Janet Harrison Shannon, Department of Anthropology/Sociology,Davidson College, Davidson, NC
7/30/96
Religion and African American Community-BuildingBorn in Phila. Janet now lives in Davidson, NC.Dissertation deals with how a group of people organized themselves in the Zoar Church community in Philadelphia, 1790-1850. Now in 20th c. looking at dreams and at children.
Burial customs and thinking about death are part of the struggle for religious cultural integrity, so focus on these topics today
Not all of African American behavior can be linked to Africa, for some has been deeply shaped by New World experience. Today work on folk Tales, stories, dance, secret societies, ancestor worship and funeral rites. Leonard Barrett's work on folktales and recurring theme of weak against the strong. These tales gain new significance in the setting of the new world. Life-affirming world view is the basis of spirituals, dance is what has carried forward .
The Ashanti felt that there was no other way to celebrate God than through music/dance. In new environment, spirituals took this role. (Suggests having students read some of Olaudah Equiano's "autobiography" : Equiano was 18th c Ebo man brought to New World, published his story ca. 1785)
Songs speak of life and death, suffering. In West African traditions, there is also life and death, rites of passage. Old Testament is the focus of many of the spirituals (relationship to Moses etc.) New Testament offers a way into the suffering and death of Jesus and the sense of pain and mourning.
New phenomenon: a number of churches are recording and videotaping their sermons and choirs and selling them--good modern fund-raising.
Secret societies were, as Bonnie Ericson, who has written on secret societies says, an easy way for Africans to hold secret. James L. Gibbs, The Peoples of Africa talks of two groups in Liberia, in which political/social business was carried out. Organizations are gender/age segregated. Initiation, but also education took place in this setting: this was an easy carryover to the southern slave situation, where the material culture (wash pots, quilts, etc.) could support the possibility of secret societies' meetings in woods.
Black secret society systems could be encompassed into the Prince Hall masons in late 18th c. . Joseph Mbiti's articles on ancestors talk about the power.
Gallien:How about the relationship btwn the church and the masons?
Ans.: Church has no problem with these groups.
Gallien: why is there an alignment here, when many of the white churches were anti-mason.
Montgomery: in Black world, the two are inter-woven, and masons provide a number of social services
Brady: do early black women's associations have secret societies also?
Glass: You've talked about institutional secrecy: what about Darlene Clark Hine's notion of the "culture of dissemblance".
Ans: I don't think there is any more secrecy in African American women's relationships than in African American men's
Rubin: work on Chinese and Japanese secret societies would make good comparison, for third generation people come back to the stories from which they had been shielded.
Ans: yes, there is a great film for classroom use on Dubois: "the man from Great Barrington"
Shannon: Mintz and Price, in their book on the origins of Afroamerican culture, talk about the active role of the dead in the lives of the living. History and genealogy are particularized in land and particular locations. Equaiano talks about Ebo children naming children for events. Charles Joyner talks about naming practices in new world. 1796 the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church was founded in NY over the question of naming the children. Equiano also talks of honored individuals (priests, healers, etc.) who, Rabateau says are transferable to new world: preacher, music, frenzy. Shannon would add ancestor worship and burial practices. Around these issues--ancestor worship and burial--communities come together, for deceased relatives have an important part in the lives of the living.
Quaker Philadelphian Elizabeth Drinker, in 18th c. diary, talks about the presence of the African-American burial grounds used for socializing and worship as well as burial. Leon Higginbotham, In the Matter of Color talk some about the "danger" of having African Americans congregate.
"Black Church" is used here as the broad umbrella for the various institutions set up by African Americans to encompass religious experience. Segregated seating and lack of autonomous authority was the norm in north and southern settings. And burial for African Americans was not permitted in white churches. So late-18thc Black churches had burial as part of their agenda, so they would not have to be buried in potter's fields. Not all African Americans chose to leave segregated white churches, and not all left together, and not all formed one church.
A good place to read about this is Gary Nash , Forging Freedom which talks about the community development. But we need to remember that many white members of old St. George's were also leaving the church to try to claim another spiritual space.
Kray: why do you suppose this occurred at this particular time?
Harvey: James Campbell, in Songs of Zion covers the story of this church growth to the modern times in the South
Little: Sylvia Fry, Waters from the Rock covers this as well.
Shannon: and Julie Winch's work as well: Philadelaphia's Black Elite.
Barnes: How about the collective consciousness.
Lapsansky: the work of Lamont Thomas, A Rise to Be a People is another way to look at this
Break:
Elizabeth Drinker's description of black burial is worth .
Richard Allen's church, with its religio-cultural agenda was only the first of many northern urban groups which broke away to establish separate communities of worship. In the rural south: no land ownership for African Americans in the south. Vlach, Back of the Big House, talks about how slaves created a material world in the slave quarters, using the hinterland for temporary refuge, and for secret worship. Sometimes planters built worship buildings for slaves, but often these were not used by slaves, who preferred their own setting. Slides of southern worship areas: "Brush harbor" outdoor worship building which is reminiscent of outdoor and/or slave outdoor worship services (built the 1890s, these outdoor structures are the first church "buildings" . Burial plots are outlined with sea shells etc., but there are no signficant distinctions on stone markers
Funerals: an annual event in the bush arbor was a group event with preaching and food. Burial came quickly, but the funeral could be some months later. Grave decorations are an important aspect of this.
Southern urban communities sometimes brought the home church to the north. But there was someimes resentment betwn northen and southern churches. But in other cases, northern churches were full of hospitality for southerners. Funerals were a serious gathering time.
In 1864, brothers bought a piece of land Chubb-town founded, and recently the church has established an annual event at their cemetery.
The church is the only institution where African Americans have had "complete" control. The spiritual and social face of the Black community and church will claim African Americans in death.
Prejsnar: There is a good deal of empahsis on importance of the funeral. There is the story of the baseball player who took "too long" to have the event
Barnes: There is also an intimate relationship between funeral parlors and churches.
Gallien: my midwestern white students are uneasy with the the idea of touching the body and relating to it. How does this relate?
Jensen: ...but certainly in the Mormon tradition there is the attention to touching the body of the dead
Sicius: some of what we can do with death, now that we have sanitized it, is to look at death images .
Lapsansky: Does anyone know of a comparative study of the ways different religious traditions deal with death in American society, looking at its meanings, the rituals, the material culture, the relationships to the body .
Piar: The Meaning of Death, by Bowker
Kray and Rubin: in Jewish traditions, there is something set up to have periodic revisiting of the death of the person
Gallien: this is at the other end of the quick-to-bury system: does it reduce depression to have this long-term grieving?
Kanda: the old Buddhist tradition was an extended one also, but it has been compressed in the recent times
Prejsnar: Tom Smith, Ancestor Worship in America, talks of the Buddhist tradition
Montgomery: this issue of hurrying to get the body buried is being copied in black communities
Jensen: the rush to bury has not taken over in the Pueblo schools where school officials send out a letter excusing a student from school for 3 days
Sicius: the tradition remains alive in Italian Philadelphia-area as well
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This page updated 1/25/97.
Shannon 7/30/96