What do slaves wear

This is so common a Sight that even the Ladies do not appear to be shocked at it. In the eighteenth century, enslaved adults generally received a pair of leather, straight-lasted i. Liveried servants received leather shoes with buckles, while children typically received no shoes at all. Thomas Jefferson, for example, did not begin issuing shoes to enslaved children until they were ten years old. Wooden-soled brogans quickly developed a reputation for being so uncomfortable and ill-fitting that former slaves, interviewed in the s, recollected casting them off, preferring to go barefoot.

Charles Crawley, a former slave in Petersburg, remembered that hats were also part of his allotment. Enslaved women working in the home were expected to cover their heads with the same type of lightweight, white cap worn by other members of the household.

In addition to wearing hats, many enslaved women continued the West African tradition of donning head wraps—often brightly colored textiles that were wrapped repeatedly and completely around the head, covering the hair, and secured with techniques involving knots or tuckings. Men, children, and babies also wore head wraps. A few favored slaves received hand-me-down clothing as gifts from their masters.

Thomas Jefferson utilized this practice at least once. Slaves often borrowed or even stole clothing when the need arose to supplement their wardrobe. For example, when running away , many enslaved women stole articles of clothing that were not part of their yearly allotments, such as silk and colorful calico gowns, which helped them blend into the free population. Nowhere is the clothing of enslaved Virginians better recorded than in advertisements for runaway slaves in the Virginia Gazette , published in Williamsburg.

Some notices began by describing the garments that runaways wore when they fled. These ads often also listed garments allegedly stolen from the household, suggesting that these clothes may have allowed the fugitives to pass themselves off as free people.

The historians and brothers Shane and Graham White have argued that slaves also stole clothing in order to sell it to other slaves. Other slaves were able to purchase items of clothing legitimately on the market. With money earned from odd jobs or by selling garden produce, they could purchase accessories and other personal goods. With cash or, in some instances, credit, slaves purchased colorful ribbon, hats, jewelry, fine textiles, and even ready-made garments to supplement their wardrobes.

Slaves also purchased items that harkened back to the cultural memory of African fashion, wearing purchased beads, cowrie shells, and even coins on strings around their necks. Regardless of how slaves acquired additional and often very fine clothes and accessories, the scholars Shane and Graham White suggest that it was the drab combined with touches of finery that made slave clothing unique.

Encyclopedia Virginia Grady Ave. Virginia Humanities acknowledges the Monacan Nation , the original people of the land and waters of our home in Charlottesville, Virginia. We invite you to learn more about Indians in Virginia in our Encyclopedia Virginia. Skip to content. Contributor: Katherine Egner Gruber.

A schematic drawing of the slave ship Brooks also known as the Brookes portrays the inhumane living conditions that enslaved Africans endured during the Middle Passage. Fabrics While enslaved Virginians wore the same basic types of clothing that other members of society wore, the fabrics of their garments were often—but not always—inferior compared with those worn by free Virginians. Thomas Jefferson. Cloth Samples for Slave Clothing. Acquisition Represents Our next door neighbor. Children Enslaved Girl.

Shoes, Headwear, and Jewelry In the eighteenth century, enslaved adults generally received a pair of leather, straight-lasted i. Slave Dance. Cowrie Shell. Advertisement for Runaway Slave Peter.

Decorative Slave Item. Baumgarten, Linda. Martin, Ann Smart. Cloth sold for distribution to slaves might be all cotton, cotton and wool, or all wool, depending on the season. Kersey was a twill weave fabric made from short staple wool fibers.

Satinet used cotton warps and a woolen weft in a broken twill weave with long floats, giving a smoother surface without a sharply defined diagonal ridge. Jean or jean cloth was occasionally supplied to slaves.

Rhode Island manufacturer William Dean Davis began his business selling kerseys and linseys, for example, but in added all-wool jeans and plains. Clothing was an important and immediately visible mark of social status, and osnaburg, jean, and kersey were considered suitable for the lower ranks of society. All of the available cloths came in several qualities, ranging from the cheapest sold to slave owners to better grades purchased by laborers, farm workers, craftsmen, and mechanics—both white and black—who also required durable but inexpensive cloth.

William Davis, for example, sold nine bales of assorted linseys from his Rhode Island mill to Baltimore merchant William E. Mayhew in Isaac P. In the s, Rhode Island slave cloth manufacturer Isaac Peace Hazard spent much time in the South selling cloth and investigating the needs of the market.

His letters to his brother Rowland indicate that the enslaved sometimes had a say in what they wore. Complaints from plantation owners about the variation in the contents of the bales of cloth they received were common, and Isaac wrote home that one of their contract weavers, John D.

The commerce of slave cloth held many ironies. Enslaved cotton plantation workers raised, harvested, ginned, and baled raw cotton to send to local, northern, and European spinning, knitting, and weaving mills.

They then received back the finished cloth and clothing that marked them as slaves. Many individuals ignored or suppressed their consciences or principles in the pursuit of profit.

Rowland G. The woolen mill in Peace Dale churned out thousands of yards of kerseys specifically for clothing slaves Fig. Figure 6. A dozen years later, in , Rowland Hazard made a fervent anti-slavery speech to the Rhode Island House of Representatives, indicating that he may have wished to dissociate himself from profiting by slavery. In , when the Hazard kersey mill burnt down, the brothers changed their production to finer goods such as cassimeres and shawls.

This was more than any other state and more than all the southern states combined. British mills exported large quantities of blankets and slave cloth to the American South. Habersham continued to outline his order:. However something of the kind may answer for men. Upon the whole there is no directing from this Distance. In London you may have anything the Nation may furnish… you know we have sometimes some very sharp days the beginning of October, when the Negroes unless fresh supplyed, are usually in rags.

Incorporating shoddy in these cloths decreased their cost and made them cheap enough to enter America at the lowest tariff rates. Hazard in , he preferred to buy Welsh Plains:. Manufacturers he says there have tried to imitate them but have not succeeded.

Another planter, John Potter of South Carolina, imported blankets from England for use on his plantations. He showed Isaac Hazard some samples that surprised Hazard by their quality. Of course Potter knew that Hazard was collecting information on the southern market for use in his manufacturing business, and may have been showing him better quality goods than he actually distributed.

Imports of slave cloth and clothing from the American North or from Britain were only a part of the total slave cloth industry. Plantation diaries and letters and the memoirs of freed or escaped slaves are full of references to the skilled labor of enslaved artisans who spun, dyed, and wove cloth or stitched bedding and clothing for themselves and their owners. It was not unusual for plantations to have facilities and equipment for spinning and weaving.

George Washington had a weave shed at Mount Vernon. She described the scene:. We had a great deal of chit chat but were interrupted by a little girl of mine, who came to tell me that the soldiers had cut my homespun out of the loom, and were bundling it up. Pray make them deliver the cloth.

Your countrymen will not let us have Negro cloth from town, for fear the rebels should be supplied; so we are obliged to weave. Other planters chose to have their cotton spun at a local mill and taken back to the plantation for enslaved workers to knit and weave for their own use. Because of this pattern of use, the quality of the yarn is an uncertain gauge of where a fabric was made. While some home weavers were novices and unskilled—or simply careless—so too were some factory hands.

Handspun yarns and uneven selvages may not indicate home- or plantation-made cloth, and, conversely, factory-spun yarns and a tight, even weave are not always hallmarks of mill production. Sarah Anne DeSellum, who lived with her bachelor brother on a plantation outside Gaithersburg, Maryland, happily showed off her long-functioning spinning room of three wheels to the Union officers who came to evaluate damages done to her property by the northern army.

Her slaves spun, Sarah Anne did the weaving, and the cloth was used for slave clothing. Her mistress warped the loom, assisted by a boy house servant, and had also taught Aunt Liza to weave. This one enslaved woman is said to have woven about half of the cloth needed to keep the plantation workers clothed, primarily in summer weight goods.

The heavier winter fabrics were purchased. Mills operating in the American South also competed for the slave cloth market. Columbus, Georgia, had several factories, including the Grant Factory, which opened in originally as the Coweta Manufacturing Co. By the company, which originally employed primarily white workers, made a full line of yarns, as well as osnaburg, jean, linsey, and kersey. Woodville also made linseys and yarns, and expanded to include kerseys shortly after the owner dismissed his white employees in and ran the factory with slave labor.

Several southern penitentiaries used inmate labor to compete in the coarse cloth market, first to clothe the inmates and then to make money by selling surpluses locally. During the Civil War they supplied yarn and cloth to locals and to the Confederate army. The state prison in Jackson, Mississippi, switched to steam powered equipment in about , and by could make 6, yards of cloth per week. Although the penitentiary manufactured 6, yards of cloth a week, it was trying to serve a vast area, and demand far outstripped supply.

Notice the Prices. Attire for weddings, funerals, and festive occasions was the best affordable, whether handmade, secondhand, borrowed, or inexpensive ready-to-wear. Freed African Americans dressed similarly depending on location and means. Recommendations for study include: dress behavior patterns of men and children, of African American women since , and contributions to the clothing industry. Off-Campus Purdue Users: To access this dissertation, please log in to our proxy server.

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