Susan Stoderl

This is the grim reality behind the story in my historical fiction/magical realism book for ages 9-12. I don’t go into this much historical detail but rather focus on what they see around them and its effects on them as the enslaved twins escape on the UGRR. I can’t help but think of the immigrant families being locked away.

During the Antebellum Years, Norfolk existed to traffic enslaved people with its integrated network of jails, shipping agents, and traders. Traders shipped enslaved people from Norfolk to the Deep South, especially Louisiana. There were at least three private slave jails in Norfolk. Slave traders auctioned the enslaved people at Market Square, on the steps of the Courthouse, and at public auctions near Newton’s Wharf, Campbell’s Wharf, and Marsden’s Wharf. Slave jails, sometimes called “repositories,” were integral to the global slave network. They were a visible, normalized part of urban life in Norfolk during the 1830s. These private holding facilities were run by slave traders or slaveholders. Local police often cooperated and profited from helping the slave jails.

Slave jails were closer to human warehouses than legal prisons. Jailers held prisoners for a few days or weeks, either awaiting auction or to complete the manifest of an outgoing ship. Locked rooms or cells were unsanitary and crowded. High walls with barred windows and ample security prevented escape. Their cries from flogging and torture mix with the sounds of the docks and shipyards. Slave “discipline” was a standard advertised service.

An infamous slave trader and jail owner was John Caphart, and his partner, Elias Guy. Caphart advertised his services as a “punisher” at the Guy and Caphart Jail in downtown Norfolk. He also sold his services as a slave hunter. By day, he worked as a police officer alongside his superior. The jails gave white owners and buyers control over the enslaved in order to maximize their sale value and to prevent and erode resistance.

Over 20,000 enslaved people went through this system of abuse.

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After the Union captured the South Carolina Sea Islands in 1861, Lucy McKim Garrison (1842-1877) and her father traveled to them. About 10,000 enslaved people were now free. Lucy became enthralled by the emotions expressed in African American songs and their great diversity of styles. She began writing their words and setting them in musical notation. Between her return from the Sea Islands to Philadelphia in 1862, she published three of the songs before returning to teaching.

After personal losses from the war, she withdrew from public work, but after marrying in 1865, she returned to her most influential collaboration with William Frances Allen and Charles Pickard Ware. Both worked in Port Royal and collected songs of the Gullah Geechee people of Saint Helena Island. In 1867, the three published “Slave Songs of the United States.” This was the first and most influential publication of 136 African American spirituals collected from various sources.

African American enslaved communities used music and song to communicate their miseries and lift themselves above a horrendous life. Slaveholders attempted to destroy African culture to break and control them, yet their music sustained them and became a part of their resistance. Some songs came about after the war, but still reflected slavery as it was.

Songs differed from state to state. In songs from Virginia, the melody jumped in unexpected ways. To someone used to church hymns, the tune would sound bent, slanted, or off-center. The songs from South Carolina stemmed from the isolated Gullah Geechee culture, making their sound more uniform. North Carolina songs were different because they came from three distinct environments. Maritime labor shaped the Coastal and Tidewater songs, with a solo caller echoed by a chorus of those rowing. Piedmont plantations were smaller, and Black and white workers worked together. Appalachian folk music influenced that of the few enslaved workers in Western North Carolina. Tennessee and Florida Black songs influenced by white music.

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