Voices for Freedom

Abstract

Shane White and Graham White are celebrators of African American culture. In their highly original work of 1998, Stylin': African American Expressive Culture from Its Beginnings to the Zoot Suit, they examined facial expressions, body movements, tonsorial and sartorial fashions, and public celebrations for insight into the African American experience in North America. The Sounds of Slavery treats the verbal culture enslaved Africans created and their descendants sustained over the past four centuries. The authors distill their analysis into the simple statement that the speech, voices, and even laughter of most slaves sounded different from those of their owners and wherever there were substantial numbers of slaves in American those sounds saturated the landscape (p. 95). White and White add additional weight to the firmly established propositions African American culture has deep roots in West African cultures and it simultaneously reflected and sustained the struggles for freedom and dignity during slavery and beyond. The authors sample the varying genres of vocal communication, such as songs, stories, and sermons and the corresponding settings of work, recreation, and worship. Observing [t]he sounds made by free blacks and slaves hawking their goods, singing, whistling, or humming, arguing, shouting, playing in the street, and merely going about their work were a part of the fabric of life ... in most American urban centers, they also treat the sounds of slavery in Charleston, New York, New Orleans, and Richmond (p. 184). As cities differed from rural areas, so too did the North differ from the South, and the authors direct their attention accordingly. The range and depth of their treatment depends on extant sources, which vary considerably in quantity and quality over time. For the colonial period, for instance, runaway slave advertisements provide considerable insight into African and African American speech, suggesting both the Babel of languages and dialects served as the vehicles of verbal communication and the