It also comes from early motion pictures and fictional accounts written by prejudiced early American authors. Jane. -----Original Message----- >From: Paul Heinegg <[log in to unmask]> >Sent: Jun 24, 2007 1:27 AM >To: [log in to unmask] >Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] Topic Picnic and Its Derogatory Commitations along with Negro Barbeques > >In response to Glen C. Gregory's post... >------- >Those lynchings did not take place without the full support of the white >population and reflect the culture of the white population at the time. Did >white just become barbarians after the war? > >There is a clear connection between the fact that African American slaves >were merely property prior to the Civil War and the actions of whites >towards >them after the war. More than two hundred years of slavery firmly set this >concept into white culture--regardless of the myth of "good" slaveowners. > >Wasn't it Eugene Genovese who wrote that our ideas about slavery, both North >and South, stem mostly from newspapers printed before the Civil War? > >I decided to take my own advice and abstract the parts of the wills of >slaveowners that refer to slaves. I own the two microfilms of the wills >from Halifax County, North Carolina, from 1758 to 1891, so I will start with >them. It is not Virginia, but it borders on it and all the families came >from there. I have so far only abstracted the first hundred pages, but I >cannot yet detect any instance in which one could not replace the name of a >slave with that of a horse except in those cases where they refer to female >slaves as wenches or one master that allowed a slave to choose masters (a >talking horse?). >http://www.freeafricanamericans.com/halifax.htm >Paul Lillian Jane Steele