The Film: Interview Transcripts: Loren Schweninger

Loren Schweninger, Professor of History, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, on
rebels on the plantation
Some historians who wrote about slavery in the early part of the 20^th Century pictured slaves as passive and as contented, and as one scholar said, it was a “chapel of ease” for those who lived in it and that “Sambo was content in his place, and loved his master.”  That was in a textbook in the 1930s that was read widely. 

Historians now recognize that the plantation was a place of turmoil and conflict and violence and constant pain and suffering among many slaves.  In recent years, scholars have delved into this and looked at slavery in various parts of the south to show this violence and this tension and conflict. 

In the public mind, many people still feel that slavery was a passive, nonviolent and calm institution, that slaves were generally contented after they were Christianized, and that after they came from the dark shores of Africa, living in America was a good thing for them. 

Frederick Law Olmstead, who traveled in the south during the 1850s, observed that on virtually every plantation he visited over a two-year period, the owners of the plantation told about runaway slaves.

Plantation owners struggled to control slaves.  It was continual and it was pervasive throughout the south.  Runaway slaves were advertised in newspapers and on broadsides, and planters spent a good deal of time trying to retrieve their property.  The slaves were caught, brought back, punished, and ran away again.

The Race and Slavery
Petitions Project

obstacles and
heart-wrenching decisions

three groups of free blacks

dramatic slave escapes

slavery’s long shadow