bark was used in dyes. Found in many parts of the region and was familiar to enslaved African Americans as a source for medicine, dye, and tanning of leather. The wood is used to make tools, furniture, machines, and utensils. The bark had medicinal and industrial applications. The nut, or acorn of the tree during the antebellum period had many uses many of which were applied by African Americans. Coffee was made from acorns and chicory mixture. The acorn coffee, which is made from roasted and ground acorns as a medicinal product. Native Americans used the crushed nuts in unleavened bread. The decoction of the bark, with sulphate of copper, is employed on the plantations to dye woollens of a green or black color, and for tanning leather. This plant is referred as water-gum, tupelo, wild olive, or sour-gum. The roots are immersed in inundated soils and have been used as a substitute for cork. Found growing in swamps and floodplains of the region. The wood is used in machine construction wheels, hubs, wagon parts and for making bowls, dippers, mortars, and other utensils. A tree with a particular wood that was durable and flexible as well is derived a cork substitute. Porcher recommended the wood to make shoes and shoe soles for enslaved on South Carolina plantations to prevent foot disease. A number of enslaved in the WPA narratives mention brogans given to them once a year around Christmas time. Former slaves had commented that their shoes were made with wooden soles. North Carolina slave Patsy Mitchner referring to the shoes they wore as described as those Porcher mentions. Our shoes has wooden bottoms on em. Dey was made wid wooden soles or bottoms. Dey tanned the leather or had it tanned in de neighborhood. A good thing for our negroes. Mississippi planters made large orders of the shoes and found that they were warmer, more durable, and more impervious to water than the leather-soled. This tree grows in dry places at higher elevations than the coast, flowering early in July, and producing a thick cluster of berries, which, when mature in early autumn, are covered with a whitish and acidic substance. The berries are used to make a medicinal syrup. The root and bark are used to make various remedies for ulcers, gonorrhea, sore throat, and antiseptic. The bark is also used to make a dye. Porcher asserts, "If the bark of the root is boiled in equal parts of milk and water, forming with flour a cataplasm, it will cure burns without leaving a scar. Butternut trees grew in the mountains of region. The inner bark of the root was used to make a laxative that proved effective as far back as General Francis Marion's camp during the Revolutionary War. It was effective treating dysentery a scourge during the Civil War. The rind of the fruit and the skin of the kernel were used to make remedies. The bark is strongest in the early summer. The leaves are dried and made into a powder that was used to produce an oil for the skin to aid stiffness. The enslaved were always producing remedies to treat the physical impact on their bodies. The Pine tree has been a staple of southern utility. Found in the mountains and swamps of South Carolina and other regions throughout the south, the soft wood tree has a fine grain. It is used for the inner work of houses, for boxes, cabinets, etc. In ornamental work and carving of every description the white pine is used; in fact, wherever a light wood is required. Masts are also made of it, and are exported to Liverpool, though not fully equal to those from Riga. The bowsprits and spars are made of white pine. By the 16th century the Portuguese introduced Africans to corn, a plant native to the Americas. American cultivation of corn as a cash crop began a century later. Planted by large and small farms, corn sometimes used slave labor, but nowhere near the numbers required for sugar and cotton production. A popular food, it replaced rice as a major staple of the American diet. Made into corn meal, porridge, whiskey, bread, hoe cakes, and hominy, the farming of corn increased as the country spread west. Zea mays, a native crop cultivated by American Indians became exploited as a cash crop of the slave plantation system. A major product of Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, humans ate sweet corn, while field corn was used as feed for livestock. The enslaved often had bacon and corn cakes as the main meal of the long day. The corn meal porridge was called kush by North Carolina slave Anna Wright. I took ten or twelve of them, and kept on my journey. During the next day, while in the woods, I roasted my corn and feasted upon it, thanking God that I was so well provided for. Peas were a popular food on slave plantations. These were edible foods for people and feed for livestock. The cow pea is one variety of the pant. It is cooked in soups and stews. In African American culture it is referred as black-eyed peas and has its own tradition as a festive food. A legume, this food provided protein for under-nourished slaves. The use of hot peppers in the diet of the enslaved is a carry-over from Africa. African Americans derived pepper oil and vinegar, as well as medicinal remedies, from these peppers. The many varieties of hot peppers were used as a food and medicine. Escaping slaves would use it to throw their scent away from the hunting dogs on their trails. Joshua Dunbar, the father of poet Paul Laurence Dunbar was said to use cayenne pepper to make search dogs sneeze and throw them off the trail during his escape from slavery in Garrard County, Kentucky. The pepper was also described by John H. Aughey, of Tupelo, Mississippi in when recounting his escape from bondage in a Confederate regiment during the Civil war. I deserted, hoping to reach the Federal lines…. The colored people furnished me with cayenne pepper, onions, and matches, and I felt comparatively safe. Joseph Ringo, enslaved in Mason County Kentucky to John French recollects the remedies used: "Dey used to mel all kines er home remdies fer ailmen's; red pepper tea fer colds, en oak bark en hickory bark fer stommick ails, en but, oh, chile, I cant member all sech home doctorin'. Okra pods were used in soup or stewed with meat, fish, and vegetables as a forerunner of gumbo. According to Porcher, the seeds were prepared as a coffee substitute on plantations throughout South Carolina. The leaves are used to make a clay that is applied to the aching or swollen part of the body and mucous passages. Okra was most likely transported to the Americas as a familiar food to feed the growing African enslaved population. Wild onions similar to garlic have a pungent odor but were used widely in food. The odor would repel insects and used by runaways to mas their scents from dogs. Charlie Davenport a field slave in Second Creek, Mississippi recalls the dinner meal that was brought to the cotton fields. Popularly called pokeweed, this plant is found at certain times of the year and eaten as a green vegetable or as a salad, but only after being cooked, as it is poisonous if eaten raw. Fernald mentions the root as a poisonous plant that is used in medicines as a narcotic, emetic and can cause death. However dangerous it may be, African Americans had long made pokeweed a green potherb along with collard, mustard, and dandelion greens. Rice has been grown since B. Used as a food onboard slave ships crossing the Atlantic, rice also became the major starchy food of colonial America. As colonists invested in growing rice, the expertise and skill of African rice growers became vital to South Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana planters and they were enslaved on rice plantations in the American South.

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