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 "Click for larger image")
Down by the Riverside
A South Carolina Slave Community
Charles Joyner
Paper978-0-252-01305-8
$25.00
| Pub Date: | 1986 |
| Pages: | 384 pages |
In Down by the Riverside, Charles Joyner takes us on a journey back in time, up the Waccamaw River thought the low-country of South Carolina, past abandoned rice fields once made productive by the labor of enslaved Africans, past rice mills and forest clearings into the antebellum world of All Saints Parish. In this slave community, and many others like it, the slaves created a new language, a new religion--indeed, a new culture--from African traditions and American circumstances.
From the letters, diaries, and memoirs of the plantation whites and their guests, from quantitative analysis of census and probate records, and above all from slave folklore and oral history, Joyner has recovered an entire society and its way of life. His careful reconstruction of daily life in All Saints Parish is an inspiring testimony to the ingenuity and solidarity of a people who endured in the face of adversity. For students and scholars of African American culture and of American history, Down by the Riverside helps preserve the remarkably rich heritage of slave folklife and demonstrates that while "all history is local history, somewhere . . . no history, if properly understood, is of merely local significance."
"Beautifully written and richly suggestive."--Washington Post Book World
"Reaches beyond any other single work in recreating in its pages a texture so fine and full that readers may feel the ribs and twills of slave life. Highest recommendation."--Library Journal
"The finest work ever written on American slavery."--George P. Rawick, editor of The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography
Charles Joyner, Burroughs Distinguished Professor of Southern History and Culture at Coastal Carolina University, is the author of Shared Traditions: Southern History and Folk Culture.
Awards:
Co-Winner of the Chicago Folklore Prize. Winner of the Eugene M. Kayden Award, 1985.
Subjects:
Southern History & Culture / Black Studies / Folklore / History, Am.: 19th C. / History, State & Local
