An 1899 illustration of a broomstick wedding

Sky Eclat · 2021-12-21T09:46:29+00:00

Christmas time usually marked the temporary relaxation of discipline and labor for enslaved men, women, and children. Additionally, plantation masters and mistresses bestowed material goods such as clothing, special food, and presents to the people they enslaved at their plantations. Due to the "charitable" attitudes of enslavers during this time, slaves frequently married during the Christmas season. Christmas provided enslaved men and women with the latitude and prosperity that made a formal wedding possible. In addition to allowing the ceremonies, some masters and mistresses ordered feasts to be prepared for the enslaved couple, arranged for a white minister to officiate the wedding, and even offered the plantation parlor for the ceremony. However, the latitude given to the enslaved during Christmas was never the less an attempt by plantation masters to suppress and reduce resistance by enslaved men and women. Frederick Douglass concluded that "all the license allowed [during the holidays] appears to have no other object than to disgust the slaves with their temporary freedom, and to make them as glad to return to their work, as they were to leave." 📷 An 1899 illustration of a broomstick wedding. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture/New York Public Library

Thread starter Sky Eclat
Start date Dec 21, 2021
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wedding

Sky Eclat

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An 1899 illustration of a broomstick wedding

Sky Eclat

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