What did slaves do on their free time?

When they could, slaves spent their limited free time visiting friends or family nearby, telling stories, and making music. Some of these activities combined African traditions with traditions of the Virginia colonists.

What would slaves do in their free time?

During their limited leisure hours, particularly on Sundays and holidays, slaves engaged in singing and dancing. Though slaves used a variety of musical instruments, they also engaged in the practice of "patting juba" or the clapping of hands in a highly complex and rhythmic fashion.

What did slaves do on their day of rest?

Most slaves had to work from sunrise to sunset. Some owners made their slaves work every day, others allowed slaves one day a month off and some allowed their slaves to have Sundays as a rest-day. Slaves would spend their non-forced working time mending their huts, making pots and pans and relaxing.

How did slaves spend their time?

In many areas, however, it was customary for slaves to work Saturday afternoons and Sundays on their own time, devoting daylight hours to cash-earning activities similar to that of their lowcountry brethren. Most slave purchasing reflected this tension between necessity, luxury, and potential danger.

Do slaves get free time?

Some people spent their free time visiting other farms or plantations where their spouses or family members lived. Some found time for games and sports in their free hours.

What Actually Happened When Slaves Were Freed

Did slaves have a day off?

Slaves were generally allowed a day off on Sunday, and on infrequent holidays such as Christmas or the Fourth of July. During their few hours of free time, most slaves performed their own personal work.

What did slaves do in the winter?

In his 1845 Narrative, Douglass wrote that slaves celebrated the winter holidays by engaging in activities such as "playing ball, wrestling, running foot-races, fiddling, dancing, and drinking whiskey" (p.

What games did slaves play?

Slave children played with dolls, balls and jump ropes, and also engaged in hopscotch and ring games. But since there was no possibility of purchasing toys from stores, children or their parents made their own. Discarded yarn was used to form balls. Corn husks or sticks and rags were used to create dolls.

What did slaves do for work?

Besides planting and harvesting, there were numerous other types of labor required on plantations and farms. Enslaved people had to clear new land, dig ditches, cut and haul wood, slaughter livestock, and make repairs to buildings and tools.

How many hours did slaves sleep?

Sixteen to eighteen hours of work was the norm on most West Indian plantations, and during the season of sugarcane harvest, most slaves only got four hours of sleep.

How did slaves cook their food?

Slaves could roast potatoes in hot ashes while wrapped in leaves, like they would with cornbread or ash-cake, or cook them over the fire with other foods. Nellie Smith, a former slave from Georgia, remembered her grandmother would bake potatoes alongside a roast.

How often did slaves get food?

Slaves usually received a monthly allowance of corn meal and salt-herrings. Frederick Douglass received one bushel of corn meal a month plus eight pounds of pork or fish. Some plantation owners gave their slaves a small piece of land, a truck-patch, where they could grow vegetables.

What did slaves drink?

in which slaves obtained alcohol outside of the special occasions on which their masters allowed them to drink it. Some female house slaves were assigned to brew cider, beer, and/or brandy on their plantations.

What did slaves sleep?

Most slaves' cabins would have been outfitted with pallets for the adults to sleep on—children often slept on the floor—and perhaps wooden boxes or stools for sitting.

Did slaves celebrate birthdays?

Most slaves never knew the day they were born. They often had to guess at the year of their birth. Knowing one's birthday gives a sense of destiny.

How many hours a day did slaves work?

During the winter, slaves toiled for around eight hours each day, while in the summer the workday might have been as long as fourteen hours.

What chores did slaves do?

Typically this would include the following: cooking; cleaning; the maintenance of kitchen gardens for house consumption; running errands; caring for domestic animals; sewing and repairing clothes worn by the master's family; performing common household chores; and caring for the master's young children.

What did the slaves eat?

Weekly food rations -- usually corn meal, lard, some meat, molasses, peas, greens, and flour -- were distributed every Saturday. Vegetable patches or gardens, if permitted by the owner, supplied fresh produce to add to the rations. Morning meals were prepared and consumed at daybreak in the slaves' cabins.

How long did slaves live?

Some estimates placed the average longevity of Blacks at 21.4 years of age in 1850, with the average longevity for Whites at age 25.5. The combination of lower living standards, greater exposure, heavier labor, and poorer medical care gave slaves a higher mortality rate than whites.

What is the slavery game?

In the Underground Railroad board game called Escaping Slavery, teachers gave students a Freedom Punch Card, that reads, “If your group runs into trouble four times, you will be severely punished and sent back to the plantation to work as a slave.”

Did slaves work in the rain?

Although slaves on the Eustatia Plantation often had to work through showers, on many days in the account book, the overseer notes that slaves did not work because of rain.

What did slaves do when it wasn't cotton season?

For example, they could work as carpenters and loggers. Solomon Northup and many of his fellow cotton picking slaves were also hired out to grow sugar cane. He spent September through January working the sugar cane fields and making sugar in the sugar mill. Sugar cane required work 24/7 with very few breaks.

How much did slaves get paid a day?

Let us say that the slave, He/she, began working in 1811 at age 11 and worked until 1861, giving a total of 50 years labor. For that time, the slave earned $0.80 per day, 6 days per week. This equals $4.80 per week, times 52 weeks per year, which equals pay of $249.60 per year.

What age did slaves start working?

Between the ages of seven and twelve, boys and girls were put to work in intensive field work. Older or physically handicapped slaves were put to work in cloth houses, spinning cotton, weaving cloth, and making clothes.

What was family life like for slaves?

A father might have one owner, his "wife" and children another. Some enslaved people lived in nuclear families with a mother, father, and children. In these cases each family member belonged to the same owner. Others lived in near-nuclear families in which the father had a different owner than the mother and children.