Lyddie: Voices from the Field - Chapter 06 Enslaved People's Agency

Enslaved African Americans – either captured by force or born into slavery – fought against slavery through small and big acts of resistance every day. These actions ranged from faking illness to avoid work that enriched their enslavers to breaking tools, practicing traditional beliefs, and running away. These acts of resistance, also called “agency,” allowed enslaved people to express their humanity while being held in a system that denied it.[i]

In other words, their actions declared, “I am a human.”

The institution of slavery in the United States was evil for many reasons. White people maintained control over enslaved African Americans’ bodies through laws that declared Black people property and with mental and physical abuse that generated intense fear. However, enslaved people still found ways to free their bodies, minds, and souls from slavery.

By practicing traditional religious beliefs and knowledge, like music, or building kinship networks of relations and friends, enslaved people were able to free their souls from the cruelty of enslavement. Most enslavers discouraged the building of family bonds, as they found it easier to sell their enslaved people without the emotional trauma that came with family separation.

By 1833, almost all of the southern states had passed anti-literacy laws forbidding enslaved people from learning to read and write. White people were afraid of what Black people would do with the knowledge and power that comes with literacy. By learning to read and write, enslaved people were able to free their minds from state-sanctioned illiteracy, reading and interpreting for themselves text like the Bible and David Walker’s “Appeal, in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World.”

Enslaved people gained physical freedom by running from their enslavers. Historians estimate that between 1820-1860, only about one thousand enslaved people escaped each year, out of the nearly 2.5 million African-descended people enslaved in the United States.[ii] Some ran from their current situations toward freedom, others ran to reunite with family and friends. Black and white people help those running from slavery by providing shelter, food, and directions to another safe house. Runaway was dangerous, with not guarantee of success, and enslavers advertised substantial rewards for their capture. Escape attempts were dangerous and uncertain, and slaveholders offered substantial rewards for captured runaways.[iii]

All these acts of agency came with risks, including whippings, being sold to another enslaver, and even death.

[i] https://www.amrevmuseum.org/finding-freedom-big-ideas/big-idea-4-agency-and-resistance

[ii] https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/ugrr/exugrr2.htm

[iii] https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/immigration/african/resistance-and-abolition/