Length: 43:53
[cassette tape starting effect]
[Excerpts of speeches from Shirley Chisholm, Toni Morrison, Malcolm X, and Angela Davis]
[Intro: "Hip Hop Instrumental 2" by Ketsa]
Jo'-Hannah: Hey guys, I'm Jo'-Hannah Valentin—
Shay: —and I'm Shay Milner—
Jo: —and you're listening to Black Tea.
Shay: Black tea is a podcast in collaboration with Vanderbilt student communications that strives to highlight underrepresented and undiscovered perspectives on campus. This month we're doing a mini series in commemoration of Black History Month, where we will be interviewing influential black faculty on campus about topics ranging from black feminism and masculinity, black literature, the origins of black history and black Greek life.
Jo: This month we'll be drinking black tea, but unfortunately, this is our—
[sniffles]
Jo: —our last — this last episode
Shay: —the last one—
Shay & Jo: —of Black History Month!
Jo: How am I supposed to survive without Black History Month guys? I just — let's take a couple seconds of silence to just think about how amazing Black History Month is. . .
[silence]
Shay: And let's keep going.
Jo: Man, I'm gonna miss black history month. This month —amazing— I mean, well, let me not say amazing some things happen this month that should have been done during Black History Month. But that's another conversation.
Jo: Okay, guys, so the event of this episode that we will be talking about or the person really is Robert Smalls. Robert Smalls was an enslaved man in the south. And a few months after the South seceded, he was hired out to steer a CSS planter, which is a military transport for the Confederacy. So he piloted That ship for several months. And during that time that ship picked up four large guns and 200 pounds of ammunition. And so traditionally white sailors slept on the ground on dry land, while the black crewman had to stay on the ship. Interesting enough this was very great for smalls as he and the remaining crew slipped away that night picked up their families who were waiting at a nearby Wharf and headed north.
Jo: Smalls knew all of the Confederate signals so he was able to pass every checkpoint. He also wore the captain straw hat and copied his mannerisms. So he was very easily able to follow the Confederates on short. He ended up reaching the US Navy and lower the Confederate flag replacing it with a white bed sheet. So that was enough morning light for the USS onward the Navy ship to see that lack of surrender and he ended up being free, you know, going to the north and also taking his family and other crewman and their families. with him. So if you would like to read more information about Robert Smalls, I suggest because it's a really interesting story, we will have links in the description.
Shay: For the quote of today, we're drawing from the Black Liberation Army revolutionary Assata Shakur's autobiography. In her autobiography, Shakur states, "People get used to anything the less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave."
Jo: Wow.
Shay: Which is very relevant to what we're talking about today, which you'll learn later if you keep listening, but also
Jo: Yes, an amazing time—
Shay: —but also just to keep this in mind as we exit Black History Month, about how you if you're, a black person can continue to pinpoint your own oppression and how the things that you may be engaged with or the factors that may be acting upon you may be aiding in your own oppression.
Jo: Also, I really like the fact that she says after a while people just think oppression is The normal state of things because I think that especially from an American viewpoint, just like here in Nashville and Tennessee and America, how there are so many things that black people have to deal with, that are considered normal these microaggressions macro aggressions just like obvious things that if it were happening to someone else, you'd be like, Wow, that's really wrong. Maybe we should not do that. But black people have to deal with this on a normal occurrence, on an everyday occurrence, so it becomes normal, which it shouldn't be normal because it's not — it's not okay. That just really struck me.
[Transition: water boiling noise]
Jo: Our self-care Tip of the day for you all is to go watch a movie. It's midterm season here on Vanderbilt's campus.
Shay: — yay.
Jo: — yay —
Shay: —said no one—
Jo: —time for no go cry in the bathroom. Also, spring break is here. I mean, we just got out of classes on Friday. So a movie is a great way to both unwind and remind yourself of the greatness that black people have achieved. I mean, what else is Black History Month here for?
[laughs]
Jo: Some movie recommendations that we have for you by black directors are movies like Selma, Crooklyn, 12 Years A Slave, Moonlight, BlackKklansman, with the three K's —
[laughs]
Jo: —Us, and When They See Us, so we hope that you guys can just one, take a break, relax, enjoy spring break, but also take some time to think about how great black people are.
[Transition: sound of tea being poured]
Shay: For today's episode, we will be interviewing Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh coming from the Department of Religious Studies here at Vanderbilt.
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: This semester, I'm teaching race and religion in America. It's a new course kind of close to what I normally teach. I teach courses on race, gender, sexuality and religion. So at those intersections, And I am also teaching Southern religion and culture, which is a writing seminar this semester.
Jo: So today we'll be talking to Dr. Wells Oghoghomeh about women, religion, and slavery. We hope you guys enjoyed this wonderful—
Shay: —enlightening.
Jo: It was amazing like, Oh my god, just bring your popcorn, enjoy —
Shay: —bring your tea.
Jo:—soak it in, bring your tea, yes, especially.
[Transition: "Poor Lazarus"]
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: Slavery was gendered in a number of ways. Mostly along lines of labor. So when we think about slavery, usually you conjure an image of . . .some man out there picking cotton, okay. And so there are just so many layers to what slavery was and a part of my work What I do in my classes is to give you a very nuanced image of what slavery actually was. I always say that we went to war, the only Civil War this nation has ever known over this institution. So it's got to be more than just somebody out there picking cotton, you know.
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: So slavery was gendered along the lines of labor. So we think about productive labor, in terms of agricultural labor, of course, is what we go to first with slavery, but also industrial labor. Artisanal labor is kind of maybe you know, a way to think about it. So in slave men were more likely to be the ones who learned trades. They were more likely to be the people who got to leave farms, plantations, and businesses. They were oarsmen. They were blacksmith. They were cobblers, they were carpenters. I mean, I, you know, I always say most jobs in the south were occupied by people of African descent during slavery, which is why we don't have a very prominent immigration narrative outside of Scottish and Irishman and of English descent, we don't have those same narratives like you get in the north, especially post-revolutionary era, revolutionary war, because of the number of jobs that enslaved people occupied.
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: They built the railroads, they did, you know, they moved the raw agricultural goods to the townships so that they can be moved north, and not just north — north and across oceans. So men were more likely to perform those tasks while women were more likely to be agricultural labor. So I always say when we think about people outside in the field, we need to be thinking about women. They also were seamstresses. They were domestics. But women also performed reproductive Labor and Social labor. So because men were more likely to be people who moved off the plantation being hired out, women, oftentimes for the heads of households. And so that meant that they raised the children. And so when we think about who socialized children to be enslaved laborers who taught them how to navigate the exigencies of enslavement and the culture that slavery produced in the south. It was usually the women. Now, this does not mean that men were abandoning their children, they just didn't have the option to be in those households oftentimes,
Shay: What did enslaved households look like?
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: So that's an interesting question. It really depended on the size of the plantation farmer business. So if you were an urban enslaved person, household could mean just you and your immediate family being the only people being owned, or it could mean solitude because there are a lot of laborers in urban spaces with whom they were never able to kind of match themselves with someone else because of the nature of their enslavement. They might have traveled a lot with the person that they were with, they might have been a personal servant. So when enslaved owners removed from the city or from their plantations, they took these one or two people with them, that meant they left, you know, any partners they had behind. So it could be you live outside, out back behind the homes of whoever you work for in an urban setting. Or sometimes we have lots of accounts of people sleeping in broom closets and things like that wherever they could lay down, you know.
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: So in the urban space, it could look a little different. Most people were not, you know, able to just kind of live with their partner because if you're there, you're usually there either with your slaveholder or you're there with, you're there by yourself, you know, you're being hired out. So whoever your partner might be somewhere else. When we talk about farms and plantations, usually they had separate spaces, usually shared. We see sometimes people were one family to a household, but usually, it was two families to a household. And these were single-room spaces. So people did everything in one room and they shared it. So that's what a household it looked like. A lot of times you had to get permission from your slaveholder to live with your partner. And that may or may not be granted. And sometimes your partner was on a neighboring plantation or farm. So you just never got to live together, you just, they would travel to see one another on Saturday nights, or mostly Sunday mornings and Sundays and spend the day together and then go back to wherever they're from, or where they lived during the week,
Jo: Which that kind of reminds me, in the class that I took with you, you had talked about these little almost like, not Hall passes, but like what would you say as Hall passes in schools that they would give to men that would go travel to see their significant other? How often do you think those were given out?
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: Yeah, so those passes would usually be given out weekly. Particularly if you had a partner who didn't live on the same plantation or farm and the logic there - Although the threat of running away was always there, people would often not choose a time when everybody's out and about to run away, because people would know you by your dress, that you are an enslaved person. So they would get them every week so that you wouldn't run away. Because the thought is, if you have somebody that you care about that is here, and we allow you to see, it's going to make it that much harder for you emotionally and psychologically to leave slavery. So they would hand them out, usually weekly, usually, only to men and men would be the ones who would travel to see their partners. But you also had permanent passes for those who were hired out. So if you were an urban labor who lived apart from the slaveholder for months at a time, you would always have something usually sewn onto your clothing that said, Who you belong to what your name was, and what your trade was, and what year the past was four. So it's more like a license than a pass. But the little kind of written passes, we usually go out once a week, or every now and then we see it you get a pass to go to like a Bible study or something like that.
Shay: Because men were only granted these kind of passes —and I guess they only had the freedom— how then did women exercise their own agency and their own resistance in these gender practices?
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: So women. I always say the question about agency and resistance is always about what choices do you make when you have a limited range of choices? So it's hard to talk about, I always say it's hard to talk about agency when we're thinking about people within structures of enslavement because agency really does come out of a context where people have a wider range of choices than enslaved people actually had. So I always say, in these contexts, and Walter Johnson, he's a slavery historian who I always quote, has a wonderful essay called "on agency". And in that article, he basically makes the argument that for enslave people, anytime they did anything, they were exercising some sort of agency. And so within that framework, you know, doing things like laughing and loving and just going to the bathroom is agency you know. And so I think with enslaved people, we have to think in terms of humanity, they're human. And so they always found ways to be human, because that's just all they could do. So they would sometimes have things called frolics, where they would go out in the middle of the night. Just meet in the woods and play music and dance. And for these events, women would piece together cloth and they would sew dresses, and they would create hoops, you know, so that they could present themselves in a certain way, they would style their hair. I think there are a number of ways that enslave people, but enslaved women, in particular, would have resisted their confinement.
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: You know, you can also think about things like religious participation, I think in these terms because women disproportionately attended religious services. And this is consistent with the pattern we see across American Christianity, you're always going to have women in larger numbers. You know, when we think across time, however, enslaved women have an added incentive, because this is an opportunity for them to leave, you know, and so when they leave, they're able to build social relationships, they're able to meet people that they don't see every day, build friendships, something as simple as having a friend that you don't work with, you know, being able to meet a partner from a wider pool of people. These are all added incentives to religious participation, particularly, I should say Christian participation, because that's what we're thinking about. So that's another kind of added layer of resisting their confinement, they found ways to be transgressive, even when it didn't seem like they were being so. So yeah, those are just some of the ways, but I think in the broader scheme of thinking about agency and resistance, every time they enjoyed themselves, every time they told stories at night, you know, sang songs when they were rowing, they sang songs when they were howing, you know, to keep time. These are all acts that say, you know, in the midst of this confinement, I am still finding ways to create, finding ways to assert my humanity.
Shay: It's crazy because a lot of slavery education is centered around refuting black humanity or like enslaved persons' humanity, and just focusing on them being like, they're these destitute people and they had to be freed.
Jo: —civilized
Shay: And I never learned about any of these things. And whenever I heard about enslaved people using songs, it'd be like Negro spirituals, and that's it.
[laughs]
Shay: They just leave it at that. It's usually a joke.
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: Yeah, no, I mean, absolutely, I mean one of my favorite and Johannah knows it because we read Neale Hurston to start my class on Slave Religion and Culture. And Hurston has one of the best lines about slave spirituals where she's like, you know, these were songs that people just sang you know, they weren't
Jo: it wasn't like anything spectacularly religious. It was like, Guys, I want to have some fun, so let's make up a song.
["I Be So Glad. . . When the Sun Goes Down"]
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: Absolutely. I'm glad you remember. I love how she makes that argument because she's like, you know, these songs that are being sung, you know, by these Glee Clubs, I don't know these songs. The spirituals are still being created every time somebody sits down and one person starts singing and another one picks it up and another one takes it on. These are the spirituals and so if you think about it in- in light of Hurston argument, it makes more sense, you know, that improvisational style that is so characteristic of African American music when we talk about the creation of jazz, and the blues and all these, you know, and we think about the call and response tradition of African American Christianity, or particularly Protestantism, the structure is already there with enslaved people. I mean, it's coming from them. So when they're sitting here, they're sitting in the spirituals, a lot of times of spirituals or secular songs, their songs, they're singing about some girl who's doing something or the other, you know—
[laughs]
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: —some man, you know, like, you know, they're not necessarily and every now and then they use Christian narratives or Christian vocabularies in their songs because they'll learn the stories. They'll learn some biblical stories here or there. But that's why their stories are going to, you know, when you hear spirituals, especially ones that have been sung since the turn of the century, they always have some funny twist on them, you know, and it's because it's the way people have this kind of way of Speaking on multiple levels, it's always going to be a layered meaning to what they're saying. But they also have humor that, you know. There's this humorous element and sort of ironic element to how they sing and what they're talking about. So, yeah, rituals are an excellent example of kind of this traditional imagery of enslaved people as this desolate group who are just out there with no humanity, picking cotton. We don't think of them as farmers. They're just workers who are not bringing any expertise or skill to their labor. And that's just not the case. You know, they brought so much of the agricultural cultures of the South are products of native and enslaved people's expertise, African peoples' expertise being imported and brought here to the south so that this country could prosper. So yeah, the spirituals are just another iteration of you know, enslaved people asserting their humanity and being creative. Even in the midst of very extreme conditions
Jo: Our next question is how did slaveholders use perceptions of female sexuality and Christianity to justify slavery? I know we ended up touching kind of on like how Christianity was a big influence with women like that being the only time for them to go out. So like, how would that connect with their sexuality and also just like the sexual and physical abuse that slaveholders used over women?
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: Yeah. So early on, we think about the history of West Africa. I think a lot of the popular modern perception of how people understood African women was you know, they understood them as beasts and they dehumanize them. But if you read early narratives of travelers to West Africa, particularly, even English travelers, but particularly when we look at the Portuguese and the Spanish, they admire African women, they are clearly marrying them. They're having children with them. They're partnering with political gain and economic gain. So, they don't seem to have these particularly strong opinions. Sometimes they'll comment on things, but it's much more narrative style. You see ethnocentrism certainly, but not to the extent that you see once we get to the late 18th and mid to late 18th century, and that's because women's sexuality becomes a way to justify slavery, you know. So, once we, we read Jennifer Morgan's work Laboring Women and in there she talks about these traveler accounts where they talk about African and Native women being able to breastfeed their children over their shoulders and how long breasted they are. And as silly as this is, because, yeah, you have some kids and you nursing you, you know, things are gonna change but you know, as- as silly as it is.
[laughs]
Jo: —sorry.
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: Yeah, it happens, you know, and so women and women of all shades experience this phenomena of gravity.
[laughs]
Jo: I like that
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: So like that, yeah. So they use that as evidence that these women somehow do not experience childbirth and childbearing as the same way European women do. And I should say that European women is still a category that's emerging, they're still not yet understanding each other as kind of the same. But they're saying that well, you know, they clearly don't have a problem having children because look, they get up right after having a baby and they go out and do something else. And so they're, now let's be very clear. Most of these travelers are men who are interpreting what they're saying—
Jo: —and who have probably never seen childbirth as well. because wasn't it like more a private thing where like, the women do that, and we'll be out and we'll bring them food or something, so they wouldn't know in the first place.
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: Absolutely. Absolutely. They would not know. So there's saying this in a different cultural context. And they're really not seeing women give birth in even in West African society, but they're surmising from what they do see that these women are not having any sort of difficulty having a baby, they're just going about their day. And, you know, these are ways to justify slavery, you know, there are they are an enslavable group of people. Because look at this, they can reproduce without the same problems as everyone else, they're more physically durable, you know, so they're not going to succumb in the same ways that women of European descent would if they were put the same sort of labor. So this is why even when we get to the colonial period, when you still have white indentured servants, female white indentured servants, you have prohibitions against them being used in the field that were not applied to women of African descent. So even when you have, you know, two people have the same labor class or similar labor classes. In the colonial period in the Chesapeake, they're still going to start making these distinctions based on these ideas that women of African descent are somehow - they're somehow different physically. They're never going to say physically superior, it's going to be different in the same way a cow can plow.
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: So that's one of the ways and then there's also going to be this kind of parallel argument about sexual practices that they're observing in West Africa. So they're going to end really it's not people point to polygamy, but it's really not a lot of polygamy happening before you get the decimation of certain cultures and you don't have enough men there because they've been taken by the slave trade. Now, this happens in places like Congo and Angola. So there's certain regions that are just absolutely decimated by the slave trade. And so yeah, you're going to have this congregating around certain men, usually by force, because these men are going to be slave traders, you know, who are able to acquire women for commercial exchange to facilitate their trade relationships. So when people come in, I don't only offer you hospitality, I offer you a woman to serve as your translator, to cook your food to make sure you don't get sick, and to be your sexual concert. It's really much more of this kind of economic accumulation of women. And so, Europeans are going to observe things like that, even though they're participating in it. They're going to observe it and say, Look, slavery is teaching these people morals, you know, and liberating the women in particular, from the degradation of African men. And so the arguments are going to change it's going to go from these African women are beautiful and their - man they're really you know, they have a real a lot of talents, look at what they can do, so we need to enslave them. So how do we rhetorically and discursively create a justification for the economic and political ends that we have in these - these regions and towards these people. And so that's You're going to get a lot of the sexual arguments, looking at enslaved women's practices, because the structures of slavery did not allow them to create these lasting relationships. They're going to be, you know, projected as promiscuous, but they're also, of course, we know going to be projected as promiscuous because it's easier when you want to rape somebody to not have to think about —
Jo: —to think that she's tempting you and you're not acting like a savage. Right?
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: Exactly, to not think about the emotional, psychological or physical ramifications of what you're doing to someone. So and I mean, they knew it was awful, you know, but in the everyday rhetoric in the metal rhetoric of the transatlantic slave trade, we can make these arguments so we can break up their families, you know, somehow they don't love as deeply and you know, to be honest, this is still with us. You know, when we are trying to assert black humanity, it's still a sense of, well, you know, when one of our children gets shot by you know, someone, we don't feel the same things as other people. So it's not as much of a tragedy, you know. So there's an illegibility of black pain. This is part of that larger narrative, the sexual assault and coercive culture of slavery is a part of rendering people of African descent, paying their physical, emotional, psychological pain and struggle, illegible and invisible for economic ends. And Christianity is always an accomplice, you know, it can always be used as an accomplice any religion can be an accomplice to what people want to do. Ultimately, it just provides a very powerful rhetorical tool and theological structure
Jo: —and it almost gives them like that divine nothin, that something above us is telling me, that this is how it's supposed to be.
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: Absolutely. That's why it's powerful. I mean, what are you going to say when I say - if I say God said, there's no nowhere to go from that if you believe in God
Jo: That reminds me. Oh my gosh, it was a woman that said she was like the reincarnation of a saint in the Congo?
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: Oh yeah. Kimpa Vita, yes.
Jo: Yeah, and she was like oh, well, I'm- I'm the reincarnation. So this is what this person says. And everyone couldn't really deny that because religion is like an experience of its own. So like, they couldn't say, well, you're wrong because, like, who knows if she was right or wrong?
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: Right, that is an amazing example of how the same rhetoric, the same structures can be deployed against colonialism and against white supremacy. Kimpa Vita said I am the reincarnation of Saint Anthony. So, Saint Anthony says, we're gonna get rid of all of this imported rice, Saint Anthony says we're going to start farming local varieties of African rice. You know—
Jo: —St. Anthony knows what's up.
[laughs]
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: Right? You know, so what do you say to that? The missionaries didn't know what to do with her. So the French government, the French colonial government, had to you know, basically kidnap her and imprison her and eventually she died and there's nothing - there is no response to that. She's using the very language and rubrics of the culture that is trying to - the colonial culture that's oppressing her. So she, I mean, they The only thing they could do, you know, was kill her, because they could not refute her in open space. They can just - they couldn't debate her. I mean, she would. She was redeploying everything but she was doing it, also drawing upon Congolese tradition of the Nganga. And she said no, no, I've been ordained in both traditions. I've been divinely appointed in both and so she just - she just pulled every ounce of religious power out of that culture and redeployed it to anti-colonial ends Oh, she's a really powerful figure.
Shay: So can we think about on the other hand how enslave people may have used religion or practice their own religions and or how they may have adapted Christianity to their own religion?
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: Mhm!
Jo: Oh, wait, I think that reminds me of something else!
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: Oh, what?
Jo: What was it called?
Shay: You really learned something!
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: You really did. I love it!
Jo: it was - it was like the - gosh, I can't remember the term they use where you take one symbol and you kind of like use like the symbol of the cross which already existed in Congo culture.
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: Yes!
Jo: So it was talking about life and death like the circle of life and death. But, then they were like, oh, I've seen that before. So they just merged it and all the Christians were like, Ah, so you love Jesus and they were like —yeah, we love Jesus.
[laughs]
Jo: That ain't My Jesus!
[laughs]
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: Yea! they're like, no, this is not me. So a lot of them practice other things, or they might incorporate Christian narratives. They liked certain narratives of Christianity, but they were doing other things as well. They were still praying at the end of the day and kind of in circles, they were still doing ring shouts during funerals, they were still practicing conjure, they were still conjuring one another, they still believe that there were met - there was this tradition where objects can manifest sacred power. And sometimes your physical problem was the result of a spiritual problem
Shay: Actually, going on with that. Our next question is about conjuring, so if you could explain to us what conjuring is and how did it come about.
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: So I always say conjure is like a - kind of this constellation of things. I would argue it's much more It's a tradition or maybe an orientation more than anything else, because conjure was medicine. It was a constellation of rituals and material artifacts and ideas that could be deployed for healing or harming ends. So sometimes, when people are talking about conjure, they really were just talking about root work, you know, people who knew how to go and identify plants that were helpful for resolving illnesses. In other instances, conjure was much more tied to divination. So the sense of someone having an ability to discern an unseen problem, you know, an unseen element of a problem, the unseen dimensions of a problem. In this instance, conjurers were usually people who were understood to be born with this ability. So they were usually born special they had, maybe they were the seventh child. If you were born that way, you had some sort of spiritual gift, and that spiritual gift was using that understood through Christian rubrics, so that spiritual gift usually was something along the lines of, you can see ghosts, you can see dead people, you can talk to the people who are disembodied, I should say, or you could conjure, you know, you were good at root work.
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: So it's a range of things. But conjure was really much more about tradition than anything else that included a lot of different things, things that we would call witchcraft, people who were harming, you know, just all about harming, people who were considered to be embodied metaphysical entities or spirit entities were also under the rubric of conjures and conjure, I always say, conjure was the religion of enslaved people. Okay, that was it. Most of them practice conjure even if they professed to be Christian, or Muslim, they still wore packets, you know for protection. They Still went to a root worker when they were sick. They use the Bible and these really interesting ways to deter witches and things of that nature. So I mean, they're doing all this under the rubric or you know, in the framework of conjure, so Christianity and everything else slots into conjure, not the other way around.
Shay: Bringing it back to women and Christianity in your article the Gendered Ethics of Female Enslavement Searching for Southern Slave Women's Religions in the African Atlantic —
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: —Gosh!
Shay: —yea, that's a long title. You state, "in the ocean away from ancestral spirits, a mesh in Western European hedge of money captive Monday, women and their descendants likely interpreted Christian practices and the spirits of the Christian Pantheon as sources of spiritual power." Can you just explain what you meant by that?
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: So this idea that you have just additional layers of spiritual power, spirit power, you know, you just you need as much as possible because, why not? And so, you know, I always like in my work to wrap myself around how enslaved women and enslaved people might have perceived something. So we tend to do in scholarship is, you know, because we only have European voices, we sort of orient out that way. And we don't try to understand how enslaved women might have understood, you know, what they were getting from these - these sources. And so for me, and kind of imagining, well, why, if you have a master, you know, every time most of them went into a Christian space, they were hearing something about being obedient, and being better-enslaved people, which fundamentally, most of them disagreed with. They just, you know, they did—
[laughs]
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: And they - they said that you know, we have that in the WPA source. They're like, ah, we didn't, you know, you know, we don't believe in that. So then the question becomes, well, for the few so, you know, one scholar has given an estimate. 22% of enslaved people are Christian prior to the Civil War, although there's really no way to know how many people were. For the few who seem to profess some devotion to Christianity, why? Why would you do it? And that's my interpretation. You know, you're looking at these Christian Pantheons - people like Jesus as an access point to power. You know, how can Jesus help me in this condition in which I find myself and if you think about how, in American Protestantism, Jesus is understood as this very powerful intermediary, this powerful ally of humanity, this person, this - the Savior and all that. It's very attractive if you're someone who finds yourself enslaved because the question is well Why - Why am I enslaved? And these people are able to enslave me? Why not access their God, their deities, their spirits to try to get the same power that they have? So yeah, this is why Christianity would seem to the few who decided to adhere to it attractive. I want to kind of revise this idea of a few. Because I do think that a lot of people incorporated Jesus into their Pantheon, they incorporated the Christian God into their Pantheons doesn't mean that you're supplanted anything. They just joined other things that they were focused on. And they did that because they represented power. And power is currency and all religions, you know, but particularly for people who are coming out of a West and West Central African, indigenous orientation, religious orientation, cosmological orientation, it's about power. You know, we're not talking about belief, what is belief without power? If it doesn't work, who cares? You know, and so, they saw these Europeans have power, and they have power and they're talking about this god, they're talking about their god, how do I get that god because I don't like where I am, you know, so yeah, you know, I think that statement, I'm just inviting us to think about what religion does.
Shay: I think that's all the questions we have.
Jo: That was amazing.
Shay: Yea!
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: Perfect!
Shay: Thank you so much for letting us interview you and enlightening us on this Monday afternoon.
Jo: Makes me very—
Shay: Yeah
Jo: —and I'm loving this conversation.
Shay: Yeah, I've never taken a class in religion so I'm learning so many things.
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: Oh, good!
Jo: You should - you should take a class with —
Shay: —yea, no, I want to—
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: —well yes come to come to my class you know, I —this is what I love. You know, Johannah knows slave religion and culture is what I do. So I love talking about this stuff. And I —I really appreciate the invitation. This was fabulous. You guys are doing amazing work.
Shay: Thank you.
Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh: Thank you so much for having me.
Shay: Thank you.
[Transition: "Hip Hop Instrumental 2" by Ketsa]
Shay: So once again, we'd like to thank Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh for speaking with us today. You have enlightened me immensely. I've never learned about most of these topics.
Jo: You are one of my favorite professors, really, like I have to take another class with you. That was— wow.
Shay: As a reminder, we'll be linking all of the resources that Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh may mention during her interview, along with the information about the event of the day that we advertise and will be listing the different movie recommendations that we gave you guys during our self-care tip.
Jo: As you all may know, and we've mentioned this in previous episodes.
Shay: —this has to be like third time we've mentioned—
Jo: —so it means it's really important, which it is. Voting is coming up!
Shay: March third is the official voting day for Tennessee. Yes, and you can't even say that me and Jo'-Hannah are being hypocritical because we went to go vote last Friday —
Jo: —yes we did—
Shay: —during early voting,
Jo: We went and voted. So that means if my little 4'11 size person —
[laughs]
Jo: —can go and vote, y'all can vote because I know all of y'all are taller than me.
Shay: So yeah, if you guys have any questions, comments or concerns, our email is blackteainquiry@gmail.com. It has not changed.
Jo: You probably already knew this but you know just to reinforce they do say that if you say something, I think it was 21 times or at least you get, like, told 21 times it'll become a —a fact in your mind. like, you remember it. So we're just gonna keep saying it, more than 21 times you'll always know.
Shay: And also, we'll be having another mini-series coming up next month after spring break, which we would love to have some of you guys on the podcast!
Jo: Please. We love everyone!
Shay: Specifically, if you are a woman of color because if you don't know, March is women's month—
Jo: —oh Women's Month, another amazing feat. First black people, then women! Wow!
[laughs]
Shay: So yeah, if you have any comments for us, you can reach us by our email or on our website or by our various social media platforms.
Jo: And if you think that you're doing something important on campus, we have no problem with interviewing you or just, I don't know —
Shay: —highlighting you—
Jo: — just gassing you up.
Shay: Especially if you are a woman of color.
Jo: Exactly!
Shay: —for our coming episodes
Jo: Exactly! Women's month. March. Amazing.
Shay: See you guys not next Saturday, but the Saturday after that.
Jo: Because I want to sleep.
[laughs]
Shay: Bye guys.
[Transition: "Hip Hop Instrumental 2," by Ketsa]
Jo: This has been Black Tea. Thanks for listening.
Jo & Shay: Cheers.
[Outro: "Hip Hop Instrumental 2," by Ketsa]
Resources:
1. Robert Smalls https://www.avclub.com/in-1862-a-slave-hijacked-a-confederate-ship-and-became-1828752853 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/thrilling-tale-how-robert-smalls-heroically-sailed-stolen-confederate-ship-freedom-180963689/
2. Assata Shakur https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/assata-olugbala-shakur-1947/; https://www.amazon.com/Assata-Autobiography-Shakur/dp/1556520743
3. Walter Johnson “On Agency,” https://www.jstor.org/stable/3790316?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
4. Zora Neal Hurston, The Sanctified Church
5. Jennifer L. Morgan, Laboring Women
6. Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita: https://www.headstuff.org/culture/history/terrible-people-from-history/beatriz-kimpa-vita-african-prophet/ https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pwmn_4/hd_pwmn_4.htm
Credits
Shay Milner, co-host
Jo'Hannah Valentin, co-host
Music: “Hip Hop Instrumental 2,” by Ketsa; “Yesterday Night,” by Checkie Brown at https://freemusicarchive.org/ ; “Poor Lazarus,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ue6FD9r92CI, “I Be So Glad. . . When the Sun Goes Down,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-zlSq4mWiE&list=PL5gesReHGwvw6aCtl1VdBUVJHzSwzy0CD&index=2
Episode edited with Audacity
What we're drinking: Bigelow Earl Grey Black Tea https://www.bigelowtea.com/Teas/Tea-Type/Black-Tea/Earl-Grey-Tea
Quote of the day: “People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.” ― Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography (https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/57925.Assata_Shakur)
Self-care tip of the day: Watch a (black-directed) movie. Recommendations: Selma, Crooklyn, 12 Years a Slave, Moonlight, BlackKKKlansman, Us, and When They See Us
We want to hear from you! You can reach us through our email, website, or our social media outlets.
Email: blackteainquiry@gmail.com
Instagram: @BlackTeaPodcas1
Twitter: @BlackTeaPodcas1, https://twitter.com/BlackTeaPodcas1
Facebook: @blackteapodcast, https://www.facebook.com/blackteapodcast/
Platforms
Our podcast can be found at: https://anchor.fm/johannah-chanteria
Website: blackteapodcast.wixsite.com/podcast